Lack of salience, though not often so flagrant, is habitual. Without salience, without sufficient motivation, Bandello’s tales are oftener a mere series of events than a sequence of scenes. They are not consistently developed by action. Instead of revealing themselves progressively before our eyes, his persons make speeches or even think aloud. Their speeches are far oftener oratory than narrative dialogue. Indeed, they may repeat what has been already thought or done. The very inequality in the collection betrays Bandello’s weakness in narrative composition. His ornate style is fairly constant in elegant fluency; but his composition is hit or miss. He has no steady command of story management.
Nor is his art sure in the eighteen longer tales. Of these, twelve (Part I. 5, 17, 21, 34, 45, 49; Part II. 24, 28, 36, 40, 41, 44), averaging about twenty-three pages, have essentially the same slack composition as the shorter tales. The remaining six deserve more attention.
I. 2 (26 pages) Ariobarzanes, proud and generous courtier, endured from Artaxerxes a series of humiliations, and emerged triumphant. The tale begins with the posing of a question: is the life of a courtier essentially liberality and courtesy, or obligation and debt? The series of trials is cumulative enough to give a certain sequence; but that it involved a struggle against detraction is not disclosed until the final oration, and thus does not operate as motivation.
I. 15 (23 pages) Two clever wives conspired to outwit the intrigues of their husbands, delivered them from prison, and reconciled them to each other. Here are complication and solution, but through a plot as artificial as it is ingenious. Though the detail is livelier, the action is slow. It halts in the middle; and the dénouement comes finally through a long oration rehearsing the whole story in court. The only characterization is of a third lady in the sub-plot.
I. 22 (25 pages) Timbreo, betrothed to Fenicia, repudiated her through a dastardly trick of his rival. The lady, who was supposed to be dead of shame, hid herself in a villa. The rival repenting and confessing, both men vowed to set her name right. At the request of her father marrying “Lucilla,” Timbreo found her to be Fenicia. The rival married a sister, and the King adorned the wedding with royal festivities, dowries for the brides, and posts for the men. Here again are complication and solution. Though some of the scenes are realized, there is not that salience of critical situations which leads a narrative sequence onward. The royal wedding at the end, for instance, has as much space as the repudiation. Fenicia is presented with some hints of characterization.
I. 27 (27 pages) Don Diego and Ginevra, two very young country gentlefolk, falling in love utterly at sight, the girl turned so violently jealous as to deny all attempts at reconciliation; and the boy in despair went far away to end his days as a hermit in a cave. An old friend of both families, finding his retreat, reasoned with him in vain, but roused his hope by promising to move the girl. The girl was so far from being moved that she planned to elope with an adventurer. The old friend frustrated this and, in spite of the girl’s fury, carried her off toward the boy’s cave. Her pride remaining quite obstinate, the old friend finally lost patience and told her to go her own foolish way; but the boy, coming to meet them, showed so deep and unselfish devotion that she fell on his neck. This tale, which Bandello had from Spain, has not only complication and solution, but, in spite of some unnecessary interruption, an engaging narrative progress. Besides the constant motivation of the persons’ youth, there is definite characterization of the old friend, of the boy, and especially of the girl. No other tale of the collection equals this in narrative composition.
II. 9 (35 Pages) The now familiar tale of Romeo and Juliet is told straight through with little salience and with little characterization.
II. 37 (48 pages) Edward III, suing a lady long in vain, at last had to marry her. The lady’s first high-spirited and intelligent response has some distinct characterization; but the situation is repeated again and again with cumulative urgency until this longest of the tales becomes tedious.
Even these better longer tales, then, are quite unequal in story management. Bandello seems to take his stories as he finds them. His literary fiction of writing a story that he has heard seems essentially true in that sense. As he has not discerned in Boccaccio the various achievement of a narrative artist, so he does not see what makes his own best tales good, much less shape others accordingly. He is not creative.