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• The Theatre Couple in Early Modern Italy: Self-Fashioning and Mutual Marketing by Serena Laiena
• Erith Jaffe-Berg (bio)

In The Theatre Couple in Early Modern Italy: Self-Fashioning and Mutual Marketing Serena Laiena focuses on the rise of the power couple of the commedia dell’arte. She contends that the comici used their marital status to their advantage by marketing themselves as couples, tag-teaming in order to advance each other’s agendas. The status of couple increased the actors’ reputations artistically and also appealed to powerful religious and political figures. In this way, Laiena argues, commedia dell’arte created a fame-building machine and laid a foundation for stardom that is still resonant today. In her accessible narration, she draws on multiple disciplines, including theatre history, performance studies, Italian studies, celebrity studies, and gender studies. This interdisciplinary approach builds on scholarship about the Italian diva, in such works as Rosalind Kerr’s The Rise of the Diva on the Sixteenth-Century Commedia dell’Arte Stage and Pamela Allen Brown’s The Diva’s Gift to the Shakespearean Stage: Agency, Theatricality, and the Innamorata, interweaving an understanding of how the actors navigated Counter-Reformation Catholic resurgence to their advantage by foregrounding their relationships.

In the first chapter, Laiena sets the stage of post-Tridentine Italy, a place in which religious figures such as Cardinal Borromeo and Giovan Domenico Ottonelli waged war on the theatre by casting it as a corrupting influence. Professional actresses were the main target of clerical censure, personifying their detractors’ criticism of licentious presentation and inducing moralistic condemnation. Despite this, the ever-defiant divas flaunted their sexual appeal and resisted censure, thriving on their public’s interest. Nevertheless, the divas were not impervious to condemnation, and the couple identity offered the actresses a means of pushing back on the moralizing admonitions they faced. More than just a safety net, as Laiena argues, the actresses used their status strategically, along with other methods of self-fashioning as artists and intellectuals. The following chapters unfold how they did this.

Laiena’s second chapter offers a bird’s eye view of the phenomenon by chronicling ten theatre couples, mining various sources for details about the ways they individually enhanced each other’s fame as a strategy for mutual benefit. She notes an evolution in the commedia dell’arte’s history, in terms of the function of each couple—from having the woman take on the prima Innamorata role and the man take on the pen to reversing that trend in later periods. Laiena contends that it was up to the actress to not only forge connections with intellectuals and [End Page 489] aristocrats but also facilitate relationships with ecclesiastical authorities. Laiena identifies Alberto Naselli (Zan Ganassa, c. 1540- c.1584) and Barbara Flaminia (c. 1540- c. 1586) as the original power couple who became international purveyors of performance. Others followed this model because, as Laiena puts it, the status offered benefits, including “mutual legitimation” that extended even upon one person’s death, when the surviving partner continued lauding their beloved (51). As talented as the actors may have been as individuals, their opportunities were amplified by the mutual benefit of being part of a couple. Laiena traces many a couple well beyond the turn of the seventeenth century, up to the early eighteenth century. This broad scope provides a very useful corrective to the tendency to emphasize the first and second generations of comici, neglecting their legacy in subsequent decades. Thus, Caterina Biancolelli (1665–1716) and Pierre Lenoir de la Thorillière (1659–1731) surface as an international couple, “crowning the union of two theatrical traditions” (60). Likewise, unknown names such as Bridgida Bianchi (1613–1703) and Marc’Anotonio Bianchi (?-ca.1600) fall into focus and suggest further work still remains to be undertaken by future scholars.

In the next three chapters, Laiena shifts the focus to one stellar couple, Giovan Battista Andreini (1576–1654) and...

 校订者：

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  近代早期意大利的剧院夫妇：Serena Laiena 的自我塑造和相互营销
•  Erith Jaffe-Berg （生物）

在《近代早期意大利的剧院夫妇：自我塑造与相互营销》中，Serena Laiena 关注了艺术喜剧界权力夫妇的崛起。她争辩说，这些喜剧演员利用他们的婚姻状况，将自己推销为情侣，结队以推进彼此的议程。夫妇的地位提高了演员在艺术上的声誉，也吸引了强大的宗教和政治人物。Laiena 认为，通过这种方式，commedia dell'arte 创造了一台建立名声的机器，并为明星奠定了基础，至今仍能引起共鸣。在她通俗易懂的叙述中，她借鉴了多个学科，包括戏剧史、表演研究、意大利研究、名人研究和性别研究。这种跨学科的方法建立在关于意大利女主角的学术研究之上，如罗莎琳德·科尔 （Rosalind Kerr） 的《十六世纪艺术喜剧舞台上的女主角崛起》和帕梅拉·艾伦·布朗 （Pamela Allen Brown） 的《女主角给莎士比亚舞台的礼物：代理、戏剧性和 Innamorata》，交织了对演员如何通过突出他们的关系来驾驭反宗教改革天主教复兴以发挥自身优势的理解。

在第一章中，Laiena 设置了后三叉戟时代的意大利舞台，红衣主教 Borromeo 和 Giovan Domenico Ottonelli 等宗教人物将剧院塑造成一种腐败的影响力，向剧院发动战争。职业女演员是神职人员谴责的主要目标，将批评者对放荡的表演的批评拟人化，并引发道德谴责。尽管如此，这些永远挑衅的女主角们炫耀自己的性吸引力并抵制谴责，为公众的利益而繁荣。尽管如此，女主角们并非不受谴责，这对夫妇的身份为女演员提供了一种反击她们面临的道德化告诫的方法。正如 Laiena 所说，女演员们不仅仅是一个安全网，还战略性地利用了她们的地位，以及其他自我塑造艺术家和知识分子的方法。以下章节将介绍他们是如何做到这一点的。

Laiena 的第二章通过记录十对戏剧夫妇，从各种来源中挖掘他们如何单独提高彼此的名气作为互惠互利的策略的细节，对这一现象进行了鸟瞰图。她注意到艺术喜剧的历史演变，就每对夫妇的功能而言——从让女人扮演主要的 Innamorata 角色，让男人承担笔，到在后期扭转这一趋势。莱纳争辩说，这位女演员不仅要与知识分子和 [完第 489 页] 贵族建立联系，还要促进与教会当局的关系。Laiena 认为 Alberto Naselli（赞·加纳萨，约 1540- c.1584）和芭芭拉·弗拉米尼亚（Barbara Flaminia，约 1540- c. 1586）是成为国际表演提供者的原始权力夫妇。其他人遵循这种模式，因为正如 Laiena 所说，这种地位提供了好处，包括“相互合法化”，甚至在一个人去世后，当幸存的伴侣继续赞美他们所爱的人时，这种合法性甚至会延长 （51）。尽管演员们作为个人可能很有才华，但他们的机会因成为一对夫妇的共同利益而被放大。Laiena 追溯了许多夫妇，远远超过 17 世纪之交，直到 18 世纪初。这种广泛的范围为强调第一代和第二代漫画而忽视了他们在随后几十年中的遗产的趋势提供了非常有用的纠正。因此，卡特琳娜·比安科莱利（Caterina Biancolelli，1665-1716 年）和皮埃尔·勒努瓦·德拉·索里耶尔（Pierre Lenoir de la Thorillière，1659-1731 年）以一对国际夫妇的身份出现，“为两种戏剧传统的结合加冕”（60）。同样，不知名的名字，如 Bridgida Bianchi （1613-1703） 和 Marc'Anotonio Bianchi （？-ca.1600）成为焦点，并表明未来的学者仍有待开展进一步的工作。

在接下来的三章中，Laiena 将重点转移到一对明星夫妇身上，Giovan Battista Andreini （1576–1654） 和......