Renaissance in Italy Volume V Part 8

The year 1502, when Lucrezia Borgia came as Alfonso d'Este's bride to Ferrara, marks the climax of these Latin spectacles.[162] Ercole had arranged a theater in the Palace of the Podesta (now called the Palazzo della Ragione), which was connected with the castle by a private gallery. His troupe, recruited from Ferrara, Rome, Siena, and Mantua, numbered one hundred and ten actors of both s.e.xes.

Accomplished singers, dancers, and scene-painters were summoned to add richness to the spectacle. We hear of musical interludes performed by six violins; while every comedy was diversified by morris-dances of Saracens, satyrs, gladiators, wild men, hunters, and allegorical personages.[163] The entertainment lasted over five nights, a comedy of Plautus forming the princ.i.p.al piece on each occasion. On the first evening the _Epidicus_ was given; on the second, the _Bacchides_; on the third, the _Miles Gloriosus_; on the fourth, the _Asinaria_; on the fifth, the _Casina_. From the reports of Cagnolo, Zambotto, and Isabella Gonzaga, we are led to believe that the unlettered audience judged the recitations of the Plautine comedies somewhat tedious. They were in the same position as unmusical people of the present day, condemned to listen to Bach's Pa.s.sion Music, and afraid of expressing their dissatisfaction. Yet these more frivolous spectators found ample gratification in the ingenious ballets, accompanied with music, which relieved each act. The occasion was memorable. In those five evenings the Court of Ferrara presented to the fashionable world of Italy a carefully-studied picture of Latin comedy framed in a setting of luxuriant modern arabesques. The simplicity of Plautus, executed with the fidelity born of reverence for antique art, was thrown into relief by extravagances borrowed from medieval chivalry, tinctured with Oriental a.s.sociations, enhanced by music and colored with the glowing hues of Ferrarese imagination. The city of Boiardo, of Dossi, of Bello, of Ariosto, strained her resources to devise fantastic foils for the antique. It was as though Cellini had been called to mount an onyx of Augustus in labyrinths of gold-work and enamel for the stomacher of a Grand-d.u.c.h.ess.

[Footnote 162: Gregorovius in his book on _Lucrezia Borgia_ (pp.

228-239) has condensed the authorities. See, too, Dennistoun, _Dukes of Urbino_, vol. i. pp. 441-448.]

[Footnote 163: The minute descriptions furnished by Sanudo of these festivals read like the prose letterpress accompanying the Masks of our Ben Jonson.]

We may without exaggeration affirm that the practice of the Ferrarese stage, culminating in the marriage shows of 1502, determined the future of Italian comedy. The fashion of the Court of Ercole was followed by all patrons of dramatic art. When a play was written, the author planned it in connection with subordinate exhibitions of dancing and music.[164] He wrote a poem in five acts upon the model of Plautus or Terence, understanding that his scenes of cla.s.sical simplicity would be embedded in the grotesques of _cinque cento_ allegory. The whole performance lasted some six hours; but the comedy itself was but a portion of the entertainment. For the majority of the audience the dances and the pageants formed the chief attraction.[165]

It is therefore no marvel if the drama, considered as a branch of high poetic art, was suffocated by the growth of its mere accessories. Nor was this inconsistent with the ruling tendencies of the Renaissance.

We have no reason to suppose that even Ariosto or Machiavelli grudged the partic.i.p.ation of painters like Peruzzi, musicians like Dalla Viuola, architects like San Gallo, and dancers of ephemeral distinction, in the triumph of their plays.

[Footnote 164: Il Lasca in his prologue to the _Strega_ (_ed. cit._ p.

171) says: "Questa non e fatta da principi, ne da signori, ne in palazzi ducali e signorili; e per non avra quella pompa d'apparato, di prospettiva, e d'intermedj che ad alcune altre nei tempi nostri s'e veduto."]

[Footnote 165: A fine example of the Italian Mask is furnished by _El Sacrificio_, played with great pomp by the Intronati of Siena in 1531 and printed in 1537. _El Sacrificio de gli Intronati Celebrato ne i giuochi del Carnovale in Siena l'Anno MDx.x.xI._ Full particulars regarding the music, _mise en scene_, and ballets on such ceremonial occasions, will be found in two curious pamphlets, _Descrizione dell'Apparato fatto nel Tempio di S. Giov. di Fiorenza_, etc. (Giunti, 1568), and _Descrizione dell'Entrata della Serenissima Reina Giovanna d'Austria_, etc. (Giunti, 1566). They refer to a later period, but they abound in the most curious details.]

The habit of regarding scenic exhibitions as the adjunct to extravagant Court luxury, prevented the development of a theater in which the genius of poets might have shone with undimmed intellectual l.u.s.ter. The want of permanent buildings, devoted to acting, in any great Italian town, may again be reckoned among the causes which checked the expansion of the drama. When a play had to be acted, a stage was erected at a great expense for the occasion.[166] It is true that Alfonso I. built a theater after Ariosto's designs at Ferrara in 1528; but it was burnt down in 1532. According to Gregorovius, Leo X.

fitted one up at Rome upon the Capitol in 1513,[167] capable of holding the two thousand spectators who witnessed a performance of the _Suppositi_. This does not, however, seem to have been used continuously; nor was it until the second half of the sixteenth century that theaters began to form a part of the palatial residences of princes. One precious relic of those more permanent stages remains to show the style they then a.s.sumed. This is the Teatro Farnese at Parma, erected in 1618 by Ranuzio I. after the design of Galeotti Aleotti of Ferrara. It could accommodate seven thousand spectators; and, though now in ruins, it is still a stately and harmonious monument of architectural magnificence.[168] What, however, was always wanting in Italy was a theater open to all cla.s.ses and at all seasons of the year, where the people might have been the patrons of their playwrights.[169]

[Footnote 166: See the details brought together by Campori, _Notizie per la vita di Lodovico Ariosto_, p. 74, Castiglione's letter on the _Calandra_ at Urbino, the private representation of the _Rosmunda_ in the Rucellai gardens, of the _Orbecche_ in Giraldi's house, of the _Sofonisba_ at Vicenza, of Gelli's _Errore_ by the Fantastichi, etc.]

[Footnote 167: _Stadt Rom_, viii. 350.]

[Footnote 168: See the article "Fornovo" in my _Sketches and Studies in Italy_.]

[Footnote 169: At this point, in ill.u.s.tration of what has been already stated, I take the opportunity of transcribing a pa.s.sage which fairly represents the conditions of play-going in the _cinque cento_. Doni, in the _Marmi_, gives this description of two comedies performed in the Sala del Papa of the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence.[A] "By my faith, in Florence never was there anything so fine: two stages, one at each end of the Hall: two wonderful scenes, the one by Francesco Salviati, the other by Bronzino: two most amusing comedies, and of the newest coinage; the _Mandragola_ and the _a.s.siuola_: when the first act of the one was over, there followed the first act of the other, and so forth, each play taking up the other, without interludes, in such wise that the one comedy served as interlude for the other. The music began at the opening, and ended with the close."]

[Footnote A: Barbera's edition, 1863, vol. i. p. 67.]

The transition from Latin to Italian comedy was effected almost simultaneously by three poets, Bernardo Dovizio, Lodovico Ariosto, and Niccol Machiavelli. Dovizio was born at Bibbiena in 1470. He attached himself to the Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici, and received the scarlet from his master in 1513. We need not concern ourselves with his ecclesiastical career. It is enough to say that the _Calandra_, which raised him to a foremost place among the literary men of Italy, was composed before his elevation to the dignity of Cardinal, and was first performed at Urbino some time between the dates 1504 and 1513, possibly in 1508. The reader will already have observed that the most popular Latin play, both at Ferrara and Rome, was the _Menaechmi_ of Plautus. In Dovizio's _Calandra_ the influence of this comedy is so noticeable that we may best describe it as an accommodation of the Latin form to Italian circ.u.mstance. The intrigue depends upon the close resemblance of a brother and sister, Lidio and Santilla, whose appearance by turns in male and female costume gives rise to a variety of farcical incidents. The name is derived from Calandro, a simpleton of Calandrino's type; and the interest of the plot is that of a _Novella._ The characters are very slightly sketched; but the movement is continuous, and the dialogue is always lively. The _Calandra_ achieved immediate success by reproducing both the humor of Boccaccio and the invention of Plautus in the wittiest vernacular.[170]

A famous letter of Balda.s.sare Castiglione, describing its representation at Urbino, enlarges upon the splendor of the scenery and dresses, the masks of Jason, Venus, Love, Neptune, and Juno, accompanied by morris-dances and concerts of stringed instruments, which were introduced as interludes.[171] From Urbino the comedy pa.s.sed through all the Courts of Italy, finding the highest favor at Rome, where Leo more than once decreed its representation. One of these occasions was memorable. Wishing to entertain the Marchioness Isabella of Mantua (1514), he put the _Calandra_ with great pomp upon his private stage in the Vatican. Balda.s.sare Peruzzi designed and painted the decorations, giving a new impulse to this species of art by the beauty of his inventions.[172]

[Footnote 170: One of the chief merits of the _Calandra_ in the eyes of contemporaries was the successful adaptation of Boccaccio's style to the stage. Though Italians alone have the right to p.r.o.nounce judgment on such matters, I confess to preferring the limpid ease of Ariosto and the plebeian freshness of Gelli. The former has the merit of facile lucidity, the latter of native raciness. Bibbiena's somewhat pompous phraseology sits ill upon his farcical obscenities.]

[Footnote 171: See the translation in Dennistoun, vol. ii. p. 141.]

[Footnote 172: See Vasari, viii. 227.]

Leo had an insatiable appet.i.te for scenic shows. Comedies of the new Latinizing style were his favorite recreation. But he also invited the Sienese Company of the Rozzi, who only played farces, every year to Rome; nor was he averse to even less artistic buffoonery, as may be gathered from many of the stories told about him.[173] In 1513 Leo opened a theater upon the Capitol, and here in 1519, surrounded with two thousand spectators, he witnessed an exhibition of Ariosto's _Suppositi_. We have a description of the scene from the pen of an eye-witness, who relates how the Pope sat at the entrance to the gallery leading into the theater, and admitted with his benediction those whom he thought worthy of partaking in the night's amus.e.m.e.nts.[174] When the house was full, he took his throne in the orchestra, and sat, with eye-gla.s.s in hand, to watch the play. Raphael had painted the scenery, which is said to have been, and doubtless was, extremely beautiful. Leo's behavior scandalized the foreign emba.s.sadors, who thought it indecorous that a Pope should not only listen to the equivocal jests of the Prologue but also laugh immoderately at them.[175] As usual, the inter-acts consisted of vocal and instrumental concerts, with ballets on cla.s.sical and allegorical subjects.

[Footnote 173: See D'Ancona, _op. cit._ vol. ii. p. 250, for the special nature of the _Farsa_. See also _ib._ p. 211, the description by Paolucci of Leo's buffooneries in the Vatican.]

[Footnote 174: See Campori, _Notizie Inedite di Raffaello di Urbino_, Modena, 1863, quoted by D'Ancona, _op. cit._ p. 212. The entertainment cost Leo 1,000 ducats.]

[Footnote 175: No doubt Paolucci refers to the obscene play upon the word _Suppositi_, and to the ironical epithet of _Santa_ applied to _Roma_ in a pa.s.sage which does no honor to Ariosto.]

Enough has now been said concerning the mode of presenting comedies in vogue throughout Italy. The mention of Leo's entertainment in 1519 introduces the subject of Ariosto's plays. The _Suppositi_, originally written in prose and afterwards versified by its author, first appeared in 1509 at Ferrara. In the preceding year Ariosto exhibited the _Ca.s.saria_, which, like the _Suppositi_, was planned in prose and subsequently versified in _sdrucciolo_ iambics.[176]

[Footnote 176: For the dates of Ariosto's dramatic compositions, see above, Part 1, p. 499. The edition I shall refer to, is that of Giovanni Tortoli (Firenze, Barbera, 1856), which gives both the prose and verse redactions of the _Ca.s.saria_ and _Suppositi_. It may here be incidentally remarked that there are few thoroughly good editions of Italian plays. Descriptions of the _dramatis personae_, stage directions, and ill.u.s.trative notes are almost uniformly wanting. The reader is left to puzzle out an intricate action without help. All the slang, the local customs, and the pa.s.sing allusions which give life to comedy and present so many difficulties to the student, are for the most part unexplained.]

In Ariosto's comedies the form of Roman art becomes a lay-figure, dressed according to various modes of the Italian Renaissance. The wire-work, so to speak, of Plautus or of Terence can be everywhere detected; but this skeleton has been incarnated with modern flesh and blood, habited in Ferrarese costume, and taught the paces of contemporary fashion. Blent with the traditions of Plautine comedy, we find in each of the four plays an Italian _Novella_. The motive is invariably trivial. In the _Ca.s.saria_ two young men are in love with two girls kept by a slave-merchant. The intrigue turns upon the arts of their valets, who cheat the pander and procure the girls for nothing for their masters. In the _Suppositi_ a young man of good family has a.s.sumed the part of servant, in order to seduce the daughter of his master. The devices by which he contrives to secure her hand in marriage, furnish the action of the play. The _Lena_ has even a simpler plan. A young man needs a few quiet hours for corrupting his neighbor's daughter. Lena, the chief actress, will not serve as a go-between without a sum of ready money paid down by the hero. The movement of the piece depends on the expedients whereby this money is raised, and the farcical obstacles which interrupt the lovers at the point of their felicity. In the _Negromante_ a young man has been secretly married to one woman, and openly to another. Cinthio loves his real wife, Lavinia, and feigns impotence in order to explain his want of affection for Emilia, who is the recognized mistress of his home. An astrologer, Iacchelino, holds the threads of the intrigue in his hands. Possessed of Cinthio's secret, paid by the parents of Emilia to restore Cinthio's virility, paid again by a lover of Emilia to advance his own suit, and seeking in the midst of these rival interests to make money out of the follies and ambitions of his clients, Iacchelino has the whole domestic company at his discretion.

The comic point lies in the various pa.s.sions which betray each dupe to the astrologer--Cinthio's wish to escape from Emilia, Camillo's eagerness to win her, the old folks' anxiety to cure Cinthio. Temolo, a servant, who is hoodwinked by no personal desire, sees that Iacchelino is an impostor; and the inordinate avarice of the astrologer undoes him. Thus the _Negromante_ presents a really fine comic web of humors at cross purposes and appet.i.tes that overreach themselves.

There is considerable similarity in Ariosto's plots. In all of them, except the _Negromante_, we have a sub-plot which brings a tricksy valet into play. A sum of money is imperatively needed to effect the main scheme of the hero; and this has to be provided by the servant's ingenuity. Such direct satire as the poet thought fit to introduce, is common to them all. It concerns the costs, delays and frauds of legal procedure, favoritism at Court, the Ferrarese game-laws, and the tyranny of custom-house officials. But satire of an indirect, indulgent species--the Horatian satire of Ariosto's own epistles--adds a pleasant pungency to his pictures of contemporary manners no less than to his occasional discourses. The prologue to the _Ca.s.saria_, on its reappearance as a versified play, might be quoted for the perfection of genial sarcasm, playing about the foibles of society without inflicting a serious wound. All the prologues, however, are not innocent. Those prefixed to the _Lena_ and the _Suppositi_ contain allusions so indecent, and veil obscenities under metaphors so flimsy, as to justify a belief in Ariosto's vulgarity of soul. Here the satirist borders too much on the sympathizer with a vice he professes to condemn.

It remains to speak of the _Scolastica_, a comedy left incomplete at Ariosto's death, and finished by his brother Gabrielle, but bearing the unmistakable stamp of his ripest genius impressed upon the style no less than on the structure of the plot.[177] The scene is laid at Ferrara, where we find ourselves among the scholars of its famous university, and are made acquainted in the liveliest manner with their habits. The heroes are two young students, Claudio and Eurialo, firm friends, who have pa.s.sed some years at Pavia reading with Messer Lazzaro, a doctor of laws. The disturbance of the country having driven both professors and pupils from Pavia,[178] a variety of accidents brings all the actors of the comedy to Ferrara, where Eurialo is living with his father, Bartolo. Of course the two lads are in love--Claudio with the daughter of his former tutors, and Eurialo with a fatherless girl in the service of a n.o.ble lady at Pavia. The intrigue is rather farcical than comic. It turns upon the difficulties encountered by Claudio and Eurialo in concealing their sweethearts from their respective fathers, the absurd mistakes they make in the hurry of the moment, and the misunderstandings which ensue between themselves and the old people. Ariosto has so cleverly complicated the threads of his plot and has developed them with such lucidity of method that any a.n.a.lysis would fall short of the original in brevity and clearness. The _denouement_ is effected by the device of a recognition at the last moment. Eurialo's _innamorata_ is found to be the lost ward of his father, Bartolo; and Claudio is happily married to his love, Flaminia. The merit of the play lies, however, less in the argument than the characters, which are ably conceived and sustained with more than even Ariosto's usual skill. The timid and perplexed Eurialo, trembling before his terrible father, seeking advice from every counselor, despairing, resigning himself to fate, is admirably contrasted with the more pa.s.sionate and impulsive Claudio, who takes rash steps with inconsiderate boldness, relies on his own address to extricate himself, and vibrates between the ecstasies of love and the suspicions of an angry jealousy.[179] Bartolo, burdened in his conscience by an ancient act of broken faith, and punished in the disobedience of his son, forms an excellent pendent to the honest but pedantic Messer Lazzaro, who cannot bear to see his daughter suffer from an unrequited pa.s.sion.[180] Each of the servants, too, has a well-marked physiognomy--the witty Accursio, picking up what learning he can from his master's books, and turning all he says to epigrams; the easy-going, Baccha.n.a.lian duenna; blunt Pistone; garrulous Stanna. But the most original of all the _dramatis personae_ is Bonifazio, that excellent keeper of lodgings for Ferrarese students, who identifies himself with their interests, sympathizes in their love-affairs, takes side with them against their fathers, and puts his conscience in his pocket when required to pull them out of sc.r.a.pes.[181] Each of these characters has been copied from the life.

The taint of Latin comedy has been purged out of them.[182] They move, speak, act like living beings, true to themselves in every circ.u.mstance, and justifying the minutest details of the argument by the operation of their several qualities of head and heart. Viewed as a work of pure dramatic art, the _Scolastica_ is not only the most genial and sympathetic of Ariosto's comedies, but also the least fettered by his Latinizing prepossessions, and the strongest in psychological a.n.a.lysis. Like the _Lena_, it has the rare merit of making us at home in the Ferrara which he knew so well; but it does not, like that play, disgust us by the spectacle of abject profligacy.[183] There is a sunny, jovial freshness in this latest product of Ariosto's genius, which invigorates while it amuses and instructs.

[Footnote 177: Gabrielle added the last two scenes of the fifth act.

See his prologue. But whether he introduced any modifications into the body of the play, or filled up any gaps, does not appear.]

[Footnote 178:

Poiche a Pavia levato era il salario Alli dottor, ne piu si facea studio Per le guerre che piu ogni d augumentano.]

[Footnote 179: Their opposite humors are admirably developed in the dialogues of act ii. sc. 5, act iii. sc. 5.]

[Footnote 180: Compare Bartolo's soliloquy in act iv. sc. 6, with Lazzaro's confidences to Bonfazio, whom he mistakes for Bartolo, in act v. sc. 3.]

[Footnote 181: His action in the comedy is admirably ill.u.s.trated by the self-revelation of the following soliloquy (act iv. sc. 1):

Io vu a ogni modo aiutar questo giovane, E dir dieci bugie, perche ad incorrere Non abbia con suo padre in rissa e in scandalo: E cos ancor quest'altro mio, che all'ultima Disperazione e condotto da un credere Falso e da gelosia che a torto il stimola.

Ne mi vergogner d'ordire, o tessere Fallacie e giunti, _e far ci ch'eran soliti_ _Gli antichi servi gia nelle commedie_: Che veramente l'aiutare un povero Innamorato, non mi pare uffizio Servil, ma di gentil qualsivoglia animo.]

[Footnote 182: The process is well indicated in the lines I have italicized in Bonifazio's soliloquy. He is no longer a copy of the Latin slaves, but a free agent who emulates their qualities.]

[Footnote 183: With all admiration for the _Lena_, how can we appreciate the cynicism of the situation revealed in the first scene--the crudely exposed appet.i.tes of Flavio, the infamous conduct of Fazio, who places his daughter under the tutelage of his old mistress?]

The _Scolastica_ is not without an element of satire. I have said that Bartolo had a sin upon his conscience. In early manhood he promised to adopt a friend's daughter, and to marry her in due course to his own Eurialo. But he neglected this duty, lost sight of the girl, and appropriated her heritage. He has reason to think that she may still be found in Naples; and the parish priest to whom he confided his secret in confession, will not absolve him, unless he take the journey and do all he can to rectify the error of his past. Bartolo is disinclined to this long pilgrimage, with the probable loss of a fortune at the end of it. In his difficulty he has recourse to a Frate Predicatore, who professes to hold ample powers for dispensing with troublesome vows and pious obligations:[184]

Voi potete veder la bolla, e leggere Le facultadi mie, che sono amplissime; E come, senza che pigliate, Bartolo, Questo pellegrinaggio, io posso a.s.solvere E commutar i voti; e maravigliomi, Che essendo, com'io son, vostro amicissimo, Non m'abbiate richiesto; perche, dandomi Quel solamente che potreste spendere Voi col famiglio nel viaggio, a.s.solvere Vi posso, e farvi schifar un grandissimo Disconcio, all'eta vostra incomportabile: Oltra diversi infiniti pericoli, Che ponno a chi va per cammino occorrere.

[Footnote 184: Act iii. sc. 6.]

The irony of this speech depends upon its plain and business-like statement of a simoniacal bargain, which will prove of mutual benefit to the parties concerned. Bartolo confides his case of conscience to the Friar, previously telling him that he has confessed it to the parson:

Ma non mi sa decidere Questo caso, che, come voi, teologo Non e; sa un poco di ragion canonica.

At the close of the communication, which is admirable for its lucid exposition of a domestic romance adapted to the circ.u.mstances of the sixteenth century, the Friar asks his penitent once more whether he would not willingly escape this pilgrimage. Who could doubt it?

answers Bartolo. Well then:

Ben si potra commutare in qualche opera Pia. Non si trova al mondo s forte obbligo, Che non si possa scior con l'elemosine.

Here again the sarcasm consists in the hypocritical adaptation of the old axiom that everything in this world can be got for money. On both sides the transaction is commercial. Bartolo, like a good man of business, wishes to examine the Frate's t.i.tle-deeds before he engages in the purchase of his spiritual privileges. In other words he must be permitted to examine the Bull of Indulgence:[185]

Porterollavi, E ve la lascer vedere e leggere.

Siate pur certo che la bolla e amplissima, E che di tutti i casi, componendovi Meco, vi posso interamente a.s.solvere, Non meno che potria 'l Papa medesimo.

_Bartolo._ Vi credo; nondimeno, per iscarico Della mia conscienza, la desidero Veder, e farla anco vedere e leggere Al mio parrocchiano.