I.
THE history of the Italian theatre is closely connected with the history of the Classical Revival.[19] The literary drama—as distinguished from performances by tumblers, mimes, and masquers, from sacred plays and from plebeian farces—began with the representation of Latin tragedies and comedies. At the close of the fifteenth century it was usual to crown courtly festivals with scenic recitations of favourite pieces by Terence and Plautus. Rome vied with Florence, Venice with Naples, Ferrara with Urbino, in the magnificence of these spectacles. At a time when humanistic erudition formed the main preoccupation of society, and when to be illiterate was unfashionable, princes and great prelates afforded their guests the refined amusement of seeing the Menœchmi or Amphitryon, the Eunuchus or Miles Gloriosus, on their private stages. At the same time, obeying the decorative instinct of the Renaissance, they set these jewels of classical antiquity in arabesques of the richest and most fantastic workmanship. Allegorical masques, dances with musical accompaniment and pantomimic interludes, were interposed between each of the five acts, enhancing the simplicity of the Roman plays and gratifying the vulgar by an appeal to their senses. These hybrid spectacles, eminently characteristic of Italian taste in the age which produced them, contained the germs of several dramatic species, afterwards known as the Commedia Erudita, the pastoral play, the ballet, and the opera. Meanwhile Italian literature, stimulated and powerfully influenced by humanism, acquired independence; and the comedies of Plautus and Terence were translated and performed in the vernacular. During the last years of the fifteenth century these translations began to take the place of the originals upon the temporary stages of princely patrons. As yet there were no public theatres.
Such, briefly sketched, was the origin of Italian comedy; and the specific character of the Commedia Erudita, or written comedy of the sixteenth century, may be ascribed to the peculiar conditions out of which it grew. The genius of men like Ariosto, Machiavelli, and Aretino never wholly freed the form they handled from subservience to Latin models. It remained, in spite of their close imitation of contemporary life and their audacious realism, a sub-species of that dramatic art which the Romans adapted to their uses from the new comedy of the Attic stage.