Renaissance in Italy Volume V Part 9

_Frate._ Ora sia _in nomine_ _Domini_, porterolla, e mostrerolla A chi vi pare.

[Footnote 185: Act iv. sc. 4. In the last line but one, ought we not to read _mostreratela_ or else _mostrerollavi_?]

We may further notice how the parish priest is here meant to play the part of solicitor in the bargain. He does not deal in these spiritual commodities; but he can give advice upon the point of validity. The episode of Bartolo and the Dominican reminds us that we are on the eve of the Reformation. While Rome and Ferrara laughed at the hypocrisies, credulities, and religious frauds implied in such transactions, Northern Europe broke into flame, and Luther opened the great schism.[186]

[Footnote 186: Room must be found for a few of the sarcasms, uttered chiefly by Accursio, which enliven the _Scolastica_. Here are the humanists:

questi umanisti, che cercano Medaglie, e di rovesci si dilettano.

Here is Rome:

Roma, dove intendono Che 'l sangue degli Apostoli e de' Martiri e molto dolce, e a lor spese e un bel vivere.

Here is Ferrara:

Ferrara, ove pur vedesi Che fino alli barbieri paion n.o.bili.

Here are the Signori of Naples:

da Napoli.

Ho ben inteso che ve n'e piu copia Che a Ferrara di Conti; e credo ch'abbiano, Come questi contado, quei dominio.]

The artistic merit of Ariosto's comedies consists in the perfection of their structure. However involved the intrigues may be, we experience no difficulty in following them; so masterly is their development.[187]

It may be objected that he too frequently resorts to the device of anagnorisis, in order to solve a problem which cannot find its issue in the action. This mechanical solution is so obviously employed to make things easy for the author that no interest attaches to the climax of his fables. Yet the characters are drawn with that ripe insight into human nature which distinguished Ariosto. Machiavelli observed that, being a native of Ferrara, cautious in the handling of Tuscan idioms, and unwilling to use the dialect of his own city, Ariosto missed the salt of comedy.[188] There is truth in this criticism. Matched with the best Florentine dialogues, his language wants the raciness of the vernacular. The _sdrucciolo_ verse, which he preferred, fatigues the ear and adds to the impression of formality.

He frequently interrupts the action with tirades, talking, as it were, in his own person to the audience, instead of making his characters speak.[189] Yet foreigners, who study his comedies side by side with Plautus, at almost the same distance of unfamiliarity, will recognize the brilliance of his transcripts from contemporary life. These studies of Italian manners are eminent for good taste, pa.s.sing at no point into extravagance, and only marred by a certain ba.n.a.lity of moral instinct. The _Lena_ has the highest value as a picture of Ferrarese society. We have good reason to believe that it was founded on an actual incident. It deserves to rank with Machiavelli's _Mandragola_ and Aretino's _Cortigiana_ for the light it throws on sixteenth-century customs. And the light is far more natural, less lurid, less partial, than that which either Machiavelli or Aretino shed upon the vices of their century.

[Footnote 187: Cecchi noticed the lucid order, easy exposition and smooth conduct of Ariosto's plots, ranking him for these qualities above the Latin poets. See the pa.s.sage from _Le Pellegrine_ quoted below.]

[Footnote 188: In an essay on the Italian language, included among Machiavelli's works, but ascribed to him on no very certain ground.]

[Footnote 189: Notice the long monologue of the _Ca.s.saria_ in which Lucramo describes the fas.h.i.+onable follies of Ferrara. Ariosto gradually outgrew this habit of tirade. The _Scolastica_ is freer than any of his pieces from the fault.]

Of Machiavelli we have two genuine comedies in prose, the _Mandragola_ and the _Clizia_, and two of doubtful authenticity, called respectively _Commedia in Prosa_ and _Commedia in Versi_, besides a translation of the _Andria_.[190] Judging by internal evidence alone, a cautious critic would reject the _Commedia in Versi_ from the canon of Machiavelli's works; and if the existence of a copy in his autograph has to be taken as conclusive evidence of its genuineness, we can only accept it as a crude and juvenile production. It is written in various measures, a graceless octave stanza rhyming only in the last couplet being used instead of blank verse, while many of the monologues are lyrical. The language is crabbed, uncertain, archaistic--in no point displaying the incisive brevity of Machiavelli's style. The scene is laid in ancient Rome, and the intrigue turns upon a confusion between two names, Catillo and Cammillo. The conventional parasite of antiquity and the inevitable slaves play prominent parts; while the plot is solved by a preposterous exchange of wives between the two chief characters. Thus the fabric of the comedy throughout is unnatural and false to the conditions of real life. Were it not for some piquant studies of Italian manners, scattered here and there in the descriptive pa.s.sages, this _Commedia in Versi_ would scarcely deserve pa.s.sing notice.[191]

[Footnote 190: _Le Commedie di N. Machiavelli, con prefazione di F.

Perfetti_, Firenze, Barbera, 1863.]

[Footnote 191: Take this picture of Virginia (act i. sc. 2):

_Ap._ Dilettasi ella dar prova a filare, O tessere, o cucire, com'e usanza?

_Mis._ No, che far la.s.sa tal cosa a sua madre.

_Ap._ Di che piglia piacer?

_Mis._ Delle finestre, Dove la sta dal mattino alla sera.

E vaga e di novelle, suoni e canti, E studia in lisci, e dorme, e cuce in guanti.

Or the picture of the lovers in church described by the servant, Doria (act iii. sc. 2), or Virginia's portrait of her jealous husband (act iii. sc. 5).]

The _Commedia in Prosa_, for which we might find a t.i.tle in the name of the chief personage, Fra Alberigo, displays the spirit and the style of the _Mandragola_. Critics who do not accept it for Machiavelli's own, must a.s.sume it to have been the work of a clever and obsequious imitator. It is a short piece in three acts written to expose the corruption of a Florentine household. Caterina, the heroine, is a young wife married to an old husband, Amerigo. Their maid-servant, Margherita, holds the threads of the intrigue in her hands. She has been solicited on the one side by Amerigo to help him in his amours with a neighbor's wife, and on the other by the friar, Alberigo, to win Caterina to his suit. The devices whereby Margherita brings her mistress and the monk together, cheats Amerigo of his expected enjoyment, and so contrives that the despicable but injured husband should establish Fra Alberigo in the position of a favored house-friend, const.i.tute the argument. Short as the play is, it combines the chief points of the _Clizia_ and the _Mandragola_ in a single action, and may be regarded as the first sketch of two situations afterwards developed with more fullness by the author.[192]

The language is coa.r.s.e, and the picture of manners, executed with remorseless realism, would be revolting but for its strong workmans.h.i.+p.[193] The playwright expended his force on the servant-maid and the friar, those two instruments of domestic immorality. Fra Alberigo is a vulgar libertine, provided with pious phrases to cloak his vicious purpose, but casting off the mask when he has gained his object, well knowing from past experience that the appet.i.tes of the woman he seduces will secure his footing in her husband's home.[194] Margherita revels in the corruption she has aided. She delights in sin for its own sake, extracts handfuls of coppers from the friar, and counts on profiting by the secret of her mistress. Her speech and action display the animal appet.i.tes and gross phraseology of the proletariate, degraded by city vices and hardened to the spectacle of clerical hypocrisy.[195] One of her exclamations: "I frati, ah! son piu viziati che 'l fistolo!" taken in conjunction with her argument to Caterina: "I frati, eh? Non si trova generazione piu abile ai servigi delle donne!" points the satire intended by the playwright. Yet neither Caterina nor Amerigo yields a point of baseness to these servile agents. Plebeian coa.r.s.eness is stamped alike upon their language and their desires. They have no delicacy of feeling, no redeeming pa.s.sion, no self-respect. They speak of things unmentionable with a crudity that makes one shudder, and abuse each other in sarcasms borrowed from the rhetoric of the streets.[196] To a refined taste the calculations of Caterina are no less obnoxious and are far less funny than the rogueries of the friar.

[Footnote 192: The scene between Caterina and Amerigo, when the latter is caught in flagrant adultery (act iii. 5), antic.i.p.ates the catastrophe of the _Clizia_. The final scene between Caterina, Amerigo, and Fra Alberigo bears a close resemblance to the climax of the _Mandragola_. On the hypothesis that this comedy is not Machiavelli's but an imitator's, the playwright must have had both the _Clizia_ and the _Mandragola_ in his mind, and have designed a pithy combination of their most striking elements.]

[Footnote 193: See especially the scenes between Caterina and Margherita (act i. 3; act ii. 1) where the advantages of taking a lover and of choosing a friar for this purpose are discussed. They abound in _gros mots_, as thus:

_Cat._ Odi, in quanto a cotesta parte tu di' la verita; ma quello odore ch'egli hanno poi di salvaggiume, non ch'altro mi stomaca a pensarlo.

_Marg._ Eh! eh! poveretta voi! i frati, eh? Non si trova generazione piu abile ai servigi delle donne. Voi dovete forse avere a pigliarvi piacere col naso? etc.]

[Footnote 194: Compare his speech to Caterina (act ii. 5) with his dialogue with Margherita (act iii. 4) and his final discourse on charity and repentance (act iii. 6). The irony of these words, "Certamente, Amerigo, che voi potete vantarvi d'aver la piu saggia e casta giovane, non vo' dir di Fiorenza ma di tutto 'l mondo,"

p.r.o.nounced before Caterina a couple of hours after her seduction, fixes the measure of Machiavelli's cynicism.]

[Footnote 195: The quite unquotable but characteristic monologue which opens the third act is an epitome of Margherita's character.]

[Footnote 196: Act iii. 5.]

This comedy of Fra Alberigo is a literal transcript from a cynical _Novella_, dramatized and put upon the stage to amuse an audience familiar with such arguments by their perusal of Sacchetti and Boccaccio. Its freedom from Latinizing conventionality renders it a striking example of the influence exercised by the _Novellieri_ over the theater. The same may be said about both the _Clizia_ and the _Mandragola_, though the former owes a portion of its structure to the _Casina_ of Plautus.[197] The _Clizia_ is a finished picture of Florentine home-life. Nicomaco and Sofronia are an elderly couple, who have educated a beautiful girl, Clizia, from childhood in their house.

At the moment when the play opens, both Nicomaco and his son, Cleandro, are in love with Clizia. Nicomaco as determined to marry her to one of his servants, Pirro, having previously ascertained that the dissolute groom will not object to sharing his wife with his master.

Sofronia's family pride opposes the marriage of her son and heir with Clizia; but she is aware of her husband's schemes, and seeks to frustrate them by giving the girl to an honest bailiff, Eustachio. In the contest that ensues, Nicomaco gains the victory. It is settled that Clizia is to be wedded to Pirro, and on the night of the marriage Nicomaco makes his way into the bridal chamber. But here Sofronia proves more than a match for her lord and master. Helped by Cleandro, she subst.i.tutes for Clizia a young man-servant disguised as a woman, who gives Nicomaco a warm reception, beats him within an inch of his life, and exposes him to the ridicule of the household.[198] Sofronia triumphs over her ashamed and miserable husband, who now consents to Clizia's marriage with Eustachio. But at this juncture the long-lost father of the heroine appears like a _deus ex machina_. He turns out to be a rich Neapolitan gentleman. There remains no obstacle to Cleandro's happiness, and the curtain falls upon a marriage in prospect between the hero and the heroine. The weakness of the play, considered as a work of art, is the mechanical solution of the plot.

Its strength and beauty are the masterly delineation of a family interior. The _dramatis personae_ are vigorously sketched and act throughout consistently. Nothing can be finer than the portrait of a sober Florentine merchant, regular in his pursuits, punctual in the performance of his duties, exact in household discipline and watchful over his son's education, whose dignified severity of conduct has yielded to the lunacies of an immoderate pa.s.sion.[199] For the time being Nicomaco forgets his old a.s.sociates, abandons his business, and consorts with youthful libertines in taverns. His appet.i.te so blinds him that he devises the odious scheme I have described, in order to gratify a senile whim.[200] The lifelong fabric of honesty and honor breaks down in him; and it is only when lessoned by the punishment inflicted on him by his wife and son, that he returns to his old self and sees the vileness of the situation his folly has created. Sofronia is a notable housewife, rude but respectable. The good understanding between her and her handsome son, Cleandro, whom she loves affectionately, but whom she will not indulge in his caprice for Clizia, is one of the best traits furnished by Italian comedy.

Cleandro himself has less than usual of the selfishness and sensuality which degrade the Florentine _primo amoroso_. There is even something of enthusiasm in his pa.s.sion for Clizia--a germ of sentiment which would have blossomed into romance under the more genial treatment of our drama.[201] Morally speaking, what is odious in this comedy is the willingness of every one to sacrifice Clizia. Even Cleandro says of her: "Io per me la torrei per moglie, per amica, e in tutti quei modi, che io la potessi avere." Nicomaco, when he has failed in his plot to secure the girl, thinks only of his own shame, and takes no account of the risk to which he has exposed her. Sofronia is merely anxious to get her decently established beyond her husband's reach.

[Footnote 197: From an allusion in act ii. sc. 3, it is clear that the _Clizia_ was composed after the _Mandragola_. If we a.s.sign the latter comedy to a date later than 1512, the year of Machiavelli's disgrace, which seems implied in its prologue, the _Clizia_ must be reckoned among the ripest products of his leisure. The author hints that both of these comedies were suggested to him by facts that had come under his notice in Florentine society.]

[Footnote 198: The _Clizia_ furnished Dolce with the motive of his _Ragazzo_ ("Il Ragazzo, comedia di M. Lodovico Dolce. Per Curtio de Nav e fratelli al Leone, MDXLI."). An old man and his son love the same girl. A parasite promises to get the girl for the old man, but subst.i.tutes a page dressed up like a woman, while the son sleeps with the real girl. Readers of Ben Jonson will be reminded of _Epicoene_.

But in Dolce's _Ragazzo_ the situation is made to suggest impurity and lacks rare Ben's gigantic humor.]

[Footnote 199: See Sofronia's soliloquy, act. ii. sc. 4.]

[Footnote 200: Cleandro understands the faint shadow of scruple that suggested this scheme: "perche tentare d'averla prima che maritata, gli debbe parere cosa impia e brutta" (act i. sc. 1). This sentence is extremely characteristic of Italian feeling.]

[Footnote 201: His observations on his father, are, however, marked by more than ordinary coa.r.s.eness. "Come non ti vergogni tu ad avere ordinato, che si delicato viso sia da s fetida bocca s...o...b..vato, s delicate carni da s tremanti mani, da s grinze e puzzolenti membra tocche?" Then he mingles fears about Nicomaco's property with a lover's lamentations. "Tu non mi potevi far la maggiore ingiuria, avendomi con questo colpo tolto ad un tratto e l'amata e la roba; perche Nicomaco, se questo amor dura, e per lasciare delle sue sustanze piu a Pirro che a me" (act iv. sc. 1).]

Only long extracts could do justice to the sarcasm and irony with which the dialogue is seasoned. Still a few points may be selected.[202] Sofronia is rating Nicomaco for his unseasonable dissipation. He answers: "Ah, moglie mia, non mi dire tanti mali a un tratto! Serba qualche cosa a domane." Eustachio, in view of taking Clizia for his wife, reflects: "In questa terra chi ha bella moglie non pu essere povero, e del fuoco e della moglie si pu essere liberale con ognuno, perche quanto piu ne dai, piu te ne rimane." When Pirro demurs to Nicomaco's proposals, on the score that he will make enemies of Sofronia and Cleandro, his master answers: "Che importa a te? Sta' ben con Cristo e fatti beffe de' santi." A little lower down Nicomaco trusts the decision of Clizia's husband to lot:

_Pirro._ Se la sorte me venisse contro?

_Nicom._ Io ho speranza in Dio, che la non verra.

_Pirro._ O vecchio impazzato! Vuole che Dio tenga le mani a queste sue disonesta.

[Footnote 202: Act iii. scs. 4, 5, 6.]

Nor can criticism express the comic humor of the scenes, especially of those in which Nicomaco describes the hours of agony he spent in Siro's bed, and afterwards capitulates at discretion to Sofronia.[203]

In spite of what is disagreeable in the argument and obscene in the catastrophe, the _Clizia_ leaves a wholesomer impression on the mind than is common with Florentine comedies. It has something of Ariosto's _bonhomie_, elsewhere unknown in Machiavelli.