THE PROCESSION OF THE REDENTORE
he presented himself one day in 1826 at one of the asylums for the poor, where he spent a day; but when towards evening he was requested to put on the dress of the establishment, he flew into such a terrible rage that he had fever all night, and had to be watched. On the following morning he shook the dust from his feet and departed, declaring that a gentleman like himself could not live among such brigands. During two years the workmen of the Arsenal subscribed to give him a pittance; at the end of that time, feeling that his days were numbered, he consented to enter the little hospice of Saint Ursula, which a pious person of the fourteenth century had founded for the perpetual support of three poor old men.
It is said that the last Carnival of Venice was the gayest in all her history, and fully realised the condition of things described by Goldoni some years earlier in his comedy La Mascherata. I translate the couplet into prose:—
Here the wife and there the husband,
Each one does as best he likes;
Each one hastens to some party,
Some to gamble, some to dance.
Provided every one in Carnival
May do exactly as he chooses,
It would not seem a serious matter
Even to go raving mad.
A good many different traditional and legendary feasts amused the Venetians in old times, but the only one that has survived to our own day is
G. R. Michiel, iii. 389.
the Festa del Redentore, the feast of the Redeemer, which was instituted as a thanksgiving after the cessation of the plague in 1576, and is kept even now both as a civil and religious holiday. The serenades, illuminations, and feasts in the island of the Giudecca certainly delight the Venetian populace of to-day as much as in the times when the old flag of Saint Mark floated over everything, and the little movable kitchens on wheels were adorned with the symbols of the Evangelist prettily outlined with flowers on a ground of green leaves.
The central point of all amusement in Carnival was the theatre, for the Venetians always had a passion for spectacles, and, at a time when the worst possible taste debased the stage throughout Italy, the reform which has since raised the Italian theatre so high began in Venice with Goldoni’s comedies. Properly speaking, there was no dramatic art in Italy before him. As I have explained in speaking of the sixteenth century, the Hose Club founded the first theatre, but most of the performances were what we still call mummeries, in which more or less symbolic personages said anything witty or profound that occurred to them, or talked nonsense in the absence of inspiration. Pantaloon was the national mask of Venice, and was always supposed to be a doctor who became involved in the most astonishing adventures. Valaresso, a man of taste in those days, produced a play that ended with a battle supposed to be fought behind the scenes. In his satire the poet makes the prompter appear upon the stage carrying a little lamp. ‘Ladies and
Aureli, Vita del Pergolesi.