After the demise of the Phlyax sometime in 300 B.C., the comedic theater found a new expression in the indigenous fabula Atellana from the Oscan town Atella in the Campania (near Naples.) The Atella used the familiar masks and stock characters of ancient comedy but drew their plots almost entirely from the rural life of their audiences with only rare appearances of mythological and legendary figures. These stories were rife with all the sins and scandals of any community. In these short Atellan farcical plays, we begin to see the first inklings of a not–yet–born Italian comic theater, the Commedia dell' Arte.
As with the Commedia, the Atellan farces crowded the stage with stock characters, fools and tricksters, known by their appetites and foibles; and actors spent their careers polishing the roles of these specific masks. Bucco, the first of four stock characters, was a boisterous but stupid fool, who delighted in bragging and eating. His mask had a high forehead, puffed out cheeks and wide opened mouth (bucca means cheek or mouth).
Dossenus appeared as a scary mask with an exaggerated jaw full of teeth and a huge hooked nose. In small statues he was shown hunchbacked and corpulent, often with a large wart on the end of his beak–nose. Like Bucco, he was considered a fool — but of a higher order, for he was witty, malicious, and clever enough to obtain his food at the public's expense.
Maccus was known as a glutton and clumsy, head–banging, toe–stubbing fool. His mask was round, plump, and bald headed, emphasizing his soft, pudgy features. The name of Pappus, the last of the four, came from the Greek pappos meaning papa. An old man with a bald head and straggling beard, he was stupid and wandering in mind, and often taken advantage of by younger companions.
The Atellan farces became popular enough to spread in professional troupes from Naples up to Rome where they were beloved by audiences for their burlesques, their rude wit, and bold political satire. On occasion performers got away with outrageous political barbs, and audiences roared their approval when, for example, an excessive Emperor was slyly referred to as "the old–he goat." But there were risks involved in pushing the satire too far. The Emperor Caligula once in retribution for a slight had the writer of an Atellan farce burned alive.
While condemned by the intellectual upper classes as merely obscene, there is a good deal of evidence to suggest the Atellan farce mixed delicate phrasing and a rich tradition of puns with its naughty rustic wit. The Latin may have been in the Vulgate, but it was wielded by clever comedians who knew how to manipulate the language. City youths with time on their hands formed small groups to bring Atellan farces to the public in various venues while professional Atellan troupes performed in small neighborhood theaters and at royal banquets, alongside poets, harp players, and tragedians. The Atellan farces flourished as a popular entertainment for almost 150 years before being slowly eclipsed by the more elaborate mimic dramas approved by the state.
These early forms of comic theater laid the foundations of a popular, low brow comedy. In Mask Mimes and Miracles, Nicoll describes it thus:
"All make free use of every means offered by the stage. Music, dancing, and acrobatics mingle with regular dialogue. The dramatic poet for the most part remains in the background; much of the mimic activity is purely improvisational. All keep strictly to life. There may be exaggeration, but there is no artificiality. The gods are brought from the high paths of Olympus to walk the common streets along with grotesquely conceived characters of the day. The bombastic and grandiloquent language of tragedy is dragged from its tottering throne and mocked at. Naturally, this being so, all these forms of drama are unconfined in scope; they sweep not only over the whole of human life, but, in their secular tendencies and in their general appeal, embrace along with these all creations of myth, all abstract figures of the popular imagination."
While court jesters and "wise fools" who attended royalty offered solo performances like a standup comic, the Dorian mimes, satyr plays, Phlyax, and Atellan farces created an unruly crowd of clowns and fools in whose convoluted plots and antics an audience might see its own human weaknesses, its foolishness, and its appetites played out in frank, good humor.
