TheScolasticais not without an element of satire. I have said that Bartolo had a sin upon his conscience. In early manhood he promised to adopt a friend's daughter, and to marry her in due course to his own Eurialo. But he neglected this duty, lost sight of the girl, and appropriated her heritage. He has reason to think that she may still be found in Naples; and the parish priest to whom he confided his secret in confession, will not absolve him, unless he take the journey and do all he can to rectify the error of his past. Bartolo is disinclined to this long pilgrimage, with the probable loss of a fortune at the end of it. In his difficulty he has recourse to a Frate Predicatore,who professes to hold ample powers for dispensing with troublesome vows and pious obligations:[184]
The irony of this speech depends upon its plain and business-like statement of a simoniacal bargain, which will prove of mutual benefit to the parties concerned. Bartolo confides his case of conscience to the Friar, previously telling him that he has confessed it to the parson:
At the close of the communication, which is admirable for its lucid exposition of a domestic romance adapted to the circumstances of the sixteenth century, the Friar asks his penitent once more whether he would not willingly escape this pilgrimage. Who could doubt it? answers Bartolo. Well then:
Here again the sarcasm consists in the hypocriticaladaptation of the old axiom that everything in this world can be got for money. On both sides the transaction is commercial. Bartolo, like a good man of business, wishes to examine the Frate's title-deeds before he engages in the purchase of his spiritual privileges. In other words he must be permitted to examine the Bull of Indulgence:[185]
We may further notice how the parish priest is here meant to play the part of solicitor in the bargain. He does not deal in these spiritual commodities; but he can give advice upon the point of validity. The episode of Bartolo and the Dominican reminds us that we are on the eve of the Reformation. While Rome and Ferrara laughed at the hypocrisies, credulities, and religious frauds implied in such transactions, Northern Europe broke into flame, and Luther opened the great schism.[186]
The artistic merit of Ariosto's comedies consists in the perfection of their structure. However involved the intrigues may be, we experience no difficulty in following them; so masterly is their development.[187]It may be objected that he too frequently resorts to the device of anagnorisis, in order to solve a problem which cannot find its issue in the action. This mechanical solution is so obviously employed to make things easy for the author that no interest attaches to the climax of his fables. Yet the characters are drawn with that ripe insight into human nature which distinguished Ariosto. Machiavelli observed that, being a native of Ferrara, cautious in the handling of Tuscan idioms, and unwilling to use the dialect of his own city, Ariosto missed the salt of comedy.[188]There is truth in this criticism. Matched with the best Florentine dialogues, his language wants the raciness of the vernacular. Thesdruccioloverse, which he preferred, fatigues the ear and adds to the impression of formality.He frequently interrupts the action with tirades, talking, as it were, in his own person to the audience, instead of making his characters speak.[189]Yet foreigners, who study his comedies side by side with Plautus, at almost the same distance of unfamiliarity, will recognize the brilliance of his transcripts from contemporary life. These studies of Italian manners are eminent for good taste, passing at no point into extravagance, and only marred by a certain banality of moral instinct. TheLenahas the highest value as a picture of Ferrarese society. We have good reason to believe that it was founded on an actual incident. It deserves to rank with Machiavelli'sMandragolaand Aretino'sCortigianafor the light it throws on sixteenth-century customs. And the light is far more natural, less lurid, less partial, than that which either Machiavelli or Aretino shed upon the vices of their century.
Of Machiavelli we have two genuine comedies in prose, theMandragolaand theClizia, and two of doubtful authenticity, called respectivelyCommedia in ProsaandCommedia in Versi, besides a translation of theAndria.[190]Judging by internal evidence alone, a cautious critic would reject theCommedia in Versifrom the canon of Machiavelli's works; and if the existence of a copy in his autograph has to be taken as conclusive evidence of its genuineness, we can only accept it as a crude and juvenile production. It is written invarious measures, a graceless octave stanza rhyming only in the last couplet being used instead of blank verse, while many of the monologues are lyrical. The language is crabbed, uncertain, archaistic—in no point displaying the incisive brevity of Machiavelli's style. The scene is laid in ancient Rome, and the intrigue turns upon a confusion between two names, Catillo and Cammillo. The conventional parasite of antiquity and the inevitable slaves play prominent parts; while the plot is solved by a preposterous exchange of wives between the two chief characters. Thus the fabric of the comedy throughout is unnatural and false to the conditions of real life. Were it not for some piquant studies of Italian manners, scattered here and there in the descriptive passages, thisCommedia in Versiwould scarcely deserve passing notice.[191]
TheCommedia in Prosa, for which we might find a title in the name of the chief personage, Fra Alberigo, displays the spirit and the style of theMandragola. Critics who do not accept it for Machiavelli's own, must assume it to have been the work of a clever and obsequious imitator. It is a short piece in three acts written to expose the corruption of a Florentine household. Caterina, the heroine, is a young wife married to an old husband, Amerigo. Their maid-servant, Margherita, holds the threads of the intrigue in her hands. She has been solicited on the one side by Amerigo to help him in his amours with a neighbor's wife, and on the other by the friar, Alberigo, to win Caterina to his suit. The devices whereby Margherita brings her mistress and the monk together, cheats Amerigo of his expected enjoyment, and so contrives that the despicable but injured husband should establish Fra Alberigo in the position of a favored house-friend, constitute the argument. Short as the play is, it combines the chief points of theCliziaand theMandragolain a single action, and may be regarded as the first sketch of two situations afterwards developed with more fullness by the author.[192]The language is coarse, and the picture of manners, executed with remorseless realism, would be revolting but for its strong workmanship.[193]The playwright expended his force on the servant-maid and the friar, those two instruments of domestic immorality. FraAlberigo is a vulgar libertine, provided with pious phrases to cloak his vicious purpose, but casting off the mask when he has gained his object, well knowing from past experience that the appetites of the woman he seduces will secure his footing in her husband's home.[194]Margherita revels in the corruption she has aided. She delights in sin for its own sake, extracts handfuls of coppers from the friar, and counts on profiting by the secret of her mistress. Her speech and action display the animal appetites and gross phraseology of the proletariate, degraded by city vices and hardened to the spectacle of clerical hypocrisy.[195]One of her exclamations: "I frati, ah! son più viziati che 'l fistolo!" taken in conjunction with her argument to Caterina: "I frati, eh? Non si trova generazione più abile ai servigi delle donne!" points the satire intended by the playwright. Yet neither Caterina nor Amerigo yields a point of baseness to these servile agents. Plebeian coarseness is stamped alike upon their language and their desires. They have no delicacy of feeling, no redeeming passion, no self-respect. They speak of things unmentionable with a crudity that makes one shudder, and abuse each other in sarcasms borrowed from the rhetoric of the streets.[196]To a refined taste the calculations of Caterina are noless obnoxious and are far less funny than the rogueries of the friar.
This comedy of Fra Alberigo is a literal transcript from a cynicalNovella, dramatized and put upon the stage to amuse an audience familiar with such arguments by their perusal of Sacchetti and Boccaccio. Its freedom from Latinizing conventionality renders it a striking example of the influence exercised by theNovellieriover the theater. The same may be said about both theCliziaand theMandragola, though the former owes a portion of its structure to theCasinaof Plautus.[197]TheCliziais a finished picture of Florentine home-life. Nicomaco and Sofronia are an elderly couple, who have educated a beautiful girl, Clizia, from childhood in their house. At the moment when the play opens, both Nicomaco and his son, Cleandro, are in love with Clizia. Nicomaco as determined to marry her to one of his servants, Pirro, having previously ascertained that the dissolute groom will not object to sharing his wife with his master. Sofronia's family pride opposes the marriage of her son and heir with Clizia; but she is aware of her husband's schemes, and seeks to frustrate them by giving the girl to an honest bailiff, Eustachio. In the contest that ensues, Nicomaco gains the victory. It is settled that Clizia is to be wedded to Pirro, and on the night of the marriage Nicomaco makes his way into the bridalchamber. But here Sofronia proves more than a match for her lord and master. Helped by Cleandro, she substitutes for Clizia a young man-servant disguised as a woman, who gives Nicomaco a warm reception, beats him within an inch of his life, and exposes him to the ridicule of the household.[198]Sofronia triumphs over her ashamed and miserable husband, who now consents to Clizia's marriage with Eustachio. But at this juncture the long-lost father of the heroine appears like adeus ex machina. He turns out to be a rich Neapolitan gentleman. There remains no obstacle to Cleandro's happiness, and the curtain falls upon a marriage in prospect between the hero and the heroine. The weakness of the play, considered as a work of art, is the mechanical solution of the plot. Its strength and beauty are the masterly delineation of a family interior. Thedramatis personæare vigorously sketched and act throughout consistently. Nothing can be finer than the portrait of a sober Florentine merchant, regular in his pursuits, punctual in the performance of his duties, exact in household discipline and watchful over his son's education, whose dignified severity of conduct has yielded to the lunacies of an immoderate passion.[199]For the time being Nicomaco forgets his old associates, abandons his business, and consortswith youthful libertines in taverns. His appetite so blinds him that he devises the odious scheme I have described, in order to gratify a senile whim.[200]The lifelong fabric of honesty and honor breaks down in him; and it is only when lessoned by the punishment inflicted on him by his wife and son, that he returns to his old self and sees the vileness of the situation his folly has created. Sofronia is a notable housewife, rude but respectable. The good understanding between her and her handsome son, Cleandro, whom she loves affectionately, but whom she will not indulge in his caprice for Clizia, is one of the best traits furnished by Italian comedy. Cleandro himself has less than usual of the selfishness and sensuality which degrade the Florentineprimo amoroso. There is even something of enthusiasm in his passion for Clizia—a germ of sentiment which would have blossomed into romance under the more genial treatment of our drama.[201]Morally speaking, what is odious in this comedy is the willingness of every one to sacrifice Clizia. Even Cleandro says of her: "Io per me la torrei per moglie, per amica, e in tutti quei modi, che io la potessi avere." Nicomaco, when he has failed inhis plot to secure the girl, thinks only of his own shame, and takes no account of the risk to which he has exposed her. Sofronia is merely anxious to get her decently established beyond her husband's reach.
Only long extracts could do justice to the sarcasm and irony with which the dialogue is seasoned. Still a few points may be selected.[202]Sofronia is rating Nicomaco for his unseasonable dissipation. He answers: "Ah, moglie mia, non mi dire tanti mali a un tratto! Serba qualche cosa a domane." Eustachio, in view of taking Clizia for his wife, reflects: "In questa terra chi ha bella moglie non può essere povero, e del fuoco e della moglie si può essere liberale con ognuno, perchè quanto più ne dai, più te ne rimane." When Pirro demurs to Nicomaco's proposals, on the score that he will make enemies of Sofronia and Cleandro, his master answers: "Che importa a te? Sta' ben con Cristo e fàtti beffe de' santi." A little lower down Nicomaco trusts the decision of Clizia's husband to lot:
Pirro.Se la sorte me venisse contro?Nicom.Io ho speranza in Dio, che la non verrà.Pirro.O vecchio impazzato! Vuole che Dio tenga le mani a queste sue disonestà.
Pirro.Se la sorte me venisse contro?
Nicom.Io ho speranza in Dio, che la non verrà.
Pirro.O vecchio impazzato! Vuole che Dio tenga le mani a queste sue disonestà.
Nor can criticism express the comic humor of the scenes, especially of those in which Nicomaco describes the hours of agony he spent in Siro's bed, and afterwards capitulates at discretion to Sofronia.[203]In spite of what is disagreeable in the argument and obscene in the catastrophe, theClizialeaves a wholesomer impression on the mind than is common with Florentinecomedies. It has something of Ariosto'sbonhomie, elsewhere unknown in Machiavelli.
Meanwhile theMandragolais claiming our attention. In that comedy, Machiavelli put forth all his strength. Sinister and repulsive as it may be to modern tastes, its power is indubitable. More than any plays of which mention has hitherto been made, more even than Ariosto'sLenaandNegromante, it detaches itself from Latin precedents and offers an unsophisticated view of Florentine life from its author's terrible point of contemplation.
In order to appreciate theMandragola, it is necessary to know the plot. After spending his early manhood in Paris, Callimaco returns to Florence, bent on making the beautiful Lucrezia his mistress. He has only heard of her divine charms; but the bare report inflames his imagination, disturbs his sleep, and so distracts him that he feels forced "to attempt some bold stroke, be it grave, dangerous, ruinous, dishonorable; death itself would be better than the life I lead." Lucrezia is the faithful and obedient wife of Nicia, a doctor of laws, whose one wish in life is to get a son. The extreme gullibility of Nicia and his desire for an heir are the motives upon which Callimaco relies to work his schemes. He finds a parasite, Ligurio, ready to assist him. Ligurio is a friend of Nicia's family, well acquainted with the persons, and so utterly depraved that he would sell his soul for a good dinner. He advises Callimaco to play the part of a physician who has studied the last secrets of his art in Paris, introduces him in this capacity to Nicia, and suggests that by his help the desired result may be obtainedwithout the disagreeable necessity of leaving Florence for the baths of San Filippo. In their first interview Callimaco explains that a potion of mandragora administered to Lucrezia will remove her sterility, but that it has fatal consequences to the husband. He must perish unless he first substitutes another man, whose death will extinguish the poison and leave Lucrezia free to be the mother of a future family. Nicia revolts against this odious project, which makes him the destroyer of his own honor and a murderer. But Callimaco assures him that royal persons and great nobles of France have adopted this method with success. The argument has its due weight: "I am satisfied," says Nicia, "since you tell me that a king and princes have done the like." But the difficulty remains of persuading Lucrezia. Ligurio answers: that is simple enough; let us work upon her through her confessor and her mother. "You, I, our money, our badness, and the badness of those priests will settle the confessor; and I know that, when the matter is explained, we shall have her mother on our side." Thus we are introduced to Fra Timoteo, the chief agent of corruption. The monk, in a first interview, does not conceal his readiness to procure abortion and cover infanticide. For a consideration, he agrees to convince Lucrezia that the plot is for her good. He first demonstrates the utility of Callimaco's method to the mother Sostrata, and then by her help persuades Lucrezia that adultery and murder are not only venial, but commendable with so fair an end in view. His sophistries anticipate the darkest casuistry of Escobar. Lucrezia, with a woman's good sense, fastens on thebrutal and unnatural loathsomeness of the proposed plan: "Ma di tutte le cose che si sono tentate, questa mi pare la più strana; avere a sottomettere il corpo mio a questo vituperio, et essere cagione che un uomo muoia per vituperarmi: chè io non crederei, se io fussi sola rimasa nel mondo, e da me avesse a risurgere l'umana natura, che mi fusse simile partito concesso." Timoteo replies: "Qui è un bene certo, che voi ingraviderete, acquisterete un'anima a messer Domenedio. Il male incerto è, che colui che giacerà dopo la pozione con voi, si muoia; ma e' si truova anche di quelli che non muoiono. Ma perchè la cosa è dubbia, però è bene che messer Nicia non incorra in quel pericolo. Quanto all'atto che sia peccato, questo è una favola: perchè la volontà è quella che pecca, non il corpo; e la cagione del peccato è dispiacere al marito: e voi gli compiacete; pigliarne piacere: e voi ne avete dispiacere," etc. Sostrata, accustomed to follow her confessor's orders, and not burdened with a conscience, clinches this reasoning: "Di che hai tu paura, moccicona? E c'è cinquanta dame in questa terra che ne alzarebbero le mani al cielo." Lucrezia gives way unwillingly: "Io son contenta; ma non credo mai esser viva domattina." Timoteo comforts her with a final touch of monkish irony: "Non dubitare, figliuola mia, io pregherò Dio per te; io dirò l'orazione dell'Angiolo Raffaelo che t'accompagni. Andate in buon'ora, e preparatevi a questo misterio, che si fa sera." What follows is the mere working of the plot, whereby Ligurio and Timoteo contrive to introduce Callimaco as the necessary victim into Lucrezia's bed-chamber. The silly Nicia plays the part of pander to his ownshame; and when Lucrezia discovers the scheme by which her lover has attained his ends, she exclaims: "Poi chè l'astuzia tua e la sciochezza del mio marito, la semplicità di mia madre e la tristizia del mio confessore, m'hanno condotta a far quello che mai per me medesima avrei fatto, io voglio giudicare che e' venga da una celeste disposizione, che abbia voluto così. Però io ti prendo per signore, padrone e guida." It must be remarked that Lucrezia omits from her reckoning the weakness which led her to consent.
My excuse for analyzing a comedy so indecent as theMandragola, is the importance it has, not only as a product of Machiavelli's genius, but also as an illustration of contemporary modes of thought and feeling. In all points this play is worthy of the author of thePrincipe. TheMandragolais a microcosm of society as Machiavelli conceived it, and as it needs must be to justify his own philosophy. It is a study of stupidity and baseness acted on by roguery. Credulity and appetite supply the fulcrum needed by unscrupulous intelligence. The lover, aided by the husband's folly, the parasite's profligacy, the mother's familiarity with sin, the confessor's avarice, the wife's want of self-respect, achieves the triumph of making Nicia lead him naked to Lucrezia's chamber. Moving in the region of his fancy, the poet addsQuod erat demonstrandumto his theorem of vileness and gross folly used for selfish ends by craft. But we who read it, rise from the perusal with the certainty that it was only the corruption of the age which rendered such a libel upon human nature plausible—only the author's perverse and shallow view of life which sustained himin this reading of a problem he had failed to understand. Viewed as a critique upon life, theMandragolais feeble, because the premises are false; and these same false premises regarding the main forces of society, render the logic of thePrincipeinconsequent. Men are not such fools as Nicia or such catspaws as Ligurio and Timoteo. Women are not such compliant instruments as Sostrata and Lucrezia. Human nature is not that tissue of disgusting meannesses and vices, by which Callimaco succeeds. Here lay Machiavelli's fallacy. He dreamed of action as the triumph of astuteness over folly. Virtue with him meant the management of immorality by bold intelligence. But while, on the one hand, he exaggerated the stupidity of dupes, on the other he underestimated the resistance which strongly-rooted moral instincts offer to audacious villainy. He left goodness out of his account. Therefore, though his reasoning, whether we examine theMandragolaor thePrincipe, seems irrefragable on the premises from which he starts, it is an unconvincing chain of sophisms. The world is not wholly bad; but in order to justify Machiavelli's conclusions, we have to assume that its essential forces are corrupt.
If we turn from theMandragolato the society of which it is a study, and which complacently accepted it as an agreeable work of art, we are filled with a sense of surprise bordering on horror. What must the people among whom Machiavelli lived, have been, to justify his delineation of a ruffian so vicious as Ligurio, a confessor so lost to sense of duty as Timoteo, a mother who scruples not to prostitute herdaughter to the first comer, a lover so depraved as Callimaco, a wife so devoid of womanly feeling as Lucrezia? On first reflection, we are inclined to believe that the poet in this comedy was venting Swiftian indignation on the human nature which he misconceived and loathed. The very name Lucrezia seems chosen in irony—as though to hint that Rome's first martyr would have failed, if Tarquin had but used her mother and her priest to tame her. Yet, on a second reading, theMandragolareveals no scorn or anger. It is a piece of scientific anatomy, a demonstration of disease, executed without subjective feeling. The argument is so powerfully developed, with such simplicity of language, such consistency of character, such cold analysis of motives, that we cannot doubt the verisimilitude of the picture. No one, at the date of its appearance, resented it. Florentine audiences delighted in its comic flavor. Leo X. witnessed it with approval. His hatred of the monks found satisfaction in Timoteo. Society, far from rising in revolt against the poet who exposed its infamy with a pen of poisoned steel, thanked the man of genius for rendering vice amusing. Of satire or of moral purpose there is none in theMandragola. Machiavelli depicted human nature just as he had learned to know it. The sinister fruits of his studies made contemporaries laugh.
TheMandragolawas the work of an unhappy man. The prologue offers a curious mixture of haughtiness and fawning, only comparable to the dedication of thePrincipeand the letter to Vettori.[204]A sense of his own intellectual greatness is combined with an uneasy feeling of failure:
Non è componitor di molta fama.
As an apology for his application to trivialities, he pleads wretchedness andennui:
These verses, indifferent as poetry, are poignant for their revelation of a disappointed life. Left without occupation, unable to display his powers upon a worthy platform, he casts the pearls of his philosophy before the pleasure-seeking swine. The sense of this degradation stings him and he turns upon society with threats. Let them not attempt to browbeat or intimidate him:
Throughout his prologue we hear the growl of a wounded lion, helpless in his lair, yet conscious thathe still has strength to rend the fools and knaves around him.
Aretino completed the disengagement of Italian from Latin comedy. Ignoring the principles established by the Plautine mannerists, he liberated the elements of satire and of realism held in bondage by their rules. His reasoning was unanswerable. Why should he attend to the unities, or be careful to send the same person no more than five times on the stage in one piece? His people shall come and go as they think fit, or as the argument requires.[205]Why should he make Romans ape he style of Athens? His Romans shall be painted from life; his servants shall talk and act like Italian varlets, not mimicking the ways of Geta or Davus.[206]Why should he shackle his style with precedents from Petrarch and Boccaccio? He will seek the fittest words, the aptest phrases, the most biting repartees from ordinary language.[207]Why condescend to imitation, when his mother wit supplies him with material, and the world of men lies open like a book before his eyes?[208]Why follow in the footsteps of the pedants, who mistake their knowledge of grammar forgenius, and whose commentaries are an insult to the poets they pretend to illustrate?[209]
Conscious of his own defective education, and judging the puristic niceties of the age at their true value, Aretino thus flung the glove of defiance in the face of a learned public. It was a bold step; but the adventurer knew what he was doing. The originality of hisArs Poeticatook the world by surprise. His Italian audience delighted in the sparkle of a style that gave point to their common speech. Had Aretino been a writer of genius, Italy might now have owed to his audacity and self-reliance the starting-point of national dramatic art.[210]He was on the right path, but he lacked the skill to tread it. His comedies, loosely put together, with no constructive vigor in their plots and no grasp of psychology in their characters, are a series of powerfully-written scenes, piquant dialogues, effective situations, rather than comedies in the higher sense of the word. We must not look for Ariosto's lucid order, for Machiavelli's disposition of parts, in these vagaries of a brilliant talent aiming at immediate success. We must be grateful for the filibustering bravado which made him dare to sketch contemporary manners from the life. The merit of these comedies is naturalness. Such affectation of antithesis orlabored epigram as mars their style, was part of Aretino's self. It reveals the man, and is not wearisome like the conceits of the pedantic school. What he had learned, seen or heard in his experience of the world—and Aretino saw, heard and learned the worst of the society in which he lived—is presented with vigor. The power to express is never shackled by a back-thought of reserve or delicacy. Each character stands outlined with a vividness none the less convincing because the study lacks depth. What Aretino cannot supply, is the nexus between these striking passages, the linking of these lively portraits into a coherent whole. Machiavelli's logic, perverse as it may be, produces by its stringent application a more impressive æsthetical effect. The doctrine of style for style's sake, derided by Aretino, satisfies at least our sense of harmony. In the insolence of freedom he spoils the form of his plays by discussions, sometimes dull, sometimes disgusting, in which he vents his spite or airs his sycophancy without regard for the exigencies of his subject. Still, in spite of these defects, Aretino's plays are a precious mine of information for one who desires to enter into direct communication with the men of the Renaissance.
Aretino's point of view is that of the successful adventurer. Unlike Machiavelli, he has no sourness and reveals no disappointment. He has never fallen from the high estate of an impersonal ambition. His report of human depravity is neither scientific nor indignant. He appreciates the vices of the world, by comprehending which, as means to ends, he has achieved celebrity. They are the instruments of hisadvance in life, the sources of his wealth, the wisdom he professes. Therefore, while he satirizes, he treats them with complacence. Evil is good for its own sake also in his eyes. Having tasted all its fruits, he revels in recalling his sensations, just as Casanova took pleasure in recording his debaucheries. His knowledge of society is that of an upstart, who has risen from the lowest ranks by the arts of the bully, flatterer and pander. We never forget that he began life as a lackey, and the most valuable quality of his comedies is that they depict the great world from the standpoint of the servants' hall. Aretino is too powerful and fashionable to be aware of this. He poses as the sage and satirist. But the revelation is none the less pungent because it is made unconsciously. The Court, idealized by Castiglione, censured by Guarini, inveighed against by La Casa, here shows its inner rottenness for our inspection, at the pleasure of a charlatan who thrives on this pollution. We hear how the valets of debauched prelates, the parasites of petty nobles, the pimps who battened on the vices of the rich, the flatterer who earned his bread by calumny and lies, viewed this world of fashion, how they discussed it among themselves, how they utilized its corruption. We shake hands with ruffians and cut-throats, enter the Roman brothels by their back-door, sit down in their kitchens, and become acquainted with the secrets of their trade. It may be suggested that the knowledge supplied by Aretino, if it concerns such details, is neither profitable nor valuable. No one, indeed, who is not specially curious to realize the manners of Renaissance Italy, should occupy his leisure with these comedies.
TheCortigianais a parody of Castiglione'sCortegiano. A Sienese gentleman, simple and provincial, the lineal descendant of Pulci's Messer Goro, arrives in Rome to make his fortune.[211]He is bent on assuming the fine airs of the Court, and hopes to become at least a Cardinal before he returns home. On his first arrival Messer Maco falls into the clutches of a sharper, who introduces him to disreputable society, under color of teaching him the art of courtiership. The satire of the piece consists in showing Rome to be the school of profligacy rather than of gentle customs.[212]Before he has spent more than a few days in the Eternal City, the country squire learns the slang of thedemi-mondeand swaggers among courtesans and rufflers. Maestro Andrea, who has undertaken his education, lectures him upon the virtues of the courtier in a scene of cynical irony:[213]"La principal cosa, il cortigiano vuol sapere bestemmiare, vuole essere giuocatore, invidioso, puttaniere, eretico, adulatore, maldicente, sconoscente, ignorante, asino, vuol sapere frappare, far la ninfa, et essere agente e paziente." Some of these qualities are understood at once by Messer Maco. Concerning others he asks for further information: "Come si diventa eretico? questo è 'l caso.—Notate.—Io nuoto benissimo.—Quando alcuno vi dice che in Corte sia bontà, discrezione, amore, o conoscenza, dite no 'l credo ... in somma a chi vi dice bene de la Corte, dite: tu sei un bugiardo." Again, MesserMaco asks: "Come si dice male?" The answer is prompt and characteristic of Aretino:[214]"Dicendo il vero, dicendo il vero." What Maestro Andrea teaches theoretically, is expounded as a fact of bitter experience by Valerio and Flamminio, the gentlemen in waiting on a fool of fortune named Parabolano.[215]These men, admitted to the secrets of a noble household, know its inner sordidness, and reckon on the vanity and passions of their patron. A still lower stage in the scale of debasement is revealed by the conversations of the lackeys, Rosso and Cappa, who discuss the foibles of their master with the coarseness of the stables.[216]In so far as theCortigianateaches any lesson, it is contained in the humiliation of Parabolano. His vices have made him the slave and creature of foul-minded serving-men, who laugh together over the disgusting details of his privacy, while they flatter him to his face in order to profit by his frivolities.[217]Aretino's own experience of life in Rome enabled him to make these pictures of the servants' hall and antechamber pungent.[218]The venom engendered by years of servitude and adulation is vented in his criticism of the Court as censured from a flunkey's point of view. Nor is he less at home in painting the pleasures of the class whom he has chosen for his critics of polite society. Cappa's soliloquy upon the paradise of the tavern, and Rosso's pranks, when he plays the gentleman in his master'sfine clothes, owe the effect of humor to their realistic verve.[219]We feel them to be reminiscences of fact. These scenes constitute the salt of the comedy, supported by vivid sketches of town characters—the news-boy, the fisherman of the Tiber, and the superannuated prostitute.[220]
In theCortigianait was Aretino's object to destroy illusions about Court-life by describing it in all the vileness of reality.[221]TheMarescalcois a study of the same conditions of society, with less malignity and far more geniality of humor.[222]A rich fool has been recommended by his lord and master, the Duke of Mantua, to take a wife. He loathes matrimony, and shrinks from spending several thousand ducats on the dower. But the parasites, buffoons and henchmen of the prince persuade and bully him into compliance. He is finally married to a page dressed as a woman, and his relief at discovering the sex of his supposed wife forms the climax of the plot. The play is conducted with so much spirit that we may not be wrong in supposing Shakspere inTwelfth Nightand Ben Jonson inEpicœneto have owed something to its humor. We look, however, in vain for such fine creatures of the fancy as Sir Toby Belch, or for a catastrophe so overwhelming as thecrescendoof noise and bustle which subdue the obstinacy of Morose. On the other hand, the two companion scenes in which Marescalco's nurse enlarges on the luxuries of married life, while Ambrogiodescribes its miseries, are executed with fine sense of comic contrast.[223]
In theTalantawe return to Roman society. This comedy is a study of courtesan life, analyzed with thorough knowledge of its details. The character of Talanta, who plays her four lovers one against the other, extracting presents by various devices from each of them, displays the author's intimate acquaintance with his subject.[224]Talanta on the stage is a worthy pendant to Nanna in theRagionamenti. But the intrigue is confused, tedious and improbable; and after reading the first act, we have already seen the best of Aretino's invention. The same may be said about theIpocritaand theFilosofo, two comedies in which Aretino attempted to portray a charlatan of Tartufe's type and a student helpless in his wife's hands. These characters are not ill conceived, but they are too superficially executed to bear the weight of the plot laid upon them. In like manner the pedant in theMarescalcoand the swashbuckler in theTalantaare rather silhouettes than finished portraits. Though well sketched, they lack substance. They have neither the lifelike movement of Shakspere's minor persons, nor the impressive mechanism of Jonson's humors. Bobadil and Master Holofernes, though caricatures, move in a higher region ofthe comic art. The characters Aretino would imitate supremely well, were a page like Giannico in theMarescalco, a footman like Rosso in theCortigiana, or a woman of the town like Talanta. His comedies are never wanting in bustle and variety of business; while the sarcasm of the author, flying at the best-established reputations, sneering at the most fashionable prejudices of society, renders them effective even now, when all the jealousies he flouted have long been buried in oblivion.[225]
Bibbiena'sCalandrais a farce, obscene but not malignant. Ariosto's comedies are studies of society from the standpoint of the middle class. If he is too indulgent to human frailty, too tolerant of vice, we never miss in him the wisdom of a genial observer. Machiavelli'sMandragolacasts the dry light of the intellect on an abyss of evil. Nothing but the brilliance of the poet's wit reconciles us to his revelation of perversity. Aretino, by the animation of his sketches, by his prurient delight in what is vile, makes us comprehend that even theMandragolawas possible. Machiavelli stands outside his subject, like Lucifer, fallen but disdainful. Aretino is the Belial who acknowledges corruption for his own domain. Ariosto and Machiavelli are artists each in his kind perfect. Aretino is animprovvisatore, clever with the pen he uses like a burin.
It would be difficult to render an account of thecomedies produced by the Italians in the sixteenth century, or to catalogue their authors. A computation has been made which reckons the plays known to students at several thousands. In spite of this extraordinary richness in comic literature, Italy cannot boast of a great comedy. No poet arose to carry the art onward from the point already reached when Aretino left the stage. The neglect that fell on those innumerable comedies, was not wholly undeserved. It is true that their scenes suggested brilliant episodes to French and English playwrights of celebrity. It is true that the historian of manners finds in them an almost inexhaustible store of matter. Still they are literary lucubrations rather than the spontaneous expression of a vivid nationality. Nor have they the subordinate merit of dealing in a scientific spirit with the cardinal vices and follies of society. We miss the original plots, the powerful modeling of character, the philosophical insight which would have reconciled us to aCommedia erudita.
When we examine the plays of Firenzuola, Cecchi, Ambra, Gelli, Il Lasca, Doni, Dolce, we find that a hybrid form of art had been established by the practice of the earlier playwrights. This hybrid implied Plautus and Terence as a necessary basis. It adopted the fusion of Latin arguments with Italian manners which was so ably realized by Ariosto and Machiavelli. It allowed something for the farce traditions which the Rozzi made fashionable at Rome. It assumed ingredients from theBurleandNovelleof the marketplace, reproduced the language of the people, and made use of current scandals to give piquancy to itsconventional plots. But notwithstanding the admixture of so many modern elements, the stereotyped Latinism of its form rendered this comedy unnatural. Ingeniouscontaminatio, to use a phrase in vogue among Roman critics, was always more apparent than creative instinct.
TheCommedia eruditapresented a framework ready-made to the playwright, and easily accepted on the strength of usage by the audience he sought to entertain. At the same time it left him free, within prescribed limits, to represent the manners of contemporary life. The main object of a great drama "to show the very age and body of the time his form and pressure," is thrust into the second rank; and the most valuable portions of these clever works of skill are their episodes—such scenes, for example, as those which in theAridosioof Lorenzino de' Medici reveal the dissoluteness of conventual customs in a scholasticrifacimentoof theAdelphiand theMostellaria.[226]Had the fusion of classical and modern elements been complete as in theEpicœneof Jonson, or had the character-drawing been masterly as in Molière'sAvare, we should have no cause for complaint. But these are just the qualities of success missed by the Italian playwrights. Their studies from nature are comparatively slight. Having exhibited them in the presentation of the subject or introduced them here and there by way of interludes, they work the play to its conclusion on the lines of Latinistic convention.[227]
Such being the form ofcinque centocomedy, it follows that its details are monotonous. The characters are invariably drawn from the ranks of the rich burgher classes; and if we may trust the evidence furnished by the playwrights, the morality of these classes must have been of an almost inconceivable baseness. We survey a society separated from the larger interests than elevate humanity, without public ambition or the sense of national greatness, excluded from the career of arms, dead to honor, bent upon sensual enjoyment and petty intrigues. The motive which sustains the plot, is illicit love; but in its presentation there is no romance, nothing to cloak the animalism of an unchecked instinct. The young men who play the part ofprimi amorosi, are in debt or without money. It is their object to repair their fortunes by a rich marriage, to secure a maintenance from a neighbor's wife they have seduced, to satisfy the avarice of a greedy courtesan, or to conceal the results of an intrigue which has brought their mistress into difficulties. From the innumerable scenes devoted to these elegant and witty scapegraces, it would be difficult to glean a single sentence expressive of conscience, remorse, sense of loyalty or generous feeling. They submit to the most odious bargains and disreputable subterfuges, sacrificing the honor of theirfamilies or the good fame of the women who depend upon them, to the attainment of some momentary self-indulgence.[228]Without respect for age, they expend their ingenuity in robbing their parents and exposing their fathers to ridicule.[229]Nor is it possible to feel much sympathy for the elders, who are so brutally used. The old man of these comedies is either a superannuated libertine, who makes himself ridiculous by his intrigues with a neighbor's wife, or a parsimonious tyrant, or else an indulgent rake, who acts the pander for his good-for-nothing rascal of a son.[230]Mere simpletons like Machiavelli's Nicia, or Aretino's Messer Maco, furnish another type of irreverent age, unredeemed by the comic humor of Falstaff or the gigantic lusts of Sir Epicure Mammon. Between son and father the inevitable servant plays the part of clever rogue. It is he who weaves the meshes of the intrigue that shall cut the purse-strings of the stingy parent, blind the eyes of the husband to his wife's adultery, or cheat the creditor of his dues. Our sympathy is always enlisted on the side of the schemers; and however base their tricks may be, we are invited to applaud the success which crowns them.The girls are worthy of their lovers. Corrupted by nurses; exposed to the contaminating influences of the convent; courted by grooms and servants in their father's household; tampered with by infamous duennas; betrayed by their own mothers or intrusted by their fathers to notorious prostitutes; they accept the first husband proposed to them by their parents, confident in the hope of continuing clandestine intrigues with the neighbor's son who has seduced them.[231]The wives are such as theNovellepaint them, yielding to the barest impulses of wantonness, and covering their debauchery with craft that raises a laugh against the husbands they have cozened. Such are the main actors, the conventional personages, of the domestic comedy. The subordinate characters consist of parasites and flatterers; ignorant pedants and swaggeringbravi; priests who ply the trade of pimps; astrologers who thrive upon the folly of their clients; doctors who conceal births; prostitutes and their attendant bullies; compliant go-betweens and rapacious bawds; pages, street urchins, and officers of justice. The adulterous intrigue required such minor persons as instruments; and it often happens that scenes of vivid comic humor, dialogues of the most brilliant Tuscan idiom, are suggested by the interaction of these puppets, whose wires the clever valet and theprimo amorosopull.
The point of interest for contemporary audiences was theburla—the joke played off by a wife upon herhusband, by rogues upon a simpleton, by a son upon his father, by a servant on his master's creditors, by a pupil on his pedantic tutor. Accepting the conditions of a comedy so constructed, and eliminating ethical considerations, we readily admit that these jokes are infinitely amusing. The scene in Gelli'sSportawhere Ghirigoro de' Macci receives the confidences of the youth who has seduced his daughter, under the impression that he is talking about his money-box, is not unworthy of Molière'sAvare. Two scenes in Gelli'sErrore, where Gherardo Amieri, disguised as an old woman, is tormented by a street urchin whom his son has sent to teaze him, and afterwards confronted by his angry wife, might have adorned theMerry Wives of Windsor.[232]Cecchi's comedies in like manner abound in comical absurdities, involving exquisitely realistic pictures of Florentine manners.[233]For the student of language, no less than for the student of Renaissance life, they are invaluable. But the similarity of form which marks the comedies of thecinque cento, renders it impossible to do justice to their details in the present work. I must content myself with the foregoing sketch of their structure derived from the perusal of such plays as were accessible in print, and with the further observation that each eminent dramatist developed some side of the common heritage transmitted by their common predecessors. Thus Firenzuola continued the Latin tradition with singular tenacity, adapting classical arguments in hisLucidiandTrinuziato modern themes with the same inimitable transparencyof style he had displayed in hisrifacimentoof theGolden Ass.[234]Gelli adapted theAululariain hisSporta, and closely followed theCliziain hisErrore. The devotion professed for Machiavelli by this playwright, was yielded by Cecchi to Ariosto; and thus we notice two divergent strains of tradition within the circle of Florentine art.[235]Cecchi was a voluminous dramatic writer. Besides his comedies insdruccioloandpianoverse, he composedSacre Rappresentazioniand plays of a mixed kind derived from a free handling of that elder form.[236]While Gelli and Cecchi severally followed the example of Machiavelli and Ariosto, Il Lasca attempted to free the Italian drama from the fetters of erudite convention.[237]His comedies are exceedingly witty versions ofNovelle, forming dramatic pendants to his narratives in that style. Yet though he strove to make the stage a mirror of contemporarycustoms, he could not wholly escape from the mannerism into which the dramatic art had fallen. Nor was it possible, now that the last gleam of liberty had expired in Italy, when even Florence accepted her fate, and the Inquisition was jealously watching every new birth of the press, to create what the earlier freedom of the Renaissance had missed. The drama was condemned to trivialities which only too faithfully reflected the political stagnation, and the literary trifling of a decadent civilization.[238]
It is worthy of notice, as a final remark upon the history of the comic stage, that at this very moment of its ultimate frustration there existed the germ of a drama analogous to that of England, only waiting to be developed by some master spirit. That was theFarsa, which Cecchi, the most prolific, original and popular of Florentine playwrights, deigned to cultivate.[239]He describes it thus: "TheFarsais a new third species between tragedy and comedy. It enjoys the liberties of both, and shuns their limitations; for it receives into its ample boundaries great lords and princes, which comedy does not, and, like a hospital or inn, welcomes the vilest and most plebeian of the people, to whom Dame Tragedy has never stooped. It is not restricted to certain motives; for it accepts all subjects—grave and gay, profane and sacred, urbane and rude, sad and pleasant. It does not care for time or place. The scene may be laid in a church, or apublic square, or where you will; and if one day is not long enough, two or three may be employed. What, indeed, does it matter to theFarsa? In a word, this modern mistress of the stage is the most amusing, the most convenient, the sweetest, prettiest country-lass that can be found upon our earth."[240]He then goes on to describe the liberty of language allowed in theFarsa, rounding off a picture which exactly applies to our Elizabethan drama. TheFarsa, in the form it had assumed when Cecchi used it, was, in fact, the survival of an ancient, obscure species of dramatic art, which had descended from the period of classical antiquity, and which recently had blent with the traditions of theSacre Rappresentazioni. Had circumstances been favorable to the development of a national drama in Italy, the popular elements of the Pagan farce and the medieval Mystery would have naturally issued through theFarsain a modern form of art analogous to that produced in England. But the Italians had, as we have seen, no public to demand the rehabilitation of theFarsa; nor was Cecchi a Shakspere, or even a Marlowe, to prove, in the face of Latinizing playwrights, that the national stage lay in its cradle here. It remained for the poets of a far-off island, who disdained Italianjigsand owed nothing to theFarseof either Florentine or Neapolitan contemporaries, acting by instinct and in concert with the sympathies of a great nation, to take this "sweetest, prettiest country-lass" by the hand and place her side by side with Attic Tragedy and Comedy upon the supreme throne of art.
The Italian comedies offer an even more startling picture of social vice than theNovelle.[241]To estimate how far they represent a general truth, is difficult; especially when we remember that they were written in a conventional style, to amuse princes, academicians, and prelates.[242]Comparing their testimony with that of private letters and biographical literature (the correspondence, for example, of Alessandra degli Strozzi, Alberti's treatise on the Family, and statements gleaned from memoirs andRicordi), we are justified in believing that a considerable difference existed at the commencement of this epoch between public and domestic manners in Italy; between the Court and the home, the piazza and the fireside, the diversions of fashionable coteries and the conversation of friends and kinsmen. The family still retained some of its antique simplicity. And it was not as yet vitiated by the institution of Cicisbeism. But the great world was incredibly corrupt. Each Court formed a nucleus of dissolute living. Rome, stigmatized successively by men so different as Lorenzo de' Medici, Pietro Aretino, Gian-Giorgio Trissino, and Messer Guidiccioni, poisoned the whole Italiannation. Venice entertained a multitude of prostitutes, and called thembenemeritæin public acts. Since, therefore, these centers of aristocratic and literary life drew recruits from the burgher and rural classes, the strongholds of patriarchal purity were continually being sapped by contact with fashionable uncleanliness. And thus in the sixteenth century a common standard of immorality had been substituted for earlier severity of manners. The convulsions of that disastrous epoch, following upon a period of tranquillity, during which the people had become accustomed to luxury, submerged whole families in vice. "Wars, famines, and the badness of the times," wrote Aretino, "inclining men to give themselves amusement, have so debauched all Italy (imputtanita tutta Italia), that cousins and kinsfolk of both sexes, brothers and sisters, mingle together without shame, without a shadow of conscience."[243]Though it is preposterous to see Aretino posing as a censor of morals, his acuteness was indubitable; nor need we suppose that his acquaintance with the disease rendered him less sagacious in detecting its causes. What Corio tells us about Lodovico Sforza's capital, what we read about the excess of luxury into which the nobles of Vicenza and Milan plunged, amid the horrors of the French and Spanish occupation, confirms his testimony.[244]After the Black Death, described by Matteo Villani, the Florentines consoled themselves for previous sufferings by an outburst of profligate and reckless living. So now they sought distraction in unbridled sensuality. Society was in dissolution, and men lived for the moment, careless of consequences. The immorality of the theater was at once a sign and a source of this corruption. "O times! O manners!" exclaims Lilius Giraldus:[245]"the obscenities of the stage return in all their foulness. Plays are acted in every city, which the common consent of Christendom had banned because of their depravity. Now the very prelates of the faith, our nobles, our princes, bring them back again among us, and cause them to be publicly presented. Nay, priests themselves are eagerly ambitious of the infamous title of actors, in order to bring themselves into notoriety, and to enrich themselves with benefices."
It must not be supposed that the immorality of the comic stage consists in the license of language, incident or plot. Had this been all, we should hardly be justified in drawing a distinction between the Italians of the Renaissance and our own Elizabethan playwrights. It lies far deeper, in the vicious philosophy of life paraded by the authors, in the absence of any didactic or satirical aim. Molière, while exposing evil, teaches by example. A canon of goodness is implied, from which the deformities of sin and folly are deflections. But Machiavelli and Aretino paint humanity as simply bad. The palm of success is awarded to unscrupulous villainy. An incapacity for understanding the immutable power of moral beauty was the main disease of Italy. If we seek the cause of this internal cancer, we must trace the history of Italian thought and feelingback to the age of Boccaccio; and we shall probably form an opinion that misdirected humanism, blending with the impieties of a secularized Papacy, the self-indulgence of the despots, and the coarse tastes of thebourgeoisie, had sapped the conscience of society.