Ruzante
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Angelo Beolco (c. 1496 – March 17, 1542), better known by the nickname Ruzzante or Ruzante, was a Venetian (
Padua Padua ( ) is a city and ''comune'' (municipality) in Veneto, northern Italy, and the capital of the province of Padua. The city lies on the banks of the river Bacchiglione, west of Venice and southeast of Vicenza, and has a population of 20 ...
n)
actor An actor (masculine/gender-neutral), or actress (feminine), is a person who portrays a character in a production. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. ...
and
playwright A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes play (theatre), plays, which are a form of drama that primarily consists of dialogue between Character (arts), characters and is intended for Theatre, theatrical performance rather than just Readin ...
. He is famous for his rustic comedies, written mostly in the Paduan variety of the
Venetian language Venetian, also known as wider Venetian or Venetan ( or ), is a Romance languages, Romance language spoken natively in the northeast of Italy,Ethnologue mostly in Veneto, where most of the five million inhabitants can understand it. It is som ...
,And precisely in a now-archaic form known in Italian as ''dialetto pavano''. featuring a peasant called "Ruzzante". Those plays paint a vivid picture of Paduan country life in the 16th century.


Biography

Born in
Padua Padua ( ) is a city and ''comune'' (municipality) in Veneto, northern Italy, and the capital of the province of Padua. The city lies on the banks of the river Bacchiglione, west of Venice and southeast of Vicenza, and has a population of 20 ...
, Beolco was the illegitimate son of Giovan Francesco Beolco, a physician who occasionally worked at the
University A university () is an educational institution, institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly ...
, and a certain Maria, possibly a maid. (It has been suggested, however, that his real name was Ruzzante, and that Beolco was a local corruption of , meaning "ploughman" — by extension, "country simpleton".) Some claim that he was born in Pernumia, a small town near Padua.Rai International, ''Ruzzante: dalla "Pastoral" alla "Betìa" alla "Prima orazione"'' (a biography of Ruzante, in Italian
Online version
accessed on 2009-06-27.
Angelo was raised in his father's household and there he received a good education. After Giovan Francesco's death in 1524, Angelo became manager of the family's estate, and later (1529) also of the farm of
Alvise Cornaro Alvise Cornaro, often Italianised Luigi (1484, 1467 or 1464 gives a birth date of 1467 – 8 May 1566), was a Venice, Venetian nobleman and patron of arts, also remembered for his four books of ''Discorsi'' (published 1583–1595) about the ...
, a nobleman who had retired to the Paduan countryside and who became his friend and protector. He developed his theatrical vocation by associating with contemporary Padua intellectuals, such as
Pietro Bembo Pietro Bembo, (; 20 May 1470 – 18 January 1547) was a Venetian scholar, poet, and literary theory, literary theorist who also was a member of the Knights Hospitaller and a cardinal of the Catholic Church. As an intellectual of the Italian Re ...
and
Sperone Speroni Sperone Speroni degli Alvarotti (1500–1588) was an Italian Renaissance Humanism, humanist, scholar and dramatist. He was one of the central members of Padua's literary academy ''Accademia degli Infiammati'' and wrote on both moral and literary ...
. His first stints as an author and actor may have been , impromptu sketches delivered at marriage parties. In 1520, already known as , he played a role in a peasant play at the Foscari Palace in
Venice Venice ( ; ; , formerly ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are li ...
. Soon afterwards he put together his own theater troupe. His plays were staged first at
Ferrara Ferrara (; ; ) is a city and ''comune'' (municipality) in Emilia-Romagna, Northern Italy, capital of the province of Ferrara. it had 132,009 inhabitants. It is situated northeast of Bologna, on the Po di Volano, a branch channel of the main ...
(1529–1532) and then at Padua, in Cornaro's residence. He died in Padua in 1542, while preparing to stage Speroni's play , for the
Accademia degli Infiammati The Accademia degli Infiammati ("Academy of the Burning Ones") was a short-lived but influential Philosophy, philosophical and literature, literary academy in Padua, in northern Italy. It was founded in 1540 by Leone Orsini, and was dissolved somewh ...
. In spite of his success as an actor, he was very poor through most of his life. His friend Speroni remarked that while Angelo had unsurpassed understanding of comedy, he was unable to perceive his own tragedy.


His work

In his first printed play, ''La Pastoral'', labeled "a rural comedy", he contrasts Arcadian
shepherd A shepherd is a person who tends, herds, feeds, or guards flocks of sheep. Shepherding is one of the world's oldest occupations; it exists in many parts of the globe, and it is an important part of Pastoralism, pastoralist animal husbandry. ...
s who tell of their frustrated loves in affected
tercet A tercet is composed of three lines of poetry, forming a stanza or a complete poem. Examples of tercet forms English-language haiku is an example of an unrhymed tercet poem. A poetic triplet is a tercet in which all three lines follow the same r ...
s, with the peasants Ruzzante and Zilio, who deliver rustic verses in Venetian, generously spiced with vulgarities and obscenities (starting with Ruzante's very first word in the play).Nancy Dersofi (1996), ''Translating Ruzante's Obscenities''. Text of the Translation Seminar Lecture delivered at Amherst in December 1996. Published in ''Metamorphoses'' Five College Faculty Seminar, issue 6.1, December 1997, p. 4–14
Online version
accessed on 2009-06-27.
Much of the play's comical effect comes from the contrast between the two languages, which provides the occasion for many misunderstandings and wordplays. Featured is also a physician, who earns the gratitude of Ruzzante for prescribing a fatal medicine to his stingy father and thus uniting the lad with his long-awaited inheritance. In his later plays and monologues he shifts to the Venetian language almost exclusively, while keeping up with his social satire. In the , a welcome speech for Bishop Marco Cornaro, he suggests several measures that the new prelate should consider for improving the peasants' life; such as either castrating the priests, or forcing them to marry — for the peace of mind of the local men and their wives. Because of his "lascivious" themes and abundant use of "very dirty words" (in the evaluation of his contemporary critics), Beolco's plays were often considered unfit for educated audiences, and sometimes led to performances being canceled. On the other hand, his plays seem to have been well received by those rural nobles which had opposed the metropolitan nobility of Venice in the Cambraic Wars. Perhaps for that reason, none of his plays was staged at Venice after 1526. One of his best-known pieces is the short dialogue , where the character tells of his return from the Venetian war front, only to find that he had lost his wife, land, and honor. Again, Ruzante's speech begins with his favorite expletive: ("Rotten be the front and the war and the soldiers, and the soldiers and the war!") Modern studies have concluded that Ruzante's speech was not a linguistically accurate record of the local Paduan dialect of Venetian, but was to some extent a "theatrical dialect" created by Beolco himself. Italian playwright and 1997 Nobel laureate
Dario Fo Dario Luigi Angelo Fo (; 24 March 1926 – 13 October 2016) was an Italian playwright, actor, theatre director, stage designer, songwriter, political campaigner for the Italian left wing and the recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature. ...
puts Ruzzante on the same level as
Molière Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (; 15 January 1622 (baptised) – 17 February 1673), known by his stage name Molière (, ; ), was a French playwright, actor, and poet, widely regarded as one of the great writers in the French language and world liter ...
, claiming that he is the true father of the Venetian comic theater (''
Commedia dell'Arte Commedia dell'arte was an early form of professional theatre, originating from Theatre of Italy, Italian theatre, that was popular throughout Europe between the 16th and 18th centuries. It was formerly called Italian comedy in English and is a ...
'') and the most significant influence on his own work.


Plays and monologues

*'' La Pastoral'' (1518–1520) *'' La Betia'' (1524–1525) *'' Bilora'' (pre-1528) *'' I Dialoghi'' (1528–1529) *'' Il Parlamento de Ruzante che iera vegnú de campo'' (1529–1530) *'' La Moscheta'' (1529) *'' La Fiorina'' (1531–1532) *'' La Piovana'' (1532) *'' La Vaccaria'' (1533) *'' Oratione'' *'' L'Anconitana (Beolco's play)'' (1533-1534)


References


External links


Short biography
(in Italian)

at Liber Liber (in Venetian).
McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Drama (1984), By Stanley Hochman, McGraw-Hill, incAngelo Beolco Facts, information, pictures
{{DEFAULTSORT:Beolco, Angelo 1490s births 1542 deaths Writers from Padua Dramatists and playwrights from the Republic of Venice Italian male stage actors 16th-century Italian writers 16th-century Italian male actors 16th-century Italian male writers 16th-century dramatists and playwrights Italian male dramatists and playwrights Male actors from Padua