Page:Punch and judy.djvu/22

Rh Neapolitans in general, he remarks (p. 231), that, "from a certain national vivacity and disposition, they have been at all times distinguished for their talent in imitating the ridiculous on their stages." Hence more than one of the amusing personages in their impromptu comedies, or commedie à soggetto, inserted by Riccoboni among the plates attached to his work, have had their origin in that lively and luxurious capital.

In order to give a notion of the species of dramatic entertainment in which these various characters, and among them Pulcinella, were engaged, a further short quotation from Signorelli's work will be useful: he is referring to the state of the Italian comedy in the beginning of the seventeenth century. "In general (he says) the public comedians travelled over Italy, representing certain theatrical performances, called comedies of art, in contradistinction to comedies of learning, recited in the academies and in private dwellings by well-bred actors for their pleasure and exercise. The plan or plot of the fables, they call it, à soggetto, was noted down, as well as