Lovers’ Debates for the Stage: A Bilingual Edition

The actress and author Isabella Andreini won international renown playing the bold, versatile, and intellectual innamorata of the commedia dell’arte. After her death, her husband Francesco Andreini continued publishing her works, among them the thirty-one amorosi contrasti, or debates, presented in this volume, which enable readers to envision the commedia dell’arte through the words of its most revered diva. Lovers male and female flirt boldly, trade bawdy insults, exhibit their learning, and drive each other mad, in stage dialogues that showcase Isabella’s skill in composing and playing “other voices.”

Lovers’ Debates (Fragmenti, 1617) makes available in English for the first time the striking posthumous work of Isabella Andreini, the leading Italian commedia dell’arte actress of her day. The thirty-one dramatic scenarios each feature a debate between two lovers evoking a dazzling array of topics, from Neoplatonism to madness and sexual violence. Brown, Campbell and Nicholson bring alive these highly theatricalized texts through their vivid translation and scholarly annotations. Engagingly written for students and scholars of early modern theater and women’s writing, this volume may serve also for practical performance.

-Lisa Sampson, Associate Professor and Director of Italian Studies, University College London

PAMELA ALLEN BROWN, Professor of English, University of Connecticut, is author of The Diva’s Gift to the Shakespearean Stage: Agency, Theatricality, and the Innamorata (Oxford,
2022).

JULIE D. CAMPBELL, Professor of English, Eastern Illinois University, is the editor and translator of Isabella Andreini’s La Mirtilla (ACMRS, 2002).

ERIC NICHOLSON is a scholar, actor, and director of early modern European drama, who has taught theater courses and staged productions at Syracuse University Florence since 1998.

REVIEWS

Italica 100.3 (2023): 463–464. Reviewed by Simone Gugliotta.
Renaissance & Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme 47.1 (2024): 213–215. Reviewed by Rosalind Kerr.

PERFORMANCE

On May 16, 2024, drama history professor Eric Nicholson (Syracuse University, Florence) and communications professor Elia Nichols (Syracuse University, Florence) performed two lovers’ debates at the University of Verona. The performance was accompanied by a book presentation: Lisa Sampson (University College London) gave an overview of the work, and Pamela Allen Brown (University of Connecticut) and Julie D. Campbell (Eastern Illinois University) presented briefly on the contrasti. https://suabroad.syr.edu/florence/2024/05/21/professors-nicholson-and-nichols-perform-in-verona/.