Chapter V: Popular Religious Poetry (2)

Vasari in his life of Il Cecca contributes much valuable information concerning the machinery used in the shows of S. John's Day.[411] The Piazza of the Duomo was covered in with a broad blue awning--similar, we may suppose, to that veil of deeper and lighter azure bands which forms the background to Fra Lippi's "Crowning of the Virgin." This was sown with golden lilies, and was called a Heaven. Beneath it were the clouds, or _Nuvole_, exhibited by various civic guilds. They were constructed of substantial wooden frames, supporting an almond-shaped aureole, which was thickly covered with wool, and surrounded with lights and cherub faces. Inside it sat the person who represented the saint, just as Christ and Madonna are represented in the pictures of the Umbrian school. Lower down, projected branches made of iron, bearing children dressed like angels, and secured by waist-bands in the same way as the fairies of our transformation scenes. The wood-work and the wires were hidden from sight by wool and cloth, plentifully sprinkled with tinsel stars. The whole moved slowly on the backs of bearers concealed beneath the frame. Vasari attributes the first invention of these and similar _ingegni_ to Filippo Brunelleschi. Their similarity to what we know about the _pegmata_ of Roman triumphs, renders this assertion probable. Brunelleschi's study of ancient art may have induced him to adapt a classical device to the requirements of Christian pageantry. When designed on a colossal scale and stationary, these _Nuvole_ were known by the name of _Paradiso_. Another prominent feature in the Midsummer Show was the procession of giants and giantesses mounted upon stilts, and hooded with fantastic masks. Men marched in front, holding a pike to balance these unwieldy creatures; but Vasari states that some specialists in this craft were able to walk the streets on stilts six cubits high, without assistance. Then there were _spiritelli_--lighter and winged beings, raised aloft to the same height, and shining down like genii from their giddy altitude in sunlight on the crowd.

Whether we are right or not in assuming with D'Ancona that the _Sacra Rappresentazione_ was a hybrid between the Umbrian _Divozione_ and these pageants, there is no doubt that the Florentine artists, and _Ingegnieri_, were equal to furnishing the stage with richness. The fraternities spared no expense, but secured the services of the best designers. They also employed versifiers of repute to compose their libretti. It must be remembered that these texts were written for boys, and were meant to be acted by boys. Thus there came into existence a peculiar type of sacred drama, displaying something childish in its style, but taxing the ingenuity of scene-painters, mechanicians, architects, musicians, and poets, to produce a certain calculated theatrical effect. When we remember how these kindred arts flourished in the last decades of the fifteenth century, we are justified in believing that the _Sacre Rappresentazioni_ offered a spectacle no less beautiful than curious and rare.

An examination of a few of these plays in detail will help us to understand one of the most original products of the popular Italian literature. With this object, I propose to consider the three volumes of reprints, edited with copious illustrations by Professor Alessandro d'Ancona.[412] But before proceeding to render an account of the forty-three plays included in this collection, it will be well to give some notice of the men who wrote them, to describe their general character, and to explain the manner of their presentation on the stage.

The authors of _Sacre Rappresentazioni_ are frequently anonymous; but Lorenzo de' Medici, Antonio Alamanni, Bernardo Pulci and his wife Monna Antonia contribute each a sacred drama. The best were written by Feo Belcari and Castellano Castellani. Of the latter very little is known, except that in the year 1517 he exercised the priestly functions at Florence and was a prolific writer of Lauds. Feo Belcari, a Florentine citizen, born in 1410, held civic offices of distinction during the ascendency of Casa Medici. He was a man of birth and some learning, who devoted himself to the production of literature in prose and verse intended for popular edification. His Lauds are among the best which have descended from the fifteenth century, and his translation of the Lives of the Fathers into Tuscan is praised for purity of style. When he died, in 1484, "poor, weak, and white-haired," Girolamo Benivieni, the disciple of Savonarola and the greatest sacred singer of that age, composed his elegy in verses of mingled sweetness and fervor[413]:

Tace il celeste suon, gia spenta e morta
E l'armonia di quella dolce lira,
Che 'l mondo afflitto or lascia, e 'l ciel conforta.
E come parimenti si sospira
Qui la sua morte, cosi in ciel s'allegra
Chi alla nuova armonia si volge e gira.
Felice lui che dalla infetta e negra
Valle di pianti al ciel n'e gito, e 'n terra
Lasciata ha sol la veste inferma ed egra,
Ed or dal mondo e dall'orribil guerra
De' vizi sciolto, il suo splendor vagheggia
Nel volto di Colui che mai non erra.

As regards their form, the _Sacre Rappresentazioni_ are never divided into acts; but the copious stage-directions prove that the scenes were shifted, and in one or two instances secular interludes are introduced in the pauses of the action.[414] The drama follows the tale or legend without artistic structure of plot; nor do the authors appear to have aimed, except in subordinate episodes, at much development of character. What they found ready to their hand in prose, they versified. The same fixed personages, and the same traditional phrases recur with singular monotony, proving that a conventional framework and style had become stereotyped. The end in view was religious edification. Therefore mere types of virtue in saints and martyrs, types of wickedness in tyrants and persecutors, sufficed alike for authors, actors, and audience. True dramatic genius emerges only in the minor parts, where a certain freedom of handling and effort after character-drawing are discernible. The success of the play depended on the movement of the story, and the attractions of the scenery, costumes and music. It was customary for an angel to prologize and to dismiss the audience[415]; but his place is once at least taken by a young man with a lute.[416] A more dramatic opening was occasionally attempted in a conversation between two boys of Florence, the one good and the other bad; and instead of the _licenza_ the scene sometimes closed with a _Te Deum_, or a Laud sung by the actors and probably taken up by the spectators. Castellani in his _Figliuol Prodigo_ made good use of the dramatic opening, gradually working the matter of his play out of a dialogue which begins with a smart interchange of Florentine chaff.[417] It would be useless even to attempt a translation of this scene. The raciness of its obsolete street-slang would evaporate, and the fiber of the piece is not strong enough to bear rude handling. It must suffice to indicate its rare dramatic quality. Students of our own Elizabethan literature may profitably compare this picture of manners with similar passages in _Hycke Scorner_ or _Lusty Juventus_. But the Florentine interlude is more fairly representative of actual life than any part of our Moralities. Castellani's Prodigal Son, however, rises altogether to a higher artistic level than the ordinary; and the same may be said about the _Miracolo di S. Maria Maddalena_, where a simple dramatic motive is interwoven with the action of the whole piece and made to supply a proper ending.[418]

As a rule, the _Sacre Rappresentazioni_ partook of the character of a religious service. Their tone is uniformly pious. Yet the spirit of the age and the nature of the Italians were alike unfavorable to piety of a true temper. Here it is unctuous, caressing, sentimental--anything but vigorous or virile. The monastic virtues are highly extolled; and an unwholesome view of life seen from the cloister by some would-be saint, who "winks and shuts his apprehension up" to common facts of experience, is too often presented. Vice is sincerely condemned; yet the morality of these exhibitions cannot be applauded. Instead of the stern lessons of humanity conveyed in a drama like that of Athens or of England, the precepts of the pulpit and confessional are enforced with a childish simplicity that savors more of cloistral pietism than of true knowledge of the world. Mere belief in the intercession of saints and the efficacy of relics is made to cover all crimes; while the anti-social enthusiasms of dreamy boys and girls are held up for imitation. We feel that we are reading what a set of feeble spiritual directors wrote with a touch of conscious but well-meaning insincerity for children. The glaring contrast between the professed asceticism of the fraternities and the future conduct of their youthful members in the world of the Renaissance leaves a suspicion of hypocrisy.[419] This impression is powerfully excited by Lorenzo de' Medici's _Rappresentazione di S. Giovanni e Paolo_, which was acted by his children. The tone is not, indeed, so unctuous as that of Castellani. Yet when we remember what manner of man was Lorenzo; when we reflect what parts were played by his sons, Piero and Leo X., upon the stage of Italy; the sanctimonious tone of its frigid octave stanzas fails to impose on our credulity.

An adequate notion of the scenic apparatus of the _Rappresentazioni_ may 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.