[16] The Italian style of novel has been imitated in English inStories after Nature, by Charles Wells, author ofJoseph and his Brethren, with great success, except for Wells’s deficiency in humour, and his employment of a more poetical diction than the Italians would have allowed themselves.

CHAPTER XVII
THE DRAMA

Alone among the great nations of the modern world, Italy stands in the unenviable position of possessing no drama at the same time national and literary. From one point of view three classes of the drama may be distinguished, (1) The rude popular play entirely a creation of the people, such as the buffooneries of the Dionysiac festival, out of which the Athenian drama grew, or the dramatic exhibitions at fairs of itinerant actors barely distinguishable from mountebanks, like those whose puppet-plays originatedFaust. Performances of this nature have probably existed in every nation endowed with the rudiments of culture. (2) These crude beginnings elevated by men of genius into the sphere of art, and become literary without ceasing to be popular. This is the true national drama, when the pulses of the poet and the people beat in full unison, and of which Greece, England, and Spain have given the world the most brilliant examples. (3) The artificial drama, written by men of culture for men of culture, but neglecting, or at least failing to reach the heart of the people. With the exception of the musical drama of which Metastasio affords the type, and of the comedies of Goldoni and Gozzi, all of which belonged to a more recent period than that with which we are now engaged, the whole of the Italian drama possessing any literary pretensions belongs to this class. It is true that, as in England and elsewhere, it is accompanied by a lower order of dramatic composition which may be regarded as popular. In the early days of the Italian drama we have theRappresentazioni, at a later period theCommedia dell’ Arte, of both of which some notice must be taken. But neither is, strictly speaking, literature.

It appears at first exceedingly surprising that a nation, not only so gifted as the Italian, but so dramatically gifted, should not merely never have achieved a national drama, but should have no dramatic writer meriting to be ranked among the chief masters of the art. Lively, emotional, capable of being worked up to the most violent degrees of passion; at the same time observant, sagacious, reflective; members of a society comprising every variety of character and profession, and inheritors of a history replete with moving and tragic incidents, Italians should seem to have wanted no requisite for the creation of a flourishing stage. Prolific they were indeed: more than five thousand plays were written between 1500 and 1734. Perhaps there are not five which enjoy any considerable reputation out of Italy, or which, whatever their literary merit, can be considered characteristically Italian. The most potent of probable causes will be adduced in its place, but no single explanation, or any accumulation of partially satisfactory explanations, will entirely account for so remarkable a circumstance. One reason was probably the great development of Italian culture at an early period, compared with that of other European nations. The ablest men had become fully acquainted with Seneca and Terence, and looked upon them as painters looked upon Raphael, or sculptors upon Phidias. They deemed them the norm of excellence, and condemned themselves to a sterile imitation, which might and often did possess high literary merit, but which was entirely estranged from popular sympathies. Men like Politian and Pontano, who really could have created a national drama if they could have trusted their own instincts, were deterred from producing anything at variance with the canons in which they themselves believed. It must be said in extenuation of their error, that the classical school, with all its defects, was vastly in advance of the rude, amorphous beginnings of the romantic drama in every country but one. One little corner of Europe alone possessed in the early sixteenth century a drama at once living, indigenous, and admirable as literature. Nothing in literary history is more surprising than the gap between Gil Vicente and his contemporaries, whether classical or romantic. Had he been born an Italian instead of a Portuguese, the history of the Italian stage might possibly have been different. It nevertheless remains to be explained why no such person arose among so gifted a people, and why throughout their entire history, with one or two marked exceptions in particular departments, Italians have never had a drama that they could justly call their own.

In its first beginnings, notwithstanding, the Italian drama was as national as any other. As with all other modern European dramas, its origin was religious. Christianity found the need of replacing the heathen shows and spectacles it had suppressed, and amused the people with representations of Scriptural subjects, or of incidents in the lives of the saints. For centuries these were never written down, but improvised or exhibited in dumb show. Gradually the miracle-play came into being, a more advanced development, compelling learning by rote and much drilling of the performers, and therefore of necessity committed to writing. In Italy this assumed a more polished form than elsewhere, the Rappresentazione Sacra, rude in construction, but composed frequently in elegant, sometimes in excellent octave verse. This was a development of the fifteenth century, the earliest of which the date is known being the Abraham and Isaac of Feo Belcari, 1449. It became exceedingly popular in the later part of the century, especially at Florence. No less distinguished a person than Lorenzo de’ Medici is enumerated among its authors. Numbers of such pieces were printed, down even to the end of the seventeenth century, and usually set off with wood-engravings, sometimes of great elegance. The materials were usually drawn from ecclesiastical legend. Constantine is represented as giving his daughter to his successful general Gallicanus, on condition of his becoming a Christian. Julian, marching to wage war with the Persians, is slain by an invisible saint. The histories of Tobit, of St. Agnes, of St. Cecilia, and numbers of similar legends, form the staple subjects. Sometimes romance is laid under contribution, as in the instance of the Emperor Octavian, but always with a religious motive. Dramatic force does not seem to have been much considered, the stately octave being better adapted for declamation than for dialogue; but the stage directions are very precise, and every effort seems to have been made to impress the spectators, so far as permitted by the rudeness of the open-air theatre, a mere scaffold with perhaps a curtain for a background, yet often very splendidly decorated.

How near Italy came to creating a national drama is shown by the frequent representations of public events upon the stage, quite in the spirit of Shakespeare’s historical plays. Two types may be discriminated—one adhering very closely to that of theRappresentazioni, and composed in the vernacular; the latter following classical models, and in Latin. To the latter belongs the very tedious play of Carlo Verardi on the fall of Granada, performed before Cardinal Riario in 1492; but the very remarkable and unfortunately lost dramatic chronicle of the usurpations and downfall of the house of Borgia, acted before the Duke of Urbino on the recovery of his states in 1504, seems rather to have belonged to the former class. To this type also is allied the first Italian drama of genuine literary merit, theOrfeo of Politian, where the dialogue is mostly in octave stanzas, as in the Rappresentazioni, and the object is evidently rather to delight the spectators by a rapid succession of scenes admitting of musical accompaniment than to “purge the soul by pity and terror.” Slight as this juvenile work of Politian’s is, it is the work of a poet, and written with a swing and rush which recall the lyrical parts of the Bacchæ of Euripides. It indicates what theRappresentazioni might have become but for the competition of the more classical type of drama, and seems a prelude to the thoroughly national species of composition which arose in the seventeenth and prevailed in the eighteenth century, the opera.

The Italian stage had thus made a respectable beginning with the drama a hundred years before any drama worthy of the name existed in England. The disappointment of such auspicious promise is justly ascribed by Symonds, in great measure, to the want of a representative public and a centre of social life. The emulation of a number of independent cities, so favourable to the development of art, prevented the development of the national feeling essential to a national drama. The political circumstances of these communities, moreover, were inimical to the existence of a popular stage. Theatrical representations remained the amusement of courts; and when the general public was allowed to participate in them, the play itself was so enveloped in show and spectacle as to appear the least part of the entertainment. It was not possible that under such circumstances the drama could deviate far from conventional models. Tragedy continued to be composed after the pattern of Seneca, an imitation of an imitation. Comedy, though also in bondage to classical precedents, could not avoid depicting contemporary manners, and hence displays far more vitality and vigour.

Latin plays had been written by Italians from the beginning of the fifteenth century, and had included comedies, now lost, by persons of no less account than Petrarch and Æneas Sylvius. The first vernacular tragedies worthy of the name were composed for the entertainment of the court of Ferrara, and were written in the octave stanza orterza rima. No genius could have adapted this form to the exigencies of the stage, and a great step was taken when in 1515 Trissino, whose epic on the Gothic wars has been previously noticed, wrote his tragedy ofSophonisba in blank verse, retaining nothing of the lyrical element but the chorus. The piece marks an era, and as such remains celebrated, notwithstanding its total want of poetry and passion. It would have been a good outline for an abler hand to have clothed with substance. Trissino had abundance of successors and imitators, most of whom had more poetical endowment, but few more genuine vocation, and all of whom are devoid of any impulse except the ambition of literary distinction. This could only be reached by the prescribed path; and no vestige of originality appears in any of them except Sperone Speroni’s innovation, not laudable in a tragedy, although a fruitful suggestion for the pastoral drama, of mingling lyrical metres with the regulation blank verse. The subject of his play, the incest of Macareus and Canace, infinitely overtaxed his elegant talent. Of the other tragedies of the time, the best known are theRosmunda of Rucellai, theMariamne of Lodovico Dolce, and theOrbecche of Cinthio the novelist, whoseEpitia contains the rude germ of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure[17]. At a later date tragedy was attempted by a true poet of great genius, who would assuredly have produced something memorable under favourable circumstances. Hut the composition of Tasso’sTorrismondo, commenced in his youth, was long interrupted, and the play was completed in 1586 under the depressing circumstances of his Mantuan exile. It thus wants energy; and, as Carducci remarks, Tasso is too much of an eclectic, striving by a combination of the advantages of all styles to supply the one indispensable gift of poetical inspiration, which misfortune had all but extinguished.