Disguise and recognition in Renaissance comedy

Abstract

The relationship between the Elizabethan stage and the Italian theatre of the 16th century has attracted a great deal of scholarly investigation, but with scanty results. English plays of this period are so manifestly Italianate - Italian stage settings, characters' names, allusions are so frequent that we are bound to suspect Italian origins. Yet despite the intensive and ingenious labours of source-hunters the direct, proven contribution of Italian to English theatre in this period is extremely slim. Only a handful of Italian plays can be shown convincingly to have been known in Elizabethan England, and the vast majority of the apparent derivations have proved to be indirect (via translations and adaptations, mostly narrative) or from common sources (generally classical) or so tenuous as to be of negligible significance.