SOURCE: Lea, Kathleen Marguerite. “The Commedia dell'Arte and the English Stage.” In Italian Popular Comedy: A Study in the Commedia dell'Arte, 1560-1620, 2 vols., pp. 411-30. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934.

In the following excerpt, Lea examines English plays that appear to have been directly influenced by the commedia dell'arte and not merely by broader trends in Italian comedy.

It is hardly to be expected that we should find the precise original of any English play among the miscellanies of the Commedia dell'arte. Putting aside the probabilities that scenari have been lost, and that many Italian plays never attained the permanence of a written record, it is the nature of the material that it should be flexible. Themes and situations were continually reshuffled. If Italian professionals had little feeling for the integrity of a scenario, English dramatists in search of plot materials might be expected to have less. This seems to...