This book gives an account of how the new dramatic experimentwas born and grew, moving from closed courtly audiences to a wider public. By concentrating on the order in which things happened, it underlines the novelty of almost everything that was produced. By highlighting performing qualities,rather than literary ones, it is able to show how improvised commedia dell'arte depended to a surprising degree on these relatively respectable antecedents. Scripted and improvised comedy are treated as part of the same phenomenon, and in this way a crucial phase in the development of European theatre is explored for the first time.