Quinn

Commedia Dell’arte Background

Unlike a lot of modern theatre, commedia dell’arte performances aren’t scripted. Instead, they’re more like highly-structured improv where performers take on the roles of stock characters and act out comedic scenarios following an outline from the Director (hi Pierro).

Most scenarios are built around pairs of archetypes, which include:

Vecchi, the old men (Pantalone, Dottore)

Zanni, the trickster servants (Colombina, Arlecchino, Pulcinella)

Innamorati, the lovers

and then a handful of other characters that combined tropes such as Capitano, Signora, or Scaramuccia

To ensure the audience could immediately recognize stock roles across scenarios, these characters needed distinctive looks that could be carried from town to town, generation to generation. To that end, each character had a unique mask and costume tied to their characteristics.

Pantalone’s was one of the most recognizable by far.

Pantalone as a Stock Character

Pantalone’s inclusion among the stock characters dates back to at least the mid-1500s. As one of the principle “antagonists” (along with his foil, Dottore), Pantalone was often the catalyst of the action making up many of the routines. So he needed a recognizable appearance.

And, whoo boy, did he get one.

Keep in mind that the commedia dell’arte was hyperbolic. Everything was exaggerated, and Pantalone was the ultimate exaggeration of a greedy, lecherous, materialistic old man prone to emotional outbursts.

One of the defining features of Pantalone’s outfit were his long, red, extremely tight trousers, a stark contrast to the more common wide knee-breeches worn at the time. These were so tight that they flaunted his codpiece—a piece of fabric that cups the genitals. During the Renaissance, codpieces had started to become increasingly padded and sculpted, not to hide the crotch but rather to call attention to it.

(In some cases, instead of wearing the codpiece, Pantalone would wear a strategically-placed money pouch around his waist, and you can probably imagine what that looked like... )

The effect was meant to be vulgar and comedic. Here’s an old, greedy, horny man whose tight trousers and slippers make him look frail, yet he’s walking around with his hips cocked, showing off a his codpiece.

The audience found him hilarious because raunchy humour never goes out of style. And yet, while he satirized the ego-driven fool, he also served as a melancholic musing on aging. Even Shakespeare nods to this role in As You Like It, when the fool Jaques gives one of his most famous monologues on the link between life and theatre:

All the world’s a stage ... And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side

That’s our guy, a representative not only of older characters but also of older actors whose time on the stage was coming to a close.

When long, tight-fitted breeches came into fashion in England during the Restoration Era in the late 1600s, they were called pantaloons after the Anglicized name Pantalone. He was so popular that the role defined an entire clothing item.

By the 1700s, pantaloons came to be used to refer to any long trouser, regardless of cut and also began to denote women’s undergarments as well (earliest record for that is from 1797). Pantaloons was eventually shortened to pants, and it also gives us the word panties. Do with that information what you will.

The Patron Saint of Doctors

There’s been a lot of speculation over where the name Pantalone came from in the first place, since the earliest attested records are from the commedia dell’arte itself.

One of the potential inspirations—and the one noted in the Oxford English Dictionary as the likely etymological root—is San Pantalon (Saint Pantaleone), a Christian martyr who was condemned to death for miracles of healing and who earned the title all-compassionate for begging Heaven to forgive his executioners.

San Pantalon was a popular saint in Venice, and Pantalone is one of the primary Venetian characters in the commedia dell’arte. The audience would absolutely recognize the irony that the extraordinarily greedy stock character Pantalone is named after an all-compassionate saint who, notably, gave all his money to the poor.

What makes this potential origin so so delightful is the fact that Pantaleon is a patron saint of physicians

Given that Dottore and Pantalone had a deeply intertwined relationship in the commedia dell’arte—as sometimes rivals, often friends, always ridiculous together—this also feels quite fitting. (Pantaleon is also the patron saint of lottery winners, funny enough, so that works here too.)

"Are you suggesting I worship you as a god?" "No, but as a Saint might be nice."

Wearing the Pants

All this to say: the reason we have the modern word pants is because of the stock character Pantalone. Our Ninth Harbinger is not named after the clothing item, he’s its etymological origin. His costume helped bring them into fashion.