Besides the “Notti” only one other work of Straparola’s is known to exist—a collection of sonnets and other poems published at Venice in 1508, and (according to a citation of Zanetti in the “Novelliero Italiano,” t. iii., p. xv, Ven. 1754, Bindoni) in 1515 as well.[[4]] A comparison of these dates will serve to show that, as he had already brought out a volume in the first decade of the century, the “Piacevoli Notti” must have been the work of his maturity or even of his old age. With this fact the brief catalogue of the known circumstances of his life comes to an end.

Judging from the rapidity with which the successive editions of the “Notti” were brought forth from the press after the first issue—sixteen appeared in the twenty years between 1550 and 1570—we may with reason assume that it soon took hold of the public favour.[[5]] Its fame spread early into France, where in 1560 an edition of the first part, translated into French by Jean Louveau, appeared at Lyons, to be followed some thirteen years later by a translation of the second part by Pierre de la Rivey, who thus completed the book. He likewise revised and re-wrote certain portions of Louveau’s translation, and in 1725 an edition was produced at Amsterdam, enriched by a preface by La Monnoie, and notes by Lainez. There are evidences that a German translation of the “Notti” was in existence at the beginning of the seventeenth century, for in the introduction to Fischart’s “Gargantua” (1608) there is an allusion to the tales of Straparola, brought in by way of an apology for the appearance of the work, the writer maintaining that, if the ears of the ladies are not offended by Boccaccio, Straparola, and other writers of a similar character, there is no reason why they should be offended by Rabelais. The author of the introduction to a fresh edition of the same work (1775) remarks that he knows the tales of Straparola from a later edition published in 1699. Of this translation no copy is known to exist.

In the “Palace of Pleasure” Painter has given only one of the fables, the second Fable[[6]] of the second Night; and in Roscoe’s “Italian Novelists” another one appears, the fourth Fable of the tenth Night. At the end of the last century the first Fable of the first Night was printed separately in London under the title, “Novella cioe copia d’un Caso notabile intervenuto a un gran gentiluomo Genovese.”[[7]] A translation of twenty-four of the fables, prefaced by a lengthy and verbose disquisition on the author, reputed to be from the pen of Mazzuchelli, appeared at Vienna in 1791;[[8]] but Brackelmann, in his “Inaugural Dissertation” (Gottingen, 1867), has an examination of the introduction above named, which goes far to prove that Mazzuchelli had little or nothing to do with it. In 1817 Dr. F. W. V. Schmidt published at Berlin a translation into German of eighteen fables selected from the “Notti,” to which he gave the title “Die Märchen des Straparola.” To his work Dr. Schmidt affixed copious notes, compiled with the greatest care and learning, thus opening to his successors a rich and valuable storehouse both of suggestion and of accumulated facts. It is almost certain that he must have worked from one of the many mutilated or expurgated editions of the book, for in the complete work there are several stories unnoticed by him which he would assuredly have included in his volume had he been aware of their existence.

One of the chief claims of the “Notti” on the consideration of later times lies in the fact that Straparola was the first writer who gathered together into one collection the stray fairy tales, for the most part brought from the East, which had been made known in the Italian cities—and in Venice more especially—by the mouth of the itinerant story-teller. These tales, incorporated in the “Notti” with others of a widely different character, were without doubt the principal source of the numerous French “Contes des Fées” published in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Perrault, Madame D’Aulnoy, and Gueulette took from them many of their best fables; and these, having spread in various forms through Northern and Western Europe, helped to tinge with a hue of Orientalism the popular tales of all countries—tales which had hitherto been largely the evolution of local myths and traditions.

Four of Straparola’s fables are slightly altered versions of four of the stories in the “Thousand and One Nights,”[[9]] which, as it will scarcely be necessary to remark, were not translated into any European language till Galland brought out his work at the beginning of the eighteenth century. One of these, the third Fable of the fourth Night, is substantially the same as the story of the Princess Parizade and her envious sisters, given in Galland’s translation. To account for this close resemblance we may either assume that Galland may have looked at Straparola’s fable, or that Straparola may have listened to it from the mouth of some wandering oriental or of some Venetian traveller recently come back from the East—the tale, as he heard it, having been faithfully taken from the same written page which Galland afterwards translated. Another one, the story of the Three Hunchbacks—the third Fable of the fifth Night—has less likeness to the original, and has been imitated by Gueulette in his “Contes Tartares.” The treatment of the story of the Princess Parizade by Straparola furnishes an illustration to prove that, bad as his style was, he was by no means deficient in literary skill and taste. He brings into due prominence the wicked midwife, who is particeps criminis with the queen-mother and the sisters in the attempted murder of the children, and who has on this account full and valid motive for acting as she did, seeing that interest and self-preservation as well would have prompted her to compass their destruction. On the other hand, in the Arabian tale it is hard to understand why the female fakir should have been led to persuade the princess to send her brothers off on their quest. Again, in the fable of Prince Guerrino[[10]] Straparola has displayed great ingenuity in weaving together a good story out of some half dozen of the widely-known fairy motives, any one of which might well have been fashioned into a story by itself.

After reading the “Notti” through one can hardly fail to be struck by the amazing variety of the themes therein handled. Besides the fairy tales—many of them classic—to which allusion has already been made, there is the world-famous story of Puss in Boots, an original product of Straparola’s brain. There are others which may rather be classed as romances of chivalry, in the elaboration of which a generous amount of magic and mystery is employed. The residue is made up of stories of intrigue and buffo tales of popular Italian life, some of which—not a large number, when one takes into consideration the contemporary standard of decency in such matters—are certainly unpleasant in subject and coarse in treatment, but with regard to the majority of these one is disposed to be lenient, inasmuch as the fun, though somewhat indelicate, is real fun. When the duped husband, a figure almost as inevitable in the Italian Novella as in the modern French novel, is brought forward, he is not always exhibited as the contemptible creature who seems to have sat for the part in the stories of the better known writers. Indeed, it sometimes happens that he turns the tables on his betrayers; and, although Straparola is laudably free from the vice of preaching, he now and then indulges in a brief homily by way of pointing out the fact that violators of the Decalogue generally come to a bad end, and that his own sympathies are all on the side of good manners. It is true that one misses in the “Notti” those delicious invocations of Boccaccio, commonly to be found at the end of the more piquant stories, in which he piously calls on Heaven to grant to himself and to all Christian men bonnes fortunes equal to those which he has just chronicled.

The scheme of the “Notti” resembles in character that of the Decameron, of Le Cene, and of other collections of a similar kind. In the Proem to the work it is set forth how Ottaviano Maria Sforza, the bishop-elect of Lodi—the same probably who died in 1540, after a life full of vicissitude—together with his daughter Lucretia, is compelled by the stress of political events to quit Milan. The Signora Lucretia is described as the wife of Giovanni Francesco Gonzaga, cousin of Federico, Marquis of Mantua, but as no mention of this prince is made it may be assumed that she was already a widow. Seeing that her husband died in 1523, an approximate date may be fixed for the “Piacevoli Notti,” but historical accuracy in cases of this sort is not to be expected or desired. After divers wanderings the bishop-elect and his daughter find a pleasant refuge on the island of Murano, where they gather around them a company of congenial spirits, consisting of a group of lovely and accomplished damsels, and divers cavaliers of note. Chief amongst the latter is the learned Pietro Bembo, the renowned humanist and the most distinguished man of letters Venice ever produced. With him came his friend Gregorio Casali, who is described as “Casal Bolognese, a bishop, and likewise ambassador of the King of England.” Both Gregorio Casali and his brother Battista were entrusted by Henry VIII. with the conduct of affairs of state pending between him and the Pope, and the former certainly visited England more than once. The king showed him many signs of favour during his stay, and when in 1527 Casali found himself shut up in Rome by the beleaguering army of the Constable of Bourbon, he was allowed free exit on the ground of his ambassadorial rank. Bernardo Cappello, another friend of Bembo, is also of the company, and a certain Antonio Molino, a poet of repute, who subsequently tells a fable in the dialect of Bergamo—a feat which leads to a similar display of local knowledge on the part of Signor Benedetto Trivigiano, who discourses in Trevisan. It may be remarked, however, that by far the greater number of the fables are told by the ladies.

But the joyous company assembled in the palace at Murano find divers other forms of recreation beside story-telling. They dance and they sing ballads, which are for the most part in praise of the gracious Signora Lucretia, but the chief byplay of the entertainment consists in the setting and solving of riddles. As soon as a fable is brought to an end the narrator is always called upon by the Signora to complete the task by propounding an enigma. This is then duly set forth in puzzling verses, put together as a rule in terms obscure enough to baffle solution, often entirely senseless, and now and again of a character indecent enough to call down upon the propounder the Signora’s rebuke on account of the seeming impropriety of the subject. In fact, a certain number of these enigmas are broad examples of the double entendre. The first reading of them makes one wonder how such matter could ever have been put in print, and agree fully with the anger of the Signora, but when the graceful and modest damsel, who may have been the author, proceeds to give the true explanation of her riddle she never fails to demonstrate clearly to the gentle company that her enigma, from beginning to end, is entirely free from all that is unseemly. In “French and English” Mr. Philip Gilbert Hamerton tells a story illustrating the late survival of this sort of witticism in France. In the early days of Louis Philippe, on one occasion when the court was at Eu, the mayor of the town and certain other local notables were bidden to déjeuner at the chateau, and after the banquet the mayor, in accordance with an old French fashion, asked leave to sing a song of his own making. This composition had two meanings, one lying on the surface and perfectly innocent, and the other, slightly veiled, which, though not immoral, was prodigiously indecent. When the true nature of the song was realized, there was for a second or two silence and confusion amongst the company, but at last, by good luck, someone laughed. The dangerous point was safely rounded, and the mayor brought his song to an end amidst loud applause.

When he published his translation into French of the second part of the “Notti,” Pierre de la Rivey made alterations in almost all the enigmas therein contained, and re-wrote many of those which had already been translated by Louveau, but in neither case did his work tend to make them more decent. In reading over the enigmas as Straparola left them one often feels that the line of reticence, recognized by contemporary decorum, has been crossed, otherwise there would be no need for the ladies to hide their faces, or for the Signora to visit the culprit for the time being with her well-deserved rebuke. But Straparola’s untouched work is almost decent compared with De la Rivey’s emendations.

In spite of the blots above designated, there will be found in the “Notti” a smaller proportion of stories calculated to outrage modern canons of taste than in any of the better known collections of Italian novelle. The judgments which have been dealt out to Straparola on the score of indecency by Landau (“Beiträge,” p. 130), by the writer of the article in the “Biographie Universelle,” and by Grimm in his notes to “Kinder und Hausmärchen,” seem to be unduly severe. In certain places he is no doubt brutally coarse, but the number of fables defaced in this manner is not large. If one were to take the trouble to compare the rendering given by Basile in the “Pentamerone,” of stories told also by Straparola, with the rendering of the same in the “Notti,” the award for propriety of language would assuredly not always be given to the Neapolitan, who, it should be remembered, was writing a book for young children. In few of the collections of a similar character is there to be found so genuine a vein of comedy, and for the sake of this one may perhaps be permitted to beg indulgence for occasional lapses—lapses which are assuredly fewer in number and probably not more heinous in character than those of novelists of greater fame. Straparola turns naturally towards the cheerful side of things, the lives of the men and women he deals with seem to be less oppressed with the tædium vitæ than are the creatures of the Florentine and Sienese and Neapolitan novel-writers, and the reason of this is not far to seek. Life in Venice, when once the political constitution was firmly and finally fixed on an oligarchic basis, was more stable, more secure, more luxurious than in any of the other ruling cities of Italy. Social and political convulsion of the sort which vexed the neighbouring states was almost unknown, and, though the forces of the Republic might occasionally suffer defeat and disaster in distant seas and in the Levant, life went on peacefully and pleasantly within the shelter of the Lagunes. The religious conscience of the people was easy-going, orthodox, and laudably inclined to listen to the voice of authority; neither disposed to nourish within the hidden canker of heresy, nor to let itself be worked up into ecstatic fever by any sudden conviction of ungodliness such as led to the lighting of the Bonfire of Vanities in Florence. In a society thus constituted it was inevitable that life should be easier, more gladsome, and more secure than in Milan, with the constant struggle of Pope against Emperor, and later on under the turbulent despotism of the Viscontis and Sforzas; or than in Florence, with its constant civil broils and licentious public life, which not even the craft and power of the leaders of the Medici could discipline into public order; or than in Naples, dominated by the Aragonese kings and harried by the greedy mercenaries in the royal employ; or than in Rome itself, vexed continually by intrigue, political and religious, and by the tumults generated by the violence and ambition of the ruling families.