Abstract
After the death of Louis XIV, the Théâtre-Italien, an Italian theatrical company, was invited by the regent, the Duke of Orleans, to Paris in 1716. Directed by Luigi Liccoboni, Italian actors began to work with French playwrights despite the problem of language. Marivaux was one of the major writers who contributed to the Italians, whose acting style was inherited from commedia dell’arte.
Italian actors had already performed in France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Hence, their traditional style of acting, which used such aspects as improvisation and physicality, were gradually weakened, but they did not abandon their stereotyped characters in the eighteenth century.
The Italian company attracted the audience in Paris, especially through the performance of Thomassin (as Arlequin/Harlequin) and the actress Silvia. Their acting style was called “naive acting (le jeu naïf)” by their contemporaries. Italian actors were obedient to playwrights and attempted to assume their rolls naturally. Silvia was admired especially for this type of acting and Arlequin-Thomassin for his acting and naive character.
In one of Marivaux’s early comedies written for Italians, La Double Inconstance (1723), Arlequin’s and Silvia’s characters appear as naive villagers. Through their naive actions, they find that a new world — the royal world — is full of luxury and vanity. Here, their frank opinions function as social critique. However, once they become part of this high society, they are integrated into it without noticing. Their unconscious actions defamiliarize the society as well as their own selves. Thus, because the naive acting of Italians had an influence on Marivaux’s dramaturgy, his comedy needs this kind of acting.
Furthermore, La Dispute (1744), performed by French actors, shows that the influence of Italian actors had deeply penetrated Marivaux’s dramaturgy even when he wrote for French actors. In La Dispute, naive characters function similarly to Arlequin and Silvia in La Double Inconstance, appearing as the “specific characters” of this comedy. Thus, although the acting style of Italians was not the mainstream style in eighteenth-century France, it played an important role in the history of French theater.
