The plan here adopted by Stalino for securing possession of Casina, is nearly the same with that pursued by the Count Almaviva, in Beaumarchais’ prose comedy, Le Marriage de Figaro; where the Count, with similar intentions, plans a marriage between Suzanne and his valet-de-chambre, Figaro, but has his best-laid schemes invariably frustrated. The concluding part of the Casina has probably, also, suggested the whole of the Marescalco, a comedy of the celebrated Aretine, which turns on the projected nuptials of the character who gives name to the piece, and whose supposed bride is discovered, during the performance of the marriage ceremony, to be a page of the Duke of Mantua, dressed up in wedding garments, in a frolic of the Duke’s courtiers, in order to impose on the Marescalco. Those scenes in the Ragazzo of Lodovico Dolce, where a similar deception is practised and where Giacchetto, the disguised youth, minutely details the event of the trick of which he was made the chief instrument, [pg 126]have also been evidently drawn from the same productive origin.[247]
The closest imitation, however, of the Casina, is Machiavel’s comedy Clitia. Many of its scenes, indeed, have been literally translated from the Latin, and the incidents are altered in very few particulars. The Stalino of Plautus is called Nicomaco, and his wife Sofronia: their son is named Cleandro, and the dependents employed to court Clitia for behoof of their masters, Eustachio and Pirro. The chief difference is, that the young lover, who is supposed to be absent in the Casina, is introduced on the stage by the Italian author, and the object of his affections is a young lady, brought up and educated by his parents, and originally intrusted to their care by one of their friends, which makes the proposal of her marrying either of the servants offered to her choice more absurd than in the Latin original. The bridal garments, too, are not assumed by one of the rival servants, but by a third character, introduced and employed for the purpose. This comedy of Machiavel, his Mandragola, and the renowned tale of Belfegor, were the productions with which that profound politician and historian, who established a school of political philosophy in the Italian seat of the Muses—who applied a fine analysis to the Roman history, and a subtler than Aristotle to the theory of government—attempted, as he himself has so beautifully expressed it,
“Fare il suo tristo tempo piu soave;
Perche altrove non have,
Dove voltare il viso,
Che gli è stato interciso
Mostrar con altre imprese altra virtute.”
Cistellaria, (the Casket.)—The prologue to this play is spoken by the god Auxilium, at the end of the first act. It explains the subject of the piece—compliments the Romans on their power and military glory—and concludes with exhorting them to overcome the Carthaginians, and punish them as they deserve. Hence it is probable, that this play was written during the second Punic war, which terminated in the year 552; and as Plautus was born in the year 525, it may be plausibly conjectured, that the Cistellaria was one of his earliest productions. This also appears from its greater rudeness when compared with his other plays, and from the shortness and simplicity of the plot. But though the argument is trite and sterile, it is enlivened by a good deal of comic [pg 127] humour, particularly in the delineation of some of the subordinate characters. Like many others of Plautus’s plays, it turns on the accidental recognition of a lost child by her parents, in consequence of the discovery of a casket, containing some toys, which had been left with her when exposed, and by means of which she is identified and acknowledged.
In ancient times these recognitions, so frequently exhibited on the stage, were not improbable. The customs of exposing children, and of reducing prisoners of war to slavery—the little connection or intercourse between different countries, from the want of inns or roads—and the consequent difficulty of tracing a lost individual—rendered such incidents, to us apparently so marvellous, of not unusual occurrence in real life. In Greece, particularly, divided as it was into a number of small states, and surrounded by a sea infested with pirates, who carried on a commerce in slaves, free-born children were frequently carried off, and sold in distant countries. By the laws of Athens, marriage with a foreigner was null; or, at least, the progeny of such nuptials were considered as illegitimate, and not entitled to the privileges of Athenian citizens. Hence, the recognition of the supposed stranger was of the utmost importance to herself and lover. In real life, this recognition may have been sometimes actually aided by ornaments and trinkets. Parents frequently tied jewels and rings to the children whom they exposed, in order that such as found them might be encouraged to nourish and educate them, and that they themselves might afterwards be enabled to discover them, if Providence took care for their safety[248]. Plots, accordingly, which hinged on such circumstances, were invented even by the writers of the old Greek comedy. One of the later pieces of Aristophanes, now lost, entitled Cocalus, is said to have presented a recognition; and nearly the same sort of intrigue was afterwards employed by Menander, and, from his example, by Plautus and Terence. From imitation of the Greek and Latin comedies, similar incidents became common both in dramatic and romantic fiction. The pastoral romance of Longus hinges on a recognition of this species; and those elegant productions, in which the Italians have introduced the characters and occupations of rural life into the drama, are frequently founded on the exposure of children, who, after being brought up as shepherds by reputed fathers, are recognised by their real parents, from ornaments or tokens fastened to their persons when abandoned in infancy or childhood.
The Cistellaria has been more directly imitated in Gli Incantesimi of Giovam-Maria Cecchi, a Florentine dramatist of the sixteenth century. That part, however, of the plot which gives name to the piece, has been invented by the Italian author himself.