Script

It. Copione; Fr. Scénario; Germ. Regiebuch; Span. Guión.

Greek Theatre.

The script or so-called ‘original manuscript’ for texts by the great authors of classical theatre, such as Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, represents an illusory mirage or an ideal always desired but often unattainable for modern philologists. A unique case in point is the text of Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis, the poet’s last tragedy, which, perhaps under the direction of his son, was performed posthumously in Athens. After his death, the play remained an incomplete script, and whoever staged it had to, first of all, write a prologue which, in its current form in anapests, appears juxtaposed to the draft of one in iambi (presumably original) and adapt the prologue to both the first episode and everything that had already been composed while trying to rectify inconsistencies or sections of the play that were not fully developed. Moreover, at other points, the text seems to show signs of reworking after the 5^th century. BC; above all, in the final part, it would seem to derive from a corrupted archetype due to linguistic and prosodic errors that cannot be remedied (Page 1934, pp. 122-207, West 1981, Stockert 1992, Diggle 1994, pp. 358-425, Kovacs 2003, Distilo 2013, Collard-Morwood 2017, Andò, 2021, pp. 18-28). The critics’ attempt to identify the stratigraphy of the various interventions chronologically after the so-called original, which already included interventions before First performance, entails a total dissection of the drama and examining a very high percentage of verses. Yet, the dramatic text, which is preserved despite some inconsistencies that were not resolved by the author and were deliberately preserved by those who first staged it in the 5^th century, has nevertheless continued to be performed, perhaps with some variations in later centuries, so that it constitutes - historically in diachrony and synchrony - the only manuscript that was already born as a script and has maintained its main characteristics over time. This is also the only form in which Iphigenia can be read and interpreted by literary critics.

If the prompter also seems to be a figure pertinent to ancient theatre practice (Page 1934, pp. 98-99), papyruses containing only selections of an actor’s parts or annotations relating to the performance are usually exceptional and rarely found; they nevertheless constitute the emerging tip of a widespread submerged phenomenon, a tendency which appears to be growing after the age of Athenian drama: among the instrumental manuscripts the case of P. Oxy. 4546 (1st century BC, or 1st century AD) containing Alcestis vv. 344-52 but only the part of Admetus, those of P. Oxy 5131 and P. Oxy 2458, containing respectively Euripides’ Ino and Cresphon, where notations with letters of the alphabet appear to indicate parts played by different actors (Gammacurta 2006, Finglass 2014 and 2016). P. Oxy 2746 (TrGF adesp. 649) represents another particular case, containing a dramatic text from the Hellenistic period, which must have been part of a theatrical anthology and in which Cassandra describes the duel between Hector and Achilles to Priam, Deiphobus, and a chorus. Because the layout of the papyrus it is difficult to decipher precisely the staging of this tragic fragment, where between regular iambic trimetres, we find short verses written with indentation (ἐν εἰσθέσι [en eisthési]) and, preceded by a diacritical separating sign (παρεπιγραφή [parepigraphé]), the word ᾠδή [odè] ‘song’ placed in a separate verse: while there is no agreement on the interpretation regarding the kind of performance, nevertheless, because of diacritical marks, arrangement, and sloppy handwriting, it is likely to be a copy intended for use by theatre companies or actors (Coles 1968, Catenacci 2002, Ferrari 2009, Medda 2021). More conspicuous are the papyrus documents that can be interpreted as scripts attesting to popular or minor forms of theatre such as mime: in this case, for example, for the so-called mime of Caritone (P. Oxy. 413), two different editions are attested, evidently successive, one enlarged and the other reduced for two different performances. The latter appears annotated as a remake of the first on the verso of the same document (Gammacurta 2006, pp. 8-40). However, the most relevant question in the ancient originals is the great mystery of the music, a fundamental part of the ancient theatrical text, but lost or missing in the preserved manuscripts (for a general review, cf. Tessier 2018). It is likely that the music had already been annotated as hypomnemata (‘commentaries’) by the author himself and thus would have only circulated in the specific professional contexts of acting companies. In 330 BC, Lycurgus had the copies of the texts of the three great tragedians deposited and fixed by law to which all Athenian theatre companies had to adhere, apparently after reading aloud the text to be recited by the γραμματεύς [grammatéus] (Plutarch, Lives of the Ten Orators, 841-42). According to Wilamowitz 1889 (1907) and later Pöhlmann 1988, this intervention on the part of Lycurgus would have radically altered the separation between the ‘original’ manuscript, the text of the first performance, the transmission of which would have been ensured only within the framework of companies of professional actors, and the manuscript intended for an exclusive readership, for sale in the common ancient book market, devoid directorial notations, especially of a musical kind, from which the specimens that reached the Hellenistic philologists which would later derive, thus constituting the archetypes of the medieval tradition: Galen, in the 2^nd century AD, informs us that Ptolemy Evergetes requested the texts of the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides from the Athenians, returning only copies without the originals (commentary on Hippocrates Epidemies III = XVII.1.607.4-14 Kühn). According to Fleming and Kopff 1991 (cf. also Flemming 1999), Lycurgus’ copies could also have contained musical notations. Thus, the Colometry of the codices dating back to the Alexandrian period and, finally, the metrical scholia would attest to a rhythmic-musical knowledge even outside of strictly theatrical contexts; indeed, for the metric-rhythmic scansion, the scripts in use could even have constituted the main reference model. In any case, the few attestations of papyrus manuscripts for stage use with musical notations preceding or contemporary to the establishment of Hellenistic philology can be compared with the manuscript texts (P. Vindob. inv. G 2315 = DAGM 3, P. Leid. inv. 510 = DAGM 4 containing verses from Euripides’ Orestes and Iphigenia in Aulis, respectively, the second of which also has wider inter-spaces between lines to accommodate the complete musical notation) do not present a colometrical arrangement (Gammacurta 2006, pp. 130-50) and may represent scripts for Hellenistic re-editions (Prauscello 2006, pp. 123-84). The problem of a dichotomy between speech and music from the very beginning thus remains unsolved because it also involves authors such as Aristophanes, who were not included in the edict of Lycurgus and seems to be confirmed by more recent papyri, where music continues to be extemporaneously and partially fixed even for Hellenistic dramatic texts (cf. TrGF adesp. 649), suggesting a distinction of the specific and specialised technical skills in music from the others and, in any case, leads one to consider music as the most variable part of the performance (Prauscello 2003 and 2006). In both orientations of the critics regarding musical notations, however, the idea of the script is still conceived too rigidly and statically, while in general, the phenomenon of the preservation of musical scores attached or not attached to the text appears heterogeneous and to have occurred in several written modes and also orally in certain specialised circles (Prauscello 2003 and 2006). In reality, even medieval manuscripts preserve a recitation text that already shows traces of its pragmatic use: variations, inconsistencies, corruptions, repetitions, and assemblages between options clearly relating to different performances are documented in the codices or scholia, which are labelled or in any case almost always presented by editors or critics as ‘interpolations’ by the actors and, therefore, essentially deviations from the ‘original’, in short, ‘inauthentic’ (Page 1934). It is precisely based on these same options for modifications, attesting to different occasions and forms of performance, but incorporated into the text and sometimes only mentioned in the ancient scholastic tradition, as the 2015 Finglass studies on Medea have revealed, that an ancient practice in theatre is reconstructed that is no different from the modern one: as the dramatic text enters into circulation it becomes a tool of fluid use and this text, already varied and susceptible to further modifications for subsequent performances, sometimes continues to be known or recoverable or at any rate potentially approachable in non-technical, but philological circles. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate ancient manuscripts not only with the ‘eyes of the philologist’ but with the ‘eyes of the actors’ to generally clarify the constitution of the texts we are dealing with today. Modern scholars, however, come second in line after the great season of the recovery, study, and preservation of dramatic texts by Hellenistic philology. The earliest history of evaluating 5^th century Greek dramatic texts begins in Alexandria in the 3^rd century BC and cannot disregard what these philologists intentionally transmitted to us; indeed, it has rightly been pointed out that Lycurgus’ edict in the 4^th century, intended to bind theatre companies to use only an accredited, so to speak, ‘state’ text of the three great tragedians, already presupposes a situation that is difficult to control due to the proliferation of manuscripts or copies previously ‘adulterated’ by variations (Page 1934, p. 2). These ‘options for change’, however, contrary to popular belief, are not only because of the large-scale professional development of itinerant and active companies of actors after the conclusion of the great classical Athenian theatre season but, in part, already date back to a generalised dramatic practice of earlier reperforming, albeit on a more limited or partly contained scale, but attestable as early as the 5^th century and continuing, despite the decree, into later periode.

If it was quite rare that in the main competitions (the Great Dionysias or the Lenee), a drama, tragedy, or comedy, previously staged in agones of city festivals, were re-proposed. Reruns of dramas usually went on tour in the theatres of the demi, which sometimes, and occasionally, could also welcome Premiere: famous, for example, was the theatre of Piraeus, where, according to the anecdotal, Socrates used to go, but only to attend the debut of Euripides’ plays (Test. 47 a TrGF and Elianus, Variae Historiae, 2.13); or that of Eleusis, linked to the significant economic resources of the sanctuary, clearly growing during the 4^th fourth century, so much so that, as documented by the inscriptions, it could even bear to relative expenses of the Dionysian agons, in the 3^rd BC. The productions of tragedies and comedies were proportionate (and not infrequently adapted or readapted) not only to the different structures of the theatrical buildings, which were less imposing and equipped than the theatre of Dionysus but also to the funding allocated by the Demotic communities. There are also various indirect testimonies on the possibility of performances in Attica beyond the theatre of Dionysus and on the cultural mobility of the theatre through the reperformances of ancient plays (Csapo-Wilson 2015, Lamari 2017). Various sources (Quintilian 10.1.66, Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana, 6.11, Aristophanes’ Scolia of Acharnenses 10 c, p. 7 Wilson and Frogs 868 a, p. 114 Chantry, Life of Aeschylus, 11-12) attest, for instance, that Aeschylus’ tragedies were favoured by the Athenian polis to be performed even after the poet’s death, competing with other dramas by contemporary authors. But for Aeschylus, some variations are motivated in particular by re-enactments or re-editions in contexts not strictly marked by theatrical buildings, as seems possible for the performances of the Persians and the Aetneas that took place in Sicily: here, the poet is said to have staged the Persians a second time (cf. Herodicus of Babylon in Scholium to Aristophanes Frogs 1028 E Chantry = fr. 10 Broggiato, Eratosthenes in Scholium to Aristophanes, Frogs 1028 F Chantry and the Life of Aeschylus TrGF 3 T1, rr. 68-9) and several times the Aetneas at Etna, Syracuse, Leontini, Xoutia and Temenite (cf. P. Oxy. 2257) perhaps in an unstructured theatrical space, but within the venues used for the celebration of local festivals (Wilson 2007, Zimmermann 2019; for the existence of a theatre in Syracuse renovated in 470 BC by the architect Damocopus, known as ‘Myrrillas’ cf. Poli-Palladini 2001). An interesting case in point is Euripides’ Archelaus, whose opening lines are quoted by Aristophanes in the Frogs vv. 1206-8 (published among the Incertarum fabularum fragmenta TrGF 846), but in a different form from how they are attested in other, later sources (believed to be faithful witnesses of 13 TrGF 228 of the Archelaus): the tragedy composed on the Macedonian king’s commission was in fact staged for the first time by Euripides in Macedonia between 408 and 406, in Dion in Pieria (perhaps on the occasion of the Μουσαῖα instituted precisely by Archelaus himself), or in the ancient capital of Aege, today’s Vergina, or again in the new capital of Pella (in the theatre where Philip was murdered, founded by Archelaus himself, and now identified by Paolo Storchi in 2017); for the occasion, the poet will have been accompanied by top actors and a professional chorus, in short, by his group of τεχνῖται (Csapo 1999-2000); after his death, between the Leneas of 405 (when Euripides had recently died) and 404 (spring 405 or, more likely, after the battle of Aegospotami and the promulgation of Patroclides’ decree, at the Lenee in 404 or at the Dionysiae of the same year, Sommerstein 2009 and Cozzoli 2017), i.e. between the first and second performances of the Frogs, somehow the Athenian publica attended a performance of the play presumably in a minor attic theatre (Collard - Cropp 2008, pp. 229-33, Cozzoli 2011, Lamari 2017, pp. 45-53). During the 4^th and 3^rd centuries BC the Archelaus was certainly often restaged; 3rd century inscriptions attest at least two performances on the occasion of the Heraia of Argos and the Naïa of Dodona (TrGF test. iib). However, the verses quoted by Aristophanes have already disappeared in the Hellenistic text read by Alexandrian philologists and have been replaced by the other incipit; thus, the text that has come down to us in fragments would no longer appear to be the original, which is known only thanks to Aristophanes’ earlier parody.

Limited or more extensive alterations of single or groups of verses, or entire scenes, could be due to theatre companies for subsequent re-staging, but also sometimes go back to the author’s restaging, where changes were necessary for technical or political reasons. The most interesting evidence for the latter is offered by the comedies, whose texts, which were not officially fixed, were less subject to re-perfomances in later centuries and, thus, derived directly from the author’s archives (Sommerstein 2010, pp. 399-422; Wilson 2014, pp. 424-31). In the Frogs, besides instances of mutated and alternative verses, but recorded in sequence in our codices (e.g. vv. 1251-60), the final part of the agon between Aeschylus and Euripides (vv. 1435-66) is irretrievably corrupted: the text must therefore have already been quite problematic in ancient times, as documented by the proposals of Hellenistic philologists to eliminate some verses (Scholium to the Frogs of Aristophanes vv. 1437-41 abcd, p. 157 Chantry), in an attempt to correct it, and, therefore, the condition in which it has come down to us reflects an editorial situation that lies at the source of our entire tradition; it is highly probable according to the communis opinio that the two different editions, one dating from the first performance of the Frogs, the other from the replica (404 BC?), were merged and preserved in the archetype because they were present in Aristophanes’ original. Another relevant case is in Argumentum II of Peace, where we read, «It is reported in the Didascaliae that Aristophanes represented (δεδιδαχώς [dedidachòs]) another Peace. It is not clear – observes Eratosthenes – whether he replicated the same one (τὴν αὐτὴν ἀνεδίδαξεν [tèn autèn anedìdaxen]) or staged another one (ἑτέραν καθῆκεν [hetéran kathèken]), which was not saved. Cratetes certainly knew two dramas... And occasionally verses are quoted that are not found in the preserved ones»; in fact, four or five quotations have come down to us refer generically to Peace. Aristophanes, therefore, made some minor revisions to his comedy for the reprisal recorded by the Aristotelian Didascaliae which, likely, did not take place like the First performance, which was certainly in a city context at the Dionysia in 421. Instead, it likely occurred in some peripheral theater: in fact the greatest difference must have been the introduction of the character of Georgias (Agriculture), to whom some verses quoted in Stobeus are attributed (PCG fr. 305 K.-A.); Georgìas was to appear in the finale as a personified abstract entity next to Opora (the abundance of fruit), and thus replace Theorìa (the solemn Feast) instead more avowedly linked to city festivals and the polis and less suited to celebrate a rural feast of a demos (Mureddu -Nieddu 2015); but Aristophanes also had to partly restructure the more dynamic scenes, such as the descent of the protagonist from the sky through the roof’s skenè, or in any case those that were less suited to being staged again, with the same stage direction, in a smaller theatre with different architectural structures and less sophisticated theatrical machinery.

When the Alexandrian critics, who were also in contact with the contemporary theatre practice of anthological decompositiondisjoint and reproducing texts in different forms of performance (sometimes mentioned in the scholia (Gentili 1977, Easterling-Hall 2002), but above throughout the study of the tragic and comic copies at their disposal, collected and surviving in the Library of Alexandria, became aware that the text of a dramatic work is something anthropologically different from any ancient literary text, they were induced to evaluate it first, so to speak ‘through the eyes of the actors’: that is, they probably discovered the importance and decisive role of ‘staging’, which takes place in diachrony, but which often appeared, either condensed in the texts they faced in an inextricable synchronic presence of ‘dramatic options’, or in multiple copies that such different options somehow registered; hence they were induced to a much less rigid classification of texts with these characteristics.

Traces of the ancient debate are unfortunately found only sporadically. In the Argumentum preface to Euripides’ Orestes, attributed to Aristophanes of Byzantium and handed down in the codices, the peculiar staging (διασκευή [diaskeué]) that opens the tragedy is investigated: Orestes lies in the precincts of Agamemnon’s palace, exhausted by madness and lying on a bed, next to which Electra sits at his feet; it is discussed why she does not sit next to his head: ‘in this way’, it is observed, ‘she would have given more of an impression of caring for her brother by sitting closer; it is then added that the poet probably staged (διασκευάσαι) it this way because of the chorus; Orestes who had recently dozed off with difficulty would have woken up if the women of the chorus had placed themselves too close to him, as can be deduced from what Electra says to the chorus ‘Hush, hush...’. It is logical that Electra’s position at Orestes’ feet was intended to protect her brother from the outside world, also concerning the arrival of the Chorus or anyone else who would have woken him up. Precisely where the ancient dispute over the exact position in the staging of Electra arose from is unclear; it might be assumed that a different staging of Electra and different stage movements were known to the commentators from an edition of the play dating from the 4th century onwards (Medda 2001, pp. 82-94, Cozzoli 2018). Repetitions of the Orestes are recorded, one certainly epigraphically documented between 299 and 219 BC (at the theatre of Tegea, DID B 11, 1-2 Snell, perhaps at Smyrna Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists, p. 52, 16-21 Kayser at Smyrna). Still, there were others, both earlier and later: however, the codices, together with the Scolia, attribute the quoted line in question to the chorus and not to Electra. This section of the Orestes, however, could hardly have been re-enacted from the 4th cent, as expected in the original: in the 4th century, the presence in the theatre of an elevated λογεῖον [loghéion] that was hardly accessible to the chorus, a stage on which the actors acted in clear separation from the chorus, effectively prevented the actors and chorus from approaching and coming into contact with each other; it would therefore have appeared utterly ridiculous for Electra to invite the chorus not only not to make noise but also not to approach the bed, which by then would have been completely impossible as a stage action. Electra’s repeated invitation to the chorus to neither approach nor make noise suggests that the movement of the chorus in the original staging was conceived as a gradual approach in the orchestra of the chorus to the two actors. In a theatrical space with a varied architecture, such as that of the 4th century, in which there is a clear separation between actors and chorus, a compromise solution, of which a trace remains in our codices had to be opted for: the lyrical line was attributed to the chorus as an internal invitation to the group of choruses in a manner quite different from ancient practice, and immediately before it a recited line of Electra was inserted, no longer in lyrical dialogue with a similar invitation, but without the admonition not to approach (vv.136-39); the only possible action between chorus and actors in view of a more confidential and sotto voce conversation, which the original text called for at several points after this scene, was to move Electra from the bed to the edge of the λογεῖον towards the chorus and, therefore, in all probability, it is possible that they opted as a rule to place Electra near Orestes’ head and not at his feet and then have her move closer to the chorus, but not further than she could, that is, not beyond the edges of the λογεῖον. The ancient philologists were fully aware of this variation linked to the new staging in the 4^th century, which also involved an alteration in the text and was preserved in the manuscripts.

Therefore, apart from the problem of music, the text or rather the texts and documents that reached the Hellenistic age must have been much more articulate and varied, i.e., it cannot be ruled out that our manuscripts often retain traces of their diachronic instrumental use in various places, and that they are often much more script-like than one might imagine. At the same time, they seem to be increasingly moving away from the so-called original. This is why the modern philologist must be cautious with direct and indirect evidence: the text of the dramas in our possession, apart from individual, clearly distinguishable, later interpolations, may already have been both text and script at the same time in its composition; in it one should not exclude the possibility of capturing in a synchronous dimension the diachrony of the performances subsequent to the original after the 5th century and in some cases even later times, but without often being able to estabilish distinctions of relative chronology.

[Adele Teresa Cozzoli]

Latin Theatre.

Theatre performances in Rome are held on religious holidays and are usually organized by relatively young public officials, the aediles curules (and on some occasions by the praetor urbanus). These aediles curules use holidays to secure people’s favour – and votes – to guarantee success in their political careers. It is, therefore, to the aediles curules that playwrights have to send the scripts intended for theatrical production. Normally, however, the aediles curules themselves do not purchase the script directly from playwrights. This is done by a salaried intermediary, the so-called dominus gregis, the main actor of a troupe (grex) who is, in most cases, a freedman. The dominus gregis (or others on his behalf) later resells the script to the aediles curules and stages the drama of the purchased script with his own company. From the moment the script is sold by the playwright to the dominus gregis, the playwright receives no further economic proceeds (besides the initial sale amount), even if the drama is staged several times; similarly, if the drama turns out to be a failure, those who have purchased its staging rights (the dominus gregis or the impresario/producer to whom the latter has sold the rights) are responsible for any expenses incurred. Naturally, the preservation of a script depends on its actual commercial value: the greater the public’s appreciation, the greater its chances of staged repetitions (after all, theatre is always created with an occasion in mind, and aims at ensuring that the public does not desert the performance for something more appealing) and, therefore, the survival of the script; conversely, it is plausible that a drama, doomed to failure, is also destined to disappear from circulation.

Unfortunately, we do not possess any original scripts from the Latin world today. The only theatrical texts, derived from the original scripts, which we do possess in almost complete form, are the twenty-one comedies of Plautus (the so-called Varronianae), and the six comedies of Terence, all from the Republican age; all the remaining production, whether comical or tragical, of Atellana or mime, has come down to us in a fragmentary state thanks only to grammatical and lexicographical quotations, and, when lucky, thanks to Cicero and other authors who provide at least a literary context on which we may reflect. It is still a highly controversial issue whether tragedy of Seneca, the only other author whose work has been received in its entirety, is representative or not. Therefore, it is not possible to know what an original Latin theatre script would look like. However, it is possible to do so through the study of the texts of Plautus and Terence received throught direct tradition, thanks to examples in the form of a manuscript, whose eldest exponents date back to the 4^th-5^th century AD (the Ambrosian Palimpsest for Plautus and the Bembinus for Terence). In analyzing texts that have come down to them, scholars deal with their authors on a philological level, while the original theatrical dimension remains intangible to them. However, it is also clear that from the text come down to us the script is “liquid”, that is, subject to changes, dictated by the most different requirements; and, if such changes are still perceptible in the manuscripts in our possession, it will not be too far-fetched to believe that they also occurred earlier, probably during the representations of the ancient performances themselves. We can thus speak of retractatio (expansions, abbreviations and simplifications made to the script by the playwright himself or by those who later purchased the rights) and of contaminatio (mixing the story told in a script with those of other authors, or even of the same author), a rather common phenomenon for a Latin theatre which mostly owes its subjects to the Greek theatre.

A well-known example of retractatio is that of Plautus, Casina, 5-22. The verses of the Casina prologue that have come down to us are presumably written by a chief comedian claiming to stage an old comedy by Plautus, once applauded by older spectators but unknown to the younger ones who now wish to see it: qui utuntur vino vetere sapientis puto / et qui libenter spectant fabulas. / ... / Nos postquam populi rumore intelleximus / studiose exptere vos Plautinas fabulas, / antiquam eius edimus comoediam, / quam vos probastis qui estis in senioribus. / Nam iuniorum qui sunt, non norunt, scio; / verum ut cognoscant dabimus operam sedulo. / Haec cum primum acta est, vicit omnes fabulas... («those who drink old wine I judge as sensible people, like those who prefer old comedies. [...] And we, having learned from the voice of the public of your profound desire to see Plautus’ comedies, now show you one of his old comedies. The older ones among you have had the opportunity to applaud it; while the younger ones, I know it well, don’t even know it; but we will do our best to make it known to them too. When this comedy was first performed, it outdid all the others [...]»). Another example of retractatio is the double finale of Poenulus, in which is evident how a second recensio is juxtaposed to the first one but not completely disregards it, with all textual and philological problems that follow. Limiting ourselves to the last verse of the two respective recensiones, we immediately notice how only in the second one we find the typical closing with the imperative request for applause addressed to the public (plaudite): cf. Plautus, Poenulus, 1371 si placuit, plausum postulat comoedia («now, as the comedy is at its end, it requires your applause») and 1422 faciam ita ut vis. :: Age sis, eamus; nos curemus. Plaudite («I will do as you wish. :: Okay; let’s go to refresh ourselves. And you applaud us»). A classic case of contaminatio is known thanks to the testimony of Terence, Eunuchus, 23-26; on the occasion of ludi Megalenses of 161 BC the aediles buy Terence’s Eunuchus, as showed by the captions of this comedy, dating back to the 1^st century BC; once purchased, they organize a première with themselves present, and perhaps with the presence of Terence himself, as well as the envious poet Luscius Lanuvinus, who manages to participate, and exclamat furem, non poetam fabulam / dedisse et nihil dedisse verborum tamen: / Colacem esse Naevi, et Plauti veterem fabulam, / parasiti personam inde ablatam et militis («he starts to scream that the author of the comedy is a thief, not a poet, and does not allow himself to be led by the nose; he explains that there is an old comedy by Naevius and Plautus, entitled The Flatterer, and that the characters of the parasite and the soldier were taken from there»). Thus, the Eunuchus script would be “contamined” (“defiled” according to the literal, technically correct, interpretation of Beare) with that of the Colax of Naevius and Plautus; above all, however, this testimony is important because it would suggest that Luscius Lanuvinus knows the scripts of Naevius and Plautus very well to quote them so readily and, since he mentions them, he would have done so for the benefit of others who might also have known them. The knowledge may derive from the memory of a stage performance, but it is not excluded that written versions of the scripts of its predecessors still circulate at the time of Terence, perhaps preserved with their current buyer, whoever that may be, or in the archives of aediles or at the collegium poetarum. However, these are only hypotheses.

With the change from the 2^nd to the 1^st centuries BC, the political, social, and cultural changes, as well as the consequent absence of leading figures such as Plautus and Terence from the scenic panorama, lead to a decrease in productions, and the episodic character of the genre gradually fades as it moves towards written coding.

The intense philological work of Accius, Aelius Stilo, and above all Varro, are a demonstration of this and lead to the formation of inventory and what critics nowadays define as “very old editions” of stage texts, and therefore, the ancestors, of current critical editions. What the appearance of an ancient edition was, is difficult to say; perhaps in the 2^nd century AD they circulate in the form of papyrus volumina containing indications of interlocutor changes and with occasional notes on the margin, but without stage titles, line separations, or any kind typographical devices, and therefore different from the characteristics of the most ancient manuscripts of the scenic works in our possession today.

Information regarding the history of theatre scripts from the 1^st to the 4^th century AD is scarce and needs to be meticulously sought in seemingly unexpected sources. The “liquid” feature of the script is still documented in the Ciceronian era where we learn from the Arpinate himself that the most famous tragoedus of Rome and his friend, Clodius Aesopus, could allow himself to change the lines of a drama by inserting passages from one tragedy into another during performances; for examples, the Eurysaces of Accius, “contaminated” for political and personal purposes with Ennius’ Andromacha (Cicero, Pro Sestio, 120-23). In the same period, rhetoricians also have to select the tragic scripts to extract effective sententiae and elegant expressive phrases (cf. Rhetorica ad Herennium, 4.4.7; Cicero, De oratore, 3.217-19). Information regarding the imperial age is no better. From the Dialogus de oratoribus we are informed that Curiatius Maternus plausibly circulates political accusation scripts of his tragedies Cato and Thyestes, but we do not know if at the time these texts are still intended for the stage or for public or private reading. Besides demonstrating the custom of giving evidence for recitationes, and the activity of Statius as a theatre librettist in the Hadrian era, a fundamental passage from Juvenal (Saturae, 7.82-87) is the only Latin literary passage known to us which refers to the direct sale of a manuscript – here a script – from an author to an actor: cf. vv. 86-87 ...sed cum fregit subsellia versu / esurit, intactam Paridi nisi vendit Agaven («but after destroying the chairs with his verses, he dies of hunger if he does not sell his still intact Agave to Paris»), where both the verb vendere and the adjective intactus are, significantly, technical terms in the theatrical lexicon, which I would translate here as “unpublished” (cf. also the senaries of the Trajan age in Carmina Latina Epigraphica, 97.1-4 ne more pecoris otio transfungere[r, / Menandri paucas vorti scitas fabulas / et ipsus etiam sedulo finxi novas. / Id quale qualest chartis ma[n]datum diu [«Not to spend all my free time as an animal / I have translated a few Menander's witty comedies, / and I too have created with care some new ones. / Whatever is their value, it has long since put in writing»]). Finally, there is a belief according to which an accompanying script of pantomime recited by voiceover or performed by cantores and choir in relation to the Medea of Hosidius Geta has been preserved (Gianotti 1991, p. 138). This, however, is only a hypothesis which is probably destined to remain only that.

[Marco Filippi]

Modern Theatre.

Large performances based on biblical content organised in the 14^th and 15^th centuries in Western European urban centres provided the context for the dramatic text manuscript’s origin. Medieval dramatic manuscripts were recognised as a tool to both memorise the parts to be recited and control the performance. Recording various information items (lists of parts and actors, indications and lists of objects and devices for the preparation), the recited text’s manuscript gradually became an autonomous and recognisable document with its own specific consistency, conservation, and function. This manuscript is called original, both for the French mystères and the cycles of the English mystery plays. It has been called the «full text of the representation used as a reference book in a specific place and event» (Smith 2019, p. 33). In the respective linguistic fields, the simple denomination livre or book is also in use (for the English cycles, Mills 2007). Using the text to be recited involves dismemberment processes and includes change options which can transform it into a palimpsest for use variations. The unitary version of the original produces the transcription in the individual parts for the players. These parts exhibit, in the specimens preserved in different contexts, the characteristic shape of rôles, or rolls, which we also find in the rotuli of the recitation of the Passion Play of the Colosseum in Rome between the 15^th and 16^th centuries, in the Elizabethan scrolls, and the papeles of the Iberian professional companies (for this kind of manuscripts, Lalou 1993; for the rolls of the Passion Play of the Colosseum in Rome, Wisch-Newbigin 2013; on the parts in the Elizabethan theatre, Palfrey-Stern 2007; for the Spanish professional theatre, Vaccari 2006). As tools involved in theatre practices, theatrical manuscripts bear traces of both their uses and users. They act as practical memory as well as internal and external transmission processes related to the primary context. In the laude drammatuche of the Umbrian medieval brotherhoods, the textual traces locate the devotional and representational activities of the communities that adopted them (Nerbano 2007). In terms of dispersion, text dismemberment resulting from use in representations has been studied as pertaining to the material tradition of the dramatic forms produced for the early Renaissance Italian court festivities (Bortoletti 2008). With Poliziano’s Fabula di Orfeo, the identification in the textual tradition of variants attributable to a «theatrical form» and, therefore, to specific contexts and facts of representation has been hypothesised (Tissoni Benvenuti 1986).

The creation of repertoire dramaturgy by the professional companies in early modern Europe, and the consequent need for accumulation and memorisation, changed the processes of textual production and transmission, both in terms of quantity and quality. The editorial problem in Shakespeare, and the conditions of production of dramas in London’s professional theatres between the 16^th and 17^th centuries, have marked the history of the playbook and its interpretation as cultural object, characterising the functioning of dramatic repertoires in early modern Europe. In Shakespeare's world, two impressive phenomena intersect: the use of texts in professional theatre and their outcome in print. The book as object consolidates textual unity and author identity. At the same time, production requirements shape the playbook manuscript: the subdivision of the drafting in the (possible and frequent) collaboration of several authors, the breaking up of the parts for the memorisation of the single actors, reverberations of the aural memory in the work of the scribe who transcribes and prepares the copies for the censorship, and the companies’ stock. The census and description of the Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatic manuscripts (Ioppolo 2006; Werstine 2012) are relatively recent acquisitions. Until the end of the last century, they were undervalued by the editorial criteria of the Shakespearean text and by the hypotheses on the production of prints. Therefore, the classification of (alleged) Shakespearean manuscripts (notoriously not preserved) in the two categories of foul papers (bad copy in the author’s hand) and prompt-book (script of the company for stage use) has been obsolete for a few decades now. Compared to the preserved manuscripts, the prompt-book as an operational reference text and instrument for conducting the representation is translated in current studies with the cautious and comprehensive name of playhouse manuscript. The dramatic manuscript falls within a wide range of uses of writing in theatrical practices (Greg 1931; Stern 2009), widening in recent studies the recognition of the inventoried documents (plot-scenarios, bills, advertising, scrolls, arguments, paratexts, backstage-plots), and therefore the context of writing practices that frames the dramaturgy and accompanies its peculiar transcription processes. Both the texts attributed to the authors and the practical-technical arrangement of the manuscripts for theatrical use, generate copies with varying characteristics. Regarding the ascertained author manuscripts, there are various processing methods and finalities (for reading or scenic use) of the surviving examples. According to internal factors such as stage directions and character names (speech prefixes), we cannot define the standard shape of a manuscript aimed at representative use (Werstine 2012, pp. 221-42). Therefore, in the lexicon of current studies, the multiple-meaning notion of playhouse manuscript is used, while the functional notion of the prompt-book reacquires its 18^th century meaning as a text with written lines for entries and exits used by the bookkeeper (the in charge of the conservation of the unitary manuscript) when he acts as prompter.

In some cases, it is possible to answer the question concerning the identity between bookkeeper and company copyist. The copyists Ralph Crane and Edward Knight, whose relationships with the King’s Men (Shakespeare’s company) are known, embody different profiles: Edward Knight was a bookkeeper in the company, while Ralph Crane was a professional scribe, active in the Jacobean age, who is discussed as the «first editor» for some texts published in the 1623 folio (Werstine 2015). A fictional example of the copyist’s task comes from France. In Scarron’s novel Le Roman comique (1651), a nomadic epic of the minor French companies, the wandering actors welcome Léandre, escaped from the Jesuitic college of La Flèche, hiring him as «le valet qui écrit tous nos rôles» (I, ch. 23). However, not until the early 18^th century did the bookkeeper and copyist’s identification with the prompter impose the definition of the prompt-book on the book or playbook which is the manuscript, the script that feeds and preserves literary dramaturgy in theatres. The prompter John Downes is notoriously at the origins of British theatrical historiography as the author of the Roscius Anglicanus (1708). The theatre copyist, who fulfills a multiple mandate, personifies the multifaceted necessity of written culture in the theatre, the oscillation between conservation and mobility, which goes back to the functions of the bookkeeper in medieval performances, ranging from transferring the author’s manuscript to the stage to providing the copy for the supervision of censorship.

Both handwritten and printed texts could be intended for reading, while editions of dramas aimed at reading could, as is typical today, become the basis for memorisation and reproduction in the form of scripts for performances. The dramatic text’s identity in modern theatre is a dense and delicate intertwining of writing, speech, and reading practices. The Shakespearean quartos and the 1623 folio could be used as prompt-books, and could serve as the basis for both textual and theatrical revisions and reworkings (see the quarto of Hamlet of 1676 noted by James Ward in Chartier 2015, pp. 201-12; and in general, Evans 1960-1996). The dialectic between the printing of the author’s text and the modification for the scene produces the actors’ margin glosses in the collections of printed texts (Knight 2015), while the scripts reshaped for performances are fixed in the printing of acting versions or performance publications. The destiny of the texts that animated the stage and have been turned into books represents not only the transformation into a literary work but the potential return of the drama to the stage. In the consolidation of the relationship between theatrical life and book culture, the literary space of the theatre appears to be an n^th -dimensional system in which books, and every material meaning of the texts (not only the playbooks), multiply the possibility of uses. Besides the reproduction of the texts to be memorised, we should also mention a different range of manuscripts (scenarios or canvases) that feed into the collections of plays that had not been edited into fixed parts. These are documents of the mode of production of shows prevalent (but not exclusive) among the actors of Italian companies between the 16^th and 18^th centuries (later called «comici dell’Arte»). These collections of scenarios handed down the composition of dramatic sequences whose lines were created on-the-spot and were freely invented parts based on the repertoire of fixed situations and types (on the free parts, Taviani and Schino 1982; on genres, collections, and dramaturgy of the Italian comedians, Marotti-Romei 1991; Testaverde 2007; Vescovo 2010).

A unique document, the Manuel du souffleur of the copyist-prompter Thibaut Thibaut, active in Paris in the Théâtre de la Gaité, exemplifies the relationship between stage practice and production and conservation of texts in 19th century France. This document was published in instalments between 1830 and 1831 in the Journal des comédiens and integrated by the author with a manuscript preserved in the Bibliothèque de l’Opéra (see Di Baldi’s study 2002-2003). Thibaut describes the concentration of the writing specialist’s tasks in the drama’s production process. These range from transcription of the author’s manuscript in roles (rôles), to text changes during rehearsals, both in stage directions and dialogue, and finally, the draft for the prompter and the régisseur (director-coordinator of the show) during the performances. As for the documentary value of Thibaut’s Manuel on the creation and use of the manuscrit de la pièce, the legibility of the interpretative procedures related, not only to the appropriation and personalisation of the parts but also the more overall design responsibility of the leading actors, emerged in the 19^th century. This process has been exemplified by Shattuck’s collection of Shakespearean prompt-books (1965) and the collection of the Folger Library (Washington, on the web at http://www.shakespeareinperformance.amdigital.co.uk). The appropriation and personal regeneration of the repertoire text characterises the leading actor's activity as stage manager or capocomico. In Italy, in the 19^th century, the copione indicates the text intended for the company’s scenic use. The most direct trace of the interpretive and dramaturgical creation of the Great Actor of the Italian 19^th century, between Gustavo Modena and Adelaide Ristori and Eleonora Duse’s repertoire, is sedimented, both for the intonation notations and for the scenic aspects of the transposition, by the fragmentary glosses that emerge in the body of the whole texts and of the «singled out parts» (recent studies in Bertolone 2000; Brunetti 2008; Perrelli 2009). In light of the configurations of the theatrical work, the script, with its margin notes and annotations condenses traces and projections, from the reproduction and memorisation of the personal repertoires to the invention of the show. As the place of the actor’s observations and readings/writings, it becomes a support for potential dramaturgy, reaching out to stage practice. As an instrument of conception and text of the project to be realised, the script’s sense became more specific with the advent of the director as author of the performance in the first decades of the 20^th century. The best known and most studied example are Max Reinhardt’s Regiebücher (Passow 1971).

Therefore, the study of dramatic manuscripts has an original and specific historical value compared to the better known and consolidated analyses on printed drama and on «theatre in the shape of book» (Chartier 1999 and 2015; Taviani 2010). Studying the script as a document is crucial for analysing the presence of writing not only in dramaturgy but also in the overall context of the material cultures of performance. In 20^th century dramaturgy, the relationships between literature and the stage produce new ways of inscription and trascription which are sensitive and variable in their interaction with theatrical work. Two examples are the joint presence of handwritten and typewritten scripts and the printed versions in the edition of the dramaturgy of the actor-writer Eduardo De Filippo (2000-2007), and the study of Samuel Beckett’s notebooks containing his revisions as author-director (Beckett 1994-1999).

[Raimondo Guarino]

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Teatro greco

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