Professor d'Ancona believes, that to the custom of keeping May by singing from house to house and collecting largess of eggs or fruit or cheese, may be traced the dramatic representations, which, under the name of Maggi, can still be witnessed in certain districts of the Tuscan Hills and of the plain of Pisa. These May-plays are performed any Sunday in Spring, just after Mass; the men, women, and children, hastening from the church-door to the roughly-built theatre which has the sky for roof, the grey olives and purple hills for background. The verses of the play (it is always in verse) are sung to a sort of monotonous but elastic chant, in nearly every case unaccompanied by instruments. No one can do more than guess when that chant was composed; it may have been five hundred years ago and it may have been much more. Grief or joy, love and hate, all are expressed upon the same notes. It is possible that some such recitative was used in the Greek drama. A play that was not sung would not seem a play to the Tuscan contadino. The characters are acted by men or boys, the peasants not liking their wives and daughters to perform in public. A considerable number of Maggi exist in print or in MS. carefully copied for the convenience of the actors. The subjects range from King David to Count Ugolino, from the siege of Troy to the French Revolution. They seem for most part modern compositions, cast in a form which was probably invented before the age of Dante.
THE IDEA OF FATE IN SOUTHERN TRADITIONS.
In the early world of Greece and Italy, the beliefs relating to Fate had a vital and penetrative force which belonged only to them. "Nothing," says Sophocles, "is so terrible to man as Fate." It was the shadow cast down the broad sunlight of the roofless Hellenic life. All Greece, its gods and men, bowed at that word which Victor Hugo saw, or imagined that he saw, graven on a pillar of Nôtre Dame: Ανάγκη. Necessity alone of the supernatural powers was not made by man in his own image. It had no sacred grove, for in the whole world there was no place where to escape from it, no peculiar sect of votaries, for all were bound equally to obey; it could not be bought off with riches nor withstood by valour; no man worshipped it, many groaned under its dispensation; but by all it was vaguely felt to be the instrument of a pure justice. If they did not, with Herder, call Fate's law "Eternal Truth," yet their idea of necessity carried these men nearer than did any other of their speculative guesses to the idea of a morally-governed universe.
The belief in one Fate had its train of accessorial beliefs. The Parcae and the Erinnyes figured as dark angels of Destiny. Then, in response to the double needs of superstition and materialism, the impersonal Fate itself took the form of the Greek Tyche, and of that Fortuna, who, in Rome alone, had no less than eight temples. There were some indeed who saw in Fortune nothing else than the old dira necessitas; but to the popular mind, she was nearer to chance than to necessity; she dealt out the favourable accident which goes further to secure success than do the subtlest combinations of men. The Romans did not only demand of a military leader that he should have talent, foresight, energy; they asked, was he felix—happy, fortunate? Since human life was seen to be, on the whole, but a sorry business, and since it was also seen that the prosperous were not always the meritorious, the inference followed that Fortune was capricious, changeable, and, if not immoral, at least unmoral. With this character she came down to the Middle Ages, having contrived to outlive the whole Roman pantheon.
So Dante found her, and inquired of his guide who and what she might really be?
Maestro, dissi lui, or mi di' anche:
Questa Fortuna di che tu mi tocche,
Che è, che i ben del mondo ha sì tra branche?
Dante had no wish to level the spiritual windmills that lay in his path: he left them standing, only seeking a proper reason for their being there. Therefore he did not answer himself in the words of the Tuscan proverb: "Chi crede in sorte, non crede in Dio;" but, on the contrary, tried to prove that the two beliefs might be perfectly reconciled. "He whose knowledge transcends all things" (is the reply) "fashioned the heavens, and gave unto them a controlling force in such wise that each part shines upon each, distributing equally the light. Also to worldly splendours he ordained a general minister, and captain, who should timely change the tide of vain prosperity from race to race and from blood to blood. Why these prevail, and those languish, according to her ruling, is hidden, like the snake in the grass; your knowledge has in her no counterpart; she provides, judges, and pursues her governance, as do theirs the other gods. Her permutations have no truce, necessity makes her swift; for he is swift in coming who would have his turn. This is she who is upbraided even by those who should praise her, giving her blame wrongfully and ill-repute; but she continues blessed, and hearkens not; glad among the other primal creatures, she revolves her sphere, and being blessed, rejoices."