What was the influence of Commedia Dell Arte on The Taming of the Shrew?
The 16th-century genre of Italian comedy seems to have had a big impact on Shakespeare and we can see evidence of its stylings in many of his plays. An important feature of the commedia dell’arte was the zanni, a collection of characters used for comic relief. Tranio could be classified as a zanni. The melodrama and slapstick in the play is also likely due to the influence of the commedia dell’arte, and the protagonists could easily be dressed as clowns and still fit perfectly into the drama. Many productions of The Taming of the Shrew have deliberately made the play as artificial as is possible by using elements found in the commedia dell’arte. Tori Haring Smith writes that, in several stagings, “the actors wore grotesque costumes, beaklike masks, and clown makeup” (From Farce to Melodrama, 119).
