perchè il medesimo
Ved'egli che hanno fatto li più nobili
Comici che vi sieno.

Lorenzino de' Medici in his prologue to the Aridosio tells the audience they must not be angry if they see the usual lover, miser, and crafty servant, "e simil cose delle quali non può uscire chi vuol fare commedie."

These quotations may suffice. If we analyze them, it is clear that at first the comic playwrights felt bound to apologize for writing in Italian; next, that they had to defend themselves against the charge of plagiarism; and in the third place that, when the public became accustomed to Latinizing comedies in the vulgar tongue, they undertook the more difficult task of justifying the usage which introduced so many obsolete, monotonous, and anachronistic elements into dramatic literature. At first they were afraid to innovate even to the slight extent of adaptation. At last they were driven to vindicate their artificial forms of art on the score of prescribed usage. But when Cecchi and Lorenzino de' Medici advanced these pleas, which seem to indicate a desire on the part of their public for a more original and modern comedy, the form was too fixed to be altered. Aretino, boldly breaking with tradition, had effected nothing. Il Lasca, laughing at the learned unrealities of his contemporaries, was not strong enough to burst their fetters. Nothing was left for the playwrights but to go on cutting down the old clothes of Plautus and Terence to fit their own backs—as Cecchi puts it.

APPENDIX II.

(See above, [chapter xiv.])

Passages translated from Folengo and Berni, which illustrate
the Lutheran opinions of the Burlesque Poets.

ORLANDINO VI. 41.

"To Thee, and not to any Saint I go;
How should their mediation here succeed?
The Canaanitish woman, well I know,
Prayed not to James or Peter in her need;
She had recourse to only Thee; and so,
Alone with Thee alone, I hope and plead.
Thou know'st my weal and woe; make plain the way
Thou, Lord, for to none other dare I pray.
"Nor will I wander with the common kind,
Who, clogged with falsehood and credulity,
Make vows to Gothard or to Roch, and mind
I know not what Saint Bovo more than Thee;
Because some friar, as cunning as they're blind,
Offering to Moloch, his dark deity,
Causes Thy Mother, up in heaven, a Queen,
To load with spoil his sacrifice obscene.
"Beneath the husk of piety these friars
Make a huge harvest for themselves to hold;
The alms on Mary's altar quench the fires
Of impious greed in priests who burn for gold:
Another of their odious laws requires
That year by year my faults should still be told
To a monk's ears:—I who am young and fair!—
He hears, and straightway flogs his shoulders bare:
"He flogs himself because he feels the sting
My words, impregnate with lasciviousness,
Send to his heart; so sharp are they, and wring
His lust so nearly, that, in sore distress,
With wiles and wheedling ways, he seeks to bring
Me in his secret will to acquiesce;
And here confessors oft are shown to be
More learned in pimping than divinity.
"Therefore, O Lord, that know'st the heart of man,
And seest Thy Church in these same friars' grasp,
To Thee with contrite soul, as sinners can,
Who hope their faults forgiven, my hands I clasp;
And if, my God, from this mad ocean
Thou'lt save me, now, as at my latest gasp,
I vow that never more will I trust any
Who grant indulgences for pound or penny."
Such prayers, chock-full of rankest heresy,
Prayed Berta; for she was a German wench:
In those days, you must know, theology
Had changed herself to Roman, Flemish, French;
But I've my doubts that in the end she'll be
Found squatting à la Moor on some Turk's bench,
Because Christ's seamless coat has so been tattered
Its rags have long since to the winds been scattered.