FROM ANTONIA PULCI'S 'RAPPRESENTAZIONE DI S. FRANCESCO,' S.A.
They follow these, in fact, with remarkable fidelity, and as they are written for the most part in the familiar octava rima, it is only by the speeches being made in the first person, instead of in historical narration, that they differ very greatly from them. Thus, to take the plays from which we have chosen our illustrations, that of S. Francis of Assisi, by Antonia Pulci, faithfully records all the main incidents as told in the legends—the colloquy with the beggar during which he was stricken with compunction, the theft from his father of money to repair a church, the founding of his Order, the conference with the Pope, and the reception of the stigmata; this last being, as might be expected, the subject chosen by the artist for the woodcut on the title. The play of 'San Lorenzo' shows us the martyrdom of Pope Sixtus in the Decian persecution, and then the torture and death of S. Laurence for his refusal to surrender the treasure which the Pope had bequeathed to the poor of the church. Both of the woodcuts to these two plays are of great beauty. The first probably follows the traditions of the many pictures on the subject rather than that of the stage, though it was, no doubt, for a scene like this that the stage-managers of the day used their utmost resources. In the martyrdom of S. Laurence, on the other hand, we may be sure that we have a very exact picture of the scene as played on some convent stage.
FROM THE 'RAPPRESENTAZIONE DI S. LORENZO,' S.A.
Both these plays belong to the fifteenth century, and, as is mostly the case in the earliest editions, have only a rough woodcut each. This was not invariably so, as in the Bodleian Library there are copies of editions of the plays of 'Stella' and 'S. Paulino,' which have every appearance of having been printed before 1500, but yet have sets of several cuts, all obviously designed especially for them. These, however, are exceptions; and as a rule where we find several cuts, it is easy to trace most of them back, either to other plays, or to other illustrated books of the time, such as the 'Epistole e Evangelii,' the 'Fior di Virtù,' Pulci's 'Morgante Maggiore,' etc. Thus, of the two cuts given here as illustrations to the curious 'Rappresentazione d'uno miracolo del corpo di Gesù,' the first alone occurs in the fifteenth-century edition, while in that of 1555 (probably sixty years later) this original cut reappears, with three others added to it. The first, here shown, representing a drinking scene, is borrowed, I strongly suspect, from the 'Morgante Maggiore'; while the second, which shows a man being burnt, and the third, in which a king is consulting his counsel, may be called stock-pictures, and reappear with frequency.
FROM THE 'RAPPRESENTAZIONE D'UNO MIRACOLO DEL CORPO DI GESÙ,' 1555
This play of the 'Corpo di Gesù' is an Italian version of a miracle which was constantly being reported during the middle-ages, and was often the excuse for a cruel persecution of the Jews. The well-known 'Croxton' 'Play of the Sacrament,' is cast on the same lines, and a detailed comparison of the two would yield some points of interest. In the 'Rappresentazione' the story is well told, and with unusual vivacity. After the angelic prologue there is an induction, in which a miracle of a consecrated wafer, dripping blood, is announced to Pope Urban, who discourses on it with a cardinal and with S. Thomas Aquinas and S. Bonaventura. The play itself begins with a drinking scene, in which a wicked Guglielmo squanders his money, and then takes his wife's cloak to the Jewish pawnshop to get more. The poor woman goes herself to the Jew to try to get her cloak back, and is then persuaded to filch a wafer at mass and bring it to the Jew, on his promise to restore her garment. Her horror at his proposal is overcome by the pretext that his object is to use the Host as a charm to heal his sick son, and that if this succeeds he and all his family will become Christians. This, of course, is a mere fiction, but it serves the woman in good stead; for when the Jew is discovered by the unquenchable flow of blood from the wafer he maltreats, he is promptly burnt, while the Judge is warned by a special revelation to spare the life of his accomplice, whose guilt might easily be represented as the greater of the two.
