They are rented out for a month or
so to one or other of the many troupes of actors which are constantly
wandering about the country, and which bring their own scenery
and dresses with them, generally of the cheapest and most tawdry
description.
A Tuscan proverb says, "_Figlio d'attore, attore_" ("The son of an
actor is always an actor"); and this in Italy is pretty sure to be the
case. The three greatest living actors, Salvini, Rossi and Majeroni,
belong to families which have long been popular on the stage, and so
do the actresses Ristori and Sedowsky. Signora Ristori made her debut
as an infant in the cradle, and was for years a member of a troupe the
leading lady of which was her late mother, Signora Maddalena Ristori,
a woman of great talent and merit, whose death at an advanced age
has recently occasioned her celebrated daughter poignant grief. There
still exists in Italy a Venetian troupe of comedians whose ancestors
were the first interpreters of the comedies of Goldoni, and several of
them claim descent from players who enacted the tragedies and comedies
of serious classical literature before the courts of Lucrezia Borgia
and Leonora d'Este. In glancing over an Italian play-bill one is
invariably struck by the fact that many of the artists bear the same
name, and are evidently connected by ties of consanguinity or of
marriage. In the Ristori troupe, for instance, there are several
actors calling themselves by the same name as that great artist, and
who are doubtless of her family.
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