But Minturno points out that comedy is not to be contemned because it excites laughter; for by comic hilarity the spectators are kept from becoming buffoons themselves, and by the ridiculous light in which amours are placed, are made to avoid such things in future. Comedy is the best corrective of men's morals; it is indeed what Cicero calls it, imitatio vitæ, speculum consuetudinis, imago veritatis. This phrase, ascribed by Donatus to Cicero, runs through all the dramatic discussions of the Renaissance,[203] and finds its echo in a famous passage in Hamlet. Cervantes cites the phrase in Don Quixote;[204] and Il Lasca, in the prologue to L'Arzigoglio, berates the comic writers of his day after this fashion: "They take no account of the absurdities, the contradictions, the inequalities, and the discrepancies of their pieces; for they do not seem to know that comedy should be truth's image, the ensample of manners, and the mirror of life."
This is exactly what Shakespeare is contending for when he makes Hamlet caution the players not to "o'erstep the modesty of nature; for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure."[205]
The high importance which Scaliger (1561) gives to comedy, and in fact to satiric and didactic poetry in general, is one of many indications of the incipient formation of neo-classical ideals during the Renaissance. He regards as absurd the statement which he conceives Horace to have made, that comedy is not really poetry; on the contrary, it is the true form of poetry, and the first and highest of all, for its matter is entirely invented by the poet.[206] He defines comedy as a dramatic poem filled with intrigue (negotiosum), written in popular style, and ending happily.[207] The characters in comedy are chiefly old men, slaves, courtesans, all in humble station or from small villages. The action begins rather turbulently, but ends happily, and the style is neither high nor low. The typical themes of comedy are "sports, banquets, nuptials, drunken carousals, the crafty wiles of slaves, and the deception of old men."[208]
The theory of comedy in sixteenth-century Italy was entirely classical, and the practice of the time agrees with its theory. There are indeed to be heard occasional notes of dissatisfaction and revolt, especially in the prologues of popular plays. Il Lasca, in the prologue to the Strega, defiantly protests against the inviolable authority of Aristotle and Horace, and in the prologue to his Gelosia reserves the right to copy the manner of his own time, and not those of Plautus and Terence. Cecchi, Aretino, Gelli, and other comic writers give expression to similar sentiments.[209] But on the whole these protests availed nothing. The authors of comedy, and more especially the literary critics, were guided by classical practice and classical theory. Dramatic forms like the improvised commedia dell' arte had marked influence on the practice of European comedy in general, especially in France, but left no traces of their influence on the literary criticism of the Italian Renaissance.
FOOT-NOTES:
[109] Poet. vi. 2.
[110] Daniello, p. 34.
[111] Cf. Horace, Ars Poet. 182 sq.
[112] Giraldi Cintio, ii. 6.