Atellan Farce

The Atellan Farce (Latin: Atellanae Fabulae or Fabulae Atellanae,[1] "favola atellana[2]" ; Atellanicum exhodium, "Atella
comedies[3]"), also known as the Oscan Games (Latin: ludi Osci, "Oscan plays"), were masked improvised farces.[4] It was very
popular in Ancient Rome, and usually put on after longer plays like the pantomime.[5] The name is believed to have been derived
from Atella, an Oscan town in Campania, who were one of the first to have a theatre and the hypothesized point of origin of Atellan
Farce.[6][7][8] They were originally written in Oscan and imported into Rome in 391 BC. In later Roman versions, only the ridiculous
characters read their lines in Oscan, while the others used Latin.

Contents
1 Stock characters
2 Authorship
3 Controversy and suppression
4 See also
5 Sources
6 References
7 External links

Stock characters
Some of the hypothesizedstock characters included:

Maccus (a hunchbacked, beak nosed character)[9][10]

Buccus (the country booby)[10]
Manducus (the arrogant soldier)[10]
Pappus (the old man)[10]
Centunculus (the comic slave) [10]
Dosseunus (the pompous doctor)[10]
There has been some debate of these characters connection to similar stock characters in Commedia dell'arte, as well as Punch and
Judy. Atellan Farce and Commedia were both improvised masked comedies. Some Historians argue that the stock characters in
Atellan Farce are the beginnings of what would become the stock characters of Commedia dell'arte.

Some of the theorized character progressions are as follows:

Pappus Pantalone[11][12]
Maccus+Buccus Pulcinella[13][14]
Manducus il Capitano[15]
However, the connection of Atellan Farce to Commedia dell'arte and assumption that Atellan Farce is the precursor to Commedia
dell'arte is still under debate.[16] As for Atellan Farce's connection to Punch and Judy, the similarities between Punch and the
Commedia dell'arte character Pulcinella are notable. However, many historians still debate whether or not Punch's derivation can be
traced back to Pulcinella.[17][18]

Authorship
It is believed that the dictator Sulla wrote some. Quintus Novius, who flourished 50 years after the abdication of Sulla, wrote some
fifty Atellan Fables, including Macchus Sexul ("Exiled Macchus"), Gallinaria ("The Henhouse"), Surdus ("The Deaf One"),
Vindemiatores ("The Harvesters"), andParcus (The Treasurer).

Lucius Pomponius, of Bologna, is known to have composed a few, including Macchus Miles ("Macchus the Soldier"), Pytho
Gorgonius, Pseudoagamemnon, Bucco Adoptatus, and Aeditumus. Fabius Dorsennus and a "Memmius" were also authors of these
comedies; Ovid and Pliny the Younger found the work of Memmius to be indecent.

Controversy and suppression

Taken from Tacitus ( Annals, Book 4): "...after various and often fruitless complaints from the praetors, the emperor Tiberius finally
brought forward a motion about the licentious behavior of the players. 'They had often,' he said. 'Sought to disturb the public peace,
and to bring disgrace on private families, and the old Oscan farce, once a wretched amusement for the vulgar, had become at once so
indecent and popular, that it must be checked by the Senate's authority'. The players, upon this, wer
e banished from Italy".

Suetonius ( Tiberius, 45, 1) reports that Tiberius himself was mocked for his lecherous habits in an Atellan farce, after which the
saying "the old goat lapping up the doe" h( ircum vetulum capreis naturam ligurire) became popular.

The above passage suggests a growth in popularity or maybe even a revival of these farces, in the 20s AD, that met the disapproval of
an older generation of patricians and senators. Perhaps they were even performed out in public places as an act of direct hostility
towards (or a means to mock) specific people or families. At any rate, these performances eventually became so obnoxious that, in 28
AD, all those who performed in these farces were banished from Italy
.

[19]
The Augustan History records that Hadrian furnished performances of Atellan Farces at banquets.

See also
Improvisational comedy
Improvisational theatre
Theatre of ancient Rome

Sources
Fragments of the Atellan Fables can be found in thePoetarum latinorum scen. fragmenta, Leipzig, 1834
Maurice Meyer, Sur les Atellanes; Manheim, 1826, in-8;
C. E. Schober, ber die Atellanen, Leipzig, 1825, in-8;
M. Meyer, Etudes sur le thtre latin, Paris, 1847, in-8.
Jrgen Blnsdorf Atellana fabula, in:Brills New Pauly, Antiquity volumes edited by: Hubert Cancik and Helmuth
Schneider. Consulted online on 21 July 2017
The works of Pomponius and Novius can be found in

Otto Ribbeck, Comicorum Romanorum praeter Plautum et T

erentium Fragmenta
Eduard Munk, De Fabulis Atellanis (1840).

References
1. Smith, Winifred (1964).The Commedia Dell'Arte. New York: Benjamin Blom. p. 24."The extemporary compositions
called Fabulae Atellanae..."
2. Kennard, Joseph (1964).The Italian Theatre: From Its Beginning to the close of the Seventeeth Century . New York:
Benjamin Blom. p. 5. "Another early form of drama, was the Atellanian fable (favola atellana), so called from the
Etruscan city Atella."
 3. Oreglia, Giacomo (1968).The Commedia dell'Arte. New York: Hill and Wang. p. 78. "...the Pappus of Atella
comedies"
4. Smith, Winifred (1964).The Commedia Dell'Arte. New York: Benjamin Blom. p. 26."Atellnae were farces marked by
improvisation and masked personages,"
5. Duchartre, Pierre (1966).The Italian Comedy. New York: Dover Publications, INC. p. 25."They were later called
Exodiae, because they were often given at the end of the performance.
"
6. Kennard, Joseph (1964).The Italian Theatre: From Its Beginning to the close of the Seventeenth Century . New York:
Benjamin Blom. p. 5. "Another early form of drama, was the Atellainian fable, so called from the Etruscan city Atella.
"
7. Duchartre, Pierre (1966).The Italian Comedy. New York: Dover Publications, INC. p. 25."The ancient city of Atella,
now known as Aversa, was one of the first tohave a theatre, in fact."
8. Ducharte, Pierre (1966).The Italian Comedy. New York: Dover Publications INC. p. 25."When performed in Rome
they were called Atellanae, which became their accepted name.
"
9. Smith, Winifred (1964).The Commedia Dell'Arte. New York: Benjamin Bloom. p. 22."A grotesque statuette
representing a beak-nosed, hunchbacked individual, was unearthed at Herculaneum in 1727, which by a slight
stretch of imagination could be identified with Maccus
"
10. Byrom, Michael (1972).Punch and Judy: Its Origin and Evolution. Aberdeen: Shiva Publications. p. 4.
ISBN 0902982028. "There was the old man (Pappus), the old woman, the comic slave (Centunculus), the country
booby (Buccus), the arrogant soldier (Manducus), the pompous doctor (Dossenus), and the sharp-tongued hooked
nosed hunchback (Maccus)."
11. Duchartre, Peirre (1966).The Italian Comedy. New York: Dover Publications, INC. p. 17."The ancestor of
Pantaloon, and his son Harpagon, is Pappus, the lecherous old miser of the Antellane
"
12. Oreglia, Giacomo (1968).The Commedia dell'Arte. New York: Hill and Wang. p. 78. "In the ancient theatre the
characters which recall this Mask are those of the various old men of Aristophanes, Plautus,erence,
T and the
Pappus of the Atella comedies"
13. Duchartre, Pierre (1966).The Italian Comedy. New York: The Dover Publications, INC. p. 18. "The cradle of the
family was the ancient city of Atella, in the Roman Campangna, and the gallery of ancestors shows, among others
Bucco and the sensual Maccus, whose lean figure and cowardly nature reappear in Pulcinella "
14. Duchartre, Pierre (1966).The Italian Comedy. Dover Publication, INC. p. 29."Pulcinella was always dressed in white
like Maccus, the mimus albus, or white mime"
15. Duchartre, Pierre (1966).The Italian Comedy. New York: The Dover Publications, INC. p. 18. "Next there is the ogre
Manducus, the Miles Glorious in the plays of Plautus, who is later metamorphosed into the swaggering Captain, or
Captain."
16. Smith, Winifred (1964).The Commedia Dell'Arte. New York: Benjamin Blom. p. 21."page 21 Not a little nonsense
has been written about the evolution of the commedai dellarte. Of the three main theories that attempt to account
for our farces the hoariest and most outgrown is that concerning their putative Roman father
, surely a ghost that by
now ought to be permately laid."
17. Smith, Winifred (1964).The Commedia Dell'Arte. New York: Benjamin Blom. p. 23."The identification of the statuette
with a future in the Mimes or even with a stage character at all is very uncertain, nor is it safe to press its
resemblance to the English Punch; there is no doubt that it looks like Punch but this, I think, is vest explained by the
fame of the figure at the time of its discovery and by the influence of its peculiarities on the face and figure of the
English villain-clown."
18. Byrom, Michael (1972).Punch and Judy: Its Origin and Evolution. Aberbeen: Shiva Publications. p. 5.
ISBN 0902982028. "In 1662, Pulcinella crossed the English Channel and became 'Punchinello' later to be known
simply as Punch."
19. HA Hadrian 26.

External links
(in French) Meyer, Maurice, tudes sur le thtre Latin
(in French) Imago Mundi -Atellanes

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