Maria -- chances are you're gone, but I figure it's worth a try!  I'll send a
hard copy of this to your Miami address as well in case your secretary is
forwarding your mail.
I really enjoyed reading your paper -- hope you find some of this helpful!
and do let me know where you will be in Italy after June 11 (our arrival
date in Florence)
best, Jane
---------------------



Dear Maria,
many thanks for sending me your interesting paper -- I learned alot from
it, and find your discussion of varying attitudes about the CDA and your
thoughts on theatricality very intriguing.  It's clear you've done a lot of
work on this project (much of it in the footnotes!)and I'm sure that this will
be a first-rate article (book?) once you've finished working it through.

I suppose that it is precisely, however, your term theatricality that seems
most problematic, only b/c you leave it relatively undefined.  Fuch's
definition (p. 3) is rather vague; and your elaboration of his text (3-4)
should be fleshed out more fully.  What exactly do you mean by
referentiality -- one of your most original points, by the way, if I
understand it correctly -- and how do you see CDA referentiality
differing from modern notions o referentiality (which are, exactly, what? 
I guess I just don't know enough about current theatre discourse and so
need to have it patiently explained to me). As for your second "addition"
to Fuch, this seems very important and could probably be made more of
in the exposition of your paper.  I readily agree w/you regarding "shared
backgrounds" and the necessity of knowing this in order to understand
"how" bodies "meant" something.  This is obviously a vast project, one
that would require much more than a short essay to carry out, so all you
can do here -- and I think for much of the time you do it quite well -- is to
write a sort of prologemonon (?), a theoretical argument that clearly,
carefully explains your points about referentiality and shared cultural
assumptions, and states how and why your making these two points are
a) original (i.e., they deviate from current, inadequate scholarship) and b)
utterly crucial.

That said, I don't know that you need some of the materials that you
include; or, perhaps, you need to signpost more clearly their relevance to
the argument at hand.  Thus your discussion of the history of CDA, pp.
4ff, need to be clearly subordinated to points raised on bottom 6 and top
7, which I assume have some function in your analysis of theatricality
(lack of a script and thus the absolute importance of looking at gestures,
etc.; all those things that Fuch brings out.  I don't know that anyone
would contest that these "extrascriptural" elements are important for
CDA; you may want to bring in more forcefully here your thoughts on
"referentiality" on the stage).  Your discusion begins to wander a bit on
8, where you talk about censorship or lack thereof and (9ff) the
ambivalent status ofplayers.  Again, signposts are needed here, both to
let us know why this is an issue, and how it's possible both to use the
English critics (Mullaney, Montrose) and to situate the English example as
one quite different from the Italian.  (I like, by the way, the force of the
comparsion; your pt. on 11 is quite well taken about the CDA troupes
existing not in a fixed place on the margins but in the center: i.e., the
piazza,the court, etc.  And (moving right along!) I'm not sure what place
the discussion on actors' choices to publish their scenari has overall. 
(You might ask yourself: is this essay really about the relationship b.t oral
and written texts, and what happens when the commedianti move into
the world of the Status quo vis-a-vis publication? This occupies you
throughout a great deal of the essay)

It's on 16 that you begin to look more rigorously at the issue of "shared
assumptions," and I find this section of the essay quite valuable and well
worked-out. Perhaps there is an extent to which CDA attempts to
embody or reflect a "shared world view" (its pretensions to being
"encyclopedic" or "totalizing" about the nature of Italy w/its various
provinces and dialects being only one manifestation of this). And
perhaps this almost nostalgic (and certainly fantastic) totalization of the
urban space (since it's so rarely courtly, or pastoral) is bound to become
ultimately "antiquated", nonreferential to anything in the "real" world of
the audience.  I think the questions of referentiality and "shared cultural
assumptions" are to this extent absolutely linked, in ways that perhaps
you want to reflect on a little more. B/c after you make your points about
shared (or unshared) assumptions, you move right back (19) into the
absence of a "working definition of theatricality" vis-a-vis Gaspari's
work, although without coming back w/a strong discussion of
theatricality and referentiality of your own.  So once we get to the last
few sentences, I find myself hardpressed to describe with precision the
"different theatricality" which the CDA troupes supposedly exemplified,
and you basically bow out of the issue of describing "referentialiy" in
your penultimate sentence.

My sense is that the project is important and eminently worth doing, but
that you need to articulate it more clearly and more systematically.  I'd
argue for fewer critics cited in the text (all the references clutter your
prose; consign many of them to footnotes) and a good deal more
signposts as to where you're going and why.  And perhaps most
importantly, decide ahead of time what your real priorities are. Perhaps
I've located the wrong ones; you're also interested in oral vs. script, in
whether the CDA troupes constitute a "healthy", still ongoing tradition or
not (you basically say they don't, but don't really elaborate on why; this
discussion could feasibly be subordinated to the argument you'll make on
referentiality and why the CDA actors "referenced" the world
"differently"), in various historical positionings of the CDA. All of these
things are of interest, but their place in the narrative isn't quite secure,
and perhaps you'll decide that all of them are simply not worth including.

I hope this has been of some help.  Obviously I don't know what your
reader said or didn't say, and I hope that I'm not giving you a completely
different set of criticisms!  You should know that this is all very good,
and that it requires really a reorganization and perhaps a repriotization of
ideas; most of your content is, I should think, already here on paper.

I hope you'll keep in touch about this -- I continue to struggle w/my own
thoughts on Italian theatre, which I'm hoping will congeal during the two
months we'll be in Italy! (we leave June 10 for Firenze; our address, by
the way, is Via Fra' Bartolomeo, 15; 3 piano; 50125 Firenze (no phone as
of yet).  Where will you and Robert be?

I'll keep in mind your Feb. conference .... a nice time of year to leave
Madison.

all the best,
    
Jane



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