Little as any anti-national motive can be attributed to the Adelchi, it is true that Manzoni’s patriotism was chiefly evinced in his lyrics, and that he was not prominent as a patriotic dramatist. This part was reserved for GIOVANNI BATTISTA NICCOLINI (1782-1861). In times of trial and distress the measure of service is apt to be the measure of applause, and popular gratitude may for a time have exalted Niccolini’s tragedies to a higher level than that due to their strictly literary desert. They are nevertheless fine productions, and the most patriotic are usually the best. Arnaldo di Brescia, too bold an apotheosis of the fiery monk who defied the Papacy in the twelfth century to be printed in Italy for many years after its appearance in France, is the most poetical, but is neither intended nor adapted for the stage. Notwithstanding its historical subject, this mighty tragedy, as Mr. W. D. Howells, the translator of some of its finest passages, not unjustly terms it, is an idealistic work. The other dramas, taken from history, and representing such crises in Italian story as the destruction of Florentine liberty and the Sicilian Vespers, are more compliant with ordinary dramatic rules; but the most celebrated and successful on the stage is Antonio Foscarini, founded on the same incident in Venetian history that had afforded the subject of Pindemonte’s poem. Before he became imbued with the spirit of the romantic school, Niccolini had acquired great distinction as a classical dramatist, especially by his Polissena and his Medea. His first performance, Nabucco (1816), idealised the fall of Napoleon in a Babylonian tragedy. Among his plays is a free translation of Shelley’s Cenci, in general excellent, but remarkable for the entire disfigurement of the opening speech, no doubt for prudential reasons. At first poor, afterwards in easy circumstances, Niccolini spent an uneventful life in the service of the Academy of Florence; his mode of living was sequestered, and his character stainless.
With all his good-will, Niccolini could deal no such blows at foreign or domestic oppressors as that which a brother dramatist of greatly inferior power delivered by the mere record of his sufferings. Le Mie Prigioni made SILVIO PELLICO (1789-1854) as typical a figure as the Iron Mask or the Prisoner of Chillon, and won Italy a moral victory in her darkest day (1832). It is needless to give any particular account of so famous a book. The candid and innocent author was born to move mankind by a single story, and to relapse into obscurity after delivering his message. His dramas and lyrics do not exceed mediocrity, with the exception of Francesca da Rimini (1818), a tragedy full of tender feeling, admired by Byron, to whom the version of some scenes in the Quarterly Review has been attributed. They were, however, in fact rendered by Milman.
FOOTNOTES:
Impatient to put out the only light
Of Liberty that yet remains on Earth!
—WORDSWORTH.