Crossword-Solution: RUZZANTE 8 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 26

Ruzzante peopled the Italian stage with a fresh enlivening crowd of pantomimic characters; the insipid dotards of the ancient comedy were transformed into the Venetian Pantaloon and the Bolognese Doctor; while the hare-brained fellow, the arch knave, and the booby, were furnished from Milan, Bergamo, and Calabria.

Their _masks_ and _dresses_ were furnished by the grotesque masqueraders of the carnival, which, doubtless, often contributed many scenes and humours to the quick and fanciful genius of Ruzzante.

The Pantomimes, or, as they have been described, the continual Masquerades, of Ruzzante, with all these diversified personages, talking and acting, formed, in truth, a burlesque comedy.

And to the end that there might be no separation in death between the bodies of those whose minds had been united together in the world by friendship and love of art, Messer Luigi had intended that Giovan Maria should be laid to rest beside himself in the tomb that was to be erected for his own burial, together with that most humorous poet, Ruzzante, his very familiar friend, who lived and died in his house; but I do not know whether this design of the illustrious Cornaro was ever carried into effect.

Beolco of Padua, who called himself Ruzzante (joker), and is memorable under that name as the first actor-playwright--a combination of extreme significance for the history of the modern stage.