Rewriting, Disguise and Blackface in Italian Comedy. "La Mora" (1588) by Giovanni Battista Calderari

Abstract

The article investigates the rewriting of Terence’s The Eunuch by Giovanni Battista Calderari, who transformed the «other» character of the eunuch into a Moorish woman even before the Dutch Gerbrand Adriaenszoon Bredero did with his famous comedy Moortje. The article explores the implications of this choice concerning questions of gender, ethnicity and performance. The essay demonstrates that the decision to use the Moorish woman as the «other» figure probably sprang not only from the presence of the Moors in Renaissance Italy or from the comicality that the characters’ lines regarding this «other» may excite, but especially from the sexual reputation of the Moors and from the theatrical possibilities that the blackface practice allows for. Through the use of blackface, Calderari makes the theatrical fiction the centre of his comedy and, availing himself of an actor dressed as a Moorish slave woman, he takes the fascination of Eros to the stage.