Pedrolino

Pedrolino is a primo ('first') Zanni, or comic servant, of the commedia dell'arte; the name is a hypocorism of Pedro ('Peter'), via the suffix -lino. The character made its first appearance in the last quarter of the 16th century, apparently as the invention of the actor with whom the role was to be long identified, Giovanni Pellesini. Contemporary illustrations suggest that his white blouse and trousers constituted "a variant of the typical Zanni suit", and his Bergamasque dialect marked him as a member of the "low" rustic class. But if his costume and social station were without distinction, his dramatic role was certainly not: as a multifaceted first Zanni, his character was—and still is—rich in comic incongruities.

Many commedia historians make a connection between the Italian Pedrolino and the later Pierrot of the French Comédie-Italienne, and, although a link between the two is possible, it remains unproven and seems unlikely, based on the scant evidence of early Italian scenario texts.

Type, plot-function, and character

Pedrolino appears in forty-nine of the fifty scenarios of Flaminio Scala's Il teatro delle favole rappresentative (1611) and in three (undated) pieces of the "Corsini" collection of manuscripts; he also appears (as "Pedrolin") in a 1587 scripted comedy by Luigi Groto, La Alteria. All of these provide evidence of how he was conceived and played. He is obviously a type of what Robert Storey calls the "social wit", usually incarnated as "the go-between, the willing servant, the wily slave" who "survives in serving others". In the Scala scenarios, which offer the most revealing showcase of his character, he is invariably cast as the first Zanni, a type to be distinguished from the second Zanni by his or her function in the plot. The commedia critic and historian Constant Mic clarifies the distinctions when he notes that the first Zanni

instigates confusion quite voluntarily, [but] the second creates disturbance through his blundering.