In the old Latin Comedy the same set of characters were often made to appear in other guises, and in different comic situations. Maccus, for instance, though still called so, would appear at one time as an old maid, at another as a raw soldier: Pappus would be a doting old husband, or father whose daughter was abducted: and he was usually outwitted whatever the situation he was in. These and various other types, and this custom of making them each a kind of “quick-change” artist, survived, or at least revived. In Italy, as time went by, various local types were added to the original cast of the pantomime. The old man would be a Venetian; the Doctor, from Bologna, famous for its University and--poisons; the Clown would be a peasant-servant from Bergamo; the braggart soldier, a “Capitan,” would be from Spain; sometimes they would each speak in their own particular dialect, and fun would be made thereof. Throughout the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries the fame of the Italian comedians spread throughout the world. Troupes found their way to Paris and London, and no slight traces of their influence are to be found in Shakespeare and Molière. Pre-Shakespearean comedy in England was often impromptu and pantomimic; and the actors worked much as the Italian players had always done. In 1611 a well-known Italian comedian, Flaminio Scala, printed a book of plays performed by his company. _There was no dialogue!_ They were simply something like what we know as “plots,” though the French word “_canevas_” expresses it better. It was merely the outline of the play, entrances, exits, “business” written on canvas and hung up in the wings as a reminder to the actors, who “gagged” the play throughout, each usually introducing his own stock tricks or business (_lazzi_ was the Italian word) as the play proceeded. In one of the Flaminio Scala’s plots we find a Pantalon, a Dottore or Doctor, a Captain (a braggart such as Pistol), a Pedrolino, later to become better known to us after various changes of spirit as Pierrot. In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Paris the Italian players had a sensational success, being honoured by Louis XIV and his successor; and were regularly introduced into the lighter operas, were copied by the players in the Paris Fair Theatres, and were often the subject of the brush of Watteau and other artists.