typical figures in masks, speaking in local dialects,[1] but which was not improvised, and indeed from the nature of the case hardly could have been. Its inventor was A. Beolco of Padua, who called himself Ruzzante (joker), and is memorable under that name as the first actor-playwright—a combination of extreme significance for the history of the modern stage. He published six comedies in various dialects, including the Greek of the day (1530). This was the masked comedy to which the Italians so tenaciously clung, and in which, as all their own and imitable by no other nation, they took so great a pride that even Goldoni was unable to overthrow it. Improvisation and burlesque, alike abominable to comedy proper, were inseparable from the species.
Meanwhile, the Latin imitations of Roman, varied by occasional translations of Greek, comedies early led to the production of Italian translations, several of which were performed at Ferrara in the last quarter of the 15th century, whence they spread to Milan, Pavia and other towns Early Italian regular comedy.of the north. Contemporaneously, imitations of Latin comedy made their appearance, for the most part in rhymed verse; most of them applying classical treatment to subjects derived from Boccaccio’s and other novelle, some still mere adaptations of ancient models. In these circumstances it is all but idle to assign the honour of having been “the first Italian comedy”—and thus the first comedy in modern dramatic literature—to any particular play. Boiardo’s Timone (before 1494), for which this distinction was frequently claimed, is to a large extent founded on a dialogue of Lucian’s; and, since some of its personages are abstractions, and Olympus is domesticated on an upper stage, it cannot be regarded as more than a transition from the moralities. A. Ricci’s I Tre Tiranni (before 1530) seems still to belong to the same transitional species. Among the earlier imitators of Latin comedy in the vernacular may be noted G. Visconti, one of the poets patronized by Ludovico il Moro at Milan;[2] the Florentines G. B. Araldo, J. Nardi, the historian,[3] and D. Gianotti.[4] The step—very important had it been adopted consistently or with a view to consistency—of substituting prose for verse as the diction of comedy, is sometimes attributed to Ariosto; but, though his first two comedies were originally written in prose, the experiment was not new, nor did he persist in its adoption. Caretto’s I Sei Contenti dates from the end of the 15th century, and Publio Filippo’s Formicone, taken from Apuleius, followed quite early in the 16th. Machiavelli, as will be seen, wrote comedies both in prose and in verse.
But, whoever wrote the first Italian comedy, Ludovico Ariosto was the first master of the species. All but the first two of his comedies, belonging as they do to the field of commedia erudita, or scholarly comedy, are in blank verse, to which he gave a singular mobility by the dactylic ending of the line (sdrucciolo). Ariosto’s models were the masterpieces of the palliata, and his morals those of his age, which emulated those of the worst days of ancient Rome or Byzantium in looseness, and surpassed them in effrontery. He chose his subjects accordingly; but his dramatic genius displayed itself in the effective drawing of character,[5] and more especially in the skilful management of complicated intrigues.[6] Such, with an additional brilliancy of wit and lasciviousness of tone, are likewise the characteristics of Machiavelli’s famous prose comedy, the Mandragola (The Magic Draught);[7] and at the height of their success, of the plays of P. Aretino,[8] especially the prose Marescalco (1526–1527) whose name, it has been said, ought to be written in asterisks. It may be added that the plays of Ariosto and his followers were represented with magnificent scenery and settings. Other dramatists of the 16th century were B. Accolti, whose Virginia (prob. before 1513) treats the story from Boccaccio which reappears in All’s Well that Ends Well; G. Cecchi, F. d’Ambra, A. F. Grazzini, N. Secco or Secchi and L. Dolce—all writers of romantic comedy of intrigue in verse or prose.
During the same century the “pastoral drama” flourished in Italy. The origin of this peculiar species—which was the bucolic idyll in a dramatic form, and which freely lent itself to the introduction of both mythological and allegorical elements—was purely literary, and The pastoral drama.arose directly out of the classical studies and tastes of the Renaissance. It was very far removed from the genuine peasant plays which flourished in Venetia and Tuscany early in the 16th century. The earliest example of the artificial, but in some of its productions exquisite, growth in question was the renowned scholar A. Politian’s Orfeo (1472), which begins like an idyll and ends like a tragedy. Intended to be performed with music—for the pastoral drama is the parent of the opera—this beautiful work tells its story simply. N. da Correggio’s (1450–1508) Cefalo, or Aurora, and others followed, before in 1554 A. Beccari produced, as totally new of its kind, his Arcadian pastoral drama Il Sagrifizio, in which the comic element predominates. But an epoch in the history of the species is marked by the Aminta of Tasso (1573), in whose Arcadia is allegorically mirrored the Ferrara court. Adorned by choral lyrics of great beauty, it presents an allegorical treatment of a social and moral problem; and since the conception of the characters, all of whom think and speak of nothing but love, is artificial, the charm of the poem lies not in the interest of its action, but in the passion and sweetness of its sentiment. This work was the model of many others, and the pastoral drama reached its height of popularity in the famous Pastor fido (written before 1590) of G. B. Guarini, which, while founded on a tragic love-story, introduces into its complicated plot a comic element, partly with a satirical intention. It is one of those exceptional works which, by circumstance as well as by merit, have become the property of the world’s literature at large. Thus, both in Italian and in other literatures, the pastoral drama became a distinct species, characterized, like the great body of modern pastoral poetry in general, by a tendency either towards the artificial or towards the burlesque. Its artificiality affected the entire growth of Italian comedy, including the commedia dell’ arte, and impressed itself in an intensified form upon the opera. The foremost Italian masters of the last-named species, so far as it can claim to be included in the poetic drama, were A. Zeno (1668–1750) and P. Metastasio.
The comic dramatists of the 17th century are grouped as followers of the classical and of the romantic school, G. B. della Porta (q.v.) and G. A. Cicognini (whom Goldoni describes as full of whining pathos and commonplace drollery, but as still possessing a great power to Comedy in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Goldoni.interest) being regarded as the leading representatives of the former. But neither of these largely intermixed groups of writers could, with all its fertility, prevail against the competition, on the one hand of the musical drama, and on the other of the popular farcical entertainments and those introduced in imitation of Spanish examples. Italian comedy had fallen into decay, when its reform was undertaken by the wonderful theatrical genius of C. Goldoni. One of the most fertile and rapid of playwrights (of his 150 comedies 16 were written and acted in a single year), he at the same time pursued definite aims as a dramatist. Disgusted with the conventional buffoonery, and ashamed of the rampant
- ↑ The masked characters, each of which spoke the dialect of the place he represented, were (according to Baretti) Pantalone, a Venetian merchant; Dottore, a Bolognese physician; Spaviento, a Neapolitan braggadocio; Pullicinella, a wag of Apulia; Giangurgulo and Coviello, clowns of Calabria; Gelfomino, a Roman beau; Brighella, a Ferrarese pimp; and Arlecchino, a blundering servant of Bergamo. Besides these and a few other such personages (of whom four at least appeared in each play), there were the Amorosos or Innamoratos, men or women (the latter not before 1560, up to which time actresses were unknown in Italy) with serious parts, and Smeraldina, Colombina, Spilletta, and other servettas or waiting-maids. All these spoke Tuscan or Roman, and wore no masks.
- ↑ Pasitea.
- ↑ Amicizia.
- ↑ Milesia.
- ↑ La Lena; Il Negromante.
- ↑ La Cassaria; I Suppositi.
- ↑ Of Machiavelli’s other comedies, two are prose adaptations from Plautus and Terence, La Clizia (Casina) and Andria; of the two others, simply called Commedie, and in verse, his authorship seems doubtful.
- ↑ La Cortigiana, La Talanta, Il Ipocrito, Il Filosofo.
