Commedia Dell’arte is an Italian form of comedy that used masks

covering half the face. It started in the 16th century, and has
grown to be extremely influential to modern work. It created comic
character tropes and physical slapstick styles. It started by being
performed in market squares on a marked out piece of land, but
then became more prominent and was done on raised staging.
The first character that they introduced was called Zanni, who
was a fool completely led by his physical and carnal needs. The
actor playing him wore a mask with a long nose, and the longer
the nose, the more of a fool he was. The comedy however here
was very limited as the comedy was crude and violent and
nothing more. They added more characters to create a much
more rounded comedy. They were first performed in theatres in
about 1588. The plays were improvised around a storyline, and
each actor had to know their character completely, and had
training in stock moves and quirks. This translates to actors at this
time.