be gathered from the stage-directions to _S. Uliva_ and from the
interludes described in Giovanmaria Cecchi's _Esaltazione della
Croce_.[420] The latter piece was acted in Florence on the occasion of
Ferrando de' Medici's marriage to Cristina of Lorraine, in 1589. It
belongs, therefore, to the very last of these productions. Yet, judging
by Vasari's account of the _Ingegni_, we may assume that the style of
presentation was traditional, and that a Florentine Company of the
fifteenth century might have put a play upon the stage with at least
equal pomp. The prose description of the apparatus and the interludes
reads exactly like the narrative portion of Ben Jonson's Masks at Court,
in which the poet awards due praise to the "design and invention" of
Master Inigo Jones and to the millinery of Signor Forobosco.[421] It was
indeed, a custom derived by England from Italy for the poet to set forth
a minute record of his own designs together with their execution by the
co-operating architects, scene-painters, musicians, dress-makers, and
morris-dancers. The architect, says Cecchi, was one Taddeo di Leonardo
Landini, a member of the Compagnia, skilled in sculpture as well as an
excellent machinist. He arranged the field, or _prato_, of the Compagnia
di S. Giovanni in the form of a theater, covered with a red tent, and
painted with pictures of the Cross considered as an instrument of
shameful death, as a precious relic, and as the reward of virtue in this
life. Emblems, scrolls and heraldic achievements completed the adornment
of the theater. When the curtain rose for the first time, Jacob was seen
in a meadow, "asleep with his head on certain stones, dressed in costly
furs slung across his shoulder, with a thin shirt of fine linen beneath,
cloth-of-silver stockings and fair buskins on his feet, and in his hand
a gilt wand." While he slept, heaven opened, and seven angels appeared
seated upon clouds, and making "a most pleasant noise with horns,
greater and less viols, lutes and organ ... the music of this and all
the other interludes was the composition of Luca Bati, a man in this art
most excellent." When they had played and sung, the cloud disclosed, and
showed a second heaven, where sat God the Father.[422] All the angels
worshiped Him, and heaven increased in splendor. Then a ladder was let
down, and God, leaning upon it, turned to Jacob and "sang majestically
to the sound of many instruments, in a sonorous bass voice." Thereupon
angels descended and ascended by the ladder, singing a hymn in honor of
the Cross; and at last the clouds closed round, heaven disappeared and
Jacob woke from sleep. Such was the introduction to the drama. Between
the first and second acts was shown, with no less exuberance of scenical
resources, the exodus of Israel from Egypt; between the second and
third, the miracle of Aaron's rod that blossomed; between the third and
fourth, the elevation of the Brazen Serpent; between the fourth and
fifth, the ecstasy of David dancing before the ark "to the sound of a
large lute, a violin, a trombone, but more especially to his own harp."
After the fifth act the play was concluded with a pageant of religious
chivalry--the Knights of Malta, S. James, S. Maurice, and the Teutonic
Order--who had fought for the Cross, and to whom, amid thunderings and
lightnings, as they stood upon the stage, was granted the vision of
"Religion, habited in purest white, full of majesty, with the triple
tiara and the crossed keys of S. Peter, holding in her hand a large and
most resplendent cross, adorned with diamonds, rubies and emeralds." The
resources of a theater which could place so many actors on the stage at
once, and attempt the illusion of clouds and angels, bringing into play
the machinery of transformation scenes, and enriching the whole with a
varied accompaniment of music, must have been considerable. Those who
have spent an hour in the Teatro Farnese at Parma, erected of wood for a
similar occasion, may be able to summon by the aid of the imagination a
shadow of this spectacle before their eyes. That the effect was not
wholly grotesque, though the motives were so hazardous, can be
understood from Milton's description of the descent of Mercy in his
Christmas Ode.[423]
For the play of _S. Uliva_, though first known to us in a Florentine
reprint of 1568, we may assume a more popular origin than that of
Cecchi's Mystery of the Cross. It abounds in rare Renaissance
combinations of pagan with Christian mythology. The action extended over
two days and was interrupted at intervals by dumb shows and lyrical
interludes connected only by a slight thread with the story. At one time
a chase was brought upon the stage. On other occasions pictures,
described with minute attention to details, were presented to the
audience in Tableaux Vivants. These pictures vividly recall the style
of Florentine masters, Piero di Cosimo or Sandro Botticelli. "In the
interval," say the stage-directions to the players, "you will cause
three women, well-beseen, to issue, one of them attired in white, one in
red, the other in green, with golden balls in their hands, and with them
a young man robed in white; and let him, after looking many times first
on one and then on another of these damsels, at last stay still and say
the following verses, gazing at her who is clad in green." This is the
Mask of Hope. In another part the fable of Narcissus has to be
presented, and directions are given for the disappearance of Echo, who
is to repeat the final syllables of the boy's lament. "After he has
uttered all these complaints, let him thrice with a loud voice cry
slowly Ahime, Ahime, Ahime! and let the nymph reply, and having thus
spoken let him stretch himself upon the ground and lie like one dead;
and within a little space let there issue forth four or more nymphs clad
in white, without bows and with dishevelled hair, who, when they have
come where the youth lies dead, shall surround him in a circle and at
last having wrapped him in a white cloth, carry him within, singing this
song[424]:
"Fly forth in bliss to heaven,
Thou happy soul and fair,
To find thy planet there, and haunt the skies;
Leaving the tears and sighs
Of this low-lying earth,
Where man hath sorry mirth, as thou dost know!
Bask in the fervent glow
Of that pure light divine,
Which on thy path shall shine, and be thy guide.
Nay, soul, thou hast not died,
But still more life hast thou,
Albeit unbodied now thou art at rest.
O soul, divinely blest,
Enjoy the eternal mind,
There dwelling unconfined through nights and days!
Heaven's angels stand and gaze
Upon thy glorious eyes,
Up there in Paradise! In crowds they come!
Now hast thou found thy home;
Now art thou blithe and blest;
Dwell now for aye at rest, pure placid soul!"
For another interlude a May-day band of girls attired in
flower-embroidered dresses and youths with crowns of ivy on their heads
are marshaled by Dan Cupid. They sing a song of which the following is a
free translation:
Let earth herself adorn
With grasses and fresh flowers,
And let cold hearts, these hours, in love's fire burn.
Let field, let forest turn
To bloom this morn of May,
That the whole world to-day may leap and sing.
Let love within us spring,
Banishing winter's smart,
Waking within our heart sweet thoughts and fair.
Let little birds in air
Sing yonder boughs above;
Each young man tell his love to his own maid;
And girls through mead and glade,
With honest eyes and meek
Fixed on their lovers, seek true troth to plight.
From field and mountain height
To-day cold snows are fled;
No clouds sail overhead; up springs clear morn.
Let violets be born,
Let leaves and grasses sprout,
And children wander out, garlands to twine.
In every dingle shine
Flowers white and blue and red,
Roses and lilies shed perfume around.
Maidens with May-blooms crowned
Through copse and meadow stray,
Singing their thoughts to-day, their sweet thoughts pure.
Let none be too demure;
Innocence marries mirth,
And from the jocund earth green laurels spring.
Come, Love, and blessings bring;
Chase sorrow, scatter care;
Make all men happy there, soul-full of ease.
Soothe pain, soothe jealousies,
That with their restless flame
Feed on man's heart: no shame, no grief be near.
Night and the God of Sleep again amuse the audience with an allegorical
mask; and the seven deadly sins, figured as men, women and beasts, march
across the stage. At no great distance from a vision of Judgment, the
Sirens are introduced after this fashion: "Now goes the King to Rome;
and you, meanwhile, make four women, naked, or else clothed in
flesh-colored cloth, rise waist-high from the sea, with tresses to the
wind, and let them sing as sweetly as may be the ensuing stanzas twice;
in the which while shall two or three of you come forth, and seem to
fall asleep on earth at the hearing of the song, except one only, who
shall be armed, and with closed ears shall pass the sea unstayed, and
let the said women take those who sleep and cast them in the waves."
When we reach Uliva's wedding, we meet with the following quaint rubric:
"If you wish to beguile the weariness caused by the length of the show,
and to make the spectators take more delight in this than in any other
interlude, then you must give them some taste of these bridals by
providing a general banquet; but if you mislike the expense, then
entertain the players only." It would seem that _S. Uliva_ was acted on
the _prato_ of the confraternity, where a booth had been erected.
The forty-three plays comprised in D'Ancona's volumes may be arranged in
three classes--those which deal with Bible stories or Church doctrine
based on Scripture; dramatized Legends of the saints; and _Novelle_
transformed into religious fables. Among the first sort may be mentioned
plays of Abraham and Isaac, Joseph, Tobias and Raphael, and Esther; the
Annunciation, the Nativity, S. John in the Desert, Christ preaching in
the Temple, the Conversion of the Magdalen, the Prodigal Son, the
Passion and Resurrection of our Lord, and the Last Judgment. The
_Nativita di Cristo_ opens with a pastoral reminding us of French
_Mysteres_ and English Miracle-plays.[425] The shepherds are bivouacking
on the hills of Bethlehem when the angel appears to them. For Tudde,
Harvye, Houcken, and Trowle of our Chester play, we find these southern
names, Bobi di Farucchio, Nencio di Pucchio, Randello, Nencietto, and so
forth. But the conduct of the piece is the same. The Italian hinds
discuss their cheese and wine and bread just as the clowns of Cheshire
talk about "ale of Hatton," "sheep's head sowsed in ale," and "sour
milk." Such points of similarity are rare, however; for the
_Rappresentazioni_ were the growth of more refined conditions, and
showed their origin in sentiment and pathos. The anonymous play of _Mary
Magdalen_ rises to a higher level of dramatic art than any sacred play
in English.[426] Her story, as told in these scenes, is the versified
_novella_ of a Vittoria Accoramboni or a Bella Imperia converted by the
preaching of S. Bernardino or Savonarola. It might have happened in Rome
or Florence or Perugia. Magdalen, the lady of noble blood but famous
with ill-fame, fair of person and of heaven-bright countenance, who
dresses splendidly and lives with many lovers, spending her days in the
pleasure of rich banquets and perfumed baths, delighting her heart with
the music of lyres and flutes and the voices of young men, appears
before us with a reality that proves how deep a hold upon the poet's
fancy her picturesque tale had taken. Martha, her good but commonplace
sister, forms a foil to the more impassioned and radiant figure of
Magdalen. She has been cured by Christ, and has heard Him preach. Now
she entreats her sister but to go and listen, for never man spake words
like His. Magdalen scoffs: "Why should I be damned because I do not
follow your strange life? There is time for me to enjoy my youth, and
then to make my peace with God, and Paradise will open wide for me at
last." Her friend Marcella enters with another argument: "O Magdalen, if
you did but know how fair and gracious are his eyes! Surely he has come
forth straight from heaven; could you but see him once, your heart would
never be divided from him." This touches the right spring in Magdalen's
mind. She will not go to hear the words of Christ, but the face and form
that came from Paradise allure her. Besides, in the church where Christ
will preach, there will be found new lovers and men in multitudes to
gaze at her. Her maidens array her in gold and crimson, and bind up her
yellow hair; and forth she rides in all her bravery surrounded by her
suitors. What follows may best be told by a translation of the
stage-directions and a passage of the play itself.
And at these last verses Jesus enters the temple; and having
gone up into the pulpit, he begins to preach and to say with a
loud voice, "Homo quidam peregre proficiscens vocavit servos
suos et tradidit illis bona sua." Now comes Magdalen with her
company, and her young men prepare for her a seat before the
pulpit, and she in all her pomp takes her place upon it,
regarding her own pleasure, nor paying heed as yet to Jesus.
Afterward, Jesus looks at her and goes on preaching, always
keeping his most holy gaze bent upon her; and she, after the
first stanza of the sermon, looks at him, and her eyes meet
those of Jesus. Then he goes on preaching, and says as
follows:
A certain lord who on a journey went,
Called unto him each of his serving men,
And of his goods gave them arbitrament:
To one he dealt five talents, to one ten,
To another two, to try their heart's intent,
And see how far they should be careless; then
Unto the last he left but one alone:
According to their powers, he charged each one.
And when he had departed, instantly
That servant unto whom he gave the five,
Went forth, and laboring with much industry,
Increased them, and therewith so well did thrive
That other five he gained immediately,
To render when his master should arrive;
He who received but twain, did even so,
And added to his sum another two.
But he on whom one talent was bestowed,
Went forthwith and concealed it in the soil:
Careless, unthankful for the debt he owed,
While he hath peace, he seeks but strife and toil:
Called like his fellows in that lord's abode,
He answers not, but doth himself despoil;
And, as a worthless steward, hides away
The money of his master day by day.
Woe to thee, slothful servant and remiss,
That hast thy talent buried in the ground!
When reckoning comes, thou'lt yield account for this
Nay, think how stern and rigorous he'll be found!
Weep, then, in time for what thou'st done amiss,
Before the trumpets of the judgment sound:
O soul, I tell thee thou hast gone astray,
Hiding thy talent in the earth away!
He who on earth sets his affections still,
Forgetful of the promised heavenly treasure;
He who loves self more than his Maker's will,
And in ill-doing finds continual pleasure;
He who remembers not that sin must kill,
Nor thinks how Hell will plague him above measure;
He who against himself makes fast heaven's gate;
Hideth in earth his talent till too late.
He who loves father, mother, more than God,
Not reckoning His great gifts bestowed on man;
He who the path of worldly gain hath trod,
Publishes for himself damnation's ban:
Woe, woe to that bad servant sunk in fraud,
Who leaves the good and doth what ill he can!
He who on this world seeks his joy to find,
His talent hides in earth, perversely blind.
He who is grasping, proud, discourteous, base,
Who dreameth not that he may come to want,
Who seeks for flattery, praise, and pride of place,
Lording it with high airs and arrogant;
Who to the world gives all, and still doth chase
Delight in songs and pomps exorbitant;
Who in this life is fain to rest and sleep--
His talent in the earth lies hidden deep.
Woe for that servant who through negligence
Hath hearkened not to the command divine!
Yea, he shall hear the dreadful doom: Go hence!
Go forth, accursed, in endless fire to pine!
There shall be then no time for penitence:
Bound hand and foot with punishment condign,
He shall abide among lost souls beneath,
Where is great weeping and great gnashing of teeth.
O soul, so full of sins, what shalt thou do?
Of all thy countless crimes abominable,
Look to the end! Look to it! Hell for you
Lies open, with damned folk innumerable!
Whence thou shalt never issue, ever rue
In vain remorse and pangs intolerable!
Weep, soul, ah weep for thy most vile estate,
Now that repentance need not come too late!
Seek in this life to feel sincere contrition,
Before the judge so just and so severe
Summons thee to his throne, for inquisition
Into each sin, each thought that wandered here;
There shalt thou find no merciful remission,
But justice shall be dealt with truth austere;
And he who fails shall go to burn with shame
For ever, ever, in eternal flame.
Quis ex vobis centum oves habens,
Si forte unam ex illis perdiderit,
Nonne nonagintas novem dimittens
Et illam querit, donec ipsam invenerit?
Et cum invenerit, in humeros ponens,
Gaudens, in domum suam cito venerit,
And calls his kinsfolk and his friends to make
Festival for the new-found wanderer's sake?
The soul, she is that lost and wandering sheep;
Eternal God is the true shepherd: He
Seeks her, lest on his lamb the wolf should leap,
The fiend, who slays with guile and treachery.
He spends his life, her safe to seek and keep,
And leaves those ninety-nine in bliss to be;
And when he finds her, makes great joy in heaven,
With all the angelic host, o'er one forgiven.
There was a father who had children twain;
The younger son began to speak and pray
That he might take his share, for he was fain,
Furnished therewith, from home to wend his way:
The father gently urged him to remain,
But at the last was bounden to obey:
Far, far away he roamed, and spent his all,
Sad wretch, on carnal joys and prodigal.
But when he came to want, repenting sore,
Unto his father, all ashamed, he knelt;
His father clothed him with new robes, and bore
Even more tender love than first he felt:
So doth high God, who lives for evermore,
Unto the souls that with repentance melt;
Let them but seek his love with contrite will,
He is most merciful, and pardons still.
Soul, thou hast wounded many hearts, I wis,
Dwelling in delicate and vain delight;
With many a lover thou wouldst toy and kiss
And art o'erfull of evil appetite;
Thy heart is big with strifes and jealousies:
Turn unto me; I wait to wash thee white;
That with the rest thy talent thou mayst double,
And dwell with them in heaven secure from trouble.
After the blessing of Jesus, Magdalen, weeping, and with her
head covered, can have no rest for the great confusion that
she felt; and all the people wept, and in great astonishment
were waiting agaze to see what should ensue.
_O alma peccatrice, che farai?_--Christ's voice with its recurrences of
gravely sweet persuasion melts Magdalen's heart. She may not speak one
word, until her sister has led her home and comforted her a space. Then
she answers:
Deh, priega Iddio che m'allumini il core!
After this, left alone with her own soul, awakened to the purer
consciousness that Christ has stirred, she takes the box of ointment,
and, despoiled of all her goodly raiment, with her hair disheveled, goes
to the house of the Pharisee. There at last, with the breaking of the
alabaster, she dissolves in tears, and her heart finds peace. In these
scenes, if anywhere, we have the stuff from which the drama might have
been evolved. Magdalen is a living woman, such as Palma might have
painted; and Christ is a real man gifted with power to penetrate the
soul.
The _Figliuol Prodigo_ illustrates the same effort on the poet's part to
steep an old-world story in the vivid colors of to-day.[427] In the
Prodigal himself we find a coarse-hearted villain, like Hogarth's Idle
Apprentice--vain, silly, lustful, gluttonous, careless of the honor and
love that belong to him in his father's home. The scenes with the
innkeeper, the gamblers, and the ruffians, among whom he runs to ruin,
portray the vulgar dissipations of Florence, and justify the common
identification of taverns with places of ill-fame.[428] There is a touch
of true pathos at the end of the play in the grief of the father who has
lost his son. The conflict of feelings in the heart of the elder
brother, vexed at first with the prodigal's reception, but melting into
love and pity at the fervor of his penitence, is also not without
dramatic spirit. At the very end "a boy with the lyre" enters and
"speaks the moral of the parable."[429]
The movement of these two plays is not impeded by the sanctity of the
subject. When, however, the legend belongs more immediately to the
narrative of Christ's life, the form of the Representation is more
severe. This is especially true of Castellani's _Cena e Passione_,
where the incidents of the Last Supper, the Agony in the Garden, the
trials before Pilate and Caiaphas, the Flagellation, and the Crucifixion
are narrated with reverential brevity.[430] In reading these scenes, we
must summon to our memory Luca della Robbia's bass-reliefs or the
realistic groups of the Lombard Sacri Monti. The colored terra-cotta
figures in those chapels among the chestnut trees above the Sesia are
but Castellani's poetry conveyed in tableaux, while the Florentine
actors undoubtedly aimed at presenting by their grouping, dresses and
attitudes a living image of such plastic work. But the peculiar pathos
of the Italians found finer expression in picture or fresco--in Luini's
"Flagellation" at S. Maurizio or the pallid anguish of Tintoretto's
women sunk beneath the Cross in the Scuola di San Rocco--than in the
fluent stanzas of the sacred playwrights. On the walls of church or
oratory the sweetness and languor of emotion became as dignified in
beauty as the melodies of Pergolese, and its fervor touched at times the
sublimity of tragic passion. Not words but plastic forms were ever the
noblest vehicle of Italian feeling. Yet each kind of art may be
profitably used to illustrate the other, and the simple phrases of the
_Rappresentazioni_ are often the best comments on finished works of
painting. Here, for example, is Raphael's _Lo Spasimo_ in words[431]:
Oime, figliuol, e questo il viso
Ch'era tanto formoso e tanto bello?
Ome, dove si specchia el paradiso
Oggi e percosso in tanto gran flagello!
Io vengo a morte, figliuol mio diletto,
Se non ti tengo nelle braccia stretto.
Mary faints, and the Magdalen supports her, weeping[432]:
Ome, che per dolor Maria vien meno:
Noi perderem la madre col figliuolo.
Pallido e il volto gia tanto sereno,
Quale e tutto mutato pel gran duolo.
El polso manca, e nel sacrato seno
El cuor suo resta respirante solo.
Soccorso, aiuto; ognun gli dia conforto,
Sendo aghiacciato il corpo e quasi morto.
The hearts of these rude poets were very tender for Mary, Mother of our
Lord. There is a touching passage in the _Disputa al Tempio_, when
Joseph and the Virgin are walking toward the temple with the boy who is
to them a sacred charge[433]:
_Iosef._ I' guido e son guidato, e reggo quello
Che regge me, e muovo chi mi muove:
Pastor mi fo di quel ch'io son agnello;
O quanta grazia in questo servo piove!
_Maria._ S'i' alzo gli occhi alquanto per vederlo,
Contemplo nel mirar cose alte e nuove.
Per la virtu di sua divina forma
L'amante ne l'amato si trasforma.
Something artless and caressing in these words brings before us Luini's
Joseph with his golden-brown robes and white hair, Mary in her blue and
crimson with the beautiful braided curls of gold. The Magdalen, again,
moves through all these solemn scenes with a grace peculiar to her
story. The poet, like the painter, never forgets that her sins were
forgiven _quia multum amavit_. She who in Luini's fresco at Lugano
kneels with outstretched arms and long fair rippling loosened hair,
beneath the Cross, is shown in the _Resurrezione di Gesu Cristo_ upon
her knees before the gardener whose one word tells her that she sees her
risen Lord.[434] It is a scene from Fra Angelico, a touch of tenderness
falling like a faint soft light athwart the mass of orthodox tradition.
The sympathy between these shows and the plastic arts may be still
further traced in Belcari's _Di del Giudizio_.[435] After the usual
prologue an angel thrice blows the trumpet blast that wakes the dead,
crying aloud _Surgite!_ Minos assembles his fiends, and Christ bids the
archangel separate the good from the bad.[436] Michael, obedient to this
order, seeks a hypocrite hidden among the just and sets him on the left
hand, while Trajan is taken from the damned and placed among the saved.
Solomon rises alone,[437] and remains undecided in the middle space,
till Michael, charging him with carnal sin, forces him to take his
station with the goats. S. Peter now disputes with wicked friars who
think to save themselves by pointing to their cowls and girdles. The
poor appeal to S. Francis, but he answers that poverty is no atonement
for a sinful life. Magdalen refuses help to women who have lived
impenitent. Christ and Mary reply that the hour of grace is past. Then
the representatives of the seven deadly sins step forth and reason with
the virtuous--the proud man with the humble, the glutton with the
temperate. Sons upbraid their fathers for neglect or evil education.
Others thank God for the discipline that saved them in their youth. At
the last Christ awards judgment, crying to the just: "Ye saw me hungry
and ye fed me, naked and ye clothed me!" and to the unjust: "I was
hungry and ye fed me not, naked and ye clothed me not." Just and unjust
answer, as in Scripture, with those words whereof the double irony is so
dramatic. The damned are driven off to Hell, and angels open for the
blessed the doors of Paradise.
The _Rappresentazioni_ of the second class offer fewer points of
interest; almost the sole lesson they inculcate being the superiority of
the monastic over the secular life. S. Anthony leaves the world in which
he has lived prosperous and wealthy, incarcerates his sister in a
convent, and becomes a hermit.[438] Satan assembles the hosts of hell
and makes fierce war upon his resolution; but the temptation is a poor
affair, and Anthony gets through it by the help of an angel. The play
ends with an assault of the foiled fiend of Avarice upon three
rogues--Tagliagambe, Scaramuccia, and Carabello--who cut each other's
throats over their ill-gotten booty. _S. Guglielmo Gualtero_, like S.
Francis, sells all that he possesses, embraces poverty, and becomes a
saint.[439]. _S. Margaret_ subdues the dragon, and is beheaded by a
Roman prefect for refusing homage to the pagan deities.[440] _SS.
Giovanni e Paolo_ are Latin confessors of the conventional type.[441]
The legends of the _Seven Sleepers_, _S. Ursula_, and _S. Onofrio_ are
treated after a like fashion. _S. Eufrasia_ still further illustrates
the medieval ideal of monastic chastity.[442] She leaves her betrothed
husband and her mother to enter a convent. Nothing befalls her, and her
life is good for nothing, except that she exhales the odor of conventual
sanctity and dies. _S. Teodora_ is a variation on the same theme.[443]
She refuses Quintiliano, the governor of Asia, in marriage; and is sent
to a bad house, whence Eurialo, a Christian, delivers her. Both are
immediately dispatched to execution. It is probable that the two
last-mentioned plays were intended for representation within the walls
of a nunnery. _S. Barbara_ presents the same motive, with a more marked
theological bias.[444] Dioscoro, the father of the saint, hears from his
astrologers that she is fated to set herself against the old gods of his
worship. To avert this calamity, he builds a tower with two windows,
where he shuts her up in the company of orthodox pagan teachers. Barbara
becomes learned in her retirement, and refuses, upon the authority of
Plato, to pay homage to idols. Faith, instead of Love, finds this new
Danae, in the person, not of Zeus, but of a priest dispatched by Origen
from Alexandria to convert her to Christianity. The princess learns her
catechism, is baptized, and adds a third window to her tower, in
recognition of the Trinity. It only remains for her father to torture
her cruelly to death.
The outline of these stories is often singularly beautiful, and capable
of poetic treatment. Remembering what Massinger and Decker made of the
_Virgin Martyr_, we turn with curiosity to _S. Teodora_ or _S. Ursula_.
Yet we are doomed to disappointment. The ingenuous charm, again, which
painters threw over the puerilities of the monastic fancy, is absent
from these plays. Sodoma's legend of S. Benedict in fresco on the walls
of Monte Oliveto, Carpaccio's romance of S. Ursula painted for her
Scuola at Venice, are touched with the grace of a child's fairy-story.
The _Rappresentazioni_ eliminate all elements of mystery and magic from
the fables, and reduce them to bare prose. The core of the myth or tale
is rarely reached; the depths of character are never penetrated; and
still the wizardry of wonderland is gone. In the hands of these Italian
playwrights the most pregnant story of the Orient or North assumed the
thin slight character of ordinary life. Its richness disappeared. Its
beauty evanesced. Nothing remained but the dry bones of a _novella_.
Indeed, the prose legends of the fourteenth century are far more
fascinating than these dramatized tales of the Renaissance, which might
be used to prove, if further proof were needed, that the Italian
imagination is not in the highest sense romantic or fantastic, not
far-reaching by symbol or by vision into the depths of nature human and
impersonal. The sense of infinity which gives value to Northern works of
fancy, is unknown in Italy. Sir Thomas Mallory wrote of Arthur's passage
into dreamland[445]: "And when they were at the water's side, even fast
by the banke hoved a little barge with many faire ladies in it, and
among them all was a queene, and all they had blacke hoods, and they
wept and shriked when they saw King Arthur." The author of the _Tavola
Ritonda_ makes the event quite otherwise precise[446]:
E stando per un poco, ed ecco per lo mare venire una
navicella, tutta coperta di bianco ... e la nave s'accosto
allo re, e alquante braccia uscirono della nave che presono lo
re Artu, e visibilemente il misono nella nave, e portarollo
via per mare ... si crede che la fata Morgana venisse per arte
in quella navicella, e portollo via in una isoletta di mare; e
quivi mori di sue ferite, e la fata il sopelli in quella
isoletta.
This anxiety after verification and distinctness is almost invariable in
Italian literature. The very devil becomes a definite and oftentimes
prosaic personage. External Nature is credited with no inner spirit,
reaching forth from wood or wave or cloud to touch the soul of man in
reverie or trance, or breaking on his charmed senses in the form of
gnome or water-sprite or fairy. Men and women move in clear sunlight,
disenchanted of the gloom or glory, as of star-irradiate vapor, which a
Northern mytho-poet wraps around them, making their humanity thereby
more poignant.
Those who care to connect the genius of a people with the country of
their birth, may find the source of these mental qualities in the nobly
beautiful, serene and gracious, but never mystical Italian land. The
Latin Camoenae have neither in ancient nor in modern years evoked the
forms of mythic fable from that landscape. Far less is there the touch
of Celtic or Teutonic inspiration--the light that never was on sea or
land. The nightingales of Sorrento or Nettuno in no poet's vision have
Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Down the hillsides between Lucca and Pistoja, where the cypresses stand
in rows and olives cast their shadows on the gray tilled soil, no lover
has dreamed he met Queen Guinevere in spring riding through flowers with
Lancelot. Instead of Morgan le Fay, turning men to lichened and
mist-moistened stones upon the heath, the Italian witch was ever
Locusta, the poison-brewer, or Alcina, the temptress.
This peculiarity of the Italian genius made their architects incapable
of understanding Gothic. This deprived Italian art of that sublimity
which needs a grain of the grotesque for its perfection, a touch of the
uncouth for its accomplishment. The instinct of poets and artists alike
induced them to bring mystery within the sphere of definition, to limit
the marvelous by reducing it to actual conditions, and to impoverish the
terrible by measuring its boundaries. But since every defect has its
corresponding quality, this same instinct secured for the modern age a
world of immaculate loveliness in art and undimmed joyousness in poetry.
If the wonderland of fancy is eliminated, the monstrous and unshaped
have disappeared. With the grotesque vanishes disproportion. Humanity,
conscious of its own emotion, displaces the shadowy people of the
legends. We move in a well-ordered world of cheerfulness and beauty,
made for man, where symmetry of parts is music. Ariosto's jocund irony
is no slight compensation for the imagery of a Northern mythus.
Returning to the _Rappresentazioni_, we are forced to admit that the
defect of the Italian fancy is more apparent than its quality, in a
species of dramatic art which, being childish, needed some magic spell
to reconcile an adult taste to its puerility.[447] They were written at
the most prosaic moment of the national development, by men who could
not afford to substitute the true Italian poetry of irony and idyllic
sensuousness for the ancient religious spirit. The bondage of the middle
ages was upon them. They were forced to take the extravagance of the
monastic imagination for fact. But they did not really believe; and so
the fact was apprehended frigidly, prosaically. Instead of poetry we get
rhetoric; instead of marvels, gross incredibilities are forced upon us
in the lives of men and women fashioned like the folk who crowd the
streets we know. Another step in the realistic direction would have
transformed all these religious myths into _novelle_; and then a new
beauty, the beauty of the Decameron and _Novellino_, would have been
shed upon them. But it was precisely this step that Castellani and
Belcari dared not take, since their purpose remained religious
edification. Nay, their instinct led them in the opposite direction.
Unable to escape the influence of the _novella_, which was the truest
literary form peculiar to Italy in that age, they converted it into a
sacred legend and treated it with the same rhetorical and insincere
pietism as the stories of the Saints. From S. Barbara to the third-class
_Rappresentazioni_ the transition is easy.
The interest of this group of stories, as illustrating the psychological
conditions of the Italian imagination, is great. Stripped of medieval
mystery, reduced to the proportions of a _novella_, but not yet invested
with its worldly charm, denuded of the pregnant symbolism or tragic
intensity of their originals, these plays reveal the poverty of the
fifteenth century, the incapacity of the Florentine genius at that
moment to create poetry outside the sphere of figurative art, and in a
region where irony and sensuality and natural passion were alike
excluded. They might be compared to dead bones awaiting the
spirit-breath of mirth and sarcasm to rouse them into life. _Teofilo_ is
the Italian Faustus.[448] A devil accuses him to the Bishop he is
serving. Outcast and dishonored, he seeks Manovello, a Jewish sorcerer,
who takes him to a cross-way and raises the fiend, Beelzebub. Teofilo
abjures Christ, adores the devil, and signs a promise to be Satan's
bondsman. In return, Beelzebub dispatches a goblin, Farfalletto, to the
Bishop, who believes that an angel has come to bid him restore Teofilo
to honor. Consequently Teofilo regains his post. But in the midst of his
prosperity the renegade is wretched. Stung by conscience, he throws
himself upon the mercy of our Lady. She pleads for him with Christ,
summons the devil, and wrests from his grasp the parchment given by
Teofilo. Poetic justice is satisfied by Manovello's descent to hell.
Such is the prosaic form which the Faust legend assumed in Italy.
Instead of the lust for power and knowledge which consumed the doctor of
Wittenberg, making him exclaim:
Had I as many souls as there be stars,
I'd give them all for Mephistophilis!
we have this commonplace story of a bishop's almoner, driven by a vulgar
trial of his patience to abjure the faith. The intercession of Mary
introduces a farcial element into the piece: the audience is amused by
seeing the devil's contract snatched from him after a jocular
altercation with the Queen of Heaven. Our Mephistophilis is either
fantastically grotesque, as in the old prose-legend, or tragically
saturnine, as in Marlowe's tragedy. The fiend of this Florentine play is
a sort of supernatural usurer, who lends at a short date upon exorbitant
interest, and is nonsuited for fraud in the supreme court of appeal. To
charge the Italian imagination in general with this dwarfing and
defining of a legend that had in it such elements of grandeur, might be
scarcely fair. The fault lies more perhaps with Florence of the
fifteenth century; yet Florence was the brain of Italy, and if the
people there could find no more of salt or savor in a myth like that of
Theophilus, this fact gives food for deep reflection to the student of
their culture.
In the _Re Superbo_ we have one of those stories which traveled from the
far East in the middle ages over the whole of Europe, acquiring a
somewhat different form in every country.[449] The proud king in the
midst of his prosperity falls sick. He takes a short day's journey to a
watering-place, and bathes. By night an angel assumes his shape, dons
his royal robes, summons his folk, and fares homeward to his palace. The
king, meanwhile, is treated by the innkeeper as an impudent rascal. He
begs some rags to cover his nakedness, and arrives in due time at the
city he had left the day before. There his servants think him mad; but
he obtains an audience with the angel, who reads him a sermon on
humility, and then restores him to his throne. In this tale there lay
nothing beyond the scope of the Italian imagination. Consequently the
treatment is adequate, and the situations copied from real life are
really amusing. The play of _Barlaam e Josafat_ by Bernardo Pulci is
more ambitious.[450] Josafat's father hears from his astrologers that
the child will turn Christian. Accordingly he builds a tower, and places
his son there, surrounded with all things pleasant to the senses and
cheering to the heart of man. His servants receive strict orders that
the boy should never leave his prison, lest haply, meeting with old age
or poverty or sickness, he should think of Christ. On one occasion they
neglect this rule. Josafat rides forth and sees a leper and a blind man,
and learns that age and death and pain are in store for all. This stirs
reflection, and prepares him to receive the message of one Barlaam, who
comes disguised as a merchant to the tower. Barlaam offers him a jewel
which restores sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, speech to the
dumb, and which turns a fool to wisdom. The jewel is the faith of
Christ. Josafat is instantly converted and baptized; nor can the
persuasions of wise men or the allurements of women overcome his fixed
resolve. So firmly rooted is his new faith, so wonderful his eloquence,
that he converts his father and the Court, and receives for his great
wisdom the crown of his ancestors. Yet an earthly throne savors too much
in his eyes of worldly pride. Therefore he renounces it, and lives
thenceforth a holy hermit. This legend, it will be perceived, is a dim
echo of the wonderful history of Siddartha, the founder of Buddhism.
Beautiful as are the outlines, too beautiful to be spoiled by any
telling, Pulci has done his best to draw it from the dream-world of
romance into the sphere of prose. At the same time, while depriving it
of romance, he has not succeeded in dramatizing it. We do not feel the
psychological necessity for the changes in any of the characters; the
charm of each strange revolution is destroyed by the clumsy preparation
of the motives. We are forced to feel that the playwright was working on
the lines of a legend he did not understand and could not vitalize. The
wonder is that he thought of choosing it and found it ready to his hand.
Few of the _Rappresentazioni_ are so interesting as _S. Uliva_.[451]
Uliva is no saint of the Catholic calendar but a daughter of world-old
romance. Her legend may be read in the _Gesta Romanorum_, in Philip de
Beaumanoir's _Roman de la Mannelline_, in Ser Giovanni's _Pecorone_, in
Chaucer's _Man of Law's Tale_, in Grimm's _Handless Maiden_, and in
Russian and Servian variations on the same theme. It is in truth the
relic of some very ancient myth, used by the poets of all ages for the
sake of its lesson of patience in affliction, its pathos of persecuted
innocence. The form the tale assumed in Italy is this. Uliva, daughter
of the Roman Emperor, Giuliano, is begged in marriage by her own father,
who says she has more beautiful hands than any other princess. She cuts
her hands off, and Giuliano sends her to Britain to be killed. But her
murderers take pity on her, and leave her in a wood alone. There the
King of Britain finds her and places her under the protection of his
queen. After many misfortunes the Virgin Mary restores her hands, and
she is married to the King of Castile. She bears him a son; but by this
time she has roused the jealousy and hatred of the queen-mother, who
takes the opportunity of the king's absence to poison his mind against
her by letters, and shortly after drives her forth with her child. Uliva
reaches Rome, and lives there twelve years unknown, till her husband,
who has discovered and punished his mother's treason, and has sought his
wronged wife sorrowing, at last rejoins her and recognizes in her son
his heir. The play ends with a reconciliation scene between the
Emperor, the King, and Uliva, the Pope pronouncing benedictions on the
whole party. It will be seen from this brief abstract of the legend that
the _Rappresentazione_ is a chivalrous _novella_ dramatized. Several old
pathetic stories have been woven into one, and the heroine has been
dignified with the title of saint because of the pity she inspires.
Uliva belongs to the sisterhood of Boccaccio's Griselda, Ariosto's
Ginevra, and the Queen in our old ballad of Sir Aldingar. The medieval
imagination, after creating types of stateliness like Guinivere, of
malice like Morgana, of love like Iseult, turned aside and dwelt upon
the tender delicacy of a woman, whose whole strength is her beauty,
gentleness, and patience; who suffers all things in the spirit of
charity; whom the angels love and whom our Lady cherishes; who wins all
hearts of men by her goodliness; and who, like Una, passes unscathed
through peril and persecution until at last her joy is perfected by the
fruition of her lawful love. It was precisely this element of romance
that touched the Italian fancy; and the playwright of _S. Uliva_ has
shown considerable skill in his treatment of it. Piteous details are
accumulated with remorseless pertinacity upon the head of the
unfortunate Uliva, in order to increase the pathos of her situation.
There is no mitigation of her hardships except in her own innocence, and
in the loving compassion wrung by her beauty from her rude tormentors.
This want of relief, together with the brusque passage from one incident
to another, betrays a lack of dramatic art. But the poet, whoever he
was, succeeded in sustaining the ideal of purity and beauty he
conceived. He shows how all Uliva's sufferings as well as her good
fortune were due to the passions her beauty inspired, and how it was her
purity that held her harmless to the end.
_Stella_ is the same story slightly altered, with a somewhat different
cast of characters and an evil-hearted step-mother in the place of the
malignant queen.[452] If we compare both fables with Grimm's version of
the "Handless Maiden," the superiority of the Northern conception cannot
fail to strike us. The Italian _novella_, though written for the people,
exhibits the external pomp and grandeur of royalty. All its motives are
drawn from the clash of human passions. Yet these are hidden beneath a
superincumbent mass of trivialities. The German tale has a background of
spiritual mystery--good and evil powers striving for the possession of a
blameless soul. When the husband, who has been deceived by feminine
malice, takes his long journey without food as a penitent to find his
injured wife, how far deeper is the pathos and the poetry of the
situation than the Italian apparatus of couriers with letter-bags,
chancellors, tournaments, and royal progresses undertaken with a vast
parade, can compass! The Northern fancy, stimulated by the simple beauty
of the situation, confines itself to the passionate experience of the
heart and soul. The Florentine playwright adheres to the material facts
of life, and takes a childish pleasure in passing the splendors of kings
and princes in review. By this method he vulgarizes the legend he
handles. Beneath his touch it ceases to be holy ground. The enchantment
of the myth has evanesced.
_Rosana_ is simply the story of _Floire et Blanchefleur_, which
Boccaccio had already worked into his _Filocopo_.[453] Austero, King of
Rome, goes with his wife on pilgrimage to Holy Land. He falls into the
hands of the King of Cesaria, and is slain with all his folk, except the
queen. She is taken captive to Cesaria, where she gives birth to Rosana
on the same day that Ulimeno is born to her master. When Ulimeno grows
up, he loves the daughter of his father's slave. His parents seek to
cure this passion by sending him to France, and at the same time sell
Rosana to some merchants, who convey her to the Sultan's harem. Ulimeno
returns to Cesaria in deep distress, and vows that he will never rest
till he has regained his love. After a proper number of adventures, he
finds Rosana in the seraglio, where notwithstanding the Sultan's
admiration of her beauty, she has preserved her virginity. They are
married, and Ulimeno is converted, with his realm, to Christianity. The
prettiest parts of this play are the scenes in the seraglio, where
Rosana refuses comfort from the Sultan's women, and the contrivances
devised by Ulimeno to get speech with her. Except that Rosana and her
parents are Christian and that the saints protect her, there is nothing
to justify the title of _Sacra Rappresentazione_. It is a love-romance,
like Shakspere's _Pericles_.
Another _novella_ of less poetic interest is dramatized in _Agnolo
Ebreo_.[454] Agnolo, the Jew, has a Christian wife, who persuades him
instead of putting out his money at usury to lend it to Christ by giving
it away in alms. Having thus cast his bread upon the waters, he
recovers it again after not many days by picking up money in the streets
and finding a jewel in a fish's belly. He is baptized, because he sees
clearly that the God of the Christians can make him rich. Only its
tedious solemnity prevents this play from being a farce.
Three _Rappresentazioni_ are written upon incidents of pilgrimage to the
shrine of S. James of Compostella--Il Santo Barone, as he is always
called. The first of these is entitled _Rappresentazione di un
Pellegrino_.[455] It tells the tale of a certain Guglielmo who vowed the
journey to Compostella on his sick bed. Upon the road he meets with a
fiend in the disguise of S. James, who persuades him to commit suicide.
No sooner is he dead, than the devil grasps his soul, as may be seen in
Lorenzetti's fresco of the Campo Santo, and makes away with it toward
hell. S. James stops him, and a voluble altercation takes place between
them, at the end of which the soul, who keeps crying _misericordia_ at
intervals, is rescued and restored to its body. Then Guglielmo completes
his vow, and returns joyfully to his wife. _I due Pellegrini_ is more
complex.[456] Arrigo Coletta leaves his wife and son at Rome;
Constantino Constante leaves his wife and three sons at Genoa; and both
set forth to Compostella. On the way they meet and make friends; but the
Genoese dies before they have got far upon their journey. His Roman
friend carries the dead body to Compostella, where S. James restores it
to life, and both return in safety to their homes. After sojourning some
time in Rome, Arrigo falls sick of leprosy, and has to go forth and
wander up and down the earth. Chance brings him to the house of the
Genoese who had received such benefits from him upon their pilgrimage.
They consult doctors and wise men together, who assure them that no cure
can be wrought unless the leper bathe from head to foot in the blood of
virgins. This determines Constantino to sacrifice all that he holds
dearest in the world. He kills his three sons, and prepares a bath of
their blood, which restores his old benefactor to health. But the Saint
of Compostella has still his eye upon his servants. A miracle brings the
three boys back to life. They are found with golden apples in their
hands, and the play ends with a general thanksgiving. The prosy
bluntness with which the incidents of this strange story are treated as
matter of fact, is scarcely less remarkable than the immorality which
substitutes mere thaumaturgy for the finer instincts of humanity. The
exaggerated generosity of Constantino might be paralleled from hundreds
of _novelle_. This one virtue seems to have had extraordinary
fascination for the Italians. _I tre Pellegrini_ is based upon a legend
of medieval celebrity, versified by Southey in his "Pilgrimage to
Compostella."[457] A father, a mother, and a son of great personal
beauty set forth together for the shrine of S. Iago. On the road they
put up at an inn, where Falconetta, the host's daughter, falls in love
with the boy and tempts him. Thwarted in her will, she vows to ruin him;
and for this purpose, puts a silver cup into his traveling bag. In the
morning the pilgrims are overtaken by the police, who find the cup and
hang the beautiful young man. The parents complete their vow, and on the
way back discover their son upon the gallows alive and well. Falconetta
is burned, and her parents are hanged--the old host remarking, not
without humor, that, though he was innocent of this crime, he had
murdered enough people in his day to have deserved his fate. The style
of this play merits more praise than can be bestowed on the
_Rappresentazioni_ in general. Falconetta is a real theatrical
character, and the bustle of the inn on the arrival of the guests is
executed with dramatic vigor.
In their _Sacre Rappresentazioni_ the Florentines advanced to the very
verge of the true drama. After adapting the Miracle-plays of medieval
orthodoxy to their stage, they versified the Legends of the Saints, and
went so far as to dramatize novels of a purely secular character. The
_Figliuol Prodigo_ and the farce appended to the _Pellegrino_ contain
the germs of vernacular comedy. S. Maddalena is a complete character. S.
Uliva is delicately sketched and well sustained. The situation at the
opening of the _Tre Pellegrini_ is worked out with real artistic skill.
Lastly, in the _Esaltazione della Croce_ a regular five-act tragedy was
attempted.
From the oratories of the Compagnie and the parlors of the convents this
peculiar form of art was extended to the Courts and public theaters.
Poliziano composed a _Rappresentazione_ on the classical fable of
Orpheus, and Niccolo da Correggio another on the myth of Cephalus and
Procris.[458] Other attempts to secularize the religious drama
followed, until, in 1521, Francesco Mantovano put the contemporary
history of the French General Lautrec upon the boards.
Still the fact remains that the _Sacre Rappresentazioni_ did not lead to
the production of a national Italian theater. If we turn to the history
of our Elizabethan stage, we shall find that, after the age of the
Miracles and Moralities had passed, a new and independent work of art,
emanating from the creative genius of Marlowe and Shakspere, put England
in the possession of that great rarity, a Drama commensurate with the
whole life of the nation at one of its most brilliant epochs. To this
accomplishment of the dramatic art the Italians never attained. The
causes of their failure will form the subject of a separate inquiry when
we come to consider the new direction taken by the playwrights at the
Courts of Ferrara and Rome.
As an apology for the space here devoted to the analysis of plays
childish in their subject-matter, prosaic in their treatment, and
fruitless of results, it may be urged that in the _Sacre
Rappresentazioni_ better than elsewhere we can study the limitations of
the popular Italian genius at the moment when the junction was effected
between humanism and the spirit of the people.
FOOTNOTES:
[358] Muratori, _Rer. Ital. Script._ viii. 712.
[359] A curious letter describing the entrance of the _Battuti_ into
Rome in 1399 may be read in Romagnoli's publication _Le Compagnie de'
Battuti in Roma_, Bologna, 1862. It refers to a period later by a
century than the first outbreak of the enthusiasm.
[360] Some banners--_Gonfaloni_ or _Stendardi_--of the Perugian
fraternities, preserved in the Pinacoteca of that town, are
interesting for their illustration of these religious companies at a
later date. The Gonfalone of S. Bernardino by Bonfigli represents the
saint between heaven and earth pleading for his votaries. Their
Oratory (Cappella di Giustizia) is seen behind, and in front are the
men and women of the order. That of the _Societas Annuntiatae_ with
date 1466, shows a like band of lay brethren and sisters. That of the
Giustizia by Perugino has a similar group, kneeling and looking up to
Madonna, who is adored by S. Francis and S. Bernardino in the heavens.
Behind is a landscape with a portion of Perugia near the Church of S.
Francis. The Stendardo of the Confraternita di S. Agostino by
Pinturicchio exhibits three white-clothed members of the body,
kneeling and gazing up to their patron. There is also a fine picture
in the Perugian Pinacoteca by Giov. Boccati of Camerino (signed and
dated 1447) representing Madonna enthroned in a kind of garden,
surrounded by child-like angels with beautiful blonde hair, singing
and reading from choir books in a double row of semi-circular
choir-stalls. Below, S. Francis and S. Dominic are leading each two
white _Disciplinati_ to the throne. These penitents carry their
scourges, and holes cut in the backs of their monastic cloaks show the
skin red with stripes. One on either side has his face uncovered: the
other wears the hood down, with eye-holes pierced in it. This picture
belonged to the Confraternity of S. Domenico.
[361] _Cantici di Jacopone da Todi_ (Roma, Salviano, 1558), p. 64. I
quote from this edition as the most authentic, and reproduce its
orthography.
[362] This Life is prefixed to Salviano's Roman edition of Jacopone's
hymns, 1558.
[363] The biographer adds, "Ma fu si horribile e spiacevole a vedere
che conturbo tutta quella festa, lasciando ogniuno pieno di
amaritudine."
[364] See above, p. 284. The seventeenth-century editor of Jacopone
and his followers, Tresatti, has justly styled this repulsive but
characteristic utterance, "invettiva terribile contro di se."
[365] _Op. cit._ p. 109.
[366] _Ibid._ p. 77.
[367] _Ibid._ p. 122. See Appendix.
[368] _Ibid._ p. 45.
[369] It is printed in Salviano's, and reproduced in Tresatti's
edition. I have followed the reading offered by D'Ancona, _Origini del
Teatro_, vol. i. p. 142. See Translation in Appendix.
[370] The word _Corrotto_, used by Mary, means lamentation for the
dead. It corresponds to the Greek _Threnos_, Corsican _Vocero_, Gaelic
_Coronach_.
[371] _Le Poesie spirituali del Beato Jacopone da Todi._ In Venetia,
appresso Niccolo Miserrimi, MDCXVII. The book is a thick 4to,
consisting of 1,055 pages, closely printed. It contains a voluminous
running commentary. The editor, Tresatti, a Minorite Friar, says he
had extracted 211 _Cantici_ of Jacopone from MSS. belonging to his
Order, whereas the Roman and Florentine editions, taken together,
contained 102 in all. He divides them into seven sections: (1)
Satires, (2) Moral Songs, (3) Odes, (4) Penitential Hymns, (5) The
Theory of Divine Love, (6) Spiritual Love Poems, (7) Spiritual
Secrets. This division corresponds to seven stages in the soul's
progress toward perfection. The arrangement is excellent, though the
sections in some places interpenetrate. For variety of subjects, the
collection is a kind of lyrical encyclopaedia, touching all needs and
states of the devout soul. It might supply material for meditation
through a lifetime to a heart in harmony with its ascetic and
erotically enthusiastic tone.
[372] _Op. cit._ p. 149.
[373] _Ibid._ p. 244.
[374] _Ibid._ p. 253.
[375] _Op. cit._ p. 266. See Translation in Appendix.
[376] _Op. cit._ p. 306.
[377] _Ibid._ p. 343.
[378] _Op. cit._ pp. 416, 420.
[379] _Ibid._ p. 433.
[380] _Op. cit._ p. 703.
[381] _Ibid._ p. 741.
[382] _Ibid._ p. 715.
[383] _Opere di Girolamo Benivieni_ (Venegia, G. de Gregori, 1524), p.
151.
[384] _Op. cit._ p. 143. I have only translated the opening stanzas of
this hymn.
[385] Published at Florence by Molini and Cecchi, 1863. Compare the
two collections printed by Prof. G. Ferraro from Ferrarese MSS.
_Poesie popolari religiose del secolo xiv._ Bologna, Romagnoli, 1877.
[386] _Laude, etc._ p. 105.
[387] _Op. cit._ p. 16. See _Canzone a Ballo_, etc. (Firenze, 1568),
p. 30, on this song.
[388] _Op. cit._ pp. 96, 227, 50.
[389] See _op. cit._ pp. 227, 234, and _passim_.
[390] Carducci, _Dello Svolgimento della Letteratura Nazionale_, p.
90.
[391] See Muratori, _Rer. Ital. Script._ xxiv. 1205, and _ibid._ 1209,
Friulian Chronicle.
[392] See the frontispiece to _Laude di Feo Belcari e di altri_.
[393] D'Ancona, _Or. del T._ _op. cit._ vol. i. p. 109.
[394] The phases of this progress from _ottonari_ to _ottava rima_
have been carefully traced by D'Ancona (_op. cit._ vol. i. pp.
151-165). _Ottonari_ are lines of eight syllables with a loose
trochaic rhythm, in which great licenses of extra syllables are
allowed. The stanza rhymes _a b a b c c_. The _sesta rima_ of the
transition has the same rhyming structure. The _Corrotto_ by Jacopone
da Todi, analyzed above, shows a similar system of rhymes to that of
some Latin hymns: _a a a b c c c b_, the _b_ rhyme in _ato_ being
carried through the whole poem.
[395] See above, pp. 292-294, and Appendix.
[396] D'Ancona, _op. cit._ p. 108. At p. 282 he gives some curious
details relating to the Coliseum Passion in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. In 1539 it was suppressed by Paul III., because
the Romans, infuriated by the drama of the Crucifixion, were wont to
adjourn from the Flavian amphitheater to the Ghetto, and begin a
murderous crusade against the Jews!
[397] In the directions for a "Devotione de Veneredi sancto," analyzed
by D'Ancona (_op. cit._ pp. 176-182), we read: "_predica, e como fa
signo_ che Cristo sia posto in croce, li Judei li chiavano una mano e
poi l'altra" ... "a quello loco quando Pilato comanda che Cristo sia
posto a la colona, _lo Predicatore tase_."
[398] Ducange explains _thalamum_ by _tabulatum_.
[399] See Appendix to vol. ii. of D'Ancona's _Origini del Teatro_.
[400] In the prologues of the later comedies of learning (_commedia
erudita_) allusions to the rude style of Fiesolan shows are pretty
frequent. The playwrights speak of them as our Elizabethan dramatists
spoke of Bartholomew Fair. The whole method of a Fiesolan _Sacra
Rappresentazione_ is well explained in the induction to the play of
_Abraam e Sara_ (Siena, 1581). A father and his son set out from
Florence, at the boy's request:
Et vo che noi andiamo
a Fiesolani poggi,
Ch'io mi ricordo c'hoggi
una festa non piu vista
Mai piu el Vangelista
vi fa e rappresenta.
On the road they wonder, will the booth be too full for them to find
places, will they get hot by walking fast up hill, will their clothes
be decent? They meet the Festajuolo at the booth-door, distracted
because:
manca una voce
Et e ito un veloce
a Firenze per lui.
_Voce_ was the technical name for the actor.
[401] See D'Ancona, _op. cit._ pp. 245-267. Compare the section on
"Geselligkeit und die Feste" in Burckhardt's _Cultur der Renaissance
in Italien_.
[402] Graziani, _Arch. Stor._ xvi. 344.
[403] Allegretti, Muratori, xxxiii. 767.
[404] Corio, quoted by me, _Age of the Despots_, p. 390.
[405] See D'Ancona, _op. cit._ p. 245, and compare the account of a
similar show in Galvano Flamma's _Chronicle of Milan._
[406] _Pii Secundi Commentarii_ (Romae, 1584), viii. 365.
[407] Niccolo della Tuccia, _Cron. di Viterbo_ (Firenze, Vieusseux,
1872) p. 84.
[408] Look above in chapter i. pp. 50-53, for passages from Goro
Dati's Chronicle and other sources, touching on the summer festivals
of Florence.
[409] This passage from Palmieri's MS. will be found, together with
full information on the subject of S. John's Day, in Cambiagi,
_Memorie istoriche riguardanti le feste, etc._ (Firenze, Stamp.
Gran-ducale, 1766), p. 65.
[410] D'Ancona, _op. cit._ p. 205. This use of the term Miracle seems
to indicate that the Florentines applied to them the generic term for
Northern Sacred Plays.
[411] Lemonnier's edition, vol. v.
[412] _Sacre Rappresentazioni_, Florence, Lemonnier, 3 vols. 1872.
[413] It may be not uninteresting to compare this _terza rima_ with a
passage written fifty years later by Michelangelo Buonarroti on his
father's death, grander in style but less simply Christian:
Tu se' del morir morto e fatto divo,
Ne tem'or piu cangiar vita ne voglia;
Che quasi senza invidia non lo scrivo.
Fortuna e 'l tempo dentro a vostra soglia
Non tenta trapassar, per cui s'adduce
Fra no' dubbia letizia e cierta doglia.
Nube non e che scuri vostra luce,
L'ore distinte a voi non fanno forza,
Caso o necessita non vi conduce.
Vostro splendor per notte non s'ammorza,
Ne crescie ma' per giorno, benche chiaro,
Sie quand'el sol fra no' il caldo rinforza.
In the Appendix will be found translations.
[414] Cecchi's _Elevation of the Cross_ aims at the dignity of a
five-act tragedy; but it was not represented until 1589. _Santa Uliva_
illustrates the interludes; and a very interesting example is supplied
by the _Miracolo di S. Maria Maddalena_, where two boys prologize in
dialogue, comment at intervals upon the action, and conclude the
exhibition with a Laud.
[415] "L'Angelo annunzia la festa," is the common stage-direction at
the beginning; and at the end "L'Angelo da licenza."
[416] "Constantino Imperatore," _Sacre Rappr._ ii. 187. "Un Giovine
con la citara annunzia."
[417] _Op. cit._ vol. i. pp. 357-359.
[418] _Sacre Rappr._ i. 391. Cp. the _Abraam_ quoted in a note above,
p. 313.
[419] Compare, for example, Vespasiano's _naive_ astonishment at the
virginity of the Cardinal di Portogallo with the protestations of
chastity in the _Tre Pellegrini_ (_Sacre Rappr._ iii. 467).
[420] _Sacre Rappr._ iii. p. 235 and p. 1.
[421] _Sacre Rappr._ p. 121. _Shakespeare Soc. Publ._ vol. xvii.
[422] For the technical terms _Nuvola_ and _Paradiso_ see above, pp.
318, 319.
[423] It is probable that the painting of the period yields a fair
notion of the scenic effects attempted in these shows. Or, what is
perhaps a better analogue, we can illustrate the pages of the libretti
by remembering the terra-cotta groups of the Sacro Monte at Varallo.
Designed by excellent artists and painted in accordance with the
traditions of the Milanese school, it is not impossible that these
life-size representations of Christ's birth and Passion reproduce the
Sacred Drama with fidelity.
[424] _Sacre Rappr._ iii. 270.
[425] _Sacre Rappr._ i. 193. See Shakespeare Society's Publications,
i. 119.
[426] _Sacre Rappr._ i. 255.
[427] _Sacre Rappr._ i. 357.
[428] All the novelists might be cited to illustrate this point.
[429] At the end of the _Rappresentazione di un Pellegrino_ (_Sacre
Rappr._ iii. 430) a little farce is printed, bearing no relation to
the play. It is a dialogue between a good and bad apprentice, who
discuss the question of gambling. Here and in the _Figliuol Prodigo_
and the induction to the _Miracolo di S. Maddalena_ we have the
elements of comedy, which, however, unfortunately came to nothing.
These scenes remind us of Heywood's tavern pictures, Marston's
"Eastward Ho!" and other precious pieces of English Elizabethan farce.
[430] _Sacre Rappr._ i. 304.
[431] _Ibid._ p. 319.
[432] _Sacre Rappr._ i. 229.
[433] This play ends with a pretty moralization of the episode that
forms its motive, addressed by Mary to the people (_ib._ p. 240).
Figliuo' diletti, che cercate in terra
Trovar il figliuol mio, pietoso Iddio,
Non vi fermate in questa rozza terra,
Che Jesu non ista nel mondo rio.
Chi vel crede trovar, fortement' erra,
E come stolto morra nel disio.
Al tempio, chi lo vuol, venghi oggi drento,
Che 'l viver vostro e come foglia al vento.
[434] _Sacre Rappr._ i. 342.
[435] _Ibid._ iii. 439.
[436] For these incidents we may think of Signorelli's huge angels and
swarming devils at Orvieto. What follows suggests the Lorenzetti
fresco at Pisa, and the Orcagna of the Strozzi Chapel. Fra Angelico
and Fra Bartolommeo also supply pictorial parallels.
[437] Poetry forced Castellani to decide where Solomon should go;
Lorenzetti left it vague.
[438] _Sacre Rappr._ ii. 33.
[439] _Sacre Rappr._ iii. 140.
[440] _Ibid._ ii. 124.
[441] _Ibid._ ii. 235.
[442] _Ibid._ ii. 269.
[443] _Ibid._ ii. 323.
[444] _Ibid._ ii. 71.
[445] _La Mort d'Arthur_ (Wright's edition), vol. iii. p. 331.
[446] Polidori's edition, vol. i. p. 542.
[447] The greater maturity of the plastic than of the poetic arts in
the fifteenth century is apparent when we contrast the
_Rappresentazioni_ with Masaccio's, Ghirlandajo's, Mantegna's, or
Carpaccio's paintings. Art, as I have frequently had to observe,
emancipated the human faculties, and humanized the figments of the
middle age by investing them with corporeal shape and forms of
aesthetic beauty. The deliverance of the Italian genius was thus
effected in painting earlier than in poetry, and in those very spheres
of religious art where the poets were helpless to attain true freedom.
Italian poetry first became free when it turned round and regarded the
myths with an amused smile. I do not say that this was absolutely
necessary, that an heroic Christian poetry might not have been
produced in the fifteenth century by another race. But for the
Italians it was necessary.
[448] _Sacre Rappr._ ii. 447.
[449] _Sacre Rappr._ iii. 177.
[450] _Ibid._ ii. 163.
[451] _Sacre Rappr._ iii. 235. Also edited separately with an
introduction by D'Ancona.
[452] _Sacre Rappr._ iii. 319.
[453] _Sacre Rappr._ iii. 362.
[454] _Ibid._ iii. 485.
[455] _Sacre Rappr._ iii. 416.
[456] _Ibid._ iii. 439.
[457] _Sacre Rappr._ iii. 466.
[458] The date of the former is probably 1472, of the latter 1486.