The Traveling Diva and Generic Innovation

Abstract

the first professional actresses in Italy emerged in sixteenth-century itinerant troupes, enabling an unprecedented period of innovation and geographic expansion by the players now known as the commedia dell’arte. It was not merely the novelty of their gender but the ability of leading actresses to display performative variety and virtuosity that spurred the comici to diversify their menu of tumbling, comedy, and farce and offer up plays in all three Renaissance genres: comedy, tragedy, and pastoral. At a time when few women were literate and even fewer traveled far from home, a few star actresses were extravagantly mobile and literary; some were published poets and others were musical prodigies, and the most gifted became sought-after celebrities. A vibrant new resource in theater of all kinds, the Renaissance actress played a crucial role in the rise of the avant-garde forms of tragicomic pastoral, tragicomedy, and opera. France, Spain, and England also had female perform-