Take the historical aspect first. At the time the poets wrote their play the principal authorities on the subject were Gregorovius and Yriarte. The fresh data of Professor Woodward, published in 1913, and the dry light in which he presents the life of Cesare Borgia, were not accessible to them. Moreover, Yriarte, whom they seem to have chiefly followed, is now accused (in what looks to the lay mind so much like the invariable formula of successive ‘authorities’) of inaccuracy. It would not be surprising, therefore, if the poets were caught out in matters of fact or, a graver fault, in false deductions from the facts, to accord with Yriarte’s romanticism. An obvious defence would be at hand. But the truth is that there is no need to take up the cudgels for them on this score. Apart from scenes of minor importance, they have selected as the main events of their ‘plot’ incidents so well documented as the murder of the Duke of Gandia, the Pope’s remorse and penitence, his complicity after the event, his support of Cesare’s schemes, his death at the crisis of Cesare’s fortunes. Thus, too, we have Lucrezia’s betrothal and marriage with Don Alfonso, Duke of Bisceglia, Cesare’s hatred of her husband, his assassination, and Lucrezia’s remarriage with Don Alfonso of Este. And for Cesare himself such established facts are taken as will conveniently serve to reveal his character; for example, his renunciation of the cardinalship, his military ambition, his marriage of policy, and his master-stroke of treachery in the betrayal of the Condottieri at Sinigaglia. Details of policy are avoided. Cesare’s campaigns, important as they are, are wisely indicated by these unmilitary authors only in their effect on his fortunes. While as to more sinister things, rank scandal with which the air of the time was foul, a quotation will best illustrate our poets’ method of dealing with material of this kind. In Scene 4 of Act IV Cesare and the Pope, having discussed matters of weight, are reminded by a paper lying on the ground of things more trivial:
Cesare. What is this parchment?
Alexander. You have read it,
They told me. ’Tis the libel from Taranto
Sent to Savelli.
Christ, we are a kindred!
Carnage and rapine, perfidy....
Cesare. Why mince it?
Assassination, incest!
[Rising from the ground with clenched hands.
Alexander. But the Latin!
The dulcitude of apophthegm, the style!
What sap in all this rankness. Cesare,
I laughed an hour, applauded with wet eyes—;
Literae humaniores—;so the salt
Of the strong farce compelled me.
Do you stoop
To anger? Consul Julius Cæsar laughed
When choice Catullus spat an epigram,
And dined him that same evening.
One does not claim exact historical accuracy for the play, of course. Certain incidents are introduced which will not be found in the records, but which possess the essential truth of being in character; and the scenes they inspire are the fruit not of dramatic imagination alone, but of that power operating upon very great knowledge of the life of the time and the place. It is, indeed, in its re-creation of that life that the chief interest of the play resides. As scientific history it may fail the test—;though not by a very wide margin. But scientific history never yet re-created life, and perhaps one has as little right to expect from it this, the great function of art, as to expect of art a precise accuracy. Yet one may claim for Michael Field that she has achieved the re-creation with a high degree of truth to fact; and further, that the poetic truth of her creation comes surprisingly near, in its implicit judgments, the final verdict of the historian. There is, of course, no overt judgment in her work: the human spectacle holds us too fascinated, pitiful, and terrified to leave room for censure. We are not concerned to weigh the guilt of Lucrezia, allured and appalled as we are by her fatal suppleness and passivity. We are in no mood to reckon the total of Cesare’s crimes, terrified as we are at the stupendous force to which they but serve as a convenient means. And it is not our poet’s doing, but of the mere data of history, that Rodrigo Borgia, his Holiness Pope Alexander VI, pronounces inexorable judgment on himself. This he does when, stricken by the murder of his son Giovanni, Duke of Gandia, he is filled with remorse and penitence. A vision of his son in Paradise induces the softer mood:
Alexander. Poto,
There was no scar on him, not the least wound;
That is the truth: and he stood armed again.
As bright as San Michele he looked down
Upon us from the wall, his gonfalon
Swathing around him as he stood. His face
Was to me as an angel’s.
[He weeps quietly.] I repent,
I will change all to meet that boy again
In Paradise, no wound on him, no scar.
And yet the sight of him,
O Poto, drove down to the rasping quick
Of conscience through my heart. All shall be changed,
The Vatican be cleared of sin. These bastards....
Let me not see them more! Joffré, Lucrezia—;
Joffré must mind his government afar,
I banish him. Lucrece—;oh, I shall gather
The seas between us; she shall dwell in Spain,
Dwell in Valencia, deep, where I was born,
White little demon-girl!
[He rises, trembling, and Poto robes him.
No priest henceforward
Shall hold two benefices; simony
No more shall breed among us. God would punish
Some sin in us; it could not be Giovanni
Deserved a death so cruel. Gently, Poto,
You are too violent.
Poto. Patience, Holiness,
You slit the silk.
Act I, Scene 5
A cardinal point is the poet’s conception of her three Borgia persons as one, united by every possible tie—;of blood, of sympathy, of ambition, of deep affinity. They are devoted to each other, and vowed as one mind to the aggrandizement of Cesare. Indeed, the core of the tragedy is, astonishingly, this simple human feeling. But the affection between them might never appear, under their sinister star, as a natural family bond. It was suspect from its origin. Thus the thread which binds the play together, and might have been so clear and firm a line, wavers and slips in those slippery high places of Renaissance Italy; and, however innocent in fact, takes from so much corruption the colour of guilt. Round the three persons of her trinity Michael Field has made to revolve the vivid life of the epoch they made and were made by—;warm, coloured, gay, radically unmoral and strictly religious, sparkling with wit and gravely learned, rejoicing equally in the sensible world and the things of the intellect, adoring art and pursuing science; at once fierce and cunning, militant and politic, barbarous and polished; frivolous, worldly, and voluptuous, and yet saintly, serious, and capable of profound concentration and dogged industry.
The magnificence of the Renaissance is here—;in feasts, dances, military triumphs, and ecclesiastical pomp: in Cesare’s resplendent trappings that provoke the covert sneer at the French Court, and in Lucrezia’s countless pearls. The art of the Renaissance enters, with Pintoriccio and Michelangelo and others, to foster Cesare’s love of exquisite handicraft. Its poetry comes in the person of Cavaliere; its science in the engineering works of Leonardo; its statecraft in that astute and watchful envoy from Florence, already brooding upon his Il Principe. And its very atmosphere clings about the scene, bright with a kind of glare, almost dazzling the spiritual sight; hot, heavy, and enervating to the moral sense. The poets were apparently well justified in calling their Borgia a period play.
The subject of Act I would make a complete tragedy in itself, and has in fact been so treated by other poets. Its central event is the murder of the Duke of Gandia, the Pope’s sorrow and penitence, his discovery that Cesare is the murderer, and the subdual of his will to Cesare’s immense designs. In Scene 1, on the occasion of Lucrezia’s betrothal, the Duke is reported missing. Poto, the Chamberlain, suggests that he shall be searched for; and the Pope turns to the company, which includes his young mistress, Giulia, with a jesting protest: