Experimentations with Rhetorics by Commedia dell'Arte Actors at the End of the 16th Century

Abstract

This article offers a new interpretation of Tristano Martinelli’s Compositions de Rhétorique (1600-1601), one of the most emblematic books produced by Commedia dell’Arte actors. Martinelli, creator of the mask and stage persona of Harlequin, presented the unique volume – now held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France – to Henry IV and Maria de’ Medici during their wedding celebrations in Lyon. The book combines letters, a dream poem, a sonnet, several languages, verbal inventions, and theatrical woodcuts with fifty-seven blank pages out of seventy. After reviewing the few interpretations published to date, the article examines the enigma of the blank pages and argues that the volume is neither an anti-book nor merely a parody, but a deliberate experiment in theatrical rhetoric: an early modern multimedia portfolio in which text, image, absence, and performance construct Martinelli’s artistic identity and address prospective patrons.