# Commedia dell'Arte for Actors: Stock Characters and Physical Comedy

> The commedia dell'arte stock characters as choices you can play: the stance, the walk, the hunger, and the status of each one, how a lazzo is built, and how to use all of it in a Shakespeare comedy.

- URL: https://www.offbook.com/blog/commedia-dellarte-for-actors
- Published: 2026-10-28
- Last updated: 2026-10-28

The director of your *Taming of the Shrew* stops the scene and says, "Gremio's a Pantalone. Give me more Pantalone." Everyone nods. You know it's something about an old man, and maybe a mask, and you suspect it involves a funny walk. That's about all you've got.

Or you've been handed a commedia unit at school and told to improvise. Either way, you need to know what to do with your body tomorrow.

The short version: each commedia stock character is a ready-made bundle of choices. A stance, a walk, a want that never changes, and a fixed place on the social ladder. Find the stance first, let the want drive every move, and play the status gap between master and servant as hard as you can. A **lazzo** is a comic bit you rehearse until you can drop it in anywhere. And the same tools quietly sharpen several of Shakespeare's early comedies.

## What commedia dell'arte actually was

Commedia dell'arte was a professional, mostly improvised comedy that was popular across Europe from the 16th to the 18th centuries. According to [Wikipedia's history of the form](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commedia_dell%27arte), the first recorded performances came from Rome as early as 1551, and by 1568 the Gelosi had become a distinct company. Troupes toured, playing in temporary venues, costumed and masked.

There was no script in the modern sense. Companies worked from scenarios: an outline that gave the show its plot, with the dialogue largely improvised in performance. The best-known collection, by Flaminio Scala, was published in the early 17th century. Robert Henke, a Washington University professor, says in [an interview on Shakespeare's Italian influences](https://holdthatthought.washu.edu/node/13470) that the troupes "figured out a brilliant system of improvisation," and took it on tour across Europe.

What made that system work was the stock characters. Actors often took on a single stylized role for their acting lives, as the [Internet Shakespeare Editions](https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/drama/early%20comedies/commedia.html) puts it.

Women played women. Female roles were taken by actresses, documented as early as the 1560s, and Isabella Andreini became perhaps the most widely known of the great innamorate (the female lovers).

## The stock characters, as bodies and wants

The characters fall into four groups: servants (the **zanni**), old masters (the *vecchi*), young lovers (the *innamorati*), and the swaggering Captain. Each comes with a mask, or a deliberate lack of one, and the Wikipedia article notes John Rudlin's view that the mask can't be separated from the character. Here's what each one gives you to play.

- **Zanni, the servants.** The type sits on a [lowered centre of gravity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanni), knees flexed, back arched. He's always hungry. The first zanni is clever and witty; the second is foolish, clumsy, and dull.
- **Arlecchino (Harlequin).** The acrobat of the servants. His main feature is agility: [he never does a simple action](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlequin) when a cartwheel, somersault, or flip could spice it up. He's driven by a desire for food and fear of his master.
- **Brighella.** The Shakespeare Theatre Company's [gallery of commedia characters](https://www.shakespearetheatre.org/watch-listen/a-gallery-of-rogues/) calls him "the archetype of the scheming servant": witty, intelligent, with a dagger in his belt.
- **Pantalone.** The rich old Venetian. The V&A calls him [the greedy merchant](https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O57995/) of the form; the Shakespeare Theatre Company's gallery has him "always greedily counting his pennies and always keeping the young lovers apart." His stance is a hunched old man with knees bent and turned out. He moves slowly, with bursts of agility when emotion runs high.
- **Il Dottore.** The pompous scholar, described in the Shakespeare Theatre Company gallery as "a man of great erudition and little insight." Play the learning at full volume and miss the point every time.
- **Il Capitano.** The braggart soldier, descended from the boaster of Plautus' *Miles gloriosus*. He [stands high and takes up as much space as possible](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_Capitano), and he's the first to run from any fight.
- **The lovers and the maid.** The innamorati wore no masks; their beauty and makeup were mask enough, and they spoke conventional love poetry. The servant girl, Colombina, also went unmasked, and was famous for her quick wits.

## Status is the engine of the comedy

Commedia is built on a fixed social ladder of rank. Pantalone sits at the top, with what the [Wikipedia entry on Pantalone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantalone) calls his "status at the top of the social order," along with his money. The servants are at the bottom. Nobody's rank changes. The comedy comes from how they play it: the clever servant who runs the house, the master who falls flat on his back at bad financial news and can't get up until someone helps him.

That gap between fixed rank and shifting status is status work in its purest form. Our guide to [status in acting](https://www.offbook.com/blog/status-in-acting) describes the seesaw: when one character goes up, the other usually goes down. In commedia, the ladder stays put while the seesaw tips scene by scene, and that tipping is the plot. Brighella bows low and steers the scene. So decide two things: where your character stands on the ladder by rank, and where they sit on the seesaw, moment to moment.

## How to play a commedia character

Start in the body, not the head. A common approach works from the body first, well before any words arrive.

1. **Find the stance.** Take the character's posture and hold it until it stops feeling like a pose. Zanni low with knees bent, Pantalone hunched with knees turned out, the Captain tall with his chest out.
2. **Find the walk.** Move around the room in that stance. Let the posture decide the speed. Pantalone's walk should look like hard work; Arlecchino can't cross a room in a straight line.
3. **Add the want.** Give the character their one appetite and let it pull them: food for Zanni, money for Pantalone, glory for the Captain, the beloved for the lovers. Walk again, this time chasing it.
4. **React with the whole body.** Have a partner call out news: "Your purse is gone," "Dinner's ready," "There's a soldier at the door." Respond in the character's body before you say anything.
5. **Only then, speak.** Improvise a short exchange with another character. Keep the stance. Most beginners drop it the moment they open their mouths.

If you're working in a half mask, the angle of your head becomes your facial expression. Our guide to [acting in a mask](https://www.offbook.com/blog/how-to-act-in-a-mask) covers how to clock the audience and use head angle.

## What is a lazzo?

A [lazzo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazzi) (plural *lazzi*) is a stock comic routine. The word comes from the Italian for a joke or witticism. Performers, especially the masked Arlecchino, wove lazzi into many different scenarios, often to liven up a slow scene or to cover a dropped line. They were familiar to the actors and, to some extent, rehearsed.

A few that survive in the records give you the flavor. In the Lazzo of the Fly, a servant swears there isn't a fly in the house; the master finds it full of people, and the servant still insists there are no flies. In the Lazzo of the Straw, a master pours himself wine while his servant quietly drains the cup through a straw. In the Lazzo of Nightfall, the whole troupe stumbles about as if the stage were pitch black.

Look at what they share: a simple situation, a status gap, and an action that escalates. Kerry Hishon's guide to [creating your own commedia lazzi](https://theatrefolk.com/blog/creating-commedia-lazzi) starts from a simple surprise, like a door opening and someone shouting "Boo!" She suggests playing the same scene three times, as a master, a servant, and a lover. Pantalone might clutch at his heart, Arlecchino might leap away into a back somersault, and an innamorata might drop her handkerchief and faint. Same event, three different characters.

Then she turns it into a method for building your own. Start with an ordinary action, like brushing your hair or eating a piece of fruit, then something happens. Build five to seven reactions, one after another, each more ridiculous, and make every one specific and over the top.

### Timing a lazzo

A lazzo lives or dies on rhythm. Each reaction needs a beat to land before the next one tops it, and the final one usually earns the longest hold. Our guide to [comedic timing](https://www.offbook.com/blog/comedic-timing-for-actors) covers holding for a laugh and not stepping on it.

## Commedia in Shakespeare

Shakespeare knew this tradition. Touring companies visited England several times during his life, and he refers to commedia in Jaques' "seven ages of man" speech in *As You Like It*. Here is Jaques describing the sixth of the seven ages of man (Act 2, Scene 7):

> **JAQUES:** … The sixth age shifts
> Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
> With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
> His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
> For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
> Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
> And whistles in his sound.

*Source: William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Project Gutenberg eBook 1523 (public domain).*

Henke notes that about four of Jaques' seven ages are based on commedia types, and he singles out the pantaloon as a commedia old man. Read it again as a costume and movement note: thin, in slippers, glasses on his nose, a purse at his side, old stockings sagging, a voice gone high. That's Pantalone's body, described by a writer who knew the type. If you're working on the speech, our page for ["All the world's a stage"](https://www.offbook.com/monologues/all-the-worlds-a-stage) walks through all seven ages.

Henke also says the first appearance of the word "pantaloon" in English is in *The Taming of the Shrew*, and calls the pantaloon there "an explicit reference to the commedia dell'arte." In the play, Lucentio plots to "beguile the old pantaloon" (3.1). Henke points out that the whole play is built on old men, lovers, and servants, which he calls the deep structure of commedia. The University of Rochester's [dramaturgy notes for *Shrew*](https://www.sas.rochester.edu/theatre/productions/past/2014-15/shrew/resources.html) describe Gremio as a perfect Pantaloon, hoodwinked by the lovers and servants like Biondello and Grumio.

Henke adds a fair caution: he doesn't think all of Shakespeare's comedies were influenced by commedia. Use the characters as a lens only where the structure is already there.

### The strip-it-back exercise

Here's a rehearsal approach that works for Gremio, Polonius (whom the Wikipedia history traces to Pantalone), the servants in *The Comedy of Errors*, or a braggart soldier in the Captain's mold. Run your scene once as the full commedia type, stance and all, as big as you dare. Then run it again at half size. Then again at a quarter, in a realistic body.

Each pass, keep the want and the status exactly as strong as the first time. Only the size of the body shrinks. What's left at a quarter is a character with a clear appetite and a clear place on the ladder, which is what a comic role built on commedia lines needs. You can find the full text of [The Taming of the Shrew](https://www.offbook.com/plays/the-taming-of-the-shrew) and other comedies in our [plays library](https://www.offbook.com/plays).

## Rehearsing commedia rhythm on your own

Commedia is ensemble work, but the rhythm of a scripted comic scene can be drilled alone. Offbook lets you upload your scene, pick your role, and hear realistic voices read every other character, then wait for you to finish your line before it plays the next cue. You can set how fast your partners speak, globally or line by line, and add custom pauses in the scene editor, so a hold for a reaction is built into the run.

Video: [Pacing](https://www.offbook.com/learn/pacing) (1:09)

The [free run lines tool](https://www.offbook.com/tools/run-lines-online) rehearses classic scenes the same way, with no account needed.

## Mistakes actors make with commedia

- **Dropping the stance when you speak.** The body is the character. If you stand up straight to say your line, the mask falls off, mask or no mask.
- **Playing for the laugh.** The characters take themselves completely seriously. Pantalone's greed and the Captain's vanity are funny because they mean it.
- **One status all scene.** The rank stays fixed, but the seesaw has to tip. Find the moment the servant gets the upper hand, and the moment the master gets it back.
- **Lazzi that don't escalate.** Five reactions at the same size are one joke repeated. Each one has to top the last.

To go further, our guide to [Lecoq for actors](https://www.offbook.com/blog/lecoq-for-actors) covers a teacher whose years in Italy with commedia and masks led to his neutral mask.

## Questions actors ask

### Do I need a mask to play commedia?

No. The lovers and the maid traditionally wore none, and in rehearsal you can build any character's stance, walk, and want without one. A half mask adds a layer of skill, especially head angle, but the body work comes first.

### Which commedia character should I play in an audition or class?

Pick the one whose want you understand best, and whose stance you can hold. Zanni and Pantalone make good starting points because their bodies are so clear. Show the stance, the walk, and one reaction to bad news, and you've shown the character.

### Can I use commedia for a Shakespeare monologue?

As a rehearsal tool, yes. Build the full commedia version of a comic speech, then strip it back so only the want and the status stay. For a classical audition, perform the stripped-back version. Our [Shakespeare monologues](https://www.offbook.com/monologues/shakespeare) include comic speeches to try it on.