Dying to Act

Shakespeareans stereotype the comici as bawdy masked clowns, not knowing that leading Italian companies played prestigious tragedy as well as comedy and pastoral. The unmasked actress capable of stirring pathos and desire enabled them to change their repertory and their fortunes. Most Italian tragedies had female heroines, but they were long and static, so the diva set about cutting and adapting them; they also borrowed tragic stories from romance epics and the novella. They produced showpieces full of extreme passions, plangent laments, and violent words and deeds. This new style reached England and altered tragic playwriting in works by Marlowe, Marston, Webster, and others. Two groundbreaking roles—Bel-imperia in Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy and Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, worlds apart in most ways—share the profile of the audacious, strong-willed, eloquent, and artful innamorata whose spectacular life and death reflect the unusual autonomy and theatrical brilliance of the tragic diva.