THE DRAMA
Alone among the great nations of the modern world, Italy stands in the
unenviable position of possessing no drama at the same time national
and literary. From one point of view three classes of the drama may be
distinguished, (1) The rude popular play entirely a creation of the
people, such as the buffooneries of the Dionysiac festival, out of
which the Athenian drama grew, or the dramatic exhibitions at fairs of
itinerant actors barely distinguishable from mountebanks, like those
whose puppet-plays originated _Faust_. Performances of this nature have
probably existed in every nation endowed with the rudiments of culture.
(2) These crude beginnings elevated by men of genius into the sphere
of art, and become literary without ceasing to be popular. This is the
true national drama, when the pulses of the poet and the people beat
in full unison, and of which Greece, England, and Spain have given the
world the most brilliant examples. (3) The artificial drama, written by
men of culture for men of culture, but neglecting, or at least failing
to reach the heart of the people. With the exception of the musical
drama of which Metastasio affords the type, and of the comedies of
Goldoni and Gozzi, all of which belonged to a more recent period than
that with which we are now engaged, the whole of the Italian drama
possessing any literary pretensions belongs to this class. It is true
that, as in England and elsewhere, it is accompanied by a lower order
of dramatic composition which may be regarded as popular. In the early
days of the Italian drama we have the _Rappresentazioni_, at a later
period the _Commedia dell’ Arte_, of both of which some notice must be
taken. But neither is, strictly speaking, literature.
It appears at first exceedingly surprising that a nation, not only
so gifted as the Italian, but so dramatically gifted, should not
merely never have achieved a national drama, but should have no
dramatic writer meriting to be ranked among the chief masters of
the art. Lively, emotional, capable of being worked up to the most
violent degrees of passion; at the same time observant, sagacious,
reflective; members of a society comprising every variety of character
and profession, and inheritors of a history replete with moving and
tragic incidents, Italians should seem to have wanted no requisite
for the creation of a flourishing stage. Prolific they were indeed:
more than five thousand plays were written between 1500 and 1734.
Perhaps there are not five which enjoy any considerable reputation out
of Italy, or which, whatever their literary merit, can be considered
characteristically Italian. The most potent of probable causes will be
adduced in its place, but no single explanation, or any accumulation
of partially satisfactory explanations, will entirely account for
so remarkable a circumstance. One reason was probably the great
development of Italian culture at an early period, compared with that
of other European nations. The ablest men had become fully acquainted
with Seneca and Terence, and looked upon them as painters looked upon
Raphael, or sculptors upon Phidias. They deemed them the norm of
excellence, and condemned themselves to a sterile imitation, which
might and often did possess high literary merit, but which was entirely
estranged from popular sympathies. Men like Politian and Pontano, who
really could have created a national drama if they could have trusted
their own instincts, were deterred from producing anything at variance
with the canons in which they themselves believed. It must be said
in extenuation of their error, that the classical school, with all
its defects, was vastly in advance of the rude, amorphous beginnings
of the romantic drama in every country but one. One little corner of
Europe alone possessed in the early sixteenth century a drama at once
living, indigenous, and admirable as literature. Nothing in literary
history is more surprising than the gap between Gil Vicente and his
contemporaries, whether classical or romantic. Had he been born an
Italian instead of a Portuguese, the history of the Italian stage might
possibly have been different. It nevertheless remains to be explained
why no such person arose among so gifted a people, and why throughout
their entire history, with one or two marked exceptions in particular
departments, Italians have never had a drama that they could justly
call their own.
In its first beginnings, notwithstanding, the Italian drama was as
national as any other. As with all other modern European dramas, its
origin was religious. Christianity found the need of replacing the
heathen shows and spectacles it had suppressed, and amused the people
with representations of Scriptural subjects, or of incidents in the
lives of the saints. For centuries these were never written down,
but improvised or exhibited in dumb show. Gradually the miracle-play
came into being, a more advanced development, compelling learning by
rote and much drilling of the performers, and therefore of necessity
committed to writing. In Italy this assumed a more polished form
than elsewhere, the _Rappresentazione Sacra_, rude in construction,
but composed frequently in elegant, sometimes in excellent octave
verse. This was a development of the fifteenth century, the earliest
of which the date is known being the _Abraham and Isaac_ of Feo
Belcari, 1449. It became exceedingly popular in the later part of
the century, especially at Florence. No less distinguished a person
than Lorenzo de’ Medici is enumerated among its authors. Numbers of
such pieces were printed, down even to the end of the seventeenth
century, and usually set off with wood-engravings, sometimes of great
elegance. The materials were usually drawn from ecclesiastical legend.
Constantine is represented as giving his daughter to his successful
general Gallicanus, on condition of his becoming a Christian. Julian,
marching to wage war with the Persians, is slain by an invisible saint.
The histories of Tobit, of St. Agnes, of St. Cecilia, and numbers
of similar legends, form the staple subjects. Sometimes romance is
laid under contribution, as in the instance of the Emperor Octavian,
but always with a religious motive. Dramatic force does not seem to
have been much considered, the stately octave being better adapted
for declamation than for dialogue; but the stage directions are
very precise, and every effort seems to have been made to impress
the spectators, so far as permitted by the rudeness of the open-air
theatre, a mere scaffold with perhaps a curtain for a background, yet
often very splendidly decorated.
How near Italy came to creating a national drama is shown by
the frequent representations of public events upon the stage,
quite in the spirit of Shakespeare’s historical plays. Two types
may be discriminated--one adhering very closely to that of the
_Rappresentazioni_, and composed in the vernacular; the latter
following classical models, and in Latin. To the latter belongs
the very tedious play of Carlo Verardi on the fall of Granada,
performed before Cardinal Riario in 1492; but the very remarkable and
unfortunately lost dramatic chronicle of the usurpations and downfall
of the house of Borgia, acted before the Duke of Urbino on the recovery
of his states in 1504, seems rather to have belonged to the former
class. To this type also is allied the first Italian drama of genuine
literary merit, the _Orfeo_ of Politian, where the dialogue is mostly
in octave stanzas, as in the _Rappresentazioni_, and the object is
evidently rather to delight the spectators by a rapid succession of
scenes admitting of musical accompaniment than to “purge the soul by
pity and terror.” Slight as this juvenile work of Politian’s is, it
is the work of a poet, and written with a swing and rush which recall
the lyrical parts of the _Bacchæ_ of Euripides. It indicates what the
_Rappresentazioni_ might have become but for the competition of the
more classical type of drama, and seems a prelude to the thoroughly
national species of composition which arose in the seventeenth and
prevailed in the eighteenth century, the opera.
The Italian stage had thus made a respectable beginning with the drama
a hundred years before any drama worthy of the name existed in England.
The disappointment of such auspicious promise is justly ascribed by
Symonds, in great measure, to the want of a representative public and a
centre of social life. The emulation of a number of independent cities,
so favourable to the development of art, prevented the development
of the national feeling essential to a national drama. The political
circumstances of these communities, moreover, were inimical to the
existence of a popular stage. Theatrical representations remained
the amusement of courts; and when the general public was allowed to
participate in them, the play itself was so enveloped in show and
spectacle as to appear the least part of the entertainment. It was not
possible that under such circumstances the drama could deviate far
from conventional models. Tragedy continued to be composed after the
pattern of Seneca, an imitation of an imitation. Comedy, though also in
bondage to classical precedents, could not avoid depicting contemporary
manners, and hence displays far more vitality and vigour.
Latin plays had been written by Italians from the beginning of the
fifteenth century, and had included comedies, now lost, by persons of
no less account than Petrarch and Æneas Sylvius. The first vernacular
tragedies worthy of the name were composed for the entertainment of
the court of Ferrara, and were written in the octave stanza or _terza
rima_. No genius could have adapted this form to the exigencies of the
stage, and a great step was taken when in 1515 Trissino, whose epic
on the Gothic wars has been previously noticed, wrote his tragedy of
_Sophonisba_ in blank verse, retaining nothing of the lyrical element
but the chorus. The piece marks an era, and as such remains celebrated,
notwithstanding its total want of poetry and passion. It would have
been a good outline for an abler hand to have clothed with substance.
Trissino had abundance of successors and imitators, most of whom had
more poetical endowment, but few more genuine vocation, and all of whom
are devoid of any impulse except the ambition of literary distinction.
This could only be reached by the prescribed path; and no vestige of
originality appears in any of them except Sperone Speroni’s innovation,
not laudable in a tragedy, although a fruitful suggestion for the
pastoral drama, of mingling lyrical metres with the regulation blank
verse. The subject of his play, the incest of Macareus and Canace,
infinitely overtaxed his elegant talent. Of the other tragedies of the
time, the best known are the _Rosmunda_ of Rucellai, the _Mariamne_
of Lodovico Dolce, and the _Orbecche_ of Cinthio the novelist,
whose _Epitia_ contains the rude germ of Shakespeare’s _Measure for
Measure_[17]. At a later date tragedy was attempted by a true poet of
great genius, who would assuredly have produced something memorable
under favourable circumstances. Hut the composition of Tasso’s
_Torrismondo_, commenced in his youth, was long interrupted, and the
play was completed in 1586 under the depressing circumstances of his
Mantuan exile. It thus wants energy; and, as Carducci remarks, Tasso is
too much of an eclectic, striving by a combination of the advantages
of all styles to supply the one indispensable gift of poetical
inspiration, which misfortune had all but extinguished.
The first Italian comedies, like the tragedies, were written in rhyme.
One early example is entitled to notice, both on account of the
subject and as the work of an excellent poet, the _Timone_ of Boiardo.
It is little more than a translation of Lucian’s Dialogue, yet was,
we feel confident, the channel through which Shakespeare gained the
acquaintance with that work revealed in his _Timon of Athens_. The
history of Italian comedy as a recognised form of art should, however,
be dated from the _Calandra_ of Cardinal Bibbiena, first performed
about 1508. It hardly attempts delineation of character, but, as
Symonds remarks, “achieved immediate success by reproducing both the
humour of Boccaccio and the invention of Plautus in the wittiest
vernacular.” The plot is taken from the _Menæchmi_ of Plautus, the
source of Shakespeare’s _Comedy of Errors_; but Bibbiena’s idea of
making the indistinguishable twins brother and sister enhances the
comic effect at the expense of morality, little considered by cardinals
in those days.
The great success of Bibbiena’s comedy was calculated to encourage
rivalry, and it chanced that two of the first men in Italy of the day
possessed the dramatic instinct, combined with a decided gift for
satire. In the year following the exhibition of the _Calandra_ (1509),
Ariosto gave the _Cassaria_, a comedy of intrigue on the Plautine
model. The same description is applicable to his other comedies, the
_Suppositi_, the _Lena_, the _Negromante_, and the _Scolastica_. In
all except the _Negromante_ the action turns upon the stratagems of a
knavish servant to obtain for his master the money indispensable for
the gratification of his amorous desires. This style of comedy requires
a well-contrived plot, and the maintenance of the interest throughout
by a series of ingenious surprises and unforeseen incidents. In these
Ariosto fully attains his object. Writing for the amusement of a
court, he does not care to stray from the conventions which he knows
will satisfy, and his pieces afford no measure of the success he might
have attained if he had appealed to the public and essayed to depict
Italian society as it existed. One of the characters is exceedingly
lifelike, the accommodating Dominican in the _Scolastica_, who, armed
with all imaginable faculties from the Pope, is ready to commute the
fulfilment of an inconvenient vow into the performance of some good
work profitable to his order. This play was left unfinished, but was
written before the _Lena_ and the _Negromante_, which probably appeared
about 1528.
The other Italian comic writer of genius was one of more powerful
intellect and more serious character than Ariosto, if less richly
endowed as a poet. Released from prison after the overthrow of his
party and the loss of his political position in 1512, Machiavelli
found solace in the composition of the _Mandragola_ (_Mandrake_),
a piece acted before the Pope in that day, and which could hardly
be represented anywhere in this. Its cynicism is worse than its
immorality, the plot consisting in the stratagem by which an innocent
young wife is persuaded to admit a lover; all the personages, including
the husband, who is nevertheless himself deceived in a material point,
co-operating for so laudable an end. Disagreeable as the situation is,
it is probably founded upon fact; and at all events the play is no
pale copy of Plautus or Terence, but full of consistent and strongly
individualised characters, and scenes of the most drastically comic
effect. The portrait of the rascally father confessor is particularly
vigorous, and proves of itself how ripe the times were for Luther. A
dozen more plays of equal merit would have raised the Italian stage
very high. But no successor to Machiavelli appeared; and his other
play, the _Clizia_, is deficient in originality, being little more than
a paraphrase of the _Casina_ of Plautus.
Many comedies of considerable merit succeeded Machiavelli’s, among
which may be particularly mentioned those of Firenzuola, who followed
Roman precedents, and of Cecchi, and Gelli, and Grazzini, who to a
considerable extent disengaged themselves from tradition. Angelo
Beolco, called _Il Ruzzante_, struck upon a new vein in the delineation
of rustic life, involving the employment of dialect; and, near the end
of the century, the life of the people was represented with extreme
vividness by Buonarotti, nephew of Michael Angelo, in his _Fiera_ and
_Tancia_. One other comic dramatist takes an important place, the
repulsive and decried Aretino. His claim to permanent significance is
grounded, not on the scanty literary merits of his works, but on the
unique characteristic thus expressed by Symonds, “They depict the great
world from the standpoint of the servants’ hall.” They are the work of
a low-minded man, who could see nothing but the baser traits of the
society around him, but saw these clearly, and also saw no reason why
he should not blazon what he saw. Hence his usefulness is in the ratio
of his offensiveness.
It is significant of the difference between the Italian mind and the
Spanish, and of the extent to which the former had emancipated itself
from mediævalism, that the _Rappresentazione_, touching so nearly on
the confines of the Spanish _Auto_, never developed into that or any
allied variety of the drama. The abstractions of the vices and virtues,
so natural to the Spaniard and the man of the Middle Age in general,
were uncongenial to the Italian, whose _Rappresentazioni_ were always
peopled by definite, tangible persons, even if of the spiritual order.
The _Adamo_ of Andreini, early in the seventeenth century, from which
Milton undoubtedly derived his first idea of treating the Fall in a
miracle play, might have led to a development in this direction, but
remained an isolated eccentricity. The true national development lay
in quite another path, the pastoral drama. Something like this might
be found in Gil Vicente, but we may be certain that his works were
totally unknown in Italy, and that the pastoral play grew out of such
romances as the Arcadia, such eclogues as those of Baptista Mantuanus,
and the court masques in which the principal parts were taken by
shepherds and shepherdesses. Politian’s _Orfeo_ is not very far from
being such a piece, although it is a good deal more. A pastoral masque
was composed as early as 1506 by Castiglione for the amusement of the
court of Urbino. Others followed from time to time, and developed into
a real pastoral drama by Beccari in 1554; but the literary pretensions
of this class of composition continued to be very slender until it was
virtually created by Tasso’s _Aminta_ in 1573. Few novel experiments
in literature have enjoyed a more immediate or more permanent success.
Numerous as were the _Aminta’s_ imitators, its primacy has never but
once been seriously challenged, and its nature and simplicity have
in general been justly preferred to the more elaborate artifice of
the _Pastor Fido_. It is indeed deficient in the rich poetry of its
English rival, the _Faithful Shepherdess_, “as inferior, poetically
speaking,” says Leigh Hunt, “as a lawn with a few trees on it is to
the depths of a forest.” But Leigh Hunt confesses its superiority in
“true dramatic skill, and flesh and blood interest”: it is indeed as
far as anything can be from the insipidity usually associated with
pastoral compositions. It has, moreover, more of the genuine yearning
for the golden age, the spirit which inspires Keats’s _Endymion_, than
is found in the fanciful dramas of Fletcher, or Milton, or Ben Jonson.
“The central motive of _Aminta_ and the _Pastor Fido_,” says Symonds,
“is the contrast between the actual world of ambition, treachery, and
sordid strife, and the ideal world of pleasure, loyalty, and tranquil
ease.”
Although the pastoral drama is a legitimate as well as a beautiful kind
of composition, it is not capable of very great extension or variety.
Tasso’s successors might conceivably surpass him as poets, but could
only repeat him as dramatists. His only serious competitor is his
contemporary GIOVANNI BATTISTA GUARINI, the author of the _Pastor Fido_
(1537-1612).
Guarini, the descendant of a Veronese family already distinguished
in letters, was, like Tasso, attached to the court of the Duke of
Ferrara; but, unlike Tasso, was a man of the world, and was employed
in several important missions, especially one to solicit the crown
of Poland for his master, where he nearly died of a Polish inn. Like
most of the Duke’s literary protégés, he became estranged from him,
and spent the later part of his life in roaming from court to court in
quest of employment, and litigating with his children and the world
at large. His disposition was quarrelsome; literary disputes had long
severed him from Tasso; it is to his honour that when the latter was
unable to watch over his own works, he took care of and published his
lyrical poems. The most brilliant episode of Guarini’s life was the
publication of his _Pastor Fido_ in 1590; but not the least troublesome
was the literary controversy in which it involved him. These disputes,
born rather of the idleness than of the conscientiousness of the
Italian literati, are now forgotten, and the _Pastor Fido_, a direct
challenge to the _Aminta_, is allowed an honourable though a second
place. Its relation to its predecessor may be compared to that of the
Corinthian order to the Ionic. Guarini has sought to compensate for
the lack of natural, spontaneous inspiration by superior artifice of
plot: his characters are more numerous, and his action more intricate
and ingenious. This would not have availed him much if he had not been
a poet, but this he certainly was, though with less of the _nascitur_
and more of the _fit_ than usual. Tasso was conscious of a truer
inspiration, and conveys his claim to the virtual invention of a new
mode in poetry in the verses which he has placed in the mouth of Love
appearing in the disguise of a shepherd, thus rendered by Leigh Hunt:
_After new fashion shall these woods to-day
Hear love discoursed; and it shall well be seen
That my divinity is present here
In its own person, not its ministers.
I will inbreathe high fancies in rude hearts;
I will refine, and render dulcet sweet,
Their tongues; because, wherever I may be,
Whether with rustic or heroic men,
There am I Love; and inequality,
As it may please me, I do equalise;
And ’tis my crowning glory and great miracle
To make the rustic pipe as eloquent
Even as the subtlest harp._
Guarini frequently repeated Tasso’s ideas, striving to enhance their
effect by careful elaboration. The poetry of one or both has passed
into Calderon’s _Magico Prodigioso_, and originated the scene of
the temptation of Justina, an ornament of English literature in the
incomparable version of Shelley.
FOOTNOTES:
[17] The novel by Cinthio himself on which this play is founded was
dramatised by Whetstone; but that Shakespeare had seen Cinthio’s
dramatic version also may be inferred from a minute circumstance.
Cinthio’s play, not his novel or Whetstone’s adaptation of it, has
a character named Angela, whose name disappears from _Measure for
Measure_, but who bequeaths Angelo as that of her brother, whom Cinthio
calls Juristi, and Whetstone Andrugio.