The new English translations of the four Scala scenarios that follow, each in a separate chapter, are provided by David Harwell. Margherita Pierac-ci Harwell was helpful in providing clarification for certain obscurities in Scala’s text. I edited the translations. They are based on Ferruccio Marotti’s 1976 edition of them and follow Marotti’s editorial practices. Marotti’s angle brackets for the characters that Scala neglected to specify in his list of characters have been retained, as has Marotti’s addition of square brackets for the characters that Scala lists for each scene that are not syntactically integrated into his opening for the scene. The translations of the four scenarios are deliberately literal, providing as much as possible a sense of the style of the writing and leaving intact any textual problems and verbal infelicities. This choice was made to reflect the style of the Arguments and to indicate the problems that there are in reconstruction, and the extent to which Scala was writing for performers rather than readers. In the translation, clarifying material has been added in brackets. So that scenes can be easily referenced and distinguished from the commentary following them, the text of the scenes appears in italics and scene numbers have been added. The name of the character Capitano Spavento (Captain Fear), whom Scala refers to in the margins of his scenes simply as Capitano, is left untranslated for parity with the other characters and in my commentary is referred to as the Capitano. The phrase in quello (Scala’s shorthand for “at that moment”) is translated as “at that” to make it obvious that a new set of entering characters establishes a new scene without delay. Scala’s term via for exits has been literally translated as “away,” again to retain the sense of speed that Scala seems to have sought for the transitions between scenes.
In places in my commentary I use Robert Henke’s term set pieces for speeches and dialogues that actors would have memorized because the character they regularly played had frequent occasion to use them.1 Pan-talone, for instance, regularly despairs about or rages against his children or servants. The actor would have had a repertoire of speeches for, among other things, despair and rage. Lovers, similarly would have had set speeches. Speeches could be taken from any source. An actor playing a male lover alone on stage, for instance, might have found it useful to have on hand a speech from Pietro Bembo’s widely published Gli Asolani:
O Love, may I forever bless the hand with which you have drawn and written in my soul so many features of my lady. On one long canvas I always bear with me an endless line of her fair portraits rather than a single face, and ever read and reread one tall book filled with her words and accents, and in brief compass recognize, whenever I return to them a thousand lovely traits of her and of her worth, so many of them sweet and dear to me that in my thought I feel no small part of that strong pleasure which, thanks to her, I felt when I was first aware of them.2
Such a speech could have been adapted to the scenario and situation at hand and, as I argue in chapter 4, would probably have been memorized not verbatim (memoria ad verbum) but as a cluster of meanings that could have been adapted to different words (memoria ad res). The best improvisers, at least, would have seen it as a point of pride not to repeat their or anyone else’s speeches verbatim. In so far as an audience member recognized the source, he would have appreciated the actor’s adaptation of it. There are also places for set dialogues, for instance, between lovers. I indicate possible places for both set speeches and dialogues with a single asterisk within the scenes.
In my reconstructions I have assumed that a major task for the actors was to provide exposition that allowed the audience to follow the action and the character relationships, and that entrances from where the characters resided or from where they last exited further served to clarify the action and were the easiest for the actors. In so far as it has seemed appropriate, I have incorporated the characters’ traits that are evident in other Scala scenarios, but with care because character traits vary from scenario to scenario.