[110] See the Elegia alle Donne Pratesi, vol. iv. p. 41.

[111] Vol. i. p. 16. Compare the extraordinary paragraph about female beauty being an earnest of the beauties of Paradise (pp. 31, 32).

[112] Ibid. p. 21.

[113] Ibid. pp. 51-62.

[114] Vol. i. pp. 75-80.

[115] Vol. iii. The Golden Ass begins with an autobiography (vol. i. p. 103).

[116] Vol. iv. pp. 19, 76.

[117] My principal authority is Doni's Life by S. Bongi prefixed to an edition of the Novelle, 1851, and reprinted in Fanfani's edition of I Marmi, Florence, 1863.

[118] See Zilioli, quoted by Bongi, I Marmi, vol. i. p. xiv.

[119] How Doni hated his orders may be gathered from these extracts: "La bestial cosa che sia sopportare quattro corna in capo senza belare unquanco. Io ho un capriccio di farmi scomunicare per non cantare più Domine labia, e spretarmi per non essere a noia a tutte le persone." "L'esser colla chierica puzza a tutti." His chief grievance was that he had made no money out of the Church.

[120] The greater part of what we know about the Pellegrini occurs in Doni's I Marmi. See also a memoir by Giaxich, and the notices in Mutinelli's Diari Urbani.

[121] Those I am acquainted with are I Marmi, I Mondi, Lo Stufaiuolo, the Novelle, and two little burlesque caprices in prose, La Mula and La Chiave.

[122] I Marmi, per Fanfani e Bongi, Firenze, Barbèra, 1863, 2 vols.

[123] Parte ii. "Della Stampa."

[124] Novelle di Autori Senesi, edited by Gaetano Poggiali, Londra (Livorno), 1796. This collection, reprinted in the Raccolta di Novellieri Italiani, Milano, 1815, vols. xiv. and xv., contains Bernardo Illicini, Giustiniano Nelli, Scipione Bargagli, Gentile Sermini, Pietro Fortini, and others. Of Sermini's Novelle a complete edition appeared in 1874 at Livorno, from the press of Francesco Vigo; and to this the student should now go. Romagnoli of Bologna in 1877 published three hitherto inedited novels of Fortini, together with the rubrics of all those which have not yet been printed. Their titles enable us to comprehend the scruples which prevented Poggiali from issuing the whole series.

[125] Imbasciata di Venere, Sermini, ed. cit. p. 117.

[126] Il Giuoco della pugna, Sermini, ed. cit. p. 105.

[127] See Le Cene, pt. ii. Nov. 10, and Firenzuola's seventh Novella.

[128] None of them are included in the Milanese Novellieri Italiani. The editions I shall use are Proverbii di Messer Antonio Cornazano in Facetie, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1865; Le Piacevoli Notti, in Vinegia per Comin da Trino di Monferrato, MDLI.; Gli Hecatommithi di M. Giovanbattista Giraldi Cinthio, Nobile Ferrarese, in Vinegia, MDLXVI., Girolamo Scotto, 2 vols.

[129] Fiabe, Novelle, Racconti, Palermo, Lauriel, 1875, 4 vols. I may here take occasion to notice that one Novella by the Conte Lorenzo Magalotti (Nov. It. vol. xiii. p. 362), is the story of Whittington and his Cat, told of a certain Florentine, Ansaldo degli Ormanni, and the King of the Canary Islands.

[130] John Wilson's play of Belphegor, Dekker's If it be not good the Divel is in it, and Ben Jonson's The Devil is an Ass, were more or less founded on Machiavelli's and Straparola's novels.

[131] Dunlop in his History of Fiction, vol. ii. p. 411, speaks of a Latin MS. preserved in the library of S. Martin at Tours which contained the tale, but he also says that it was lost at "the period of the civil wars in France."

[132] The title leads us to expect one hundred tales; but counting the ten of the Introduction, there are one hundred and ten. When the book first circulated, it contained but seventy. The first edition is that of Monte Regale in Sicily, 1565. My copy of the Venetian edition of 1566 is complete.

[133] The ten novels of the Introduction deal exclusively with the manners of Italian prostitutes. Placed as a frontispiece to the whole repertory, they seem intended to attract the vulgar reader.

[134] "Comedia de Timone per el Magnifico Conte Matheo Maria Boyardo Conte de Scandiano traducta de uno Dialogo de Luciano. Stampata in Venetia per Georgio di Rusconi Milanese, del MDXVIII. adì iii di Decembre." From the play itself we learn that it must have been represented on a double stage, a lower one standing for earth and a higher one for heaven. The first three acts consist chiefly of soliloquies by Timon and conversations with celestial personages—Jove, Mercury, Wealth, Poverty. In the fourth act we are introduced to characters of Athenians—Gnatonide, Phylade, Demea, Trasycle, who serve to bring Timone's misanthropy into relief; and the fifth act brings two slaves, Syro and Parmeno, upon the scene, with a kind of underplot which is not solved at the close of the play. The whole piece must be regarded rather as a Morality than a Comedy, and the characters are allegories or types more than living persons.

[135] To determine the question of priority in such matters is neither easy nor important. Students who desire to follow the gradual steps in the development of Italian play-writing before the date of Ariosto and Machiavelli may be referred to D'Ancona's work on the Origini del Teatro.

[136] I have enlarged on these points in my Essay on Euripides (Greek Poets, Series i.). I may take occasion here to say that until Sept. 1879, after this chapter was written, I had not met with Professor Hillebrand's Études Italiennes (Paris, Franck, 1868).

[137] Exception must be made in favor of some ancient quasi-tragedies, which seem to prove that before the influences of Boccaccio and the Renaissance had penetrated the nation, they were not deficient in the impulse to dramatize history. The Eccerinis of Albertino Mussato (c. 1300), half dialogue and half narration, upon the fate of Ezzellino da Romano, composed in the style of Seneca; the dialogue upon the destruction of Cesena (1377) falsely attributed to Petrarch; Giovanni Mangini della Motta's poem on the downfall of Antonio della Scala (1387), Lodovico da Vezzano's tragedy of Jacopo Piccinino; though far from popular in their character, and but partially dramatic, were such as under happier auspices might have fostered the beginnings of the tragic theater. Later on we hear of the Fall of Granada being represented before Cardinal Riario at Rome, as well as the Ferrandus Servatus of Carlo Verradi (1492).

[138] See the first cast of Jonson's Every Man in his Humor.

[139] See above, Part I, p. 276, where one ballad of the Border type is discussed.

[140] It is certainly significant that the Spanish share with the English the chief honors both of the ballad and the drama. The Scandinavian nations, rich in ballads, have been, through Danish poets, successful in dramatic composition. The Niebelungen Lied and the Song of Roland would, in the case of Germany and France, have to be set against the English ballads of action. But these Epics are different in character from the minstrelsy which turned passing events into poetry and bequeathed them in the form of spirit-stirring narratives to posterity. Long after the epical impulse had ceased and the British epic of Arthur had passed into the sphere of literature, the ballad minstrels continued to work with dramatic energy upon the substance of contemporary incidents.

[141] See above, p. 54, for the distinction between the Italian Novella and the modern novel.

[142] In the same way Alfieri's biography is a tragic and Goldoni's a comic novel. The Memoirs of Casanova, which I incline to accept as genuine, might rather be cited as a string of brilliantly written Novelle.

[143] Cantù quotes the prologue of a MS. play which goes so far as to apologize for the scene not being laid at Athens (Lett. It. p. 471):

[144] Commedie di Antonfrancesco Grazzini (Firenze, Lemonnier, 1859), p. 5.

[145] Op. cit. p. 109.

[146] Ibid. p. 173.

[147] I have put into an Appendix some further notes upon the opinions recorded by the playwrights concerning the progress of the dramatic art.

[148] My references to Italian tragedies will be made to the Teatro Italiano Antico, 10 vols., Milano, 1809.

[149] This is shown by his device of a Golden Fleece, referring to the voyage of the Argonauts. To sail the ocean of antiquity as an explorer, and to bring back the spoils of their artistic method was his ambition.

[150] Compare what Giraldi says in the dedication of his Orbecche to Duke Ercole II.: "Ancora che Aristotele ci dia il modo di comporle." In the same passage he dwells on the difficulties of producing tragedies in the absence of dramatic instinct, with an ingenuousness that moves our pity: "Quando altri si dà a scrivere in quella maniera de' Poemi, che sono stati per tanti secoli tralasciati, che appena di loro vi resta una lieve ombra." It never occurred to him that great poetry comes neither by observation nor by imitation of predecessors. The same dedication contains the monstrous critical assertion that the Latin poets, i.e. Seneca, improved upon Greek tragedy—assai più grave la fecero.

[151] This tragedy was acted at Ferrara in Giraldi's house before Ercole II., Duke of Ferrara, and a brilliant company of noble persons, in 1541. The music was composed by M. Alfonso dalla Viuola, the scenery by M. Girolamo Carpi.

[152] Giraldi, a prolific writer of plays, dramatized three other of his novels in the Arrenopia, the Altile and the Antivalomeni. He also composed a Didone and a Cleopatra.

[153] It may here be remarked that though the scholarly playwrights of the Renaissance paid great attention to Aristotle's Poetics, and made a conscientious study of some Greek plays, especially the Antigone, the Œdipus Tyrannus, the Phœnissæ, and the Iphigenia in Tauris, they held the uncritical opinion, openly expressed by Giraldi, that Seneca had improved the form of the Greek drama. Their worst faults of construction, interminable monologues, dialogues between heroines and confidantes, dry choric dissertations, and rhetorical declamations are due to the preference for Seneca. The more we study Italian literature in the sixteenth century, the more we are compelled to acknowledge that humanism and all its consequences were a revival of Latin culture, only slightly tinctured with the simpler and purer influences of the Greeks. Latin poetry had the fatal attraction of facility. It was, moreover, itself composite and derivatory, like the literature of the new age. We may profitably illustrate the attitude of the Italian critics by Sidney's eulogy of Gorboduc: "full of stately speeches and well-sounding phrases, climbing to the height of Seneca his style, and as full of notable morality which it doth most delightfully teach and so obtain the very end of Poesy."

[154] D'Ancona (Origini del Teatro, vol. ii. sec. xxxix.) may be consulted upon the attempts to secularize the Sacre Rappresentazioni which preceded the revival of classical comedy.

[155] Leo X., with a Medici's true sympathy for plebeian literature added to his own coarse sense of fun, patronized the farces of the Sienese Company called Rozzi. Had his influence lasted, had there been any one to continue the traditions of his Court at Rome, it is not impossible that a more natural comedy, as distinguished from the Commedia erudita, might have been produced by this fashionable patronage of popular dramatic art.

[156] See D'Ancona, Or. del Teatro, vol. ii. p. 201.

[157] Sabellico, quoted by Tiraboschi, says of him: "primorum antistitum atriis suo theatro usus, in quibus Plauti, Terentii, recentiorum etiam quædam agerentur fabulæ, quas ipse honestos adolescentes et docuit et agentibus præfuit."

[158] See the letter of Sulpizio da Veroli to Raffaello Riario, quoted by Tiraboschi; "eamdemque, postquam in Hadriani mole Divo Innocentio spectante est acta, rursus inter tuos penates, tamquam in media Circi cavea, toto consessu umbraculis tecto, admisso populo, et pluribus tui ordinis spectatoribus honorifice excepisti. Tu etiam primus picturatæ scenæ faciem, quum Pomponiam comœdiam agerent, nostro sæculo ostendisti."

[159] See Lucrezia Borgia, by Gregorovius (Stuttgart, 1874), vol. i. p. 201.

[160] Nicolò was a descendant of the princely house of Correggio. He married Cassandra, daughter of Bartolommeo Colleoni. His Cefalo was a mixed composition resembling the Sacre Rappresentazioni in structure. In the Prologue he says:

See D'Ancona, op. cit. vol. 2, pp. 143-146, 155.

[161] Ep. Fam. i. 18, quoted by Tiraboschi.

[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.

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

[164] Il Lasca in his prologue to the Strega (ed. cit. p. 171) says: "Questa non è fatta da principi, nè da signori, nè in palazzi ducali e signorili; e però non avrà quella pompa d'apparato, di prospettiva, e d'intermedj che ad alcune altre nei tempi nostri s'è veduto."

[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 MDXXXI. Full particulars regarding the music, mise en scène, 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.

[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.

[167] Stadt Rom, viii. 350.

[168] See the article "Fornovo" in my Sketches and Studies in Italy.

[169] At this point, in illustration of what has been already stated, I take the opportunity of transcribing a passage 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 Assiuola: 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."

[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 pronounce 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.

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

[172] See Vasari, viii. 227.

[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.

[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.

[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 passage which does no honor to Ariosto.

[176] For the dates of Ariosto's dramatic compositions, see above, Part I, p. 499. The edition I shall refer to, is that of Giovanni Tortoli (Firenze, Barbèra, 1856), which gives both the prose and verse redactions of the Cassaria and Suppositi. It may here be incidentally remarked that there are few thoroughly good editions of Italian plays. Descriptions of the dramatis personæ, stage directions, and illustrative 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 passing allusions which give life to comedy and present so many difficulties to the student, are for the most part unexplained.

[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.

[178]

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

[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.

[181] His action in the comedy is admirably illustrated by the self-revelation of the following soliloquy (act iv. sc. 1):

[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.

[183] With all admiration for the Lena, how can we appreciate the cynicism of the situation revealed in the first scene—the crudely exposed appetites of Flavio, the infamous conduct of Fazio, who places his daughter under the tutelage of his old mistress?

[184] Act iii. sc. 6.

[185] Act iv. sc. 4. In the last line but one, ought we not to read mostreratela or else mostrerollavi?

[186] Room must be found for a few of the sarcasms, uttered chiefly by Accursio, which enliven the Scolastica. Here are the humanists:

Here is Rome:

Here is Ferrara:

Here are the Signori of Naples:

[187] Cecchi noticed the lucid order, easy exposition and smooth conduct of Ariosto's plots, ranking him for these qualities above the Latin poets. See the passage from Le Pellegrine quoted below.

[188] In an essay on the Italian language, included among Machiavelli's works, but ascribed to him on no very certain ground.

[189] Notice the long monologue of the Cassaria in which Lucramo describes the fashionable follies of Ferrara. Ariosto gradually outgrew this habit of tirade. The Scolastica is freer than any of his pieces from the fault.

[190] Le Commedie di N. Machiavelli, con prefazione di F. Perfetti, Firenze, Barbèra, 1863.

[191] Take this picture of Virginia (act i. sc. 2):

Or the picture of the lovers in church described by the servant, Doria (act iii. sc. 2), or Virginia's portrait of her jealous husband (act iii. sc. 5).

[192] The scene between Caterina and Amerigo, when the latter is caught in flagrant adultery (act iii. 5), anticipates the catastrophe of the Clizia. The final scene between Caterina, Amerigo, and Fra Alberigo bears a close resemblance to the climax of the Mandragola. On the hypothesis that this comedy is not Machiavelli's but an imitator's, the playwright must have had both the Clizia and the Mandragola in his mind, and have designed a pithy combination of their most striking elements.

[193] See especially the scenes between Caterina and Margherita (act i. 3; act ii. 1) where the advantages of taking a lover and of choosing a friar for this purpose are discussed. They abound in gros mots, as thus:

[194] Compare his speech to Caterina (act ii. 5) with his dialogue with Margherita (act iii. 4) and his final discourse on charity and repentance (act iii. 6). The irony of these words, "Certamente, Amerigo, che voi potete vantarvi d'aver la più saggia e casta giovane, non vo' dir di Fiorenza ma di tutto 'l mondo," pronounced before Caterina a couple of hours after her seduction, fixes the measure of Machiavelli's cynicism.

[195] The quite unquotable but characteristic monologue which opens the third act is an epitome of Margherita's character.

[196] Act iii. 5.

[197] From an allusion in act ii. sc. 3, it is clear that the Clizia was composed after the Mandragola. If we assign the latter comedy to a date later than 1512, the year of Machiavelli's disgrace, which seems implied in its prologue, the Clizia must be reckoned among the ripest products of his leisure. The author hints that both of these comedies were suggested to him by facts that had come under his notice in Florentine society.

[198] The Clizia furnished Dolce with the motive of his Ragazzo ("Il Ragazzo, comedia di M. Lodovico Dolce. Per Curtio de Navò e fratelli al Leone, MDXLI."). An old man and his son love the same girl. A parasite promises to get the girl for the old man, but substitutes a page dressed up like a woman, while the son sleeps with the real girl. Readers of Ben Jonson will be reminded of Epicœne. But in Dolce's Ragazzo the situation is made to suggest impurity and lacks rare Ben's gigantic humor.

[199] See Sofronia's soliloquy, act. ii. sc. 4.

[200] Cleandro understands the faint shadow of scruple that suggested this scheme: "perchè tentare d'averla prima che maritata, gli debbe parere cosa impia e brutta" (act i. sc. 1). This sentence is extremely characteristic of Italian feeling.

[201] His observations on his father, are, however, marked by more than ordinary coarseness. "Come non ti vergogni tu ad avere ordinato, che si delicato viso sia da sì fetida bocca scombavato, sì delicate carni da sì tremanti mani, da sì grinze e puzzolenti membra tocche?" Then he mingles fears about Nicomaco's property with a lover's lamentations. "Tu non mi potevi far la maggiore ingiuria, avendomi con questo colpo tolto ad un tratto e l'amata e la roba; perchè Nicomaco, se questo amor dura, è per lasciare delle sue sustanze più a Pirro che a me" (act iv. sc. 1).

[202] Act iii. scs. 4, 5, 6.

[203] Act v. scs. 2 and 3.

[204] See Age of the Despots, pp. 315-319. Of the two strains of character so ill-blent in Machiavelli, the Mandragola represents the vulgar, and the Principe the noble. The one corresponds to his days at Casciano, the other to his studious evenings.

[205] "Se voi vedessi uscire i personaggi più di cinque volte in scena, non ve ne ridete, perchè le catene che tengono i molini sul fiume, non terrebbeno i pazzi d'oggidì" (Prologue to the Cortigiana).