models, recited in their academies to a select audience, and performed by amateurs; but the commedie a soggetto, the extemporal comedies, were invented by professional actors of genius.  More delightful to the fancy of the Italians, and more congenial to their talents, in spite of the graver critics, who even in their amusements cannot cast off the manacles of precedence, the Italians resolved to be pleased for themselves, with their own natural vein; and preferred a freedom of original humour and invention incompatible with regular productions, but which inspired admirable actors, and secured full audiences.

Men of great genius had a passion for performing in these extemporal comedies.  Salvator Rosa was famous for his character of a Calabrian clown; whose original he had probably often studied amidst that mountainous scenery in which his pencil delighted.  Of their manner of acting I find an interesting anecdote in Passeri’s life of this great painter; he shall tell his own story.

“One summer Salvator Rosa joined a company of young persons who were curiously addicted to the making of commedie all’ improviso.  In the midst of a vineyard they raised a rustic stage, under the direction of one Mussi, who enjoyed some literary reputation, particularly for his sermons preached in Lent.

“Their second comedy was numerously attended, and I went among the rest; I sat on the same bench, by good fortune, with the Cavalier Bernini, Romanelli, and Guido, all well-known persons.  Salvator Rosa, who had already made himself a favourite with the Roman people, under the character of Formica[52] opened with a prologue, in company with other actors.  He proposed, for relieving themselves of the extreme heats and ennui, that they should make a comedy, and all agreed.  Formica then spoke these exact words: 

“Non boglio gia, che facimmo commedie come cierti, che tagliano li panni aduosso a chisto, o a chillo; perche co lo tiempo se fa vedere chiu veloce lo taglio de no rasuolo, che la penna de no poeta; e ne manco boglio, che facimmo venire nella scena porta, citazioni, acquavitari, e crapari, e ste schifenze che tengo spropositi da aseno.”

One part of this humour lies in the dialect, which is Venetian; but there was a concealed stroke of satire, a snake in the grass.  The sense of the passage is, “I will not, however, that we should make a comedy like certain persons who cut clothes, and put them on this man’s back, and on that man’s back; for at last the time comes which shows how much faster went the cut of the shears than the pen of the poet; nor will we have entering on the scene, couriers, brandy-sellers, and goatherds, and there stare shy and blockish, which I think worthy the senseless invention of an ass.”