| OCR Text |
Show 132 THE CODE OF TERPSICHORE. mimic farces continued to be performed, though it were only in open squares, or any corners where such shews could be conveniently represented. Proofs of this may be found as far back as the twelfth century 12, beyond which period the traces of the existence of the Dottore are not observable. Then it was that Irenerius opened, at Bologna, a school of jurisprudence, from which such institutions take their rise throughout the greater part of Europe, and so continue to the present time. And it appears that the origin of the mask called Dottore may be fixed at that epoch, when the two celebrated doctors, Bulgaro and Martino, disputed upon the question, whether the whole world belonged to the reigning emperor, as sole proprietor, or whether he was only a kind of tenant ? Certainly it required some such an appearance as this grotesque mask, with black nose and scarlet cheek, which is supposed to represent exactly the man who could gravely inquire whether the world belonged to one man, or whether he was only a mere tenant ? Some learned persons, indeed, contend that the original model of this mask was the only good ever bestowed upon posterity by the school of Irenerius. With respect to Pantaloon, it seems that it was at the end of the fourteenth, or at the beginning of the fifteenth century, that this mask was introduced at the theatres; at a period when the extensive commerce of the Venetians caused the sum of 695,000 sequins to circulate annually through the state of Milan, the product of woollen manufactures, which were sent to Venice, and again sold in the Levant; this may be proved by reading a controversy of the time, of the Doge, Thommaso Mocenigo, as related by the historian Sannudo, in Rer. Ital. Script. Tom. 22, page 954. |
