Glossary

The comedia lacrimosa is a term used to describe sentimental dramas featuring bourgeois characters. Joan Lynne Pataky-Kosove provides an excellent contextualised description of the genre, noting:

The comedia lacrimosa was a transitional form in an epoch of transition. It was the vehicle by which the way was prepared for the Romantic school in the Spanish theatre, making the middle-class, which had previously been presented only in ‘laughing’ comedy, the centre of concern in serious drama. (Pataky-Kosove 1977: 12)

• Pataky-Kosove, Joan Lynne. 1977. The ‘Comedia lacrimosa’ and Spanish Romantic Drama (1773-1865). London, Tamesis

Commedia dell’arte is an Italian term for a type of comic theatre that was particularly popular between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. It features stock characters (e.g. the clown, the servant, the lovers) who were often represented by actors wearing masks. The plots of these plays frequently revolved around romantic problems such as jealousy, betrayal and mismatched lovers.

A literary genre that deals with typical regional or national customs.