Pedrolino

Contemporary illustrations suggest that his white blouse and trousers constituted "a variant of the typical Zanni suit",[1] and his Bergamasque dialect marked him as a member of the "low" rustic class.

[7]Since his function is "to keep the play moving",[8] Pedrolino seems to betray, in Storey's words, "a Janus-faced aspect": "He may work cleverly in the interests of the Lovers in one play—Li Quattro finti spiritati [The Four Fake Spirits], for example—by disguising himself as a magician and making Pantalone believe that the 'madness' of Isabella and Oratio can be cured only by their coupling together; then, in Gli avvenimenti comici, pastorali e tragici [Comic, Pastoral, and Tragic Events], indulge his capricious sense of fun by compounding the young persons' misfortunes.

"[9] So multiform is his character that his cleverness can often give way to credulity (as when he is tricked into believing that he was drunk when he learned of his wife's infidelity and so merely imagined the whole affair) and his calculation can sometimes be routed by grotesque sentimentality (as when he, Arlecchino, and Burattino share a bowl of macaroni, the three blubbering all the while).

"The recognizability came", as Richard Andrews writes, "from his costume; from his body language; and most of all from his style of speech, which for Italian audiences was based on a regional dialect as well as more personal idiosyncrasies.

"[11] That recognizability also arose from his puckish love of mischief: "He takes a child-like delight in practical jokes and pranks", as a modern-day practitioner of the commedia writes, "but otherwise his intrigues are on behalf of his master.

[20]Since the names of the two types translate into the same diminutive ("Little Pete") and they enjoy (or suffer) the same dramatic and social status, as comic servants, in the commedia, many authors have concluded that Pedrolino is either the "Italian equivalent" or the direct ancestor of the 17th-century French Pierrot.

Some eight years after its highly successful premiere, the Italians spoofed Molière's comedy with an Addendum to "The Stone Guest", in which Pierrot first appeared by name among his fellow masks;[23] he was played by one Giuseppe Giaratone, an actor who thereafter would be identified with the character for the next quarter-century.

The latter appears, as Storey writes, "in comparative isolation from his fellow masks, with few exceptions, in all the plays of Le Théâtre Italien, standing on the periphery of the action, commenting, advising, chiding, but rarely taking part in the movement around him.