Chapter XIV: Burlesque Poetry and Satire (2)

[Footnote 429: The episode of Berta's battle with her sister Laena (_Mac._ iv. p. 144), the apostrophe to old age (_Mac._ v. p. 152), the village ball (_ibid._ p. 163), the tricks played by Cingar on Zambellus (_ibid._ p. 168, and _Mac._ vi.), the description of the convent of Motella (_Mac._ vii. 196), the portrait of the ignorant parish-priest (_Mac._ vii. p. 202), the Carnival Mass (_Mac._ viii. p. 212), followed by a drunken _Ker Mess_ (_ibid._ p. 214), are all executed in the broad style of a Dutch painter, and abound in realistic sketches of Lombard country-life.]

There will soon be no one left to bear arms, till the fields, or ply the common handicrafts. All the villains make themselves monks, aspiring to ecclesiastical honors and seeking the grade of superiority denied them by their birth. It is ambition that fills the convents:

Illic nobilitas sub rusticitate laborat,
Ambitio quoniam villanos unica brancat.

This tirade is followed by the portrait of Prae Jacopinus, a village parson whose stupidity is only equaled by his vices. Jacopino's education in the alphabet is a masterpiece of Rabelaisian humor, and the following passage on his celebration of the Mass brings all the sordidness of rustic ceremonial before our eyes:[430]

Praeterea Missam foggia dicebat in una,
Nec crucis in fronte signum formare sciebat.
Inter Confiteor parvum discrimen et Amen
Semper erat, jam jam meditans adjungere finem;
Incipiebat enim nec adhuc in nomine Patris,
Quod tribus in saltis veniebat ad Ite misestum.

[Footnote 430: _Mac._ vii. p. 204.]

From generalities Folengo passes to particulars in the following description of a village Mass:[431]

Inde Jacopinus, chiamatis undique Pretis,
Coeperat in gorga Missam cantare stupendam;
Subsequitant alii, magnisque cridoribus instant.
Protinus Introitum spazzant talqualiter omnem,
Ad Chyrios veniunt, quos miro dicere sentis
Cum contrappunto, veluti si cantor adesset
Master Adrianus, Constantius atque Jachettus.
Hic per dolcezzam scorlabant corda vilani
Quando de quintis terzisque calabat in unam
Musicus octavam noster Jacopinus et ipsas
Providus octavas longa cum voce tirabat.
Gloria in excelsis passat, jam Credo propinquat;
Oh si Josquinus Cantorum splendor adesset!

[Footnote 431: _Mac._ vii. p. 212. Folengo seems to have been fond of music. See the whimsical description of four-part singing, _Mac._ xx. p. 139, followed by the panegyric of Music and the malediction of her detractors.]

Meanwhile Baldus has been left in prison, and it is time for Cingar to undertake his rescue. He effects this feat, by stripping two Franciscan monks, and dressing himself up in the frock he had just filched from one of them, while he coaxes the unfortunate Zambellus to assume the other. Then he persuades the people of Mantua that he has seen himself assassinated on the high road; gains access to Baldus in the dungeon, on the plea of hearing his confession; and contrives to leave Zambellus there in the clothes of Baldus, after disguising his friend in one of the friar's tunics. The story is too intricate for repetition here.[432] Suffice it to say that Baldus escapes and meets a knight errant, Leonardus, at the city gate, who has ridden all the way from Rome to meet so valorous a Paladin. The swear eternal friendship. The three henchmen of the hero muster round the new comrades in arms; and the party thus formed set forth upon a series of adventures in the style of Astolfo's journey to the moon.

[Footnote 432: This episode of Cingar's triumph over the enemies of Baldus, his craft, his rhetoric, his ready wit, his infinite powers of persuasion, his monkey tricks and fox-like cunning, is executed with an energy of humor and breadth of conception, that places it upon a level with the choicest passages in Rabelais.]

This part of the epic is a close copy of the chivalrous romances in their more fantastic details. The journey of the Barons, as they are now invariably styled, is performed in a great ship. They encounter storms and pirates, land on marvelous islands, enter fairy palaces, and from time to time recruit their forces with notable rogues and drunkards whom they find upon their way. The parody consists in the similarity of their achievements to those of knight-errantry, while they are themselves in all points unlike the champions of chivalry. One of their most cherished companions, for example, is Boccalus, a Bergamasque buffoon, who distinguishes himself by presence of mind in a great storm:[433]

Ille galantus homo, qui nuper in aequora bruttam
Jecerat uxorem, dicens non esse fagottum
Fardellumque homini plus laidum, plusque pesentum
Quam sibi mojeram lateri mirare tacatam
Quae sit oca ingenio, quae vultu spazzacaminus.

[Footnote 433: _Mac._ xii. p. 296.]

The tale of adventures is diversified, after the manner of the romantic poets, by digressions, sometimes pathetic, sometimes dissertational. Among these the most amusing is Cingar's lecture on astronomy, in which the planetary theories of the middle ages are burlesqued with considerable irony.[434] The most affecting is the death of Leonardus, who chooses to be torn in pieces by bears rather than yield his virginity to a vile woman. This episode suggests one of the finest satiric passages in the whole poem. Having exhibited the temptress Muselina, the poet breaks off with this exclamation:[435]

Heu quantis noster Muselinis orbis abundat!

[Footnote 434: In the course of this oration Folengo introduces an extraordinarily venomous invective against _contadini_, which may be paralleled with his allegory in the _Orlandino_. It begins (_Mac._ xiii. p. 11):

Progenies maledicta quidem villana vocatur,

and extends through forty lines of condensed abuse.]

[Footnote 435: _Mac._ xvi. p. 66.]

He then enumerates their arts of seduction, and winds up with a powerful dramatic picture, painted from the life, of a _mezzana_ engaged in corrupting a young man's mind during Mass-time:

Dum Missae celebrantur, amant cantonibus esse,
Postque tenebrosos mussant chiachiarantque pilastros;
Ah miserelle puer, dicunt, male nate, quod ullam
Non habes, ut juvenes bisognat habere, morosam!...
Numquid vis fieri Frater Monachusve, remotis
Delitiis Veneris, Bacchi, Martisque, Jovisque,
Quos vel simplicitas, vel desperatio traxit?...
Nemo super terram sanctus; stant aethere sancti:
Nos carnem natura facit, quo carne fruamur.

As the epic approaches its conclusion, Baldus discovers his true father, Guido, under the form of a holy hermit, and learns that it is reserved for him by destiny, first to extirpate the sect of witches under their queen Smirna Gulfora, and afterwards to penetrate the realms of death and hell. The last five books of the _Maccaronea_ are devoted to these crowning exploits. Merlin appears, and undertakes the guidance of the Barons on their journey to Avernus.[436] But first he requires full confession of their sins from each; and this humorous act of penitence forms one of the absurdest episodes, as may be easily imagined, in the poem. Absolved and furnished with heroic armor, the Barons march to the conquest of Gulfora and the destruction of her magic palace. Folengo has placed it appropriately on the road to hell; for under Gulfora he allegorizes witchcraft. The space allotted to Smirna Gulfora and the importance attached to her overthrow by Baldus and his Barons, call attention to the prevalence of magic in Italy at this epoch.[437] It may not, therefore, be out of place, before engaging in this portion of the analysis, to give some account of Italian witchcraft drawn from other sources, in order to estimate the truth of the satire upon which Folengo expended his force.

[Footnote 436: _Mac._ xx. p. 152. From this point onward the poet and Merlin are one person:

Nomine Merlinos dicor, de sanguine Mantus,
Est mihi cognomen Cocajus Maccaronensis.]

[Footnote 437: The _Novella_ of Luca Philippus, who kept a tavern at the door of Paradise, and had no custom, since no one came that way so long as Gulfora ruled on earth, forms a significant preface to her episode. See _Mac._ xxi. p. 180. The altercation between this host and Peter at the rusty gate of heaven is written in the purest Italian style of pious parody.]

"Beautiful and humane Italy," as Bandello calls his country in the preface to one of his most horrible _Novelle_, was, in spite of her enlightenment, but little in advance of Europe on the common points of medieval superstition. The teaching of the Church encouraged a belief in demons; and the common people saw on every chapel wall the fresco of some saint expelling devils from the bodies of possessed persons, or exorcising domestic utensils which had been bewitched.[438] Thus the laity grew up in the confirmed opinion that earth, air, and ocean swarmed with supernatural beings, whom they distinguished as fiends from hell or inferior sprites of the elements, called _spiriti folletti_.[439] While the evil spirits of both degrees were supposed to lie beneath the ban of ecclesiastical malediction, they lent their aid to necromancers, witches and wizards, who, defying the interdictions of the Church, had the audacity to use them as their slaves by the employment of powerful spells and rites of conjurations. There was a way, it was believed, of taming both the demons and the elves, of making them the instruments of human avarice, ambition, jealousy and passion. Since all forms of superstition in Italy lent themselves to utilitarian purposes, the necromancer and the witch, having acquired this power over supernatural agents, became the servants of popular lusts. They sold their authority to the highest bidders, undertaking to blast the vines or to poison the flocks of an enemy; to force young men and maidens to become the victims of inordinate appetites; to ruin inconvenient husbands by slowly-wasting diseases; to procure abortion by spells and potions; to confer wealth and power upon aspirants after luxury; to sow the seeds of discord in families--in a word, to open a free path for the indulgence of the vain desires that plague ill-regulated egotisms. A class of impostors, half dupes of their own pretensions, half rogues relying on the folly of their employers, sprang into existence, who combined the Locusta of ancient Rome with the witch of medieval Germany. Such was the Italian _strega_--a loathsome creature, who studied the chemistry of poisons, philtres, and abortion-hastening drugs, and while she pretended to work her miracles by the help of devils, played upon the common passions and credulities of human kind.[440] By her side stood her masculine counterpart, the _stregone_, _negromante_ or _alchimista_, who plays so prominent a part in the Italian comedies and novels.

[Footnote 438: Aretino's _Cortigiana_ contains a very humorous exorcism inflicted by way of a practical joke upon a fisherman.]

[Footnote 439: See above, Part i, p. 453, note 2, for the distinction between the fiends and the sprites drawn by Pulci.]

[Footnote 440: See Lasca's _Novella_ of _Zoroastro_; Bandello's novels of witchcraft (Part iii. 29 and 52); Cellini's celebrated conjuration in the Coliseum; and Ariosto's comedy of the _Negromante_. These sources may be illustrated from the evidence given by Virginia Maria Lezia before her judges, and the trial of witches at Nogaredo, both of which are printed in Dandolo's _Signora di Monza_ (Milano, 1855). Compare the curious details about Lombard witchcraft in Cantu's _Diocesi di Como_.]

Witchcraft was localized in two chief centers--the mountains of Norcia, and the Lombard valleys of the Alps.[441] In the former we find a remnant of antique superstition. The witches of this district, whether male or female, had something of the classical Sibyl in their composition and played upon the terrors of their clients. Like their Roman predecessors, they plied the trades of poisoner, quack-doctor and bawd. In Lombardy witchcraft assumed a more Teutonic complexion. The witch was less the instrument of fashionable vices, trading in them as a lucrative branch of industry, than the hysterical subject of a spiritual disease. Lust itself inflamed the victims of this superstition, who were burned by hundreds in the towns, and who were supposed to hold their revels in the villages of Val Camonica. Like the hags of northern Europe, these Lombard _streghe_ had recourse to the black art in the delirious hope of satisfying their own inordinate ambitions, their own indescribable desires. The disease spread so wildly at the close of the fifteenth century that Innocent VIII., by his Bull of 1484, issued special injunctions to the Dominican monks of Brescia, Bergamo and Cremona, authorizing them to stamp it out with fire and torture.[442] The result was a crusade against witchcraft, which seems to have increased the evil by fascinating the imagination of the people. They believed all the more blindly in the supernatural powers to be obtained by magic arts, inasmuch as this traffic had become the object of a bloody persecution. When the Church recognized that men and women might command the fiends of hell, it followed as a logical consequence that wretches, maddened by misery and intoxicated with ungovernable lusts, were tempted to tamper with the forbidden thing at the risk of life and honor in this world and with the certainty of damnation in the other. After this fashion the confused conscience of illiterate people bred a formidable extension of this spiritual malady throughout the northern provinces of Italy. Some were led by morbid curiosity; others by a vain desire to satisfy their appetites, or to escape the consequences of their crimes. A more dangerous class used the superstition to acquire power over their neighbors and to make money out of popular credulity.

[Footnote 441: It may be remembered that the necromancer in Cellini sent his book to be enchanted in the Apennines of Norcia. Folengo alludes to this superstition:

Qualiter ad stagnum Nursae sacrare quadernos.

With regard to Val Camonica, see the actual state of that district as reported by Cantu. Folengo in the _Orlandino_ mentions its witches. Bandello (iii. 52) speaks of it thus: "Val Camonica, ove si dice essere di molte streghe."]

[Footnote 442: Witchcraft in Italy grew the more formidable the closer it approached the German frontier. It seems to have assumed the features of an epidemic at the close of the fifteenth century. Up to that date little is heard of it, and little heed was paid to it. The exacerbation of the malady portended and accompanied the dissolution of medieval beliefs in a population vexed by war, famine and pestilence, and vitiated by ecclesiastical corruption.]

Born and bred in Lombardy at the epoch when witchcraft had attained the height of popular insanity, Folengo was keenly alive to the hideousness of a superstition which, rightly or wrongly, he regarded as a widespread plague embracing all classes of society. It may be questioned whether he did not exaggerate its importance. But there is no mistaking the verisimilitude of the picture he drew. All the uncleanliness of a diseased imagination, all the extravagances of wanton desire, all the consequences of domestic unchastity--incest, infanticide, secret assassination, concealment of births--are traced to this one cause and identified by him with witchcraft. The palace of the queen Gulfora is a pandemonium of lawless vice:

Quales hic reperit strepitus, qualemque tumultum,
Quales mollities turpes, actusque salaces,
Utile nil scribi posset, si scribere vellem.

Her courts are crowded with devils who have taken human shape to gratify the lusts of her votaries:

Leggiadros juvenes, bellos, facieque venustos,
Stringatos, agiles, quos judicat esse diablos,
Humanum piliasse caput moresque decentes,
Conspicit, innumeras circum scherzare puellas,
Quae gestant vestes auri brettasque veluti.

The multitude is made up of all nations, sexes, ages, classes:

Obstupet innumeros illic retrovare striones,
Innumerasque strias vecchias, modicasque puellas.
Non ea medesimo generatur schiatta paeso;
At sunt Italici, Graeci, Gallique, Spagnoles,
Magnates, poveri, laici, fratresque, pretesque,
Matronae, monighae per forzam claustra colentes.

Some of them are engaged in preparing love-potions and poisonous draughts from the most disgusting and noxious ingredients. Others compound unguents to be used in the metamorphosis of themselves on their nocturnal jaunts. Among these are found poets, orators, physicians, lawyers, governors, for whose sins a handful of poor old women play the part of scapegoats before the public:

Sed quia respectu legis praevertitur ordo,
Namque solent grossi pisces mangiare minutos,
Desventuratae quaedam solummodo vecchiae
Sunt quae supra asinos plebi spectacula fiunt,
Sunt quae primatum multorum crimina celant,
Sunt quae sparagnant madonnis pluribus ignem.

Some again are discovered compiling books of spells:

Quomodo adulterium uxoris vir noscere possit,
Quomodo virgineae cogantur amare puellae,
Quomodo non tumeat mulier cornando maritum,
Quomodo si tumuit fantinum mingat abortum,
Quomodo vix natos vitient sua fascina puttos,
Quomodo desiccent odiati membra mariti.

The elder witches keep a school for the younger, and instruct them in the secrets of their craft. Among these Baldus recognizes his own wife, together with the principal ladies of his native land.

It is clear that under the allegory of witchcraft, in which at the same time he seems to have believed firmly, Folengo meant to satirize the secret corruption of society. When Gulfora herself appears, she holds her court like an Italian duchess:

Longa sequit series hominum muschiata zibettis,
Qui cortesanos se vantant esse tilatos,
Quorum si videas mores rationis ochialo,
Non homines maschios sed dicas esse bagassas.

The terrible friar then breaks into a tirade against the courtiers of his day, comparing them with Arthur's knights:

Tempore sed nostro, proh dii, saecloque dadessum,
Non nisi perfumis variis et odore zibetti,
Non nisi, seu sazarae petenentur sive tosentur,
Brettis velluti, nec non scufiotibus auri,
Auri cordiculis, impresis, atque medallis,
Millibus et frappis per calzas perque giupones,
Cercamus carum merdosi germen amoris.

Baldus exterminates the whole vile multitude, while Fracassus pulls Gulfora's palace about her ears. After this, the Barons pursue their way to Acheron, and call upon Charon to ferry them across. He refuses to take so burdensome a party into his boat; but by the strength of Fracassus and the craft of Cingar they effect a passage. Their entry into hell furnishes Folengo with opportunities for new tirades against the vices of Italy. Tisiphone boasts how Rome, through her machinations, has kept Christendom in discord. Alecto exults in her offspring, the Guelph and Ghibelline factions:

Unde fides Christi paulatim lapsa ruinet,
Dum gentes Italae bastantes vincere mundum
Se se in se stessos discordant, seque medesmos
Vassallos faciunt, servos, vilesque famejos
His qui vassalli, servi, vilesque fa meji
Tempore passato nobis per forza fu ere.

After passing the Furies, and entering the very jaws of Hades, Baldus encounters the fantasies of grammarians and humanists, the idle nonsense of the schoolmen, all the lumber of medieval philosophy mixed with the trifles of the Renaissance.[443] He fights his way through the thick-crowding swarm of follies, and reaches the hell of lovers, where a mountebank starts forward and offers to be his guide. Led by this zany, the hero and his comrades enter an enormous gourd, the bulk of which is compared to the mountains of Val Camonica. Within its spacious caverns dwell the sages of antiquity, with astrologers, physicians, wizards, and false poets. But, having brought his Barons to this place Merlinus Cocajus can advance no further. He is destined to inhabit the great gourd himself. Beyond it he has no knowledge; and here, therefore, he leaves the figments of his fancy without a word of farewell:

Nec Merlinus ego, laus, gloria, fama Cipadae,
Quamvis fautrices habui Tognamque Gosamque,
Quamvis implevi totum macaronibus orbem,
Quamvis promerui Baldi cantare batajas,
Non tamen hanc zuccam potui schifare decentem,
In qua me tantos opus est nunc perdere dentes,
Tot, quot in immenso posui mendacia libro.

[Footnote 443:

Hic sunt Grammaticae populi, gentesque reductae,
Huc, illuc, istuc, reliqua seguitante fameja:
Argumenta volant dialectica, mille sophistae
Adsunt bajanae, pro, contra, non, ita, lyque:
Adsunt Errores, asunt mendacia, bollae,
Atque solecismi, fallacia, fictio vatum...
Omnes altandem tanto rumore volutant
Ethicen et Physicen, Animam, centumque novellas,
Ut sibi stornito Baldus stopparet orecchias.
Squarnazzam Scoti Fracassus repperit illic,
Quam vestit, gabbatque Deum, pugnatque Thomistas.
Alberti magni Lironus somnia zaffat.]

With this grotesque invention of the infernal pumpkin, where lying bards are punished by the extraction of teeth which never cease to grow again, Folengo breaks abruptly off. His epic ends with a Rabelaisian peal of laughter, in which we can detect a growl of discontent and anger.

Laying the book down, we ask ourselves whether the author had a serious object, or whether he meant merely to indulge a vein of wayward drollery. The virulent invectives which abound in the _Maccaronea_, seem to warrant the former conclusion; nor might it be wholly impossible to regard the poem as an allegory, in which Baldus should play the part of the reason, unconscious at first of its noble origin, consorting with the passions and the senses, but finally arriving at the knowledge of its high destiny and defeating the powers of evil.[444] Yet when we attempt to press this theory and to explain the allegory in detail, the thread snaps in our hands. Like the romances of chivalry which it parodies, the _Maccaronea_ is a bizarre mixture of heterogeneous elements, loosely put together to amuse an idle public and excite curiosity. If its author has used it also as the vehicle for satire which embraces all the popular superstitions, vices and hypocrisies of his century; if, as he approaches the conclusion, he assumes a tone of sarcasm more sinister than befits the broad burlesque of the commencement; we must rest contented with the assumption that his choleric humor led him from the path of comedy, while the fury of a soul divided against itself inspired his muses of the cook-shop with loftier strains than they had promised at the outset.[445] Should students in the future devote the same minute attention to Folengo that has been paid to Rabelais, it is not improbable that the question here raised may receive solution. The poet is not unworthy of such pains. Regarded merely as the precursor of Rabelais, Folengo deserves careful perusal. He was the creator of a style, which, when we read his epic, forces us to think of the seventeenth century; so strongly did it influence the form of humorous burlesque in Europe for at least two hundred years. On this account, the historian of modern literature cannot afford to neglect him. For the student of Italian manners in Lombardy during the height of the Renaissance, the huge amorphous undigested mass of the _Maccaronea_ is one of the most valuable and instructive documents that we possess. I do not hesitate, from this point of view, to rank it with the masterpieces of the age, with the _Orlando_ of Ariosto, with Machiavelli's comedies, and with the novels of Bandello.

[Footnote 444: This hypothesis receives support from the passage in which Baldus compares his new love for Crispis, the paragon of all virtues, with his old infatuation for Berta, who is the personification of vulgar appetite, unrefined natural instinct. See the end of Book xxiii.]

[Footnote 445: The rage of a man who knows that he has chosen the lower while he might have trodden the higher paths of life and art, flames out at intervals through this burlesque. Take this example, the last five lines of Book xxiii.:

Sic ego Macronicum penitus volo linquere carmen
Cum mihi tempus erit, quod erit, si celsa voluntas
Flectitur et nostris lachrymis et supplice voto.
Heu heu! quod volui misero mihi? floribus Austrum
Perditus et liquidis immisi fontibus aprum.]

Folengo used the maccaronic style in two other considerable compositions. The one entitled _Moscheis_ is an elegant parody of the _Batrachomyomachia_, relating the wars of ants and flies in elegiac verse. The other, called _Zanitonella_, celebrates the rustic loves of Zanina and Tonello in a long series of elegies, odes and eclogues. This collection furnishes a complete epitome of parodies modeled on the pastorals in vogue. The hero appears upon the scene in the following _Sonolegia_, under which title we detect a blending of the Sonnet and the Elegy:[446]

Solus solettus stabam colegatus in umbra,
Pascebamque meas virda per arva capras.
Nulla travajabant animum pensiria nostrum,
Cercabam quoniam tempus habere bonum.
Quando bolzoniger puer, o mea corda forasti;
Nec dedit in fallum dardus alhora tuus.
Immo fracassasti rationis vincula, quae tunc
Circa coradam bastio fortis erat.

[Footnote 446: _Zanitonella_, p. 3.]

The lament is spun out to the orthodox length of fourteen verses, and concludes with a pretty point. Who the _bolzoniger puer_ was, is more openly revealed in another Sonolegia:[447]

Nemo super terram mangiat mihi credite panem
Seu contadinus, seu citadinus erit,
Quem non attrapolet Veneris bastardulus iste,
Qui volat instar avis, caecus, et absque braga.

[Footnote 447: _Ibid._ p. 2. Compare Sonolegia xiii. _ib._ p. 40.]

To follow the poet through all his burlesques of Petrarchistic and elegiac literature, Italian or Latin, would be superfluous. It is enough to say that he leaves none of their accustomed themes untouched with parody. The masterpiece of his art in this style is the sixth Eclogue, consisting of a dialogue between two drunken bumpkins--_interloquutores Tonellus et Pedralus, qui ambo inebriantur_.[448]

[Footnote 448: _Op. cit._ p. 42.]

The maccaronic style was a product of North Italy, cultivated by writers of the Lombard towns, who versified comic or satiric subjects in parodies of humanistic poetry. The branch of burlesque literature we have next to examine, belonged to Tuscany, and took its origin from the equivocal carnival and dance songs raised to the dignity of art by Lorenzo de' Medici. Its conventional meter was _terza rima_, handled with exquisite sense of rhythm, but degraded to low comedy by the treatment of trivial or vulgar motives. The author of these _Capitoli_, as they were called, chose some common object--a paint-brush, salad, a sausage, peaches, figs, eels, radishes--to celebrate; affected to be inspired by the grandeur of his subject; developed the drollest tropes, metaphors and illustrations; and almost invariably conveyed an obscene meaning under the form of innuendoes appropriate to his professed theme. Though some exceptions can be pointed out, the _Capitoli_ in general may be regarded as a species of Priapic literature, fashioned to suit the taste of Florentines, who had been accustomed for many generations to semi-disguised obscenity in their vernacular town poetry.[449] Taken from the streets and squares, adopted by the fashionable rhymsters of academies and courtly coteries, the rude Fescennine verse lost none of its license, while it assumed the polish of urbane art. Were it not for this antiquity and popularity of origin, which suggests a plausible excuse for the learned writers of _Capitoli_ and warns us to regard their indecency as in some measure conventional, it would be difficult to approach the three volumes which contain a selection of their poems, without horror.[450] So deep, universal, unblushing is the vice revealed in them.

[Footnote 449: We may ascend to the very sources of popular Tuscan poetry, and we shall find this literature of _double entendre_ in the _Canzoni_ of the _Nicchio_ and _Ugellino_, noticed above, Part i. p. 38. Besides the _Canti Carnascialeschi_ edited by Il Lasca, we have a collection of _Canzoni a Ballo_, printed at Florence in 1569, which proves that the raw material of the _Capitoli_ lay ready to the hand of the burlesque poets in plebeian literature.]

[Footnote 450: My references are made to _Opere Burlesche_, 3 vols., 1723, with the names of Londra and Firenze. Gregorovius says of them: "Wenn man diese 'scherzenden' Gedichte liest, muss man entweder ueber die Nichtigkeit ihrer Gegenstaende staunen, oder vor dem Abgrund der Unsittlichkeit erschrecken, den sie frech entschleiern." _Stadt Rom._ vol. viii. p. 345.]

To Francesco Berni belongs the merit, such as it is, of having invented the burlesque _Capitoli_. He gave his name to it, and the term Bernesque has passed into the critical phraseology of Europe. The unique place of this rare poet in the history of Italian literature, will justify a somewhat lengthy account of his life and works. Studying him, we study the ecclesiastical and literary society of Rome in the age of Leo X. and Clement VII.

Francesco Berni was born at Lamporecchio, in the Val di Nievole, about the end of the fifteenth century.[451] His parents were poor; but they were connected with the family of the Cardinal Bibbiena, who, after the boy's education at Florence, took him at the age of nineteen to Rome. Upon the death of this patron in 1520, Berni remained in the service of Bibbiena's nephew, Agnolo Dovizio. Receiving no advancement from these kinsmen, he next transferred himself, in the quality of secretary, to the household of Giammatteo Giberti, Bishop of Verona, who was a distinguished Mecaenas of literary men. This change involved his taking orders. Berni now resided partly at Rome and partly at Verona, tempering the irksome duties of his office by the writing of humorous poetry, which he recited in the then celebrated Academy of the Vignajuoli. This society, which numbered Molza, Mauro, La Casa, Lelio Capilupi, Firenzuola, and Francesco Bini among its members, gave the tone to polite literature at the Courts of Leo and Clement.

[Footnote 451: The probable date is 1496.]

Berni survived the sack of 1527, which proved so disastrous to Italian scholars; but he lost everything he possessed.[452] Monsignor Giberti employed him on various missions of minor importance, involving journeys to Venice, Padua, Nice, Florence, and the Abruzzi. After sixteen years of Court-life, Berni grew weary of the petty duties, which must have been peculiarly odious to a man of his lazy temperament, if it is true, as he informs us, that the Archbishop kept him dancing attendance till daylight, while he played primiera with his friends. Accordingly, he retired to Florence, where he held a canonry in the cathedral. There, after a quiet life of literary ease, he died suddenly in 1535. It was rumored that he had been poisoned: and the most recent investigations into the circumstances of his death tend rather to confirm this report. All that is known, however, for certain, is that he spent the evening of May 25 with his friends the Marchionesse di Massa in the Palazzo Pazzi, and that next morning he breathed his last. His mysterious and unexplained decease was ascribed to one of the two Medicean princes then resident in Florence. A sonnet in Berni's best style, containing a vehement invective against Alessandro de' Medici, is extant. The hatred expressed in this poem may have occasioned the rumor (which certainly acquired a certain degree of currency) that Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici attempted to use the poet for the secret poisoning of his cousin, and on his refusal had him murdered. Other accounts of the supposed assassination ascribe a like intention to the Duke, who is said to have suggested the poisoning of the Cardinal to Berni. Both stories agree in representing his tragic end as the price paid for refusal to play the part of an assassin. The matter remains obscure; but enough suspicion rests upon the manner of his death to render this characteristic double legend plausible; especially when we remember what the customs of Florence with respect to poisoning were, and how the Cardinal de' Medici ended his own life.[453]

[Footnote 452: _Orl. Inn. Rifatto da Fr. Berni_, i. 14, 23-28, makes it clear that Berni was an eye-witness of the Sack of Rome. Panizzi's reference to this passage (_Boiardo ed Ariosto_, London, 1830, vol. ii. p. cxi.) involves what seems to me a confusion.]

[Footnote 453: The matter is fully discussed by Mazzuchelli in his biography of Berni. He, relying on the hypothesis of Berni having lived till 1536, if not till 1543, points out the impossibility of his having been murdered by the Cardinal, who died himself in July, 1535. This difficulty has recently been removed by Signor Antonio Virgili's demonstration of the real date of Berni's death in May, 1535. See _Rassegna Settimanale_, February 23, 1879, a paper of great importance for students of Berni's life and works, to which I shall frequently refer.]

Such is the uneventful record of Berni's career. He was distinguished among all the poets of the century for his genial vein of humor and amiable personal qualities. That he was known to be stained with vices which it is not easy to describe, but which he frankly acknowledged in his poetical epistles, did not injure his reputation in that age of mutual indulgence.[454] Willing to live and let live, with a never-failing fund of drollery, and with a sincere dislike for work of any sort, he lounged through existence, an agreeable, genial and witty member of society. If this were all we should not need to write about him now. But with this easy-going temperament he combined a genius for poetry so peculiar and delicate, that his few works mark an epoch in Italian literature.

[Footnote 454: It is enough to mention the _Capitoli_ "Delle Pesche," "A M. Antonio da Bibbiena," "Sopra un Garzone," "Lamentazion d'Amore." References are made to the _Rime e Lettere di Fr. Berni_, Firenze, Barbera, 1865. For the _Rifacimento_ of the _Orlando Innamorato_ I shall use the Milan reprint in 5 vols., 1806, which also contains the _Rime_.]

The best description of Berni is contained in the burlesque portrait of himself, which forms part of his _Boiardo Innamorato_.[455] This has been so well translated by an English scholar, the late W.S. Rose, that I cannot do better than refer the student to his stanzas. They convey as accurate a notion of the Bernesque manner as can be derived from any version in a foreign language.[456] The character he there has given to himself for laziness is corroborated by his extant epistles in prose. Berni represents himself as an incurably bad correspondent, pleased to get letters, but overcome with mortal terror when he is obliged to answer them.[457] He confides to his friend Francesco Bini that the great affair in life is to be gay and to write as little as possible:[458] "A vivere avemo sino alla morte a dispetto di chi non vuole, e il vantaggio e vivere allegramente, come conforto a far vio, attendando a frequentar quelli banchetti che si fanno per Roma, e scrivendo sopra tutto manco che potete. _Quia haec est victoria, quae vincit mundum._" The curse has been laid upon him of having to drive his quill without ceasing:[459] "_O ego laevus_, che scrivo d'ogni tempo, e scrivo ora che ho una gamba al collo, che ieri tornando dalla Certosa mi ruppe la mia cavalla, cascandomivi sopra. Sono pure un gran coglione!" So his pen runs on. The man writes just as he spoke, without affectation, mixing his phrases of Latin with the idiom of common life. The whole presents an agreeable contrast to the stilted style of Bembo, La Casa's studied periods, and the ambitious epistolary efforts of Aretino. Sometimes he breaks into doggrel:[460] "S'io avessi l'ingenio del Burchiello, Io vi farei volentier un sonetto, Che non ebbi giammai tema e subietto, Piu dolce, piu piacevol, ne piu bello." When his friends insist upon his writing to them, rhyme comes to his aid, and he affects a comic fit of rage:[461]

Perche m'ammazzi con le tue querele,
Priuli mio, perche ti duole a torto,
Che sai che t'amo piu che l'orso il miele, etc.

[Footnote 455: Book III. canto vii. (canto 67 of the _Rifacimento_, vol. iv. p. 266).]

[Footnote 456: This translation will be found in Panizzi's edition of the _Orlando Innamorato_ (London, Pickering, 1830), vol. ii. p. cxiv.]

[Footnote 457: Letter vi. to Messer Giamb. Montebuona.]

[Footnote 458: Letter xvii.]

[Footnote 459: Letter xxiv.]

[Footnote 460: Letter to Ippolito de' Medici (ed. Milan, vol. v. p. 227).]

[Footnote 461: Letter ix.]

Importuned to publish the poems he recited with so much effect in private circles, he at last consents because he cannot help it:[462] "Compare, io non ho potuto tanto schermirmi che pure m'e bisognato dar fuori questo benedetto Capitolo e Comento della Primiera; e siate certo che l'ho fatto, non perche mi consumassi d'andare in stampa, ne per immortalarmi come il cavalier Casio, ma per fuggire la fatica mia, e la malevolenza di molti che domandandomelo e non lo avendo mi volevano mal di morte." Nor were these the ordinary excuses of an author eager to conceal his vanity. The _Capitolo_ upon the game of primiera was the only poem which appeared with his consent.[463] He intended his burlesque verses for recitation, and is even said to have preserved no copies of them, so that many of his compositions, piratically published in his lifetime, were with difficulty restored to a right text by Il Lasca in 1548. This indifference to public fame did not imply any carelessness of style. Mazzuchelli, who had seen some of his rough copies, asserts that they bore signs of the minutest pains bestowed upon them. The melody of versification, richness of allusion, refinement of phrase, equality and flowing smoothness, which distinguish Berni's work from that of his imitators confirm the belief that his _Capitoli_ and sonnets, in spite of their apparent ease, were produced with the conscientious industry of a real artist.

[Footnote 462: Letter vii. Compare the sonnet "In nome di M. Prinzivalle da Pontremoli" (ed. Milan, vol. v. p. 3).]

[Footnote 463: It was published at Rome by Calvo in 1526, with the comment of M. Pietro Paolo da S. Chirico.]

Berni's theory of poetry revealed a common-sense and insight which were no less rare than commendable in that age of artificial literature. He refused to write at command, pleading that spontaneity of inspiration is essential to art, and quoting Vida's dictum:

Nec jussa canas, nisi forte coactus
Magnorum imperio regum.

Notwithstanding his avoidance of publication and parsimony of production, Berni won an almost unique reputation during his lifetime, and after his death was worshiped as a saint by the lovers of burlesque.[464] In one of his drollest sonnets he complains that poets were wont to steal their neighbors' verses, but that he is compelled to take the credit of more than he ever wrote:[465]

A me quei d'altri son per forza dati,
E dicon tu gli arai, vuoi o non vuoi.

[Footnote 464: Il Lasca prefixed a sonnet to his edition of 1548, in which he speaks of "Il Berni nostro dabbene e gentile," calls him "primo e vero trovatore, Maestro e padre del burlesco stile," says that it is possible to envy but impossible to imitate him, and compares him thus with Burchiello:

Non sia chi mi ragioni di Burchiello,
Che saria proprio come comparare
Caron Dimonio all'Agnol Gabriello.

In another sonnet he climbs a further height of panegyric:

Quanti mai fur poeti al mondo e sono,
Volete in Greco, in Ebreo, o in Latino,
A petto a lui non vagliono un lupino,
Tant'e dotto, faceto, bello e buono:

and winds up with the strange assurance that:

da lui si sente
Anzi s'impara con gioja infinita
Come viver si debbe in questa vita.]

[Footnote 465: Sonnet xxvii.]

A piece of comic prose or verse cannot appear but that it is at once ascribed to him:

E la gente faceta
Mi vuole pure impiastrar di prose e carmi,
Come s'io fussi di razza di marmi:
Non posso ripararmi;
Come si vede fuor qualche sonetto,
Il Berni l'ha composto a suo dispetto.
E fanvi su un guazzetto
Di chiose e di sensi, che rinnieghi il cielo,
Se Luter fa piu stracci del Vangelo.

One of the glosses referred to in this _coda_, lies before me as I write. It was composed by Gianmaria Cecchi on Berni's sonnet which begins "Cancheri e beccafichi." The sonnet is an amusing imprecation upon matrimony, written in one paragraph, and containing the sting of the epigram in its short _coda_ of three lines.[466] But it did not need a commentary, and Cecchi's voluminous annotations justify the poet's comic anger.

[Footnote 466: Sonnet ix.]

Berni's _Capitoli_ may be broadly divided into three classes. The first includes his poetical epistles, addressed to Fracastoro, Sebastian del Piombo, Ippolito de' Medici, Marco Veneziano, and other friends. Except for the peculiar humor, which elevates the trivial accidents of life to comedy, except for the consummate style, which dignifies the details of familiar correspondence and renders fugitive effusions classical, these letters in verse would scarcely detach themselves from a mass of similar compositions. As it is, Berni's personality renders them worthy companions of Ariosto's masterpieces in a similar but nicely differentiated branch of literature. It remains for the amateurs of autobiographical poetry to choose between the self-revelation of the philosophizing Ferrarese poet and the brilliant trifling of the Florentine. The second class embraces a number of occasional poems--the Complaint against Love, the Deluge in Mugello, the Satire upon Adrian VI., the Lamentation of Nardino--descriptive or sarcastic pieces, where the poet chooses a theme and develops it with rhetorical abundance. The third class may be regarded as the special source and fountain of the Bernesque manner, as afterwards adopted and elaborated by Berni's imitators. Omitting personal or occasional motives, he sings the praises of the Plague, of Primiera, of Aristotle, of Peaches, of Debt, of Eels, of the Urinal, of Thistles, and of other trifling subjects. Here his burlesque genius takes the most fantastic flight, soaring to the ether of absurdity and sinking to the nadir of obscenity, combining heterogeneous elements of fun and farce, yet never transgressing the limits of refined taste. These _Capitoli_ revealed a new vehicle of artistic expression to his contemporaries. Penetrated with their author's individuality, they caught the spirit of the age and met its sense of humor. Consequently they became the touchstones of burlesque inspiration, the models which tempted men of feebler force and more uncertain tact to hopeless tasks of emulation. We still possess La Casa's _Capitolo_ on the Oven; Molza's on Salad and the Fig; Firenzuola's on the Sausage and the Legno Santo; Bronzino's on the Paint-brush and the Radish; Aretino's on the Quartan Fever; Franzesi's on Carrots and Chestnuts; Varchi's on Hard Eggs and Fennel; Mauro's on Beans and Priapus; Dolce's on Spittle and Noses; Bini's on the _Mal Franzese_; Lori's on Apples; Ruscelli's on the Spindle--not to speak of many authors, the obscurity of whose names and the obscenity of the themes they celebrated, condemn them to condign oblivion. Not without reason did Gregorovius stigmatize these poems as a moral syphilis, invading Italian literature and penetrating to the remotest fibers of its organism. After their publication in academical circles and their further diffusion through the press, simple terms which had been used to cloak their improprieties, became the bywords of pornographic pamphleteers and poets. Figs, beans, peaches, apples, chestnuts acquired a new and scandalous significance. Sins secluded from the light of day by a modest instinct of humanity, flaunted their loathsomeness without shame beneath the ensigns of these literary allegories. The corruption of society, hypocritically veiled or cynically half-revealed in coteries, expressed itself too plainly through the phraseology invented by a set of sensual poets. The most distinguished members of society, Cardinals like Bembo, prelates like La Casa, painters like Bronzino, critics like Varchi, scholars like Molza, lent the prestige of their position and their talents to the diffusion of this leprosy, which still remains the final most convincing testimony to the demoralization of Italy in the Renaissance.[467]

[Footnote 467: The scholars of the day were not content with writing burlesque _Capitoli_. They must needs annotate them. See Caro's Commentary on the _Ficheide_ of Molza (Romagnoli, _Scelta di Curiosita Letterarie_, Dispensa vii. Bologna, 1862) for the most celebrated example. There is not a sentence in this long and witty composition, read before the Accademia delle Virtu, which does not contain a grossly obscene allusion, scarcely a paragraph which does not refer to an unmentionable vice.]

To what extent, it may be asked, was Berni responsible for these consequences? He brought the indecencies of the piazza, where they were the comparatively innocuous expression of coarse instincts, into the close atmosphere of the study and the academical circle, refined their vulgarisms, and made their viciousness attractive by the charm of his incomparable style. This transition from the _Canto Carnascialesco_ to the _Capitolo_ may be observed in Berni's _Caccia di Amore_, a very licentious poem dedicated to "noble and gentle ladies." It is a Carnival Song or _Canzone a Ballo_ rewritten in octave stanzas of roseate fluency and seductive softness. A band of youthful huntsmen pay their court in it to women, and the _double entendre_ exactly reproduces the style of innuendo rendered fashionable by Lorenzo de' Medici. Yet, though Berni is unquestionably answerable for the obscene _Capitoli_ of the sixteenth century, it must not be forgotten that he only gave form to material already sufficiently appropriated by the literary classes. With him, the grossness which formed the staple of Mauro's, Molza's, Bini's, La Casa's and Bronzino's poems, the depravities of appetite which poisoned the very substance of their compositions, were but accidental. The poet stood above them and in some measure aloof from them, employing these ingredients in the concoction of his burlesque, but never losing the main object of his art in their development. A bizarre literary effect, rather than the indulgence of a sensual imagination, was the aim he had in view. Therefore, while we regret that his example gave occasion to coarser debaucheries of talent, we are bound to acknowledge that the jests to which he condescended, do not represent his most essential self. This, however, is but a feeble apology. That without the excuse of passion, without satirical motive or overmastering personal proclivity, he should have penned the _Capitolo a M. Antonio da Bibbiena_, and have joked about giving and taking his metaphorical peaches, remains an ineradicable blot upon his nature.[468]

[Footnote 468: The six opening lines of the _Lamentazion d'Amore_ prevent our regarding Berni's jests as wholly separate from his experience and practice.]

The Bernesque _Capitoli_ were invariably written in _terza rima_, which at this epoch became the recognized meter of epistolary, satirical, and dissertational poetry throughout Italy.[469] Thus the rhythm of the Divine Comedy received final development by lending itself to the expression of whims, fancies, personal invectives and scurrilities. To quote from Berni's masterpieces in this style would be impossible. Each poem of about one hundred lines is a perfect and connected unity, which admits of no mutilation by the detachment of separate passages. Still readers may be referred to the _Capitolo a Fracastoro_ and the two _Capitoli della Peste_ as representative of the poet's humor in its purest form, without the moral deformities of the still more celebrated _Pesche_ or the uncleanliness of the _Orinale_.

[Footnote 469: A familiar illustration is Cellini's _Capitolo del Carcere_. Curious examples of these occasional poems, written for the popular taste, are furnished by Mutinelli in his _Annali Urbani di Venezia_. See above, Part i. pp. 172, 519, for the vicissitudes of _terza rima_ after the close of the fourteenth century.]

At the close of the _Capitolo_ written on the occasion of Adrian VI.'s election to the Papacy, Berni declared that it had never been his custom to speak ill of people:

L'usanza mia non fu mai di dir male;
E che sia il ver, leggi le cose mie,
Leggi l'Anguille, leggi l'Orinale,
Le Pesche, i Cardi e l'altre fantasie:
Tutte sono inni, salmi, laudi ed ode.

We have reason to believe this declaration. Genial good humor is a characteristic note of his literary temperament. At the same time he was no mean master of caricature and epigram. The _Capitolo_ in question is a sustained tirade against the Fleming, who had come to break the peace of polished Rome--a shriek of angry lamentation over altered times, intolerable insults, odious innovations. The amazement and discomfiture of the poet, contrasted with his burlesque utterance, render this composition comic in a double sense. Its satire cuts both ways, against the author and the object of his rage. Yet when Adrian gave place to Giulio de' Medici, and Berni discovered what kind of a man the new Pope was, he vented nobler scorn in verse of far more pungent criticism. His sonnet on Clement is remarkable for exactly expressing the verdict posterity has formed after cool and mature inquiry into this Pope's actions. Clement's weakness and irresolution must end, the poet says, by making even Adrian seem a saint:[470]

Un Papato composto di rispetti,
Di considerazioni e di discorsi,
Di piu, di poi, di ma, di si, di forsi,
Di pur, di assai parole senza effetti;
Di pensier, di consigli, di concetti,
Di congetture magre per apporsi
D'intrattenerti, purche non si sborsi,
Con audienze, risposte, e bei detti:
Di pie di piombo e di neutralita,
Di pazienza, di dimostrazione,
Di Fede, di Speranza e Carita,
D'innocenza, di buona intenzione;
Ch'e quasi come dir, semplicita.
Per non le dare altra interpretazione,
Sia con sopportazione,
Lo diro pur, vedrete che pian piano
Fara canonizzar Papa Adriano.

[Footnote 470:

A Papacy composed of compliment,
Debate, consideration, complaisance,
Of furthermore, then, but, yes, well, perchance,
Haply, and such-like terms inconsequent;
Of thought, conjecture, counsel, argument,
Starveling surmise to summon countenance,
Negotiations, audiences, romance,
Fine words and shifts, disbursement to prevent;
Of feet of lead, of tame neutrality,
Of patience and parade to outer view.
Of fawning Faith, of Hope and Charity,
Of Innocence and good intentions too,
Which it were well to dub simplicity,
Uglier interpretations to eschew;
With your permission, you,
To speak the plain truth out, shall live to see
Pope Adrian sainted through this Papacy.]

The insight into Clement's character displayed in this sonnet, the invective against Adrian, and the acerbity of another sonnet against Alessandro de' Medici:

Empio Signor, che de la roba altrui
Lieto ti vai godendo, e del sudore:

would gain in cogency, could we attach more value to the manliness of Berni's utterances. But when we know that, while he was showering curses on the Duke of Civita di Penna, he frequented the Medicean Court and wrote a humorous _Capitolo_ upon Gradasso, a dwarf of Cardinal Ippolito, we feel forced to place these epigrammatic effusions among the ebullitions of personal rather than political animosity. There was nothing of the patriot in Berni, not even so much as in Machiavelli, who himself avowed his readiness to roll stones for the Signori Medici.

As a satirist, Berni appears to better advantage in his caricatures of private or domestic personages. The portrait of his housekeeper, who combined in her single person all the antiquities of all the viragos of romance:

Io ho per cameriera mia l'Ancroja
Madre di Ferrau, zia di Morgante,
Arcavola maggior dell'Amostante,
Balia del Turco e suocera del Boja:

Alcionio upon his mule:

Quella che per soperchio digiunare
Tra l'anime celesti benedette
Come un corpo diafano traspare:

Ser Cecco who could never be severed from the Court, nor the Court from Ser Cecco:

Perch'ambedue son la Corte e ser Cecco:

the pompous doctor:

l'ambasciador del Boja,
Un medico, maestro Guazzaletto:

Domenico d'Ancona, the memory of whose beard, shorn by some Vandal of a barber, draws tears from every sympathetic soul:

Or hai dato, barbier, l'ultimo crollo
Ad una barba la piu singolare
Che mai fosse descritta in verso o 'n prosa:

these form a gallery of comic likenesses, drawn from the life and communicated with the force of reality to the reader. Each is perfect in style, clearly cut like some antique chalcedony, bringing the object of the poet's mirth before us with the exact measure of ridicule he sought to inflict.[471]

[Footnote 471: Sonnets xi. xvi. xiv. iii. xx. The same vivid picturesqueness is displayed in the desecrated Abbey (Sonnet xvii.), which deserves to be called an etching in words.]

This satiric power culminates in the sonnet on Pietro Aretino.[472] The tartness of Berni's more good-humored pasquinades is concentrated to vitriol by unadulterated loathing. He flings this biting acid in the face of one whom he has found a scoundrel. The sonnet starts at the white heat of fury:

Tu ne dirai e farai tante e tante,
Lingua fracida, marcia, senza sale.

[Footnote 472: Sonnet xix. In the _Capitolo_ to Ippolito de' Medici, Berni thus alludes to Aretino:

Com'ha fatto non so chi mio vicino,
Che veste d'oro, e piu non degna il panno,
E dassi del messere e del divino.]

It proceeds with execration; and when the required fourteen lines have been terminated, it foams over into rage more voluble and still more voluble, unwinding the folds of an interminable _Coda_ with ever-increasing _crescendo_ of vituperation, as though the passion of the writer could not be appeased. The whole has to be read at one breath. No quotation can render a conception of its rhetorical art. Every word strikes home because every word contains a truth expressed in language of malignant undiluted heartfelt hate. That most difficult of literary triumphs, to render abuse sublime, to sustain a single note of fierce invective without relaxing or weakening the several grades that lead to the catastrophe, has been accomplished. This achievement is no doubt due in some measure to the exact correspondence between what we know of Pietro Aretino and what Berni has written of him. Yet its blunt fidelity to fact does not detract from the skill displayed in the handling of those triple series of rhymes, each one of which descends like a lash upon the writhing back beneath:

Ch'ormai ogni paese
Hai ammorbato, ogn'uom, ogn'animale,
Il ciel e Dio e 'l diavol ti vuol male.
Quelle veste ducale,
O ducali accattate e furfantate,
Che ti piangono addosso sventurate,
A suon di bastonate
Ti saran tratte, prima che tu muoja,
Dal reverendo padre messer boja,
Che l'anima di noja,
Mediante un capestro, caveratti,
E per maggior favore squarteratti;
E quei tuoi leccapiatti,
Bardassonacci, paggi da taverna,
Ti canteranno il requiem eterna.
Or vivi e ti governa,
Bench'un pugnale, un cesso, overo un nodo
Ti faranno star cheto in ogni modo.