Guarini would hardly have acknowledged his indebtedness to Tasso in the way of art, but he drew on all sources for the incidents of his plot, and, since he appears to have valued a reputation for scholarship above one for originality, he recorded a fair proportion of his borrowings in his notes.
The Pastor fido was the talk of the Italian Courts even before it was completed. Early in 1584 the heir to the duchy of Mantua, Vincenzo Gonzaga, to whose intercession Tasso later owed his liberty, entreated Guarini to let him have his already famous pastoral for the occasion of his marriage with Eleonora de' Medici. The poet, however, found it impossible to complete the work in time, and sent the Idropica instead. In the autumn a projected representation of the now completed play came to naught. The following year Guarini presented his play to the Duke of Savoy, and received a gold chain as an acknowledgement. The occasion was the entry into Turin of Carlo Emanuele and his bride, Catharine of Austria, the marriage having taken place at Saragossa some time previously. The dedication is recorded on the title-page of the first edition in words that have not unnaturally been held to imply that the play was performed on that occasion.[[193]] It is clear, however, from contemporary documents that this is an error, and, though preparations were made in view of a performance at the following carnival, these too were abandoned. After this we find mention of preparations made at a variety of places, but they never came to anything, and there is reason to believe that some at least were abandoned owing to the opposition of Alfonso d' Este, who never forgave a courtier who transferred his allegiance to another prince. In 1591 Vincenzo Gonzaga, now duke, summoned Guarini to Mantua, and matters advanced as far as a prova generale or dress rehearsal. The project, however, had once more to be abandoned owing to the death of Cardinal Gianvincenzo Gonzaga at Rome. We possess the scheme for the four intermezzi designed for this occasion, representing the Musica della Terra, del Mare, dell' Aria, and Celeste. They were scenic and musical only, without words. About this time too, that is after the appearance of the first edition dated 1590, we have notes of preparations for several private performances, the ultimate fate of which is uncertain. The first representation of which there is definite evidence, though even here details are lacking, took place at Crema in Lombardy in 1596, at the cost of Lodovico Zurla[[194]]. After this performances become frequent, and in 1598, after the death of Alfonso, the play was finally produced in state before Vincenzo Gonzaga at Mantua. On all these occasions we may suppose that other prologues were substituted for that addressed to gran Caterina and magnanimo Carlo[[195]].
In the meanwhile Guarini, fearing piracy, had turned his attention to the publication of his play. He first resolved to submit it to the criticism of Lionardo Salviati and Scipione Gonzaga, the latter of whom had been a member of the unlucky committee for the revision of the Gerusalemme. Unfortunately little or nothing is known as to the criticisms and recommendations of these two men. The work finally appeared, as we learn from a letter of the author, at Venice in December, 1589. It is a handsome quarto from the press of Giovanbattista Bonfadino, and is dated the following year[[196]]. In 1602 a luxurious edition, said on the title-page to be the twentieth, was issued at Venice by Giovanbattista Ciotti. This represents Guarini's final revision of the text, and contains, besides a portrait and engravings, elaborate notes by the author, and an essay on tragi-comedy[[197]].
The Pastor fido was the object of a violent attack while as yet it circulated in manuscript only. As early as 1587 a certain Giasone de Nores or Denores, a Cypriot noble who held the chair of moral philosophy at the university of Padua, published a pamphlet on the relations existing between different forms of literature and the philosophy of government, in which, while refraining from any specific allusions, he denounced tragi-comedies and pastorals as 'monstrous and disproportionate compositions ... contrary to the principles of moral and civil philosophy.' Guarini argued that, as his play was the only one deserving to be called a tragi-comedy and was at the same time a pastoral, the reference was palpable. He proceeded therefore to compose a counterblast which he named Il Verato (1588) after a well-known comic actor of the time, who, it may be remarked, had had the management of Argenti's Sfortunato in 1567. In this pamphlet Guarini traversed the professor's propositions with a good deal of scholastic ergotism: 'As in compounds the hot accords with the cold, its mortal enemy, as the dry humour with the moist, so the elements of tragedy and comedy, though separately antagonistic, yet when united in a third form,' et cetera et cetera. De Nores replied in an Apologia (1590), disclaiming all personal allusion, and the poet finally answered back in a Verato secondo, first published in 1593, after his antagonist's death, restating his arguments and seasoning them with a good deal of unmannerly abuse. These two treatises of Guarini's were reprinted with alterations as the Compendio della poesia tragicommica, in the 1602 edition of the play, and together with the notes to the same edition form Guarini's own share of the controversy[[198]]. But in 1600, before these had appeared, a Paduan, Faustino Summo, published a set attack on and dissection of the play; while a certain Giovan Pietro Malacreta of Vicenza illustrated the attitude of the age with regard to literature by putting forward a series of critical dubbî, that is, doubts as to the 'authority' of the form employed. Both works are distinguished by a spirit of puerile cavil, which would of itself almost suffice to reconcile us to the worst faults of the poet. Thus Malacreta is not even content to let the author choose his own title, arguing that Mirtillo was faithful not in his quality of shepherd but of lover[[199]]. He goes on to complain of the tangle of laws and oracles which Guarini invents in order to motive the action of his play; and here, though taken individually his objections may be hypercritical, he has laid his finger on a very real weakness of the author's ingenious plot. It is, moreover, a weakness common to almost the whole tribe of the Arcadian, or rather Utopian, pastorals. Apologists soon appeared, and had little difficulty in disposing of most of the adverse criticisms. A specific Risposta to Malacreta appeared at Padua in 1600 from the pen of Paolo Beni. Defences by Giovanni Savio and Orlando Pescetti were printed at Venice and Verona respectively in 1601, while one at least, written by Gauges de Gozze of Pesaro, under the pseudonym of Fileno di Isauro, circulated in manuscript. These writings, however, are marked either by futile endeavours to reconcile the Pastor fido with the supposed teaching of Aristotle and Horace, or else by such extravagant laudation as that of Pescetti, who doubted not that had Aristotle known Guarini's play, it would have been to him the model of a new kind to rank with the epic of Homer and the tragedy of Sophocles[[200]]. Finally, Summo returned to the charge with a rejoinder to Pescetti and Beni printed at Vicenza in 1601[[201]]. But all this writing and counter-writing in no way affected the popularity of the Pastor fido and its successors. Moreover, the critical position of the combatants on both sides was essentially false. It would be an easy task to fill a volume with strictures on the play touching its sentimental tone, its affected manners, its stiff development, its undramatic construction, the weak drawing of character, the lack of motive force to move the complex machinery, and many other points--strictures that should be unanswerable. But those who wish to understand the influence exercised by the play over subsequent literature in Europe will find their time better spent in analysing those qualities, whether emotional or artistic, which won for it the enthusiastic worship of the civilized world.
Numerous translations bear witness to its popularity far beyond the shores of Italy. The earliest of these was into French, and appeared in 1595; it was followed by several others. The Spanish versions have already been mentioned, and the English will occupy our attention shortly. Besides these there are versions, often more than one, in German, Greek, Swedish, Dutch, and Polish. There are likewise versions in the Bergamasc and Neapolitan dialects, while the manuscript of a Latin translation is preserved in the University Library at Cambridge.
V
There were obvious advantages in treating the two masterpieces of pastoral drama in Italy in close connexion with one another. It must not, however, be supposed that they stood alone in the field of pastoral composition. Both between the years 1573 when the Aminta was composed and 1590 when the Pastor fido was printed, and also after the latter year, the stream of plays continued unchecked, though, apart from a general tendency towards greater regularity of dramatic construction, they do not form any organic link in the chain of artistic development. Few deserve more than passing notice. In the earlier ones, at least, we still find a tendency to introduce extraneous elements. Thus Gl' Intricati, printed in 1581, and acted a few years before at Zara, the work of Count Alvise, or, it would appear, more correctly Luigi, Pasqualigo, contains a farcical and magical part combined with some rather coarse jesting between two rogues, one Spanish and one Bolognese, who speak in their respective dialects. Another play in which a comic element appears is Bartolommeo Rossi's Fiammella (1584), which has the further peculiarity of introducing allegorical characters into the prologue, and mythological into the play. Another piece belonging to this period is the Pentimento amoroso by Luigi Groto, which was printed as early as 1575. It is a wild tale of murder and intrigue, judgement and outrageous self-sacrifice, composed in sdrucciolo verse and speeches of monstrous length. Another piece, Gabriele Zinano's Caride, surreptitiously printed in 1582, and included in an authorized publication in 1590, has the peculiarity of placing the prologue in the mouth of Vergil. Lastly, I may mention Angelo Ingegneri's Danza di Venere, acted at Parma in 1583, and printed the following year. It contains the incident of a mad shepherd's regaining his wits through gazing on the beauty of a sleeping nymph, thus borrowing the motive of Boccaccio's tale of Cymon and Iphigenia. Its chief interest for us, however, lies in the episode of the hero employing a gang of satyrs to carry off his beloved during a solemn dance in honour of Venus. This looks like a reminiscence of Giraldi Cintio's Egle, and through it of the old satyric drama[[202]].
These plays all belong to the period between the Aminta and the Pastor fido. Tasso's and Guarini's masterpieces mark the point of furthest development attained by the pastoral drama in Italy, or indeed in Europe. With them the vitality which rendered evolution possible was spent, though the power of reproduction remained unimpaired for close on a century. Signor Rossi, in the monograph of which I have already made such free use, mentions a number of plays, whose dependence on the Pastor fido is evident from their titles, though Guarini's influence is, of course, far more widely spread than such eclectic treatment reveals. The most curious, perhaps, is a play, I figliuoli di Aminta e Silvia e di Mirtillo ed Amarilli, by Ercole Pelliciari, dealing with the fortunes of the children of the heroes and heroines of Tasso and Guarini. We are on the way to a genealogical cycle of Arcadian drama, similar to the cycles of romance that centred round Roland and Launcelot. It would be a work of supererogation to demonstrate in detail the influence exercised by Tasso and Guarini over their Italian followers, and a task of forbidding proportions to give the bare titles of the plays that witnessed to that influence. Serassi reports that in 1614 Clementi Bartoli of Urbino possessed no less than eighty pastoral plays; while by 1700, the year of Fontanini's work on the Aminta, Giannantonio Moraldi is said to hsve brought together in Rome a collection of over two hundred.[[203]] Every device was resorted to that could lend novelty to the scenes; in Carlo Noci's Cintia (1594) the heroine returns home disguised as a boy to find her lover courting another nymph; in Francesco Contarini's Finta Fiammetta (1610), on the other hand, the plot turns on the courtship of Delfide by her lover Celindo in girl's attire; while in Orazio Serono's Fida Armilla (1610) we have the annual human sacrifice to a monstrous serpent--all of which later became familiar themes in pastoral drama and romance. Two plays only call for closer attention, and this rather on account of a certain reputation they have gained than of any intrinsic merit. One of these, Antonio Ongaro's Alceo, which was printed in 1582 and is therefore earlier than the Pastor fido, has been happily nicknamed Aminta bagnato. It is a piscatorial adaptation of Tasso's play, which it follows almost scene for scene. The satyr becomes a triton with as little change of character as the nymphs and shepherds undergo in their metamorphosis to fisher girls and boys. Alceo shows less resourcefulness than his prototype in that he twice tries to commit suicide by throwing himself into the sea. The last act is spun out to three scenes in accordance with the demand for greater regularity of dramatic construction, but gains nothing but tedium thereby. The other play to be considered connects itself in plot rather with the Pastor fido. It is the Filli di Sciro, the work of Guidubaldo Bonarelli della Rovere. The poet's father enjoyed the protection of the Duke Guidubaldo II of Urbino, but in after days he removed to the court of the Estensi at Ferrara. It was here that the play appeared in 1607, though it is dedicated to Francesco Maria della Rovere, who had by that time succeeded his father in the duchy of Urbino. The plot of the play is highly intricate, and shows a tendency towards the introduction of an adventurous element; it turns upon the tribute of youths and maidens exacted from the island of Scyros by the king of Thrace. The figure of the satyr is replaced by a centaur who carries off one of the nymphs. Her cries attract two youths who succeed in driving off the monster, but are severely wounded in the encounter. The nymph, Celia, thereupon falls in love with both her rescuers at once, and it is only when one of them proves to be her long-lost brother that she is able to make up her mind between them[[204]]. This brother had been carried off as a child by the Thracians together with his betrothed Filli, and having escaped was lately returned to his native land. From a dramatic point of view the dénoûment is even more preposterous than usual. The principal characters leave the stage at the end of the fourth act, under sentence of death, and do not reappear, the whole of the last act being occupied with narratives of their subsequent fortunes. A point which is possibly worth notice is the introduction of that affected talk on the technicalities of sheepcraft which adds so greatly to the already intolerable artificiality of the later pastoral drama, but which is happily absent from the work of Tasso and Guarini.