Dell'arte rappresentativa premeditata, ed all'improviso parti due. Giovevole non solo a chi si diletta di rappresentare; ma a' predicatori, oratori, accademici, e curiosi [...]

12mo (143x75 mm). [12], 394, [2] pp. Collation: a⁶ A-Q¹² Q[i.e.R]⁶. To a few surviving copies of this rare book was added an engraved frontispiece, which is not present in this copy. Contemporary stiff vellum, inked title on spine (slightly stained and soiled). On the title page ownership entry “Joannis Antonij Donelli”. Tear repaired to l. B8, worm tracks skillfully repaired on several leaves occasionally affecting the text, light browning, but a good, genuine copy.

Extremely rare first edition. “Andrea Perrucci's Dell'arte rappresentativa premeditata ed all'improviso brings together the two great acting traditions of the early modern period: that of the scripted theatre and that of the commedia dell'arte. The work can be regarded as the culmination of a series of treatises on acting […] by literary men and/or by professional actors and directors of acting companies. Leone de' Sommi was the first, with an unpublished manuscript treatise dating from the 1560s. Next came Angelo Ingegneri (1598), Jules Cesar Boulenger (1603), (1609), and Pier Maria Cecchini (1628). Perrucci (1699) outdoes them all, offering detailed observations on staging, vocal ability and training, requisite acting skills, linguistic differentiation according to social status, and the manner in which distinctive roles should be played […]  The evolution of Perrucci's dramatic theories, whether relative to the commedia premeditata or the improvised comedy, cannot be separated from the influence of the Spanish presence, culturally and linguistically, on the Italian peninsula during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Spanish control of all of southern Italy through the Viceregal court at Naples, and of the rest of the peninsula through dynastic marriages, left its most indelible mark on the evolution of the Italian theatre, on both scripted plays and the commedia dell'arte. On invitation from the Viceroys for both personal enjoyment and as part of the Spanish Crown's propaganda of acculturation, Spanish acting troupes, bringing with them the latest successes of Lope de Vega and his followers, inundated Naples, moving from there to ambassadorial courts throughout the peninsula. The recitation of Spanish comedies in public theatres, private homes, and religious collegi garnered captive audiences throughout the seventeenth century and well into the next century. As for dramatists, opera librettists, and the comici dell'arte, the translation or adaptation of Spanish pieces offered immediate financial and professional rewards. Andrea Perrucci was no stranger to this literary phenomenon, having been born (1651) at a time when the imitation of things Spanish was in full flower. Perrucci's presence in Naples coincided with the reign of Philip IV (1621-1665), fervent supporter of Spain's theatre at home and abroad, and that of Charles II (1665-1700), whose successive Viceroys continued to promote Spanish culture, the theatre being its most prominent medium. Andrea Perrucci undoubtedly had contact with Spanish actors and with Italian dramatists, librettists, and players (comici) who had adapted Spanish works for the Italian stage. Unlike many of his peers, Perrucci did not write in Spanish. But he was familiar enough with that language to read in the original Lope de Vega's Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo, published roughly one hundred years earlier, its earliest states dating from around 1605. Perrucci's multiple allusions to that text in his treatise speak to the continuing influence of the Spaniard's dramaturgy in Italian acting circles. Lope de Vega's twenty-page tract, in verse, offered Perrucci concrete advice as to the types of plots that are most enjoyable; the preeminent need to please the public even though the classic rules of the art be compromised; the dramatic intrigue of gender-reversing disguises, given that men and women were routinely cast in their own genders at that time; the need to maintain decorum in speech and manner according to the social level of the speaker; and the realistic portrayal of elders, women, servants, and masters, to name just a few of the roles treated by Perrucci. The success of Lope's plays and those of Spanish dramatists who followed him lay precisely in their ability to conform to Catholic principles and extant social mores, yet remain flexible. They demonstrated a clear capacity for combining the extraordinary with the ordinary, the heavenly with the profane -and to carry it all off with sufficient decorum to withstand ecclesiastical censure. Perrucci's affinity for the Spanish dramatist's approach led him to translate a number of Lope's plays, as he states in his treatise, though he does not specify whether these plays were comedies, tragedies, or religious dramas. For Andrea Perrucci, trained by Jesuits and Dominicans and living in an era of strident counterreformation, with its attendant ecclesiastical censures, there could be no better model and legitimizer than Lope de Vega, himself a priest. As for the linguistic content of the Italian plays, although the Neapolitan dialect was the lingua franca of the Vice-royalty, men of letters also spoke both Spanish and Tuscan Italian routinely. All of these languages found their way into the dramatic literature of the times, including works by Perrucci. Comic interludes in scripted plays were often rendered in dialect as a way of reaching the ever-broadening theatre public. In the case of dramatists and librettists from Naples, it was a way of recuperating and revaluing a cultural heritage that ‘official' literature either ignored or saw only as a source for satire and caricature. Perrucci's early foray into literature includes two poetic pieces in Neapolitan dialect: L'Agnano zeffonnato, po-ema aroieco [sic] and La malattia d'Apollo (both in 1678) […] An example of Perrucci's linguistic virtuosity may be found in the ‘Xaccara Calabrese Spagnuola' in Part 2, Regola 12 of Dell'Arte rappresentativa. Here he offers the reader a typical comic respite, a song of frustrated love delivered with a humorous mixture of Spanish and Calabrian dialect […] Incidentally Giangurgolo, a servant figure in the commedia dell'arte repertory, often spoke in the Calabrian dialect. Andrea Perrucci's guidelines for the scripted theatre and improvisational comedy are resplendent with both classical and contemporary references. His thorough classical foundation did not preclude his recognition of and appreciation for modern dramatic practices. Still, despite his many successes as a librettist, dramatist, and stage director, Perrucci never considered himself a professional in those areas. The treatise's scholarly erudition and religious tenets aside, Perrucci emerges from his text, like Lope himself, a man possessing the soul of an actor -an actor anxious to free himself from the bonds of tradition, guided by the principle that ‘alle volte l'uscir di regola è la maggior regola che si trovi' (‘Sometimes the best rule is to break the rules', Part I, Rule 4)” (N.L. D'Antuono, Forword, in: A. Perrucci, “A treatise on Acting, from memory and by improvisation (1699)”, translated and edited by F. Cotticelli, A. Goodrich Heck, Th.F. Heck, Lanham (MD), 2008, pp. vii-viii).

“A prominent figure in the cultural world of the late seventeenth century, Andrea Perrucci was born in Palermo on June 1, 165l, the son of Francesco, a naval officer, and Anna Fardella, a woman of a noble family from Trapani, Sicily. He was raised in Naples, however, where he completed his studies of law under the guidance of the Jesuits. His poetic vein manifested itself early -in the academies he joined, in aristocratic circles that welcomed him and encouraged his creativity, and in the halls of a Baroque capital that had made theatre into a privileged means of artistic expression. Beginning in 1678 he published numerous drammi per musica, opere recitative, short poems, and oratorios inspired by sacred subjects. In all these works he combined scholarly refinement with a profound grasp of the contemporary literary repertoire, as well as of classical and biblical sources. This intense and constant theatrical productivity did not keep him from receiving recognition in the legal profession -in his last years he was even appointed ‘avvocato straordinario' of the ‘most faithful City', Naples. That his literary work was neither occasional nor amateurish is evident from the fact that this viceregal appointment included the duties of chief poet of the Teatro di San Bartolomeo, the foremost Neapolitan institution for the emerging art of opera, for which he wrote prologues and intermezzi, as well as adapting plays by other authors. In the early months of 1704 he was revising a 1645 drama about the city's patron saint, San Gennaro, for this theatre, when an acute disease took his life, on May 6, at the age of only fifty-three. His fame remains linked to the treatise Dell'arte rappresenta-tiva premeditata, ed all'improviso, published in Naples by Michele Luigi Muzio in 1699.This work marks an extraordinary moment, when the two souls of Perrucci, that of the jurist and that of the passionate playwright, came together, precisely because his experience as a lawyer was put at the service of those ‘trifles' that had always constituted his secret and most authentic raison d'être. Proud memories of his long career as an artist, writer, and organizer of performances crop up here and there in the text, including the staging of spectacles for special events, work as an actor and leader of a company (sometimes in very difficult conditions), and the drafting of monologues, dialogues, and chiusette [closing couplets], for all of which he feels both proud and astonished, while also experiencing the bitter flattery of success and the ill-concealed disapproval of those who could not bring themselves to forgive his all-consuming love for the stage. It is a personal issue with him to show how much knowledge and effort go into a well-ordered performance, in which words and actions, body and mind, eye and ear, are all mutually supportive and work together, almost like a natural extension of the professional skill that can be observed in a courtroom or in the most august social gatherings. The web of quotations, references, and precepts that he spreads before the reader is intended above all to prove that the apparently light and playful world behind the curtain actually conceals a rigorous discipline when managed in a serious and professional manner, and raises significant moral and philosophical questions. This dense theoretical explanation is Perrucci's self-justification for so absolute a devotion, and with it he gives an account of the technical and conceptual complexity of the theatre that escapes the eye of lay spectators, as well as of those who see in the theatre only abomination and sin, corruption and deceit […] The relation of actor to author is marked by subordination and subjection; this is an obstacle to the actor's creative and intellectual autonomy, which the treatise proposes to honor. Perhaps this explains Perrucci's approach to the method of improvisation, ‘unknown to the Ancients' and the pride of Italy, which fascinated and conquered all of Europe. Here the roles are reversed. The actor, the ‘imperfect' orator in scripted comedy, becomes a witty creator of his own texts, taking responsibility himself for the quality of the language of the performance; in contrast, ‘when poets, doctors, and learned men have tried to improvise, they were so confused and upset, that they were unable to say a word, even though their tongues and pens were quite fluent from the lectern, on paper, and from the speaker's platform' (Preface to Pt. II). In the background, rhetoric still reigns supreme (‘it should not be attempted except by qualified and competent people, who know what the rules of language mean, [who understand] the figures of speech, tropes, and all the art of rhetoric'), but it rests entirely in the hands of the man of the theatre. Whether he selects the material most useful and congenial to himself from ancient and modern literature, or chooses to create entirely new plays or to adapt them in accordance with current models, the actor is now in all respects the creator of his own theatre, a true artist, with his own method and with critical awareness […] In the short run this treatise had an appreciable influence, particularly in Naples, where the stage writings of Domenico Barone, Marquis of Liveri, and the long-running success of comic opera cannot be understood without Perrucci's wise instructions. Yet, this appeal for an austere professionalism and the cultural formation of actors would be the subject of clashes in the centuries to come, in the face of demands for reform, moralizing anxieties, and the restored prestige of the poetic word, as opposed to the proprieties and improprieties of great actors and sullen hacks. The merging of professional theatre into society at large would remain a challenge, if not a dream. But to continue the discussion, and the struggle -after the era of anathemas- would have been impossible had the times not brought to fruition this astonishing and generous act of faith in the art of theatre” (F. Cotticelli, Introduction, in: “Op. cit.”, pp. xii-xii, xviii and xx).

Italian Union Catalogue, IT\ICCU\VEAE\003733; A. Perrucci, Andrea, Dell'arte rappresentativa premeditata ed all'improvviso, A.G. Bragaglia, ed., Florence, 1961; F. Cotticelli, Nota filologica, in: “Op. cit.”, pp. 210-212.

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