Renaissance literary theory and practice

by Charles Sears Baldwin

I. The play opens with old Linco’s advice to athletic young Silvio: go love betimes. A dialogue between Mirtillo expounds the plot. Corisca’s monologue tells the audience that she is in love with Mirtillo, and must have revenge for his disdain. Three elders, Tityrus, the priest Montano, and Dameta, further expound the situation in reminiscence. A satyr, in a monologue on love, vows to seize the tricky Corisca. The persons having been thus presented in separate sets, the act ends with a chorus.

II. Mirtillo tells Ergasto how he fell in love forever with Amaryllis. Dorinda in vain woos Silvio by detaining and restoring his hound. Corisca’s monologue exults in the outlook of her plot, and her dialogue misleading Amaryllis ends with soliloquy. The satyr seizing her, she cajoles, insults, and finally breaks away, thus providing action for the first time. The concluding chorus moralizes the past.

III. Mirtillo, after apostrophizing spring and love, is brought, through a game of nymphs devised by Corisca, to Amaryllis, declares his passion, exchanges longer and longer speeches, and finding her obdurate, vows to die. In a monologue she tells the audience that she loves him nevertheless. Corisca tricks them separately into seeking a cave. Each exhales a monologue on the way. This is the complication. The satyr unwittingly furthers it by blocking the cave with a rock, thus imprisoning the two innocents. The chorus meditates on love.

IV. At this point all that remains of the action is to disclose Corisca’s trick, correct the mistaken identity, and reveal the true intent of the oracle. But since the play must have five acts Guarini reserves all this to V, and makes IV a stalling interlude of monologues, reports, and choruses. The only action is in the last scene (ix), where Silvio, accidentally wounding Dorinda, begins to fall in love with her.

V. Mirtillo’s foster-father, arriving from far, finds him about to be sacrificed, having offered himself in place of Amaryllis. The disclosure that these two are the fated couple meant by the oracle is made gradually through five scenes, and capped by the arrival of the blind seer Tirenio in vi. Silvio is reported duly in love with the healed Dorinda. Even Corisca is pardoned; and the play ends with hymeneal choruses.

The play is not moved by the actions of its persons. Complication, indeed, comes through Corisca, who is the only person carried through the play; but the solution is through persons brought in at the end solely for that purpose. As with Garnier, the persons are presented in separate groups; and they are on the stage to talk. The style is expertly careful. Guarini has learned from Tasso how to modulate his verse. The notes record constant reminiscences of the classics, both Greek and Latin, and many borrowings; but the surcharging, again after the example of Tasso, is discreetly harmonized. Pastoral drama, then, rather prolonged pastoral than advanced drama. But its opportunities for spectacle, dance, music, and imaginative suggestion were among the motives finally woven into a play by Shakspere.

Meantime real rustics also, actual farmers, laborers, villagers, had long been dramatized for gentlefolk and bourgeois by amateurs and increasingly by professional companies. Angelo Beolco (1502-1542), called from one of his favorite impersonations Ruzzante, even localized them on the stage in Ferrara and Venice by Paduan dialect. As the shepherds of the Towneley Secunda pastorum, his rustics are presented realistically. Here is the essential difference from pastoral. The actual rudeness of such impersonations, may, indeed, be dramatically exaggerated; but it must always seem actual. Ruzzante’s vivid realizations transcend his Paduan dialect by the appeal of actual peasant life, rudeness, shrewdness, lewdness unveiled by the social conventions of a higher society, talking in their own terms. Such rustic drama in time helped to discover a dramatic interest beyond types in individuals. Types remain useful in comedy because they are readily recognizable, the braggart soldier or the clever rascal; and dramatic theory urges nothing more. But the stage attempts with rustic persons sometimes opened in comedy of manners the further appeal of characterization. The verisimilitude and propriety of the theorists gave way to dramatic creation. As later in the “histories,” so in rustic comedies, theory was widened by stage experience.

Ruzzante’s life was too short to bring his art to maturity. At forty, though he had already triumphed in single characterizations, he was still groping in the forms of Plautus. Much of his work is what is now called sketch, rather dialogue or even monologue than play.

A characteristic piece is his First Dialogue. A soldier, reminiscent here and elsewhere of the miles gloriosus, but characterized with some individuality, is returning from the war ragged and wistful, but still boastful. Catechized by an old friend, he gives his experiences, his theory of life, and something of himself. So far the form is hardly more than monologue; for the friend merely listens, questions, and comments. There is no interaction. The effect, however, even in print, is dramatic to the extent of vivid representation. The racy language has constant suggestions of manner, gesture, stage business. It differs essentially from the diction of Garnier. We come to know this man.