{{short description|Italian actor}} {{more citations needed|date=January 2013}} thumb|upright|Portrait of Angelo Beolco '''Angelo Beolco''' (c. 1496 – March 17, 1542), better known by the nickname '''Ruzzante''' or '''Ruzante''', was a Venetian<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/61401/Angelo-Beolco|title = Angelo Beolco | Italian actor and playwright}}</ref> (Paduan) actor and playwright. He is famous for his rustic comedies, written mostly in the Paduan dialect of the Venetian language,<ref>And precisely in a now-archaic form known in Italian as ''dialetto pavano''.{{Circular reference|date=March 2019}}</ref> featuring a peasant called "Ruzzante". Those plays paint a vivid picture of Paduan country life in the 16th century.
==Biography== Born in Padua, Beolco was the illegitimate son of Giovan Francesco Beolco, a physician who occasionally worked at the University, and a certain Maria, possibly a maid. (It has been suggested, however, that his real name was Ruzzante, and that Beolco was a local corruption of {{Lang|it|bifolco}}, meaning "ploughman" — by extension, "country simpleton".) Some claim that he was born in Pernumia, a small town near Padua.<ref name="raibio">Rai International, ''Ruzzante: dalla "Pastoral" alla "Betìa" alla "Prima orazione"'' (a biography of Ruzante, in Italian) [http://www.italica.rai.it/rinascimento/saggi/commedia_cinquecento/capitoli/lezion15.html Online version] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050309072054/http://www.italica.rai.it/rinascimento/saggi/commedia_cinquecento/capitoli/lezion15.html |date=March 9, 2005 }} accessed on 2009-06-27.</ref>
Angelo was raised in his father's household and there he received a good education. After Giovan Francesco's death in 1524, Angelo became manager of the family's estate, and later (1529) also of the farm of Alvise Cornaro, a nobleman who had retired to the Paduan countryside and who became his friend and protector.
He developed his theatrical vocation by associating with contemporary Padua intellectuals, such as Pietro Bembo and Sperone Speroni. His first stints as an author and actor may have been {{Lang|it|mariazi}}, impromptu sketches delivered at marriage parties. In 1520, already known as {{Lang|it|il Ruzzante}}, he played a role in a peasant play at the Foscari Palace in Venice. Soon afterwards he put together his own theater troupe. His plays were staged first at Ferrara (1529–1532) and then at Padua, in Cornaro's residence.
He died in Padua in 1542, while preparing to stage Speroni's play {{Lang|it|Canace}}, for the Accademia degli Infiammati. In spite of his success as an actor, he was very poor through most of his life. His friend Speroni remarked that while Angelo had an unsurpassed understanding of comedy, he was unable to perceive his own tragedy.
==His work==
In his first printed play, ''La Pastoral'', labeled "a rural comedy", he contrasts Arcadian shepherds who tell of their frustrated loves in affected tercets, with the peasants Ruzzante and Zilio, who deliver rustic verses in Venetian, generously spiced with vulgarities and obscenities (starting with Ruzante's very first word in the play).<ref name="Online version">Nancy Dersofi (1996), ''Translating Ruzante's Obscenities''. Text of the Translation Seminar Lecture delivered at Amherst in December 1996. Published in ''Metamorphoses'' Five College Faculty Seminar, issue 6.1, December 1997, p. 4–14. [http://www.smith.edu/metamorphoses/issues/links/dersofitranslating.html Online version] accessed on 2009-06-27.</ref> Much of the play's comical effect comes from the contrast between the two languages, which provides the occasion for many misunderstandings and wordplays.<ref name="raibio"/> Featured is also a physician, who earns the gratitude of Ruzzante for prescribing a fatal medicine to his stingy father and thus uniting the lad with his long-awaited inheritance.
In his later plays and monologues he shifts to the Venetian language almost exclusively, while keeping up with his social satire. In the {{Lang|it|Oratione}}, a welcome speech for Bishop Marco Cornaro, he suggests several measures that the new prelate should consider for improving the peasants' life; such as either castrating the priests, or forcing them to marry — for the peace of mind of the local men and their wives.
Because of his "lascivious" themes and abundant use of "very dirty words" (in the evaluation of his contemporary critics), Beolco's plays were often considered unfit for educated audiences, and sometimes led to performances being canceled. On the other hand, his plays seem to have been well received by those rural nobles which had opposed the metropolitan nobility of Venice in the Cambraic Wars. Perhaps for that reason, none of his plays was staged at Venice after 1526.<ref name="Online version"/>
One of his best-known pieces is the short dialogue {{Lang|it|Il Parlamento de Ruzante}}, where the character tells of his return from the Venetian war front, only to find that he had lost his wife, land, and honor. Again, Ruzante's speech begins with his favorite expletive: {{Lang|it|Cancaro ai campi e à la guera e ai soldè, e ai soldè e à la guera!}} ("Rotten be the front and the war and the soldiers, and the soldiers and the war!")
Modern studies have concluded that Ruzante's speech was not a linguistically accurate record of the local Paduan dialect of Venetian, but was to some extent a "theatrical dialect" created by Beolco himself.
Italian playwright and 1997 Nobel laureate Dario Fo puts Ruzzante on the same level as Molière, claiming that he is the true father of the Venetian comic theater (''Commedia dell'Arte'') and the most significant influence on his own work.
==Plays and monologues== *''La Pastoral'' (1518–1520) *''La Betia'' (1524–1525) *''Bilora'' (pre-1528) *''I Dialoghi'' (1528–1529) *''Il Parlamento de Ruzante che iera vegnú de campo'' (1529–1530) *''La Moscheta'' (1529) *''La Fiorina'' (1531–1532) *''La Piovana'' (1532) *''La Vaccaria'' (1533) *''Oratione'' *''L'Anconitana (Beolco's play)'' (1533-1534) {{Portal|Biography}}
==References== {{Reflist}}
==External links== {{wikisource|vec:Autor:Angelo Beolco|Angelo Beolco}} *[https://web.archive.org/web/20060213084030/http://www.italica.rai.it/rinascimento/parole_chiave/schede/ruzante.htm Short biography] (in Italian) *[https://web.archive.org/web/20060116115845/http://www.liberliber.it/biblioteca/r/ruzzante/index.htm Some texts by Ruzante] at Liber Liber (in Venetian). * [https://books.google.com/books?id=2SrVpFGioFUC&pg=PA294 McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Drama (1984), By Stanley Hochman, McGraw-Hill, inc] *[http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Angelo_Beolco.aspx Angelo Beolco Facts, information, pictures]
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Beolco, Angelo}} Category:1490s births Category:1542 deaths Category:16th-century Italian male actors Category:16th-century Italian male writers Category:16th-century Italian dramatists and playwrights Category:Writers from Padua Category:Dramatists and playwrights from the Republic of Venice Category:Italian male stage actors Category:Italian male dramatists and playwrights Category:Male actors from Padua