Rosana is simply the story of Floire et Blanchefleur, which Boccaccio had already worked into his Filocopo.[453] Austero, King of Rome, goes with his wife on pilgrimage to Holy Land. He falls into the hands of the King of Cesaria, and is slain with all his folk, except the queen. She is taken captive to Cesaria, where she gives birth to Rosana on the same day that Ulimeno is born to her master. When Ulimeno grows up, he loves the daughter of his father's slave. His parents seek to cure this passion by sending him to France, and at the same time sell Rosana to some merchants, who convey her to the Sultan's harem. Ulimeno returns to Cesaria in deep distress, and vows that he will never rest till he has regained his love. After a proper number of adventures, he finds Rosana in the seraglio, where notwithstanding the Sultan's admiration of her beauty, she has preserved her virginity. They are married, and Ulimeno is converted, with his realm, to Christianity. The prettiest parts of this play are the scenes in the seraglio, where Rosana refuses comfort from the Sultan's women, and the contrivances devised by Ulimeno to get speech with her. Except that Rosana and her parents are Christian and that the saints protect her, there is nothing to justify the title of Sacra Rappresentazione. It is a love-romance, like Shakspere's Pericles.
Another novella of less poetic interest is dramatized in Agnolo Ebreo.[454] Agnolo, the Jew, has a Christian wife, who persuades him instead of putting out his money at usury to lend it to Christ by giving it away in alms. Having thus cast his bread upon the waters, he recovers it again after not many days by picking up money in the streets and finding a jewel in a fish's belly. He is baptized, because he sees clearly that the God of the Christians can make him rich. Only its tedious solemnity prevents this play from being a farce.
Three Rappresentazioni are written upon incidents of pilgrimage to the shrine of S. James of Compostella—Il Santo Barone, as he is always called. The first of these is entitled Rappresentazione di un Pellegrino.[455] It tells the tale of a certain Guglielmo who vowed the journey to Compostella on his sick bed. Upon the road he meets with a fiend in the disguise of S. James, who persuades him to commit suicide. No sooner is he dead, than the devil grasps his soul, as may be seen in Lorenzetti's fresco of the Campo Santo, and makes away with it toward hell. S. James stops him, and a voluble altercation takes place between them, at the end of which the soul, who keeps crying misericordia at intervals, is rescued and restored to its body. Then Guglielmo completes his vow, and returns joyfully to his wife. I due Pellegrini is more complex.[456] Arrigo Coletta leaves his wife and son at Rome; Constantino Constante leaves his wife and three sons at Genoa; and both set forth to Compostella. On the way they meet and make friends; but the Genoese dies before they have got far upon their journey. His Roman friend carries the dead body to Compostella, where S. James restores it to life, and both return in safety to their homes. After sojourning some time in Rome, Arrigo falls sick of leprosy, and has to go forth and wander up and down the earth. Chance brings him to the house of the Genoese who had received such benefits from him upon their pilgrimage. They consult doctors and wise men together, who assure them that no cure can be wrought unless the leper bathe from head to foot in the blood of virgins. This determines Constantino to sacrifice all that he holds dearest in the world. He kills his three sons, and prepares a bath of their blood, which restores his old benefactor to health. But the Saint of Compostella has still his eye upon his servants. A miracle brings the three boys back to life. They are found with golden apples in their hands, and the play ends with a general thanksgiving. The prosy bluntness with which the incidents of this strange story are treated as matter of fact, is scarcely less remarkable than the immorality which substitutes mere thaumaturgy for the finer instincts of humanity. The exaggerated generosity of Constantino might be paralleled from hundreds of novelle. This one virtue seems to have had extraordinary fascination for the Italians. I tre Pellegrini is based upon a legend of medieval celebrity, versified by Southey in his "Pilgrimage to Compostella."[457] A father, a mother, and a son of great personal beauty set forth together for the shrine of S. Iago. On the road they put up at an inn, where Falconetta, the host's daughter, falls in love with the boy and tempts him. Thwarted in her will, she vows to ruin him; and for this purpose, puts a silver cup into his traveling bag. In the morning the pilgrims are overtaken by the police, who find the cup and hang the beautiful young man. The parents complete their vow, and on the way back discover their son upon the gallows alive and well. Falconetta is burned, and her parents are hanged—the old host remarking, not without humor, that, though he was innocent of this crime, he had murdered enough people in his day to have deserved his fate. The style of this play merits more praise than can be bestowed on the Rappresentazioni in general. Falconetta is a real theatrical character, and the bustle of the inn on the arrival of the guests is executed with dramatic vigor.
In their Sacre Rappresentazioni the Florentines advanced to the very verge of the true drama. After adapting the Miracle-plays of medieval orthodoxy to their stage, they versified the Legends of the Saints, and went so far as to dramatize novels of a purely secular character. The Figliuol Prodigo and the farce appended to the Pellegrino contain the germs of vernacular comedy. S. Maddalena is a complete character. S. Uliva is delicately sketched and well sustained. The situation at the opening of the Tre Pellegrini is worked out with real artistic skill. Lastly, in the Esaltazione della Croce a regular five-act tragedy was attempted.
From the oratories of the Compagnie and the parlors of the convents this peculiar form of art was extended to the Courts and public theaters. Poliziano composed a Rappresentazione on the classical fable of Orpheus, and Niccolò da Correggio another on the myth of Cephalus and Procris.[458] Other attempts to secularize the religious drama followed, until, in 1521, Francesco Mantovano put the contemporary history of the French General Lautrec upon the boards.
Still the fact remains that the Sacre Rappresentazioni did not lead to the production of a national Italian theater. If we turn to the history of our Elizabethan stage, we shall find that, after the age of the Miracles and Moralities had passed, a new and independent work of art, emanating from the creative genius of Marlowe and Shakspere, put England in the possession of that great rarity, a Drama commensurate with the whole life of the nation at one of its most brilliant epochs. To this accomplishment of the dramatic art the Italians never attained. The causes of their failure will form the subject of a separate inquiry when we come to consider the new direction taken by the playwrights at the Courts of Ferrara and Rome.
As an apology for the space here devoted to the analysis of plays childish in their subject-matter, prosaic in their treatment, and fruitless of results, it may be urged that in the Sacre Rappresentazioni better than elsewhere we can study the limitations of the popular Italian genius at the moment when the junction was effected between humanism and the spirit of the people.