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Table of Contents

Italian comedy before Goldoni—Italian comedy was result of intentional imitation—was a continuation of Roman comedy—religious drama—“Classical comedy” a hybrid contradiction—Ariosto first Italian writer of Classical comedy—Machiavelli’s Mandragola a masterpiece—it is deeper than a satire, presents a social thesis—Aretino’s plays are light comedy—Florentine writers who influenced Goldoni—Florentine Academy—Grazzini, Gelli, and Cecchi—the popular comedy, or La commedia dell’arte—Beolco, il Ruzzante, an initiator of improvised comedy—dialect in popular comedy—century of Arcadia produced few good comedies—Andreini as author-actor-manager—Neapolitan comedy an imitation of Spanish—Florentine popular comedy—seventeenth century supreme period of commedia dell’arte—vulgarity characterised improvised comedy—Goldoni’s poor judgment of other writers—Fagiuoli, Gigli, Nelli depict Florentine life—other contemporaries of Goldoni are unimportant.

HE importance of Goldoni’s reform of the Italian comedy can be computed only by comparing it with what the Italian comedy had achieved before his time and by considering what others had previously tried to accomplish on similar lines and with like purpose. Goldoni is, as he claimed to be, a reformer and an innovator. Few men originate anything, but many share in the never-ending evolution by continuing the task of their precursors. Goldoni did this.

When Goldoni undertook to reform the Italian comedy, he imprudently asserted “de bonnes comédies il n’y en avoit point,” but in fact his greatest difficulty was to select from much accumulated material those elements from which might be created that complex, puzzling, interesting thing—a comedy; to combine simple form, direct purpose, appropriate means in the measure required at his time and in Italy. That some of his works have sufficiently fulfilled his program as still to command a world-wide audience is the result of his genius rather than of his avowed purpose of reform.

To appreciate this purpose, and to measure this achievement, something must be said of Goldoni’s precursors—not a complete review of the early Italian comedy, but just a glimpse at the history and progress of this particular branch of literature. No attempt will be made to analyse his tragedies, though Goldoni wrote several, or that species of drama which developed into the modern opera; because Goldoni is only great in the older and nobler form of literary composition, the comedy.

The court circles of Rome, Venice, Ferrara, and Naples were neither less refined nor less self-conscious than those of Versailles and Whitehall, and it would seem natural that they would be equally prompt to mirror their own vices, foibles, manners, and customs on the stage. Yet the Italian comedy sprang late into life, and was mainly a product of imitation—imitation avowed, and stated as a fundamental principle by the writers of classical plays; imitation also, and almost as faithfully practised by the authors of popular plays. It was indeed a continuation rather than an imitation of the different sorts of plays composed and performed by the Romans, which were certainly performed, in Italy, even during the darkest Middle Ages.

The Italian gift of acting, mimicking, improvising, singing, must have found expression, in some form. There must have been a continuation, through the centuries, of the different forms of Latin comedy.

Fabulæ, Protestatæ, Togatæ, Tabernariæ, Atellamæ, Planipedes, and other sorts of mimes and pantomimes may have been acted in Mediæval Italy as frequently as the various sorts of religious performance, favoured by the clergy, or as often as the improvisation of long tales under the name of gliommeri; or the playful jousts of extempore contrasti. Such performances are still popular in Italy.

What this tendency and gift might have produced if allowed to develop in harmony with the gradual evolution of the people, we cannot know, as there is no certainty what more regular form of art might have developed out of the religious ceremonies and representations, if they had continued their regular performances under the guidance of the Church.^[1] There is no telling, because the Renaissance movement came sweeping over Italy, destroying some things, transforming many others. In so far as it was a revival of antiquity the Renaissance widened the abyss between literature and life,—an abyss fatal to comedy. Other literary forms may stand aloof from everyday actual life, but in comedy the elements of composition and also the means of performance must be directly borrowed from life. Both the actors and the audience are part of that society which is represented, part of that imaginary world evoked on the stage. Yet the spirit of the Renaissance so infatuated Italian minds that comedy was reshaped on that single principle, imitation—imitation of the Latin comedy, which in its turn was imitation of the Greek comedy.

Renaissance thus created this hybrid contradiction in terms, a classical comedy. Comedy is essentially occasional, contingent, dependent on the changing circumstances of time and surroundings; yet this absurdity had its short-lived days of glory, which could never outlive the peculiar circumstances which gave it birth. Only authors steeped in classic tradition, only princely patrons infatuated with admiration for antiquity, only the over-refined scholars and courtiers of the Italian courts, could have found pleasure in the performance first of Latin plays and then in translations of them. Yet these enlightened patrons vied in the splendour and magnificence of the embellishments with which they supplemented these performances,—halls whose decoration was directed by Baldassare Peruzzi, Bernini, and even Raphael; music and gorgeous allegorical ballets; authors that were famous in the republic of letters.

Ludovico Ariosto^[2] stands first on the list of Italian writers of classical comedies. His Cassaria and his Suppositi opened the lists. His own voice dictated the precepts that were to govern the stage for more than a century. The letter of his contemporary, Baldassare da Castiglione, the author of Il Cortegiano, describes those first representations at the court of Ferrara. What wonders were achieved when magnificence and erudition combined to produce courtly spectacles. The author himself, when a second versified performance of his play was enacted, stepped out of the curtain to explain in a prologue the intents and purposes that directed him. He boasts of having imitated his Latin models as closely as he could; he states that one must not merely borrow the subject from classic models and imitate the classic style of writing but also follow submissively the antique pattern. Customs, manners, characters, the construction of the play, everything must be imitated from the Latins, “just as these had imitated their Greek precursors.”

But Ariosto, the most imaginative of Italian poets, could not strictly apply this strange conception of art. Even he introduced vital elements of contemporary actuality into his classical imitations. Though he imitated Plautus and Terence, though his stage characters and incidents were approved by his masters, he could not help introducing some satire, some supplementary colour, that were his very own. Thus even while Ariosto adopts the plot entirely turning on the intrigues of the lesser characters, even while he submits to the limitation of a single scene for all the acts—and that one a street,—so as to contrive separate entrances and exits through different house doors for each personage, even while he adopts the usual dénouement by the recognition or unexpected return of one person that was either supposed long dead or concealed under a different name, yet he introduces such traits of satire as this one, aimed at overbearing men in office.

(Cassaria, act iv, sc. 2) “If we were to go now and see the Bassa, we would lose our pains; we would find him eager for his supper; or playing at cards or dice; unless, tired with his day’s work, he wished to enjoy his rest. Do I not know the ways of those in command? When they are most alone and most idle, they pretend that they are most busy; they set a servant at their door with orders to admit none but gamblers, harlots, ruffians of all sorts, and to keep off all honest people and worthy citizens.”

Thus satire finds its way into the dialogue, and portraits are delineated in caricatural lines, under the antique pattern. For instance the play of Negromante (sorcerer) is evidently designed to represent the pedantic astrologer speculating on the credulity and superstitions of Ariosto’s time “just as all the Great.” Ariosto’s other novelty is the metrical form. For Ariosto after writing his first plays in prose afterward translated them into poetry, and he versified his later ones. The special form of metre adopted is a delight to the ear with its easy flow and brisk harmony, fit for recitation.

Ariosto’s contemporary and imitator was Bernardo Dovizi,^[3] Cardinal Bibbiena. His Calandria has the faults and few of the beauties of Ariosto’s plays. It is considered one of the most licentious plays ever written. Yet it was performed at the Vatican before a splendid audience of princes, prelates, and Pope Leo X himself. The ribald equivocations, the shocking jokes which offend the delicacy of modern critics, were enjoyed by these scholarly cardinals. They keenly appreciated the imitation of Plautus’ Casina and a repetition of their favourite Menæchmi, made more piquant by the difference of sex between the twins, and for the same reason, as in Shakespeare’s similar imbroglios, the feminine rôles being performed by boys.

Fortunately for Italian comedy, even in this initial stage of its existence, a masterpiece was produced to remain as a model for future ages. Voltaire proclaimed Machiavelli’s Mandragola worth “all the plays of Aristophanes.” Although Goldoni speaks rather disparagingly of this play, he certainly learned from it. Comparison between Machiavelli^[4] and Goldoni is not possible. It is only in this comedy of Machiavelli’s, the pastime of an idle hour in his busy life, his diversion in a time of exile and disappointment, that they chance to meet on the same field.

When a thinker who has probed the depths of human conscience, when a statesman who seems to have investigated all the problems of his age, and foretold many problems of future ages, undertook to write so simple a thing as a comedy, he was sure to carry some of his deeper insight and clearer observation in this work.

In the narrow mould which Ariosto had fixed, in the small compass that was then allowed to comedy, Machiavelli has drawn a number of living characters. He has painted an amazing picture of the vices that disgraced his times, and of the ignorance and superstitions he hated.

Like Goldoni, he only introduces indispensable innovations, but he retains such external forms and restrictions as do not interfere with the real significance of his work. Neither does he multiply his characters, nor does he change those traits which suit his purpose yet respect the established custom. There is no shifting of scenes, the plot is simple, there are the usual personages. A foolish husband, an impudent lover, a bigoted old woman, and a prudent young one, an intrigant, and a friar: from this receipt he mixes and then unravels the simplest of intrigues. But all these classical, cold, dry elements throb with life by the imponderable spark that marks the masterpieces of genius. Truth shines through all that is conventional, and a far-reaching moral lesson under the licentiousness which custom then tolerated and, lacking which, the lesson would probably never have found listeners.

The plot is familiar, Callimaco, a student in Paris, has heard the praise of Madonna Lucrezia, Maestro Nicia’s wife, and he comes ranting with that sort of passionate desire, which was so often mistaken in the Middle Ages for love, saying that if his desire cannot be gratified he will “do something terrible,” stab himself on the lady’s doorstep, or drown in the Arno, for a woman he has never yet seen. Ligurio, the fawning intrigant, like the slave of the antique plays, serves his young master and deceives the old one. Ligurio’s shrewdness, hypocrisy, his glib tongue, his proper manners, make him a cinquecento Florentine, well qualified to persuade the pedantic sot Nicia. Friar Timoteo is a party to the intrigue, and between the three, with the unconscious connivance of Lucrezia’s mother, they persuade Nicia that if he wishes to have children he must induce Lucrezia to drink of a certain beverage concocted out of the juice of the mandragola (mandrake), for his special benefit, by the learned physician, Callimaco of course. This sort of thing was just what any Florentine of his time might have believed, or made his fellow believe. Machiavelli added to the popular superstition a more amusing trait. Nicia is told that the portentous effect of the beverage will make it mortally dangerous to—to—let us say kiss, Madonna Lucrezia immediately after she has taken it. Someone has to do the—the—kissing and be offered as a victim. A street boy may thus be sacrificed in order to secure the posterity of a most honourable citizen. Indeed, explains Callimaco, who expects to play under an appropriate disguise the part of the street boy, indeed the greatest princes and even the King of France have resorted to this artifice so that their family should not end with their own lives.

Nicia is easily persuaded, because his foolish pate is crammed with abstruse reading, and his confidence in his own wisdom is swelled in proportion. “Un sot savant est plus sot qu’un sot ignorant,” truly says Molière.

The difficulty is to convince Lucrezia, who is genuinely pure and not a bit foolish. Indeed this character of a real woman is one of the best innovations in Machiavelli’s play. She is wearied and worried by her mother’s and her confessor’s arguments; torn between the scruples of her natural honesty and instinctive common sense, and the religious principles instilled by education and example. Her common sense is not proof against the sophisms of Friar Timoteo; her filial respect compels obedience to what her mother tells her to be her duty. Indeed laughter at the comical plot and witty repartee dies out as the dire consequences of such a tormenting struggle is better understood. What moral misery was thus prepared for innocent hearts!

The friar’s character is completely and studiously delineated. How he argues to persuade the woman that “this thing which she is asked to do is no capital sin, but just as bad as eating meat on a Wednesday; it can be laved by a sprinkling of holy water.” His ready tongue supplies the clever sophisms which she cannot answer. “Why does she trouble about the means; the aim is everything. Is not her aim to fill a seat in Paradise?” And so on, until he, Timoteo, changes his tactics and uses the deceitful art of unctuous tenderness: “Go, my daughter, and I will in the meantime say the orison to Archangel Raphael, that he may watch over thee.” Let her make haste, since night is drawing near.

These were indeed deadly thrusts aimed at the whole priestly brotherhood, nothing like the attenuated strokes and noisy, but harmless, flourish which the creator of Frère Jean des Entommeures aimed at his brethren.

Yet is Machiavelli’s play something even deeper than a satire of his times, and of the peculiar vice of religious hypocrisy; there is a social thesis, which anyone may discover if he but reads, and this thesis will also be found in Goldoni. The great statesman and the modest playwright meet in this simple conception of social progress. Since the cause of much evildoing is due to the relaxation of family ties, the best means to oppose the decadence of society is to expose and condemn all that tends to relax these ties. The best ideal is the family group made whole and strong again. Let the perverting friar be held up to the pillory of ridicule; let the infatuated, bigoted mother be shown in her real colours, the slave of an unscrupulous clergy; let the husband be denounced for his failure to fill his rôle of guide and protector.

Machiavelli developed this thesis, made it even more clear in another play, la Clizia, and further explained it in a song that was added, as an interlude, for both the comedies, and in which the purity of simple life is sung in accents of real poetry, though the metrical form is not equal to his marvellous prose style.

Narrower views and less noble aspirations are found in Aretino’s plays.^[5] His plays were only his pass time; his life’s work was court intrigue and advancing his fortune. And because these plays were merely composed to amuse his hearers, they are important to our study; they give us a first sample of that light comedy which the Renaissance men liked to hear, and which Goldoni has imitated.

Cardinal Bibbiena is another author whose comedy owes little to its slight plot, yet provides matter of amusement to the audience by presenting a number of unfinished sketches, which being but loosely bound to the general plot have no real significance. His style has the originality of the man himself. It is emphatic and swollen with adornment, figures, and bombast peculiar to the writer, who used his pen as a double-edged sword, to prick or to stab.

Bibbiena’s viewpoint of life is realistic and contemptuous of the lower classes that he selects to picture, and paints very black. With him the intrigues and the characters are of the basest.

Like him, a court poet and a courtier, was Lorenzino de’ Médici,^[6] conspicuous in the history of his country for his murder of Alessandro de’ Médici, his cousin and boon companion of debauch. His Aridosia, one of the many imitations of the Aulularia, attributed to Plautus, may have provided a model to Goldoni’s Avaro. But the character was so often used by writers of prose fiction and of plays that there is no telling how much Goldoni is a debtor of Lorenzino. Indeed the miserly old man and the foolish pedant were the two favourite laughingstocks of the age. Goldoni dropped almost entirely the pedant, and this is why we omit Giordano Bruno’s comedy Il Candelaio. And many others are omitted either because they are little known to fame, or because of their slight influence on Goldoni.

A more complete study of the comic theatre during this, otherwise, glorious century would reveal its poverty of invention and its subservience to classicism, keeping the regular comedy within very narrow bounds and facilitating the composition of works that only reproduced familiar models, and did not attempt anything like novelty.

The splendour which presided at the staging of ballets and interludes, the imagination which brightened allegorical spectacles, affording opportunity to all sorts of decorators, musicians, and artists, left the comedy untouched in the poverty of its single scene, in the representation of none but humble folks. The wonder is that, thus shackled, the Italian comedy prospered and that so many able writers composed new plays, or adapted old ones.

We shall attempt to trace the transformation of the classical comedy as it was understood and practised by the wealthy and educated class of citizens in Venice and in Florence. Other Italian centres produced many interesting works; but they were unknown to Goldoni, and, moreover, they did not greatly influence the traditions that combined to form his genius, the double tradition of classical and improvised comedy.

When Goldoni penned that imprudent sentence, “de bonnes comédies, il n’y en avoit pas,” he either confessed an unpardonable ignorance or denied the source of his own inspiration.

How could he say that there were no good comedies, when in the archives of the craft, in the memory of actors and theatregoers, the Florentine plays of the cinquecento must have been preserved, at least in incomplete form, if not in their entire text? These were not composed for the great in power and wealth; but for the great in learning and wit. They were conceived by writers of the great middle class, which for this reason they could understand and faithfully represent; they were classical in a certain measure, because those who wrote them, and many of those who listened, were steeped in the knowledge of fine letters, but still they were comedies of the bourgeoisie.

Three writers may be selected: Francesco d’Ambra,^[7] Giovan Maria Cecchi, and Giambattista Gelli. They have traits in common with Goldoni just as their time had traits common to the seventeenth and eighteenth century Venice. They enjoyed, as Goldoni did not enjoy, the advantage of companionship and mutual encouragement.

L’Accademia degli Umidi (the damp), which, later, became the Florentine Academy, was then delightfully free from pedantic presumption. It was like a club, where people expected to find superior amusement. Let every man of good company and wit pay homage to the promoter Giovanni Mazzuoli, detto lo Stradino (or lo Strascino) who led the way that so many have followed. Francesco d’Ambra composed, and probably shared in the performance of, unpresuming plays that were given at this Accademia. He imitated the Latin classics, but he padded his imitations with many jokes and accumulated incidents, borrowing from several old plays to make up a single new one.

Grazzini,^[8] the most illustrious of the Umidi, under his name of “Lasca” in homage to the name of the club, is the author of many world-famous novelle. He was also a man of sound critical taste, which he showed both in practice and in delivering such good advice as this: “Since nowadays people that were thought dead do not suddenly reappear, since no one now goes to market selling or purchasing slaves and no one dares publicly to bargain and barter for pretty young women as the Roman panders did, it is time we should not represent Roman manners and ways but our own.”

Such teachings he delivered, as the fashion then was, in the prologues of his plays, prologues that then did duty for much that now goes into critical essays and reviews directing public opinion and promoting profitable discussion. Did not Goldoni attempt to do the same two centuries later? Grazzini, who knew no Greek and only as much Latin as was required for exerting his profession of farmacista, did not entirely reject the classical model; he borrowed from ancient plays and from classical reminiscences, but he opened a new path by setting largely on the stage the materials of his own and of other writers’ novelle. He mixed up the Decameron and Plautus in true Italian spirit to bind up the past with the present, passing on to the coming ages the inheritance of older centuries.

Giambattista Gelli,^[9] with even greater talent for the comic art, and with much erudition, pursued the same system. Though he was so learned that he could continue—after Boccaccio—to explain the Divina Commedia and although he could pen a series of much admired philosophical dialogues, Gelli always followed his trade of shoemaker.

He too remained faithful to classical tradition, as is shown in his Sporta (small basket) by the choice of the principal character, Ghirigoro, the typical miser, and by some incidents of the plot; but that he could walk with his own legs he showed by the management and construction of many episodes. Molière and Goldoni both are indebted to this Florentine cobbler who produced one more picture of dissolute old age baffled and exposed by youth. It would be interesting, if it were relevant, to discover how much of this Italian comedy was imported into England. The borrowing from the Italian tales by Ben Jonson, Marlowe, and Shakespeare has been often investigated; how much they directly pilfered from Italian plays is less known.

We come nearer to Goldoni and his reform when we exhume from the dusty past that second branch of comedy which, starting into life almost at the same date and almost in the same places as the classical comedy, developed on parallel lines the popular comedy, or to give it its Italian name, La commedia dell’arte. Because it is so perfectly appropriate to the spirit and the ability of Italians, it is almost certain that it existed in some form even in the dark ages. Just as the French Fatrassies sotties and other forms of “farces” were probably performed as often as the “Mystères and Miracles” and other religious representations, it is also most probable that the two sorts of spectacles were at times certainly intermingled, and they were performed alternately, by the same players, and only in the sixteenth century was the distinction clearly recognised. And even that distinction was then rather formal than essential, since the line was only drawn later and not exactly where the contemporaries of Ariosto and the first commedianti dell’arte would have drawn it.

All over Italy and especially in Naples, actors, professional or amateur, some of the latter amongst the highest born and the most powerful, performed or improvised frottole, pantomimes, and similar spectacles.

We disregard the Neapolitan theatre since Goldoni ignored it, or only knew it through the traditions dell’arte. In Florence, the most enlightened Italian city, the distinction was sooner realised and found its clearest definition. Giovan Maria Cecchi,^[10] the author of several plays, some of which almost wholly answer to his independent program, says in doggerel verse: “The farsa is a new thing, which stands between the tragedy and the comedy, avoiding thus the difficulties of both. Since it admits both great men and princes—which the comedy cannot do—and since, like an inn or a hospital, it shelters people of all sorts: villains and country louts—which the tragedy is not allowed to do—it can range over all sort of subjects: merry or sad, worldly or religious, polite or vulgar. It can locate its scene in any place, the village common or the church door; and when a day is not sufficient it can expand to three or four.”

This declaration of the freedom of the comedy from cramping rules of construction takes added importance from being issued in Florence by one who was a scholar, in the presence of the Signoria, whose patronage extended to every form of art.

About the same time almost the same ideas were expressed in Venice, 1588, by Jason de Noves, who pompously explained how comedy was required to be the reproduction by imitation of a complete action, of adequate importance. The characters introduced should belong to the middle class. The story was to begin sadly and terminate happily. Similar regulations were often repeated with the characteristic injunction that comedy should be “proper,” that is to say, should be so arranged as to offer a moralising teaching.

From the very first the intention was to adopt the ancient motto castigat ridendo, but there was endless divergence in the practice. It was the accepted idea that three or more acts of triumphant wickedness were amply compensated by a few last scenes of repentance or punishment.

Pierre Larivey, the Frenchified Italian who translated and popularised many Italian plays in France, thus sums up the ideas of his models: “Comedy being the mirror of our life, the old may learn in it how to avoid doing things that are ridiculous in the aged; the young must learn in it how to behave themselves in love-making; the ladies how to keep their modesty; the parents how to regulate their family affairs. If other pleasures are only meant for the young, this one is good for teaching, amusing, directing the old, the young, and everyone.”

A Venetian author of Il Giusto Solegno added with more realistic intent “that it was good for servants to see how the mischief they make is punished, and the maids are well warned, by example, of the horrid diseases they run the risk of taking when they misbehave themselves.”

With these honourable purposes in view, one finds among the first actors, or authors, of improvised comedy most devout and God-fearing people. One of the first whose name is known, and whose works have been recorded, is Angelo Beolco, the impersonator of a bucolic, rustic character il Ruzzante and consequently known as il Ruzzante. He has been traced back to Venice, and more exactly to the palaces of the Foscari in the year 1520, performing a play of his invention a la villanella with the collaboration of a company of players, all, like him, coming from Padova. He was applauded, he was called back to Venice in the following years, and at last he was permitted to perform his “Pastoral” at the very same court of Ferrara that had so lately seen the first blossoming of classical comedy. Here was a pathetic plot enwreathed in many funny episodes, and here was also one of the most characteristic traits of the improvised comedy, the use of dialect.

Even here some distant echo of Plautus’s Rudens or Asinaria reminds us that we are still in the age of revived humanism. The elements of realism, however, are predominant. The personages speak their own native parlance, and they express in undisguised roughness and vulgarity their rustic feelings. Thus “Fiore,” the heroine of la Fiorina, is not the simpering damsel of classical plays, but the country girl who, courted by two swains, shows preference for one of them; but when the other succeeds in carrying her away she neither mopes nor reproaches, but accepts the situation and settles down as a good wife with the husband who has conquered her.

Beolco was not only the manager and author, but also one of the actors of this first among the compagnia dell’arte: he impersonated the character of a countryman almost as boisterous as the “capitan Matamore,” as sly as “Arlecchino,” and with some traits of simple-minded “Brighella.” He was specially qualified to represent country folk as he lived a part of every year on the lands he owned near Padova. Some of his plays have been preserved and those Dialoghi in Lingua Rustica which have been lately analysed afford matter for interesting study.

In order to sympathise with and understand the Italian people and their literature we must realise how important is this question of dialects. It is the index of the infinite diversity of race, temper, degree of civilisation, manners, and customs that is the charm—as it has been the weakness—of the whole nation. No literary representation of the people should ignore these differences; no writer can reproduce the graphic expression of feelings and thoughts, unless he translates them in the style appropriate to the part of the country he has in mind to interpret. This rule holds good even to this day; after almost a century of political union, after five centuries of literary communion. It is valid for every sort of fiction; but particularly for the comedy. Hence the great success lately obtained by the Venetian, Sicilian, and Roman dialect actors is not due to a mere fad, to a passing mode; it is the natural and logical consequence of a condition of things which, though now largely removed, has left its effect and which, especially for the scenic art, must be taken in consideration.

From this early awakening of a popular form of comedy spoken in the local vernacular the different dialects inevitably forced their entrance into the written plays, as well as into those that were improvised by the actor. Even when the authors did not, as they often did, characterise with this distinctive trait their personages, the actors impersonating them were likely to add those traits of manners, those peculiar sayings, proverbs, or idioms which came glibly to their lips, because they were those that best expressed their own ideas and most appealed to their audiences. The actor thus blended his own personality with the rôle he played and between them they gave a complete type that was soon perfected by the additions and improvements of other actors, taking up the personage and continuing the tradition.

The contemporary appearance of dialects, and of popular fixed types—some of them wearing a mask and others not—representatives of different cities or provinces, emphasises this character of regionalism which is the most accentuated trait of the Italian comedy.

This analysis will only attempt to trace back to their probable origin the characters and masks of Goldoni’s plays, and not the many others which he has discarded. In the endeavour to catch the very first glimpse of the comedy as a picture of real life, we simply point out that the first direct imitation of life admitted the regional differences of character and language. Not only Beolco and his disciples, but all succeeding writers who wanted to be popular used dialects. Indeed those who wrote “Italian,” in the Florentine manner of speaking, used a language that was the dialect of a certain part of Tuscany. There is a difference of style and of accent between the country folk and the citizens; the characters that represented Sienese or Lucchese people did not speak just the same Tuscan as those of Florence.

Such nice distinctions show how the classical comedy was turning into the popular comedy; how instead of borrowing all their materials, copying their dialogues, and imitating their plots from the ancient Latins, the playwrights were beginning to look about them for models; how they were urged on and directed by their interpreters, and finally how the two professions became so mixed together that it is difficult to decide which was the more important.

Angelo Beolco directed as a manager and acted in the plays he composed. He could also deliver a speech, as he did twice in Padua when he was asked to welcome the cardinals Cornaro on their elevation to the Holy See. His speech was divided into the five parts required by the rules of eloquence, each of the several points demanding some practical and necessary relief from some form of opposition. All these traits will be found reproduced in Goldoni, Ruzzante’s worthy heir.

Andrea Calmo, 1510-1571, with more education than Beolco, acquired a freer speech and a more definite consciousness of his aim. He disregards classical models and bravely tells the audience—in a prologue to his Santuzza—that if they do not approve of his method they are welcome to rise and depart. But he will not condescend to repeat the usually banal improbabilities, neither the sudden return of long-dead personages nor the recovery of children lost and stolen, because he means to represent the times as they are, and not the stupidities which were popular in past ages.

Such examples influenced public opinion and even those pedantic writers who might have drifted back into classicism. Thus Lorenzo il Magnifico wrote in vernacular Florentine his Nencia da Barberino, thus Francesco Berni composed his Catrina, and Giordano Bruno his Candelaio in a style that resembled the popular comedy, even while the deeper thoughts of the writer were expressed under the simplicity of the dialogue. Nor was the glory of the Italian comedy and comedians, during this sixteenth century, confined to their own country. The French court first learned to admire them when Catherine de’ Médici called the compagnia dei Gelosi to adorn the festivities celebrating the union of the Médicis with the reigning house of France; but the French poets and writers had expressed already or were soon to express their admiration for the witty, graceful artists who, according to Du Bellay’s well-known sonnet, could charm and amuse.

The seventeenth century is considered a time of decadence in Italian letters and arts. Certes it was a century of luxury and hypocrisy, of foreign oppression and degradation, which was made worse by the religious persecution following the Council of Trent. Yet it was also the century in which Galileo Galilei initiated the revival of science, and a new impulse was given to plastic arts by Bernini.

The century of English euphuism, of Spanish Gongorism, of French style précieux, of Italian “Arcadia” was not fruitful of good comedies. The tendencies of the time inclined away from extravagant conventionalism and toward pastoral poems and plays. Classical comedy lost favour. With the possible exception of the Neapolitans, Giambattista Porta and Francesco d’Isa, there is no name of the first rank. More interesting as a precursor of Goldoni is Giambattista Andreini, author of that religious poem Adamo, which Milton must have had in mind when he wrote his Paradise Lost.

Giambattista Andreini, though not the earliest, is one of the most complete specimens of the author-actor-manager man of letters that Goldoni, to a degree, impersonated in himself. The son of two famous players, Francesco Andreini famous in France and Italy as the “Capitan Spaventa di Vall’ inferno” and the exquisite Isabella in whose honour so much ink dripped from the pens of poets, in whose honour a medal was coined, Giambattista inherited talent for the stage, and was also carefully educated. His career as an actor is registered in the annals of his time; his serious writings are merely used as landmarks for the learned who deal in comparisons; his comedies are forgotten, else they would be condemned as the most licentious that were ever acted.

Yet in his lifetime they were enjoyed by the same persons who admired the piety and spiritual elevation of his religious poems. The contrast, then, between the two entirely different styles was not offensive, indeed was not surprising. The pen which traced the choiring songs of angels bearing heavenward the purified soul of Maddalena also wrote the lascivious and prurient pleasantries which the author himself spoke on the stage or taught his comrades to speak. Which was the real Giambattista? Probably both, so strange and complex a thing is a human personality.

Goldoni mentions Andreini’s comedy I due Lelli simili, one more repetition of the Menæchmi, that were seldom left out of sight. But he certainly knew many more of Giambattista’s works either in their original text or in the adaptations which the comedians gave of them. Another name mentioned by Goldoni is Cicognini, probably the elder, who left but few works, and those of contested authorship. Cicognini, or whoever wrote those disputed comedies, imitated the Spanish plays.

On Spanish imitation, and on the caricature of Spaniards, the Italian comedy grew and prospered in Naples. It is interesting to notice how some of the ancient characters were reshaped and transformed. The Miles Gloriosus for instance turns into the Capitan, the Matamore, and the many other impersonations of bombastic heroism and poltroonery. This character, one of the favourites with cosmopolitan audiences, can be traced in its many ramifications, just as the spagnolised comedy may be seen spreading from Naples to France and England; but the little that Goldoni did borrow he transformed, because neither his own genius nor the Venetian conditions in any way resembled the spirit of the Neapolitan Spanish comedy.

Of greater importance is the Florentine. There the conditions of life and manners favoured the development of popular comedy, both in its almost literary form of written dialogues and in its more original form of improvisation. The written comedies which have survived are, however, in the style of the improvised ones—slovenly in style, loose in plot, and characterised by the use and the abuse of dialects.

Michelangelo Buonarroti—il Giovine—nephew to the great sculptor, produced a medley under the name of Fiera, in which long and cumbersome picture crowd the masks, types, costumes, and disguises then popular in Florence and which the immortal drawings of Callot have fixed on paper. Five days—or five plays—each one divided into five acts, Buonarroti composed in order to give a place to all the persons he wanted to strut on the stage just to say a word, play a prank, and give way for others.

If one could by an effort of imagination, or by the patient study of texts and engravings, reconstrue this medley, one would have an idea of that ample material carried far and wide by the commedianti dell’ arte,^[11] which Goldoni was to reshape into artistic form. Also if one could read in its original text the comedy of Virgilio Verucci, one would have an idea of the number of dialects admitted on the stage. If not quite the five hundred collected in one volume, reproducing one of Boccaccio’s short tales, the Italian dialects used by Virgilio Verucci in one play amounted to ten, and in other plays varied from four or five to six. Goldoni adopted but a small part of this superabundant material.

If the seventeenth century lacked regular comedies, it saw the greatest glories of the commedia dell’arte. How this peculiar art or profession was exerted deserves mention. Even before Beolco and Calmo, it had been the privilege or the ability of some one actor to take the lead of a small troupe of players and with them to wander from city to city performing all varieties of plays, in all sorts of manners, according to the circumstances, their capacities, and the opportunities offered. The best of these troupes soon found their way to France, where they prospered.

The company was generally composed of ten persons, just as the troupe Medebac was in Goldoni’s own time. Ten characters were considered sufficient for the representation of life. These ten characters are well known. Of course they extended to more, as the same actor would at times take a rôle that was akin to his own. There were the characters sérieux, as Goldoni calls them, and those burlesque. The mask was not always the badge of greater vulgarity. Two old men, Pantalone and il Dottore; two young men, Lelio and Leandro; two Zannis (servants), Arlecchino and Brighella; three women, the duegna, the amorosa, and the servetta, a capitano or some other additional character made up the number.

Each actor was so completely identified with his rôle that he was known by its name. Such an identification was the cause of a greater ability in playing it, and of a more dangerous tendency to adapt it to one’s own character. Thus if we were to trace back the transformation of each one of these types, we should have to find out, not how any particular author at any distinct moment had imagined it, but how, as it passed from one to another player, the figure, the clothing, the mode of address, the general outline, and the supplementary traits were modified. At the first appearance of a character, or the branching out of a new diversity from an old one, we generally find a famous actor, an artist that gave the intonation and fixed some of the elementary traits. Thus in France, Ganassa created the type of Ganache. Thus Tabarin and Scaramouche are characters which originated in the Italian actors whose names have thus found immortality.

In Italy some typical cases might be quoted: thus for instance Salvator Rosa,^[12] being displeased with his countrymen’s lukewarm approval of his pictures, resorted to the trick of disguising as Coviello and selling horoscopes, telling fortunes, playing an infinite number of lazzi in the crowded streets of Naples. Such was the success of this Coviello that the artist himself developed it into two personages, “Coviello Formica and Coviello Patacca,” which, both, have remained in the repertory of Neapolitan masks. The four masks and the other characters adopted by Goldoni will be fully discussed in the analysis of Goldoni plays.

Although the commedia dell’arte started on the plan of a larger independence, it soon fell into a narrow channel, and was confined by rules even more cramping than the classic models. During this entire century, though prosperity and favour attended the profession, there was little real progress. Though some of the comedians possessed ability and some talent, they lacked invention. Their practice was almost uniform from one company to another.

An outline of plot, either composed by one of them, or selected out of the stock of such documents as the troupe possessed or from a classic play, was nailed on to a poster behind the scenes and first spiegato, that is, explained and developed by the chief actor or director, in order to fix the distribution of parts, the length and importance of episodes, the general outline, and the proportions of the play. It is easy to imagine the amount of discussion and quarrelling at such rehearsals. One can picture the unwillingness of the lazy player to undertake his share of the work, and the boisterous claims of the ambitious star who wanted to do more than his share and outshine his comrades.

When the general line was thus settled, each player turned to his own private stock of material, in order to prepare for improvisation. Each one possessed a zibaldone, a sort of memorandum book containing the long-winded speeches, or the short sallies, that suited his habitual character, strange collections of sayings, proverbs, snatches of song, quotations from all sorts of books, that were handed down from one actor to another, always amplified with newly collected material. Some of the tricks of the so-called lazzi were learned by imitation and repetition. These were perhaps the best index of the degree of vulgarity and ribaldry that was tolerated and applauded by the audience. The actor who catered for plaudits, and was trained to translate his audience’s wishes, drifted into coarseness and worse, because the people who filled the house or circled round the raised boards demanded such seasoning.^[13] This absolute dependence of the improvised comedy on the favour of the public resulted in much vulgar gesture and gross speech; but during the palmy days of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries it had urged the actors to perfect their art, and to keep faithful to reality.

The number of plots that were used is not known, almost every Italian collection possessing a different selection. Different at least in titles, it very often happened that the same plot with very few changes appeared under several titles. Then also a play well known in its original classical text was cut down to a sketch, or a play developed out of a sketch. Goldoni himself sometimes resorted to such arrangements. And if he, the reformer, could not avoid this practice, one may imagine how it was unscrupulously applied by others before him.

One of the most interesting of these collections and one of the oldest was published by Flaminio Scala under the title of Teatro delle Favole Rappresentative (fifty canvases) as far back as 1611, this Scala being then in Paris with his company of players. Another noteworthy collection is due to the care of Adolfo Bartoli, who gives only twenty-four plots but much information as to the players. Carlo Gozzi speaks of no less than three hundred of these plots, but his authority is doubtful.

Lelio Riccoboni must be mentioned both for that which he endeavoured to accomplish and for that which he has written about the Italian comedy. His Histoire du Théâtre Italien gives a definition of the lazzi. The word means a knot and has the same origin as the Spanish lasso. We call lazzi the byplay which Arlecchino or the other masks perform during a scene, which they interrupt by feigned terrors or other pranks having nothing to do with the matter in hand, to which one is always obliged to return. These tricks, invented freely by Italian actors, are called lazzi.

No one better than poor Riccoboni—the Lelio who vainly tried to direct public taste toward regular comedy—knew how these practical jokes lowered Italian comedy in the esteem of critics; yet none better learned, at his own cost, how they were acclaimed by the paying public. Like Goldoni, Riccoboni expected Paris to appreciate his reforming purposes, and like Goldoni, he found that bad taste and an accredited tradition of looseness weighing on the Italian comedy were against him. Like Goldoni, he learned that the art which almost entirely relied on communion with the audience could not develop its best qualities in a foreign land.

Goldoni knew little and cared less about his contemporaries, the playwrights of early 1700. The few appreciations in his Memoirs—and the blundering opinions he records about later French plays—show that Goldoni was unable to judge of the relative merit of other writers. Yet something was achieved, something attempted in his neighbourhood which was worth notice. In Florence were Fagiuoli, Nelli, and Gigli. A court poet, a skilled courtier, was Fagiuoli,^[14] yet with an uncommon turn for satire and sarcasm. Indeed there was not a bon mot, not an amusing anecdote, not a spirited repartee, that tradition did not attribute to him for more than a century after his death.

How this reputation for professional wit could outlive the performance of his plays is strange. He rehearsed the worn plots showing the familiar characters of the ancient play—the old man and his senile infatuation, the noisy, swaggering captain, the familiar foolish lovers. Instead of employing the masks he introduced Florentine servants and other low people; he made them talk their nonsense in the highly flavoured Florentine dialect, and thus earned the title of originality. Just one of his characters, Vanesio in the Sigisbeo Sconsolato, deserves mention as a first sketch of the Cavalier servente, a mere daub that, however, suggests none of the delicate etching and amusing caricature Goldoni made of the personage.

Jacopo Nelli^[15] might have been utterly forgotten but for the success his little opera la Serva Padrona obtained in virtue of Pergolese’s music. His many other plays represent the dissolute, flimsy Florentine society of his time, with just one note that is almost original—the caricature of henpecked husbands and hectoring wives. Women characters in the older plays were seldom ridiculed; they were either pathetic or pert, victims of plots or objects of worship, but as a rule dimly delineated on the worn-out pattern of classic repertory. Now with the decline of social life, with the decadence of every manly activity which is the characteristic trait of this unfortunate period, woman received a social importance and an authority which she did not owe to any development of her own qualities, but to the lowering of the other sex.

Fagiuoli has a character of a hypocritical prude, which, though drawn with slight talent, is interesting as a symptom of the coming time. Nelli’s plays are even in their titles indicative of a tendency (Serva Padrona, la Moglie in Calzoni).

With greater talent, and more conscious aim, Gerolamo Gigli^[16] entered the lists of comic playwriting. In a city and a time wholly ruled by clerical hypocrisy, this scholar challenged the Jesuit rulers, and ridiculed their influence.

Gerolamo Gigli was one of the unfortunate people who cannot endure that which they esteem wrong. In more heroic times he might have been a glorious champion, or a lamented martyr for the sake of some bright ideal; in Tuscany and in the seventeenth century he was only a quarrelsome linguistic, an intemperate pamphleteer, an imprudent playwright, who paid for all his attempts at rebellion. He quarrelled with the Florentine Accademia della Crusca, because he wrote a very learned and witty Vocabulario Cateriniano and other tracts to show that his native dialect of Siena should be preferred to the Florentine. His book was burnt on the public Piazza for such heretical opinions. He indeed ran the risk of being burnt himself or at least spoiled of all his goods for the two plays he dared to write and to perform.

The first one, Il Don Pilone, is a translation of Tartuffe, with some additions in the form of interludes and ballets, and made more pointedly offensive by the author himself appearing in the principal character so trimmed and painted as to look like a portrait of a well-known and much-disliked Jesuit. The second play is the Sorellina di Don Pilone in which Goldoni won a little sprig of laurel when he performed in his beardless age the part of the pseudo-sister to Don Pilone.

If by his first play he won the terrible enmity of the clerical, by the second one he kindled the wrath of his own middle-aged wife, whose avarice and bigotry he had but too faithfully exhibited. Nor does he spare himself, for the plot is but an anecdote of his own conjugal life where he does not appear to great advantage. With all this it is little wonder if Gerolamo Gigli was deprived of his catedra at the Sienese University, spoiled of his wealth, and driven out of the state by offended foes and vindictive dignitaries. It is significant that he found shelter and rest in Rome after doing public penance in Florence.

Gigli’s plays are worth studying for their own sake, and also as showing one of the principal traits—which Goldoni more fully developed. Gigli is not satisfied with the clear, neat outline; he adds little touches that sometimes blur, sometimes perfect the drawing. Compare his translation of Molière’s play with the original and note the differences. Where the French poet gives but one masterful dash, Gigli lingers in tiny arabesques. For instance, the first appearance of Tartuffe with that single masterful trait, his turning toward the scene to tell his servant, “Laurent, serrez ma hère avec ma discipline,” ... which becomes in Gigli’s play,—“Piloncino, mind thou dost carefully wash the blood from my horsehair shirt, and remember thou must add two nail points to my discipline. Take good care, if the maid come in to tidy the bed, thou must not raise thy eyes. Conceal the kneeling chair behind my bed. If anyone come for me thou mayst tell them that I went to the prisons delle Stinche with alms for the poor prisoners, and that I afterward will go to take a piece of cloth to that shameless hussy, that she may lengthen her petticoat.” This minute exactness, which Thackeray and some other English writers of fiction carried to perfection, is adequate for stage effect. Goldoni used it, but not always with success.

Other contemporaries of Goldoni are hardly worth mentioning either for their own sake or for the influence they may have exerted on him. Luisa Bergalli’s attempt at a realistic play Il Poeta may have shown Goldoni the danger of two minute and depressing pictures of poverty. Scipione Maffei’s Ceremonie taught him, as he says, a good lesson of moderation in the way of reform.

The lavish praise which Goldoni gives to Scipione Maffei seems to contradict our assertion. To read certain prefaces, letters, and passages in the Memoirs, it seems that Maffei, justly famous for his tragedy Merope, is also a precursor, a star of magnitude in the field of comedy. In fact his two plays Le Ceremonie and il Raguet are now forgotten.

About Chiari and Carlo Gozzi more is said in Goldoni’s life and in the analysis of plays. Their influence was harmful: Chiari’s, because his intense competition goaded Goldoni to distracting efforts; Carlo Gozzi’s because, with more talent, he tended to waylay Italian comedy out of its course. His anticipated romanticism, his unruly imagination, were so utterly unlike Goldoni’s well-balanced mind that they could never understand one another. Their lines diverged from the first. While Gozzi conquered immediate approval abroad and found in Goethe an admirer, and the imported school of Italian romanticism celebrate him as precursor, Goldoni’s more durable glory was to gather the threads of the past, both the golden thread of classical comedy and the homespun of improvised plays, so as to mix them and prepare the woof for modern comedy. A woof so finely built, so well fitted for its purpose that it still holds and promises to hold good not only in serious comedy of customs and characters, such as they are understood actually, and apart from the elements of foreign importation, but it is the basis of a splendid revival of regional comedy, a revival which the social and political conditions of the nation happily encourage, a revival which is in the spirit of Goldoni’s plan; taking in full consideration the variations to be found in different parts of Italy without losing contact with the glorious traditions of the past.

It is dangerous to prophesy in such uncertain and threatening times; still, if anything can be discernible, it is that Italian comedy will, on recovering with the whole world from the actual malady, return to the way pointed out by Goldoni—the way that comes from the past and goes toward a brighter future.

[1] It is only in Umbria, the land of flagellanti and laudi, that religious drama developed into importance, and it is there that a certain sort of pageantry is even now performed on different annual feasts. In Florence such performances, though originally meant to be religious, soon assumed a worldly character. G. Caprin, in his Life of Goldoni, thus resumes the situation: “The religious drama was at its turning point, just taking a regular form when it found the way foreclosed by the classical conception of literature at the time of the Renaissance supported by the favour of scholars, and an æsthetic directly derived from antiquity. A conciliation was attempted, and promised success when Poliziano gave his Orfeo, a genuine expression of pagan ideal blending with the construction of a religious drama. The combination was not continued then, nor ever afterward. Religious representations similar to those which were performed during the Middle Ages are still performed in villages.”

[2] Ludovico Ariosto, son to Niccolò, was born in 1474. He entered the service of Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, bishop of Ferrara, in 1503. He rendered many important diplomatic and other services to his patron, besides praising d’Este in his immortal poem; but he was not adequately rewarded. He declined attending the cardinal in Hungary, and was dismissed. Alfonso d’Este then employed him in many ways and finally made him governor of Garfagnana. Toward 1526 Ariosto moved to his own house, which he adorned with the well-known verse, “Parva sed apta mihi.” There he peacefully ended his active life, comforted by the constant devotion of the woman he loved, Alessandra Benucci, the widow of Tito Strozzi.

Of all Ariosto’s writings we mention only his plays: La Cassaria, performed in 1508; I Suppositi, 1509, first at the Court of Ferrara and soon afterwards in Rome before Pope Leone X in a theatre decorated by Raffaello; Il Negromante, dated 1520; La Lena, 1528. The play Gli Studenti he left unfinished.

[3] Bernardo Dovizi was born in Bibbiena, in the year 1470. He sided with the Médici and was attached to Giovanni, son of Lorenzo, whom he followed into exile, under the pontificate of Giulio II. He afterward succeeded in making his patron Pope under the name of Leone X. On several occasions he was papal legate and was made cardinal of Bibbiena and Secretary of State. His portrait painted by Raffaello is almost as well known as the Pope’s. Baldassare da Castiglione introduces him in his Cortegiano (see Il Cortegiano de B.D.C. riveduto da Giuseppe Rigutini, Firenze, Barbera, 1889) as the paragon of good manners and courtesy. He died in Rome, 1519.

His letter to Lodovico Canossa describes the representation of the Calandria at the court of Urbino (quoted by D’Ancona and Bacci, Manuale della letteratura italiana, op. cit., vol. ii, page 391 and following).

[4] Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527), born in Florence, was the son of Bartolommea de Nelli and of Bernardo Machiavelli, a lawyer. Little is known about his early education. His earliest writing is dated 1497. The following year he was secretary to the second cancelleria of the Florentine Republic and soon afterward secretary to the Dieci della Pace e Libertà. He retained this place until 1512, when the Médici were reinstated in Florence and he was exiled. Charged with complicity in the Boscoli and Capponi plot, 1513, he was imprisoned and tortured. He then retired to a little place in the country near San Casciano. There he wrote his Mandragola. He recovered favour with the Médici. For Cardinal Giulio—afterward Pope Clemente VII—he wrote the Annals of Florence. At the fall of his patrons he was denied the place of secretary which he claimed. He died in poverty, 1527, and was buried in Santa Croce.

We do not attempt to mention his activity as a statesman and a writer of the most famous book on statesmanship.

[5] Pietro Aretino, so called from his birthplace, Arezzo, was the illegitimate son of a cobbler. He studied painting and letters in Perugia. He obtained favour and notoriety from having been wounded in a quarrel. Giovanni della Bande Nere was his friend, and Aretino gave him a devoted attachment in return.

Aretino lived and throve “on the sweat of his pen.” For him and others who could write on almost any topic with equal fluency and inflated eloquence the term of poligrafo was invented. Pietro Aretino is the first journalist—in the worst meaning of the word. He fawned and flattered, bit and threatened. His pen was always busy for the highest bidder. He served François I before siding with Charles V. He corresponded with almost every important personage of his time, discovering some most amiable qualities to redeem his many faults. Grasping for money and favour, he is also generous in giving to the women he loves and the daughters they bore him. He encouraged art and artists, his taste was good, although he often writes in the over-ornate style which announces il secento.

Besides many other writings Aretino composed Orazia, a tragedy which Pierre Corneille imitated in his Horace, and five other plays. He died in 1556.

[6] Lorenzo, son of Pier Francesco de’ Médici, better known as Lorenzino—the Lorenzaccio of Alfred de Musset’s play—was born in 1514 and brought up by his mother, née Soderini. He murdered his cousin Alessandro in January, 1537. This crime has been variously viewed. For some Lorenzo is a hero who delivered his country from a tyrant; others think him an ambitious fool. Sem Benelli’s play, la Maschera de Bruto, presents the interesting enigma, without attempting to solve its mystery. The last act gives an accurate and striking representation of Lorenzo’s death in Venice, 1540, by the daggers of Cosimo de’ Médici’s followers.

[7] Francesco d’Ambra, contemporary, friend, and fellow Umido, wrote several plays in verse, remarkable for a superfluity of intrigue, mistakes, and errors. His Italian, however, is elegant.

[8] Anton Francesco Grazzini—il Lasca—is a fine representative of the Florentine citizen. He championed Italian letters versus Latin and Greek literature. He endeavoured to persuade his fellow-citizens that Dante and Petrarca were greater than Homer and Virgil. He admired and imitated Francesco Berni’s rime bernesche. In November, 1540, with some boon companions he founded the Accademia degli Umidi, at first as a modest club for the purpose of pleasant meetings in the house of Giovanni Mazzuoli, one of the members. Things went on well for some time; about 1547 the easy-going club turned into a ponderous academy entitled Accademia Florentina. Then Lasca turned the arrows of his ready wit against its affectations, purism, and airs of authority.

Lasca wrote many small plays. These plays, printed much later, are inferior to Lasca’s novelle, his greatest title to fame being the elegance and purity of his Italian.

[9] Giambattista Gelli, 1498-1563, was a scholar and a philosopher. Such qualities were sufficiently appreciated then to open for him even the doors of the celebrated “Orti Oricellari.” His greatest ambition was realised when he was appointed to “read Dante.” His La Circe and I Capricci del Bottaiol sum the ideas of his time, borrowing largely from the ancients yet adding that originality which is the character of humanism.

His play la Sporta is in some parts so good that it was believed Gelli had discovered fragments of a play on this subject by Machiavelli. Another play l’Errore lacks originality. About his Ghirigoro, the miser, something more will be said when comparing it to Goldoni’s.

[10] Giovan Maria Cecchi, 1518-1587, boasted that he had never lost sight of his dear “campanile.” A genuine Florentine, he was a notary with a taste for intellectual pleasure, without aspiring to the name of Letterato. His plays, twenty-one in number, are more classical than Lasca’s, yet they never lose touch with every-day life, and often reproduce plots and characters from the popular novelle. His most admired play, L’Assiuolo, is sometimes compared to Machiavelli’s Mandragola, though it lacks the depth and meaning of its model. Cecchi is an interesting guide to the ways and manners of his time and city, his gallery of personages being very extensive.

[11] The commedia dell’arte has many different origins. It would be interesting to trace it back to the pastorale and to the bucoliche ridiculing the manners of country people and the sentimentality of heroic poems. This hybrid was taken up by the Sienese Accademia de Rozzi, wherein it took a sort of literary regularity. This academy was founded in 1531 with the intent of providing amusement for holidays. The members met to read poets and to perform plays. From this popular pastoral two different sorts of compositions branched out: the poem, such as Tasso’s Aminta and the comedy, which blended into the commedia dell’arte and thus lost its character. The first commediante dell’arte recorded is Francesco Cherea, a protégé of Leone X, but very little is known about him and his performances. There were commedianti dell’arte in Mantova in 1566.

For all the commedianti see the Dizionario dei Comici Italiani di Luigi Rasi, an accurate study which includes the many older works on the subject. For the origins of Italian comedy see Alessandro d’Ancona, Origini del Teatro Italiano, Loescher. For collection of canvases, besides the often mentioned works of Alessandro d’Ancona, see Adolfo Bartoli, Scenari inediti della commedia dell’arte, Firenze, Sansoni, 1880; also Benedetto Croce, Una nuova raccolta di scenari in Giornale Storico xxix.

[12] Salvator Rosa, 1616-1673, is so much better known for his painting that his other talents are forgotten. The history of his life reads like a novel, with its episodes of bloody quarrelling, and plottings in Rome and in his native Naples. As an amateur actor and the creator of that peculiar character of the blustering capitano he was most successful, his own sunny disposition, his rebellious spirit, and his artistic taste giving to such amusement a larger sense. As much might be said of the several creations of Bernin. See Jacques Calot, La Fiera dell’Impruneta and I Balli de Stessania, for the largest collection of Italian customs ever drawn.

[13] A. Ademollo, Intorno al teatro drammatico italiano dal 1550 in poi, Nuova Antologia, Marzo, 1881, says that in Venice the noblemen crowding the house incited the actors to the most ribald jokes and speeches, even when they were in company of their wives and daughters.

The Venetian laws were severe against these exhibitions; decrees were issued against the immorality of plays, apparently with little effect.

[14] Giovanni Battista Fagiuoli, 1660-1742, has written nothing half so amusing as the jokes that were attributed to him,—Giuseppe Baccini, G. B. Fagiuoli, poeta faceto fiorentino, Firenze, 1886.

[15] Jacopo Nelli, 1676-1770, a satirist and a playwright of slight importance. He wrote for drawing-rooms and academies, indulged in personal satire and caricature in his capitoli and the plays he composed for amateurs and school boys.

[16] Gerolamo Gigli, born in Siena, 1660, died in Rome, 1722, fearlessly exposed one of the evils that Goldoni did not discuss—the convent as a perpetual threat for disobedient girls. Il Don Pilone, act iii, sc. 13, is entirely of his invention, an addition to the stage which even Molière could not surpass.

“Marianna. If a girl has to be shut up for her entire life, let her at least first enjoy some pleasure for three or four months. Let her see something of the world, and share in some of its amusements.

Valerio. If you want me to sleep quiet to-night, you must go into the convent at once.

Mar. I see, that you may rest quiet to-night, I will have to live in torment all my life.”

Then both her brother and Valerio plead with her and sing the praise of that convent. “The rule is not very strict.... The convent is very wealthy.... Among other advantages the nuns are never made to fast. ... And they can go out and please themselves twice a month.”