This article examines the depiction of Gypsies in sixteenth-century Italian theatre. By staging Gypsies, dramatists consciously and unconsciously reflected contemporary attitudes and biases towards this itinerant foreign population. They also exposed their own insecurities : while portraying Gypsies as incapable of honest interaction with the native Italian population, they also revealed that Italians, for their part, were unable to assimilate the Gypsies’ diversity. Italians, it seems, could not accept any perceived violation of anthropological constructs that valued permanent work, geographical stability, and ethnic homogeneity. As a result, the Gypsy became the symbol of all vagrants and vagabonds who, because of their itinerant nature, were seen as dangerous external elements that threatened the social, political, and religious stability of the local population.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Leta, M., (2025), "Sorciers et philosophes : la duplicité des Gitans dans le théâtre italien de la Renaissance", HSSCommons: (DOI: )

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1. Quaderni d'italianistica

Original publication: Leta, Matteo. "Sorciers et philosophes : la duplicité des Gitans dans le théâtre italien de la Renaissance." Quaderni d'italianistica 40 (2): 2020. 25-48. DOI: 10.33137/q.i..v40i2.34877. This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Iter Canada / Quaderni d'italianistica. Copyright © the author(s). Their work is distributed by Quaderni d'italianistica under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.