|
Tace il celeste suon, già spenta e morta È l'armonia di quella dolce lira, Che 'l mondo afflitto or lascia, e 'l ciel conforta. E come parimenti si sospira Qui la sua morte, così in ciel s'allegra Chi alla nuova armonia si volge e gira. Felice lui che dalla infetta e negra Valle di pianti al ciel n'è gito, e 'n terra Lasciata ha sol la veste inferma ed egra, Ed or dal mondo e dall'orribil guerra De' vizi sciolto, il suo splendor vagheggia Nel volto di Colui che mai non erra. |
As regards their form, the Sacre Rappresentazioni are never divided into acts; but the copious stage-directions prove that the scenes were shifted, and in one or two instances secular interludes are introduced in the pauses of the action.[414] The drama follows the tale or legend without artistic structure of plot; nor do the authors appear to have aimed, except in subordinate episodes, at much development of character. What they found ready to their hand in prose, they versified. The same fixed personages, and the same traditional phrases recur with singular monotony, proving that a conventional framework and style had become stereotyped. The end in view was religious edification. Therefore mere types of virtue in saints and martyrs, types of wickedness in tyrants and persecutors, sufficed alike for authors, actors, and audience. True dramatic genius emerges only in the minor parts, where a certain freedom of handling and effort after character-drawing are discernible. The success of the play depended on the movement of the story, and the attractions of the scenery, costumes and music. It was customary for an angel to prologize and to dismiss the audience[415]; but his place is once at least taken by a young man with a lute.[416] A more dramatic opening was occasionally attempted in a conversation between two boys of Florence, the one good and the other bad; and instead of the licenza the scene sometimes closed with a Te Deum, or a Laud sung by the actors and probably taken up by the spectators. Castellani in his Figliuol Prodigo made good use of the dramatic opening, gradually working the matter of his play out of a dialogue which begins with a smart interchange of Florentine chaff.[417] It would be useless even to attempt a translation of this scene. The raciness of its obsolete street-slang would evaporate, and the fiber of the piece is not strong enough to bear rude handling. It must suffice to indicate its rare dramatic quality. Students of our own Elizabethan literature may profitably compare this picture of manners with similar passages in Hycke Scorner or Lusty Juventus. But the Florentine interlude is more fairly representative of actual life than any part of our Moralities. Castellani's Prodigal Son, however, rises altogether to a higher artistic level than the ordinary; and the same may be said about the Miracolo di S. Maria Maddalena, where a simple dramatic motive is interwoven with the action of the whole piece and made to supply a proper ending.[418]
As a rule, the Sacre Rappresentazioni partook of the character of a religious service. Their tone is uniformly pious. Yet the spirit of the age and the nature of the Italians were alike unfavorable to piety of a true temper. Here it is unctuous, caressing, sentimental—anything but vigorous or virile. The monastic virtues are highly extolled; and an unwholesome view of life seen from the cloister by some would-be saint, who "winks and shuts his apprehension up" to common facts of experience, is too often presented. Vice is sincerely condemned; yet the morality of these exhibitions cannot be applauded. Instead of the stern lessons of humanity conveyed in a drama like that of Athens or of England, the precepts of the pulpit and confessional are enforced with a childish simplicity that savors more of cloistral pietism than of true knowledge of the world. Mere belief in the intercession of saints and the efficacy of relics is made to cover all crimes; while the anti-social enthusiasms of dreamy boys and girls are held up for imitation. We feel that we are reading what a set of feeble spiritual directors wrote with a touch of conscious but well-meaning insincerity for children. The glaring contrast between the professed asceticism of the fraternities and the future conduct of their youthful members in the world of the Renaissance leaves a suspicion of hypocrisy.[419] This impression is powerfully excited by Lorenzo de' Medici's Rappresentazione di S. Giovanni e Paolo, which was acted by his children. The tone is not, indeed, so unctuous as that of Castellani. Yet when we remember what manner of man was Lorenzo; when we reflect what parts were played by his sons, Piero and Leo X., upon the stage of Italy; the sanctimonious tone of its frigid octave stanzas fails to impose on our credulity.
An adequate notion of the scenic apparatus of the Rappresentazioni may be gathered from the stage-directions to S. Uliva and from the interludes described in Giovanmaria Cecchi's Esaltazione della Croce.[420] The latter piece was acted in Florence on the occasion of Ferrando de' Medici's marriage to Cristina of Lorraine, in 1589. It belongs, therefore, to the very last of these productions. Yet, judging by Vasari's account of the Ingegni, we may assume that the style of presentation was traditional, and that a Florentine Company of the fifteenth century might have put a play upon the stage with at least equal pomp. The prose description of the apparatus and the interludes reads exactly like the narrative portion of Ben Jonson's Masks at Court, in which the poet awards due praise to the "design and invention" of Master Inigo Jones and to the millinery of Signor Forobosco.[421] It was indeed, a custom derived by England from Italy for the poet to set forth a minute record of his own designs together with their execution by the co-operating architects, scene-painters, musicians, dress-makers, and morris-dancers. The architect, says Cecchi, was one Taddeo di Leonardo Landini, a member of the Compagnia, skilled in sculpture as well as an excellent machinist. He arranged the field, or prato, of the Compagnia di S. Giovanni in the form of a theater, covered with a red tent, and painted with pictures of the Cross considered as an instrument of shameful death, as a precious relic, and as the reward of virtue in this life. Emblems, scrolls and heraldic achievements completed the adornment of the theater. When the curtain rose for the first time, Jacob was seen in a meadow, "asleep with his head on certain stones, dressed in costly furs slung across his shoulder, with a thin shirt of fine linen beneath, cloth-of-silver stockings and fair buskins on his feet, and in his hand a gilt wand." While he slept, heaven opened, and seven angels appeared seated upon clouds, and making "a most pleasant noise with horns, greater and less viols, lutes and organ ... the music of this and all the other interludes was the composition of Luca Bati, a man in this art most excellent." When they had played and sung, the cloud disclosed, and showed a second heaven, where sat God the Father.[422] All the angels worshiped Him, and heaven increased in splendor. Then a ladder was let down, and God, leaning upon it, turned to Jacob and "sang majestically to the sound of many instruments, in a sonorous bass voice." Thereupon angels descended and ascended by the ladder, singing a hymn in honor of the Cross; and at last the clouds closed round, heaven disappeared and Jacob woke from sleep. Such was the introduction to the drama. Between the first and second acts was shown, with no less exuberance of scenical resources, the exodus of Israel from Egypt; between the second and third, the miracle of Aaron's rod that blossomed; between the third and fourth, the elevation of the Brazen Serpent; between the fourth and fifth, the ecstasy of David dancing before the ark "to the sound of a large lute, a violin, a trombone, but more especially to his own harp." After the fifth act the play was concluded with a pageant of religious chivalry—the Knights of Malta, S. James, S. Maurice, and the Teutonic Order—who had fought for the Cross, and to whom, amid thunderings and lightnings, as they stood upon the stage, was granted the vision of "Religion, habited in purest white, full of majesty, with the triple tiara and the crossed keys of S. Peter, holding in her hand a large and most resplendent cross, adorned with diamonds, rubies and emeralds." The resources of a theater which could place so many actors on the stage at once, and attempt the illusion of clouds and angels, bringing into play the machinery of transformation scenes, and enriching the whole with a varied accompaniment of music, must have been considerable. Those who have spent an hour in the Teatro Farnese at Parma, erected of wood for a similar occasion, may be able to summon by the aid of the imagination a shadow of this spectacle before their eyes. That the effect was not wholly grotesque, though the motives were so hazardous, can be understood from Milton's description of the descent of Mercy in his Christmas Ode.[423]
For the play of S. Uliva, though first known to us in a Florentine reprint of 1568, we may assume a more popular origin than that of Cecchi's Mystery of the Cross. It abounds in rare Renaissance combinations of pagan with Christian mythology. The action extended over two days and was interrupted at intervals by dumb shows and lyrical interludes connected only by a slight thread with the story. At one time a chase was brought upon the stage. On other occasions pictures, described with minute attention to details, were presented to the audience in Tableaux Vivants. These pictures vividly recall the style of Florentine masters, Piero di Cosimo or Sandro Botticelli. "In the interval," say the stage-directions to the players, "you will cause three women, well-beseen, to issue, one of them attired in white, one in red, the other in green, with golden balls in their hands, and with them a young man robed in white; and let him, after looking many times first on one and then on another of these damsels, at last stay still and say the following verses, gazing at her who is clad in green." This is the Mask of Hope. In another part the fable of Narcissus has to be presented, and directions are given for the disappearance of Echo, who is to repeat the final syllables of the boy's lament. "After he has uttered all these complaints, let him thrice with a loud voice cry slowly Ahimè, Ahimè, Ahimè! and let the nymph reply, and having thus spoken let him stretch himself upon the ground and lie like one dead; and within a little space let there issue forth four or more nymphs clad in white, without bows and with dishevelled hair, who, when they have come where the youth lies dead, shall surround him in a circle and at last having wrapped him in a white cloth, carry him within, singing this song[424]:
For another interlude a May-day band of girls attired in flower-embroidered dresses and youths with crowns of ivy on their heads are marshaled by Dan Cupid. They sing a song of which the following is a free translation:
Night and the God of Sleep again amuse the audience with an allegorical mask; and the seven deadly sins, figured as men, women and beasts, march across the stage. At no great distance from a vision of Judgment, the Sirens are introduced after this fashion: "Now goes the King to Rome; and you, meanwhile, make four women, naked, or else clothed in flesh-colored cloth, rise waist-high from the sea, with tresses to the wind, and let them sing as sweetly as may be the ensuing stanzas twice; in the which while shall two or three of you come forth, and seem to fall asleep on earth at the hearing of the song, except one only, who shall be armed, and with closed ears shall pass the sea unstayed, and let the said women take those who sleep and cast them in the waves." When we reach Uliva's wedding, we meet with the following quaint rubric: "If you wish to beguile the weariness caused by the length of the show, and to make the spectators take more delight in this than in any other interlude, then you must give them some taste of these bridals by providing a general banquet; but if you mislike the expense, then entertain the players only." It would seem that S. Uliva was acted on the prato of the confraternity, where a booth had been erected.
The forty-three plays comprised in D'Ancona's volumes may be arranged in three classes—those which deal with Bible stories or Church doctrine based on Scripture; dramatized Legends of the saints; and Novelle transformed into religious fables. Among the first sort may be mentioned plays of Abraham and Isaac, Joseph, Tobias and Raphael, and Esther; the Annunciation, the Nativity, S. John in the Desert, Christ preaching in the Temple, the Conversion of the Magdalen, the Prodigal Son, the Passion and Resurrection of our Lord, and the Last Judgment. The Natività di Cristo opens with a pastoral reminding us of French Mystères and English Miracle-plays.[425] The shepherds are bivouacking on the hills of Bethlehem when the angel appears to them. For Tudde, Harvye, Houcken, and Trowle of our Chester play, we find these southern names, Bobi di Farucchio, Nencio di Pucchio, Randello, Nencietto, and so forth. But the conduct of the piece is the same. The Italian hinds discuss their cheese and wine and bread just as the clowns of Cheshire talk about "ale of Hatton," "sheep's head sowsed in ale," and "sour milk." Such points of similarity are rare, however; for the Rappresentazioni were the growth of more refined conditions, and showed their origin in sentiment and pathos. The anonymous play of Mary Magdalen rises to a higher level of dramatic art than any sacred play in English.[426] Her story, as told in these scenes, is the versified novella of a Vittoria Accoramboni or a Bella Imperia converted by the preaching of S. Bernardino or Savonarola. It might have happened in Rome or Florence or Perugia. Magdalen, the lady of noble blood but famous with ill-fame, fair of person and of heaven-bright countenance, who dresses splendidly and lives with many lovers, spending her days in the pleasure of rich banquets and perfumed baths, delighting her heart with the music of lyres and flutes and the voices of young men, appears before us with a reality that proves how deep a hold upon the poet's fancy her picturesque tale had taken. Martha, her good but commonplace sister, forms a foil to the more impassioned and radiant figure of Magdalen. She has been cured by Christ, and has heard Him preach. Now she entreats her sister but to go and listen, for never man spake words like His. Magdalen scoffs: "Why should I be damned because I do not follow your strange life? There is time for me to enjoy my youth, and then to make my peace with God, and Paradise will open wide for me at last." Her friend Marcella enters with another argument: "O Magdalen, if you did but know how fair and gracious are his eyes! Surely he has come forth straight from heaven; could you but see him once, your heart would never be divided from him." This touches the right spring in Magdalen's mind. She will not go to hear the words of Christ, but the face and form that came from Paradise allure her. Besides, in the church where Christ will preach, there will be found new lovers and men in multitudes to gaze at her. Her maidens array her in gold and crimson, and bind up her yellow hair; and forth she rides in all her bravery surrounded by her suitors. What follows may best be told by a translation of the stage-directions and a passage of the play itself.