For articles with the same name, see Cassandra (disambiguation).
Cassandre is a stock character of the commedia dell'arte.
Cassandre is one of the types of ridiculous old men destined to be deceived and mocked in the buffoonish plays of Italian origin. He takes his place immediately below the characters of Pantalon and Docteur. He is constantly the dupe of Arlequin or Pierrot. He is the father or guardian of a Colombine or an Isabella whom he wants to marry to some other old codger like himself, or whom he reserves for himself, like Bartholo. But Colombine loves a young lord, a Lélio who, thanks to the connivance of a cheeky servant, thwarts the plans contrary to his love.
After having long been the necessary accessory of every harlequinade, Cassandre became at one point the main character of plays that bore his name. Starting from 1780, the knight of Piis and Barré successively gave to the Théâtre-Italien: Cassandre oculist, Cassandre mechanic, Cassandre astrologer, Cassandre the weeper (1785), and other plays whose "content, according to Grimm, is much crazier than it is cheerful."
Cassandre était relégué, sur les tréteaux, à côté de Punch, lorsqu’il revint sur le devant de la scène, pour être de nouveau berné et dupé, dans les pantomimes ressuscitées par Jean-Gaspard Deburau.
- Maurice Sand, Masks and Buffoons (Italian Comedy), Paris, Michel Lévy frères, 1860
- Louis Moland, Molière and Italian Comedy, Paris, Didier et cie, 1867
- Gustave Vapereau, Universal Dictionary of Literatures, Paris, Hachette, 1876, p. 388
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