The Anonymous Plotter in the Routines of Renaissance Theatre and Drama

Renaissance theatre, both in England and Italy, was a commercial enterprise and, therefore, it utilized procedures of division of labour to meet the challenge of the market. One of these procedures was the compilation of preparatory texts of various kinds. But, while about one thousand scenari of the commedia dell’arte (some anonymous, some with the author’s name) survive, of the ‘plots’ compiled by the English ‘plotters’ in preparation of plays to be written only one incomplete specimen and a few fragments have been preserved; their nature, therefore, remains dubious. Furthermore, anonymous documents of a different nature, also confusingly called ‘plots’, but compiled as reminders for the actors’ entrances during performance, have survived in six, mostly fragmentary, manuscripts. This article discusses these three kinds of preparatory texts in order to characterize their different nature and argues that, although suggestive, the idea of a derivation of the two kinds of English ‘plots’ from the scenari appears unconvincing; indeed, the compilation, in both contexts, of preparatory texts was simply an obvious and necessary measure in order to speed up procedures.