Though many Renaissance tragedies were rightly labeled ‘‘closet dramas’’ for their excessive reliance on verbal rhetoric, many more were perfectly suited for the stage. By and large, dramatists sought to enliven tragic representations. For example, they reduced lengthy narratives and presented the background to the dramatic action in dialogue form, with one character telling the story and the other interrupting with exclamations and leading questions. They also enlivened the stage by increasing to five or more the number of speaking characters in a scene. This was indeed a novelty, considering that ancient tragedy does not allow more than three characters with speaking roles on the stage at the same time (see Halleran, chapter 11 in this volume). Playwrights also opted for a more visual representation of the action. One such technique was the hic et nunc expedient, whereby a character observes and describes, as they happen, dramatic events too gruesome or too cumbersome to show on stage (see Di Maria 1995a). In Giraldi’s Orbecche, for example, Orbecche kills her father King
Sulmone and hacks his body to pieces just inside the palace doors. The bloody deed is reminiscent of Clytemnestra’s murder of Agamemnon in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon,, where the audience hears the cries of the dying king without ever seeing the actual killing. But, whereas in the Greek play there is no contemporaneous eyewitness account of the murder, in Orbecche a horrified female semichorus witnesses and describes the slaying while it is happening. The frightful facial expression, the stammering speech, and the shrill tone of voice informing the description raise the spectators’ level of anxiety and receptiveness, drawing them ever so close to the unrepresentable misdeed.
Innovations were also changing the physical structure of the stage in response to the rising aesthetic expectations of contemporary audiences. Famous artists and architects, such as Peruzzi, Aristotile da Sangallo, and Vasari, were often called upon to design costumes, build elaborate scenes, and create special stage effects. With regard to the stage set, the Italians did not follow the ancient model, partly because by the time they began to emulate classical theater they had already acquired a new notion of theatrical space. The fifteenth-century architect Leon Battista Alberti, undoubtedly inspired by Vitruvius’ De Re Architectura, was one of the first authors to suggest that the stage set should include the pictorial representation of residences of private citizens. This inclusion of urban spaces and other novel ideas proposed by other Vitruvian commentators formed the basis of Renaissance stage architecture. Chiefly responsible for propagating the new concept of scenic space was the sixteenth-century author Sebastiano Serlio, who discussed and sketched dramatic scenes for the four theatrical genres: comic, tragic, pastoral, and satyr-play or burlesque. The most important feature of Renaissance theater was its use of perspective, which allowed for the pictorial representation of streets and various types of buildings, depending on the type of scene. The tragic scene consisted of temples, palaces, and stately private residences, adorned with arches, columns, and other architectural decorations. The buildings flanked a wide street that vanished into the city projected on the backdrop (plate 27.2).
The stage set of Aretino’s Orazia (1546), for instance, consists of the city of Rome depicted on the backdrop and a major street that vanishes into the city’s houses and rooftops. At the top of the street (on stage), there is the temple of Minerva on one side and the Oratii’s house on the other. The entrances to the two buildings serve as functional exits. It may help to conceive of the scenic space as a magnified section of the city that allows the spectator to zoom in, so to speak, and behold urban spaces characteristic of the whole city. Minerva’s temple, then, may be seen as the concrete representation of several other shrines alluded to throughout the play, and the Oratii’s residence is a physical representation of all the houses painted on the backcloth. The buildings’ appearance, the activities taking place inside, and the constant entering and exiting lend a realistic dimension. Spectators cannot but assume that similar human activities enliven the houses and the temples they see depicted on the set. In their theatrical experience, the rooftops, suggested by the set’s pictorial images and mentioned by several characters throughout the play, are more than a mere abstraction. They denote areas where some of the play’s events take place and where many characters are said to work and live with their families. The whole city may be seen as an extension of the stage. Indeed, it was increasingly assumed that
Plate 27.2 Scena tragica. Sebastiano Serlio. Bibliothejque de I’Arsenal, Paris. Photograph ' Giraudon/Art Resource, NY.
Dramatic space included any area where events relevant to the plot are perceived as taking place at the time of the action (see Di Maria 1995b).
World History
