The Venetian Origins of the Commedia dell\'Arte is a striking new enquiry into the late-Renaissance stirrings of professional secular comedy in Venice, and their connection to the development of what came to be known as the Commedia dell\'Arte. The book contends that through a symbiotic collaboration between patrician amateurs and plebeian professionals, innovative forms of comedy developed in the Venice region, fusing \'high\' and \'low\' culture in a provocative mix that had a truly mass appeal. Rich with anecdotes, images, and literary - often ribald - comic passages, Peter Jordan\'s central argument has important implications for the study of Venetian art, popular theatre and European cultural history--