Sceny strachu, czyli lazzi di paura w komedii dell’arte
Scenes of Fear, or lazzi di paura in Comedia dell’arte

Summary/Abstract: Lazzo is a short scene of a comic nature that can be compared to a modern-day gag. Italian actors had various categories of such scenes in their repertoires (mimic-gestual, acrobatic, verbal or mixed). Such a ready-made stage sequence was suitable for editing into various plots. The purpose of this paper is to analyze scenes of fear in selected scenarios dell’arte. To illustrate the variety of fear scenes improvised by Italian actors, four scenarios were chosen to adapt a single literary text, Calderón de la Barca’s La dama duende, a very popular work in the 17th and 18th centuries (La Dame Diablesse, manuscript from the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris; La dama Demonio, manuscript from the collection of the Vatican Library; La dama creduta spirito folletto from the Neapolitan collection; La dama demonio e la serva diavolo from the collection of arguments of the court of August III).

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