set up a stage and introduce us to their bawdy style of comedy. ("The Glorious Ones"). They tell us that much of their comic routines were improvised, and Flaminio Scala illustrates with a slapstick version of his early life, in which he demonstrates how he was raised by monks and later thrown onto the street. There, the endless parade of humanity inspires him to create a new kind of theater--masked the Commedia dell'arte.

We meet Armanda Ragusa, a dwarf, who is madly in love with the dashing