Within the context of early modern European theater Italy presents an exceptional number of female patrons, dramatists, and performers—including professional actresses (documented in the peninsula at least from 1564). Although evidence of women's theatrical protagonism is often scant, in part because of the challenge posed to female decorum by the notorious license of the public stage, no fewer than nine full-length, original plays by seven female dramatists (Barbara Torelli, Maddalena Campiglia, Isabella Andreini, Leonora Bernardi, Valeria Miani, Isabetta Coreglia, and Margherita Costa) in the secular genres of comedy, tragedy, and pastoral drama composed in ca. 1586–1650 have recently come to light, as well as a political play (Moderata Fonte's Feste [1581]) and convent drama. Of the secular plays, five are now available in critical editions with English translations through the series The Other Voice; three more are forthcoming.
To this field Alexandra Coller's richly documented monograph presents a timely and stimulating addition, as the first book-length study to explore the nine secular plays (excluding Fonte's) composed by women until 1650, set against the male-dominated canon. It builds on the pioneering work by Virginia Cox (The Prodigious Muse [2011], chapter 2, “Drama”), and studies of individual plays and genres, offering very detailed textual readings of these dramatic texts in dialogue with an impressive range of other sources, dramatic and literary, inside and outside the canon, by authors of both sexes. Coller traces largely chronologically—across comedy, tragedy, and pastoral tragicomedy—the development of female-centered thematics (e.g., marriage and family relations, feminine virtù or agency on- or offstage, female friendship and love) in terms of rhetorical and dramatic practice. The female-authored works are mostly explored against a “shared network of letterati and male sponsorship” (235), and a well-documented tradition of philogynist writings linked to the ongoing querelle des femmes. Nonetheless, evidence is suggested (especially for Isabetta Coreglia) for the development also of a literary kinship among female dramatists through bi-gendered connections across courts, cities, and academies (especially in Lucca, Siena, and the Veneto region), as well as in “gynocentric milieu[s]” (50) (for Margherita Costa in Vittoria della Rovere's Florence).
Coller's premise is that Italian erudite drama differs notably from its ancient models due to its “intriguingly sympathetic portrayals of and sustained investment in women as vibrant and dynamic characters of the early modern stage” (1). This partly reflects the strong influence on dramatists of Boccaccio's Decameron, but also real changes in contemporary views on women by early dramatists from Ruzante to Ludovico Dolce. The study does not aim, however, to explore how far comedies and tragedies mirror society, nor does it critically draw out issues of gender representation or voicing and performance in relation to the author's sex. Instead, Coller offers nuanced analysis of how in practice the plays discussed variously “both disturb[ ] and trump[ ] the kind of ideals prescribed to women” (23) and obliquely allude to real contexts and norms, often through apparently quite minor, but significant, variations to generic conventions.
The study falls into two connected parts: “Women as Protagonists in Male-Authored Drama: Comedy and Tragedy” and “Women as Authors / Women as Protagonists: Pastoral Tragicomedy.” The two chapters in part 1 (both derived from earlier published essays) set up discussion across a wide range of plays of female-oriented themes, including education and the trope of cross-dressing in comedy (chapter 1), and friendship and female virtue in tragedy (chapter 2). A coda to each chapter features original analysis of the single female-authored example of each genre: respectively, Costa's Li buffoni (1641, significantly later than most of the male-authored comedies discussed), and Valeria Miani's tragedy Celinda (1611). The second part demonstrates how pastoral tragicomedy, the genre most conducive to women (six plays), allowed creative challenges to gender stereotypes and generic conventions, as in Miani's lively nymph-satyr scene (chapter 5). Perhaps surprisingly, the last two chapters examine the “somewhat derivative” (198) pastoral plays by the little-known Coreglia (Dori [1634]; Erindo [1650]). However, here as before, Coller makes a strong case for closely reading these female-authored plays to appreciate their strategic rhetorical positioning against both male- and female-authored classics as part of a broader collaborative and competitive production, explicitly attuned to issues of gender and genre.
This book is recommended for scholars and graduate students of early modern theater, literature, and culture for its sensitive discussions of new textual-dramatic voices and gender-related issues, all meticulously referenced and with indications for future scholarship. We now await Coller's welcome companion editions of Miani's Amorosa Speranza and Coreglia's Dori.
