SOURCE: Herrick, Marvin Theodore. “The Commedia Dell'Arte and Learned Comedy.” In Italian Comedy in the Renaissance, pp. 210-227. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1960.

In the following essay, Herrick compares the plays and practices of the improvisational and scripted theatres, finding evidence that the commedia dell'arte borrowed many of its plots from the commedia erudite.

The learned comedy never reached a wide audience in Italy, for it was confined to the larger towns and even within these larger towns to a limited audience of educated people who could relish a literary performance as well as slapstick. Outside of Italy the learned comedy was known only to the highly educated few or to the professional playwrights who could make use of it in their own work. Popular comedies before 1550 were religious plays or farces. The actors in these religious plays and farces, and in the learned comedies, too, were generally...