Part 3

The earlier English moralities[4]--from the reign of Henry VI. to that of Henry VII.--usually allegorize the conflict between good and evil in the mind and life of man, without any side-intention of theological controversy. Such also is still essentially the purpose of the extant morality by Henry VIII.'s poet, the witty Skelton.[5] _Everyman_ (pr. c. 1529), perhaps the most perfect example of its class, with which the present generation has fortunately become familiar, contains passages certainly designed to enforce the specific teaching of Rome. But its Dutch original was written at least a generation earlier, and could have no controversial intention. On the other hand, R. Wever's _Lusty Juventus_ breathes the spirit of the dogmatic reformation of the reign of Edward VI. Theological controversy largely occupies the moralities of the earlier part of Elizabeth's reign,[6] and connects itself with political feeling in a famous morality, Sir David Lyndsay's _Satire of the Three Estaitis_, written and acted (at Cupar, in 1539) on the other side of the border, where such efforts as the religious drama proper had made had been extinguished by the Reformation. Only a single English political morality proper remains to us, which belongs to the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth.[7] Another series connects itself with the ideas of the Renaissance rather than the Reformation, treating of intellectual progress rather than of moral conduct;[8] this extends from the reign of Henry VIII. to that of his younger daughter. Besides these, there remain some Elizabethan moralities which have no special theological or scientific purpose, and which are none the less lively in consequence.[9]

Transition from the morality to the regular drama.

Heywood's interludes.

The transition from the morality to the regular drama in England was effected, on the one hand, by the intermixture of historical personages with abstractions--as in Bishop Bale's _Kyng Johan_ (c. 1548)--which easily led over to the _chronicle history_; on the other, by the introduction of types of real life by the side of abstract figures. This latter tendency, of which instances occur in earlier plays, is observable in several of the 16th-century moralities;[10] but before most of these were written, a further step in advance had been taken by a man of genius, John Heywood (b. c. 1500, d. between 1577 and 1587), whose "interludes"[11] were short farces in the French manner. The term "interludes" was by no means new, but had been applied by friend and foe to religious plays, and plays (including moralities) in general, already in the 14th century. But it conveniently serves to designate a species which marks a distinct stage in the history of the modern drama. Heywood's interludes dealt entirely with real--very real--men and women. Orthodox and conservative, he had at the same time a keen eye for the vices as well as the follies of his age, and not the least for those of the clerical profession. Other writers, such as T. Ingeland,[12] took the same direction; and the allegory of abstractions was thus undermined on the stage, very much as in didactic literature the ground had been cut from under its feet by the _Ship of Fooles_. Thus the interludes facilitated the advent of comedy, without having superseded the earlier form. Both moralities and miracle-plays survived into the Elizabethan age after the regular drama had already begun its course.

Pageants.

Such, in barest outline, was the progress of dramatic entertainments in the principal countries of Europe, before the revival of classical studies brought about a return to the examples of the classical drama, or before this return had distinctly asserted itself. It must not, however, be forgotten that from an early period in England as elsewhere had flourished a species of entertainments, not properly speaking dramatic, but largely contributing to form and foster a taste for dramatic spectacles. The _pageants_--as they were called in England--were the successors of those _ridings_ from which, when they gladdened "Chepe," Chaucer's idle apprentice would not keep away; but they had advanced in splendour and ingenuity of device under the influence of Flemish and other foreign examples. Costumed figures represented before gaping citizens the heroes of mythology and history, and the abstractions of moral, patriotic, or municipal allegory; and the city of London clung with special fervour to these exhibitions, which the Elizabethan drama was neither able nor--as represented by most of its poets who composed devices and short texts for these and similar shows--willing to oust from popular favour. Some of the greatest and some of the least of English dramatists were the ministers of pageantry; and perhaps it would have been an advantage for the future of the theatre if the legitimate drama and the _Triumphs of Old Drapery_ had been more jealously kept apart. With the reign of Henry VIII. there also set in a varied succession of entertainments at court and in the houses of the great nobles, which may be said to have lasted through the Tudor and early Stuart periods; but it would be an endless task to attempt to discriminate the dramatic elements contained in these productions. The "mask," stated to have been introduced from Italy into England as a new diversion in 1512-1513, at first merely added a fresh element of "disguising" to those already in use; as a quasi-dramatic species ("mask" or "masque") capable of a great literary development it hardly asserted itself till quite the end of the 16th century.

11. THE MODERN NATIONAL DRAMA

Influence of the Renaissance.

The literary influence which finally transformed the growths noticed above into the national dramas of the several countries of Europe, was that of the Renaissance. Among the remains of classical antiquity which were studied, translated and imitated, those of the drama necessarily held a prominent place. Never altogether lost sight of, they now became subjects of devoted research and models for more or less exact imitation, first in Greek or Latin, then in modern tongues; and these essentially literary endeavours came into more or less direct contact with, and acquired more or less control over, dramatic performances and entertainments already in existence. This process it will be most convenient to pursue _seriatim_, in connexion with the rise and progress of the several dramatic literatures of the West. For no sooner had the stream of the modern drama, whose source and contributories have been described, been brought back into the ancient bed, than its flow diverged into a number of national currents, unequal in impetus and strength, and varying in accordance with their manifold surroundings. And even of these it is only possible to survey the most productive or important.

(a) _Italy._

The modern Italian drama.

The priority in this as in most of the other aspects of the Renaissance belongs to Italy. In ultimate achievement the Italian drama fell short of the fulness of the results obtained elsewhere--a surprising fact when it is considered, not only that the Italian language had the vantage-ground of closest relationship to the Latin, but that the genius of the Italian people has at all times led it to love the drama. The cause is doubtless to be sought in the lack, noticeable in Italian national life during a long period, and more especially during the troubled days of division and strife coinciding with the rise and earlier promise of Italian dramatic literature, of those loftiest and most potent impulses of popular feeling to which a national drama owes so much of its strength. This deficiency was due partly to the peculiarities of the Italian character, partly to the political and ecclesiastical experiences which Italy was fated to undergo. The Italians were alike strangers to the enthusiasm of patriotism, which was as the breath in the nostrils of the English Elizabethan age, and to the religious devotion which identified Spain with the spirit of the Catholic revival. The clear-sightedness of the Italians had something to do with this, for they were too intelligent to believe in their tyrants, and too free from illusions to deliver up their minds to their priests. Finally, the chilling and enervating effects of a pressure of foreign domination, such as no Western people with a history and a civilization like those of Italy has ever experienced, contributed to paralyse for many generations the higher efforts of the dramatic art. No basis was permanently found for a really national tragedy; while literary comedy, after turning from the direct imitation of Latin models to a more popular form, lost itself in an abandoned immorality of tone and in reckless insolence of invective against particular classes of society. Though its productivity long continued, the poetic drama more and more concentrated its efforts upon subordinate or subsidiary species, artificial in origin and decorative in purpose, and surrendered its substance to the overpowering aids of music, dancing and spectacle. Only a single form of the Italian drama, improvised comedy, remained truly national; and this was of its nature dissociated from higher literary effort. The revival of Italian tragedy in later times is due partly to the imitation of French models, partly to the endeavour of a brilliant genius to infuse into his art the historical and political spirit. Comedy likewise attained to new growths of considerable significance, when it was sought to accommodate its popular forms to the representation of real life in a wider range, and again to render it more poetical in accordance with the tendencies of modern romanticism.

The regular Italian drama, in both its tragic and its comic branches, began with a reproduction, in the Latin language, of classical models--the first step, as it was to prove, towards the transformation of the medieval into the modern drama, and the birth of modern dramatic literature. But the process was both tentative and tedious, and must have died away but for the pomp and circumstance with which some of the patrons of the Renaissance at Florence, Rome and elsewhere surrounded these manifestations of a fashionable taste, and for the patriotic inspiration which from the first induced Italian writers to dramatize themes of national historic interest. Greek tragedy had been long forgotten, and one or two indications in the earlier part of the 16th century of Italian interest in the Greek drama, chiefly due to the printing presses, may be passed by.[13] To the later middle ages classical tragedy meant Seneca, and even his plays remained unremembered till the study of them was revived by the Paduan judge Lovato de' Lovati (Lupatus, d. 1309). Of the comedies of Plautus three-fifths were not rediscovered till 1429; and though Terence was much read in the schools, he found no dramatic imitators, _pour le bon motif_ or otherwise, since Hrosvitha.

Thus the first medieval follower of Seneca, Albertino Mussato (1261-1330) may in a sense be called the father of modern dramatic literature. Born at Padua, to which city all his services were given, he in 1315 brought out his _Eccerinis_, a Latin tragedy very near to the confines of epic poetry, intended to warn the Paduans against the designs of Can Grande della Scala by the example of the tyrant Ezzelino. Other tragedies of much the same type followed during the ensuing century; such as L. da Fabiano's _De casu Caesenae_ (1377) a sort of chronicle history in Latin prose on Cardinal Albornoz' capture of Caesena.[14] Purely classical themes were treated in the _Achilleis_ of A. de' Loschi of Vicenza (d. 1441), formerly attributed to Mussato, several passages of which are taken verbally from Seneca; in the celebrated _Progne_ of the Venetian Gregorio Cornaro, which is dated 1428-1429, and in later Latin productions included among the translations and imitations of Greek and Latin tragedies and comedies by Bishop Martirano (d. 1557), the friend of Pope Leo X.,[15] and the efforts of Pomponius Laetus and his followers, who, with the aid of Cardinal Raffaele Riario (1451-1521), sought to revive the ancient theatre, with all its classical associations, at Rome.

In this general movement Latin comedy had quickly followed suit, and, as just indicated, it is almost impossible, when we reach the height of the Italian Renaissance under the Medici at Florence and at Rome in

## particular, to review the progress of either species apart from that of

the other. If we possessed the lost _Philologia_ of Petrarch, of which, as of a juvenile work, he declared himself ashamed, this would be the earliest of extant humanistic comedies. As it is, this position is held by _Paulus_, a Latin comedy of life on the classic model, by the orthodox P. P. Vergerio (1370-1444); which was followed by many others.[16]

Italian tragedy in the 16th century.

Early in the 16th century, tragedy began to be written in the native tongue; but it retained from the first, and never wholly lost, the impress of its origin. Whatever the source of its subjects--which, though mostly of classical origin, were occasionally derived from native romance, or even due to invention--they were all treated with a predilection for the horrible, inspired by the example of Seneca, though no doubt encouraged by a perennial national taste. The chorus, stationary on the stage as in old Roman tragedy, was not reduced to a merely occasional appearance between the acts till the beginning of the 17th century, or ousted altogether from the tragic drama till the earlier half of the 18th. Thus the changes undergone by Italian tragedy were for a long series of generations chiefly confined to the form of versification and the choice of themes; nor was it, at all events till the last century of the course which it has hitherto run, more than the aftergrowth of an aftergrowth. The honour of having been the earliest tragedy in Italian seems to belong to A. da Pistoia's _Pamfila_ (1499), of which the subject was taken from Boccaccio, introduced by the ghost of Seneca, and marred in the taking. Carretto's _Sofonisba_, which hardly rises above the art of a chronicle history, though provided with a chorus, followed in 1502. But the play usually associated with the beginning of Italian tragedy--that with which "th' Italian scene first learned to glow"--was another _Sofonisba_, acted before Leo X. in 1515, and written in blank hendecasyllables instead of the _ottava_ and _terza rima_ of the earlier tragedians (retaining, however, the lyric measures of the chorus), by G. G. Trissino, who was employed as nuncio by that pope. Other tragedies of the former half of the 16th century, largely inspired by Trissino's example, were the _Rosmunda_ of Rucellai, a nephew of Lorenzo the Magnificent (1516); Martelli's _Tullia_, Alamanni's _Antigone_ (1532); the _Canace_ of Sperone Speroni, the envious _Mopsus_ of Tasso, who, like Guarini, took Sperone's elaborate style for his model; the _Orazia_, the earliest dramatic treatment of this famous subject by the notorious Aretino (1549); and the nine tragedies of G. B. Giraldi (Cinthio) of Ferrara, among which _L'Orbecche_ (1541) is accounted the best and the bloodiest. Cinthio, the author of those _Hecatommithi_ to which Shakespeare was indebted for so many of his subjects, was (supposing him to have invented these) the first Italian who was the author of the fables of his own dramas; he introduced some novelties into dramatic construction, separating the prologue and probably also the epilogue from the action, and has by some been regarded as the inventor of the pastoral drama. But his style was arid. In the latter half of the 16th century may be mentioned the _Didone_ and the _Marianna_ of L. Dolce, the translator of Euripides and Seneca (1565); A. Leonico's _Il Soldato_ (1550); the _Adriana_ (acted before 1561 or 1586) of L. Groto, which treats the story of _Romeo and Juliet_; Tasso's _Torrismondo_ (1587); the _Tancredi_ of Asinari (1588); and the _Merope_ of Torelli (1593), the last who employed the stationary chorus (_coro fisso_) on the Italian stage. Leonico's _Soldato_ is noticeable as supposed to have given rise to the _tragedia cittadina_, or domestic tragedy, of which there are few examples in the Italian drama, and De Velo's _Tamar_ (1586) as written in prose. Subjects of modern historical interest were in this period treated only in isolated instances.[17]

Italian tragedy in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Maffei.

Metastasio.

Alfieri.

The tragedians of the 17th century continued to pursue the beaten track, marked out already in the 16th by rigid prescription. In course of time, however, they sought by the introduction of musical airs to compromise with the danger with which their art was threatened of being (in Voltaire's phrase) extinguished by the beautiful monster, the opera, now rapidly gaining ground in the country of its origin. (See OPERA.) To Count P. Bonarelli (1589-1659), the author of _Solimano_, is on the other hand ascribed the first disuse of the chorus in Italian tragedy. The innovation of the use of rhyme attempted in the learned Pallavicino's _Erminigildo_ (1655), and defended by him in a discourse prefixed to the play, was unable to achieve a permanent success in Italy any more than in England; its chief representative was afterwards Martelli (d. 1727), whose rhymed Alexandrian verse (_Martelliano_), though on one occasion used in comedy by Goldoni, failed to commend itself to the popular taste. By the end of the 17th century Italian tragedy seemed destined to expire, and the great tragic actor Cotta had withdrawn in disgust at the apathy of the public towards the higher forms of the drama. The 18th century was, however, to witness a change, the beginnings of which are attributed to the institution of the Academy of the Arcadians at Rome (1690). The principal efforts of the new school of writers and critics were directed to the abolition of the chorus, and to a general increase of freedom in treatment. Before long the marquis S. Maffei with his _Merope_ (first printed 1713) achieved one of the most brilliant successes recorded in the history of dramatic literature. This play, which is devoid of any love-story, long continued to be considered the masterpiece of Italian tragedy; Voltaire, who declared it "worthy of the most glorious days of Athens," adapted it for the French stage, and it inspired a celebrated production of the English drama.[18] It was followed by a tragedy full of horrors,[19] noticeable as having given rise to the first Italian dramatic _parody_; and by the highly esteemed productions of Granelli (d. 1769) and his contemporary Bettinelli. P. T. Metastasio (1698-1782), who had early begun his career as a dramatist by a strict adherence to the precepts of Aristotle, gained celebrity by his contributions to the operatic drama at Naples, Venice and Vienna (where he held office as _poeta cesareo_, whose function was to arrange the court entertainments). But his _libretti_ have a poetic value of their own;[20] and Voltaire pronounced much of him worthy of Corneille and of Racine, when at their best. The influence of Voltaire had now come to predominate over the Italian drama; and, in accordance with the spirit of the times, greater freedom prevailed in the choice of tragic themes. Thus the greatest of Italian tragic poets. Count V. Alfieri (1749-1803), found his path prepared for him. Alfieri's grand and impassioned treatment of his subjects caused his faultiness of form, which he never altogether overcame, to be forgotten. His themes were partly classical;[21] but the spirit of a love of freedom which his creations[22] breathe was the herald of the national ideas of the future. Spurning the usages of French tragedy, his plays, which abound in soliloquies, owe part of their effect to an impassioned force of declamation, part to those "points" by which Italian acting seems pre-eminently capable of thrilling an audience. He has much besides the subjects of two of his dramas[23] in common with Schiller, but his amazon-muse (as Schlegel called her) was not schooled into serenity, like the muse of the German poet. Among his numerous plays (21), _Merope_ and _Saul_, and perhaps _Mirra_, are accounted his masterpieces.

Tragedians since Alfieri.

The political colouring given by Alfieri to Italian tragedy reappears in the plays of U. Foscolo and A. Manzoni, both of whom are under the influence of the romantic school of modern literature; and to these names must be added those of S. Pellico and G. B. Niccolini (1785-1861), Paolo Giacometti (b. 1816) and others, whose dramas[24] treat largely national themes familiar to all students of modern history and literature. In their hands Italian tragedy upon the whole adhered to its love of strong situations and passionate declamation. Since the successful efforts of G. Modena (1804-1861) renovated the tragic stage in Italy, the art of tragic acting long stood at a higher level in this than in almost any other European country; in Adelaide Ristori (Marchesa del Grillo) the tragic stage lost one of the greatest of modern actresses; and Ernesto Rossi (1827-1896) and Tommaso Salvini long remained rivals in the noblest forms of tragedy.

Italian comedy; popular forms.

Commedia dell' arte.

Masked comedy.

In comedy, the efforts of the scholars of the Italian Renaissance for a time went side by side with the progress of the popular entertainments noticed above. While the _contrasti_ of the close of the 15th and of the 16th century were disputations between pairs of abstract or allegorical figures, in the _frottola_ human types take the place of abstractions, and more than two characters appear. The _farsa_ (a name used of a wide variety of entertainments) was still under medieval influences, and in this popular form Alione of Asti (soon after 1500) was specially productive. To these popular diversions a new literary as well as social significance was given by the Neapolitan court-poet Sannazaro (c. 1492); about the same time a _capitano valoroso_, Venturino of Pesara, first brought on the modern stage the _capitano glorioso_ or _spavente_, the military braggart, who owed his origin both to Plautus[25] and to the Spanish officers who abounded in the Italy of those days. The popular character-comedy, a relic of the ancient _Atellanae_, likewise took a new lease of life--and this in a double form. The _improvised_ comedy (_commedia a soggetto_) was now as a rule performed by professional actors, members of a _craft_, and was thence called the _commedia dell' arte_, which is said to have been invented by Francesco (called Terenziano) Cherea, the favourite player of Leo X. Its scenes, still unwritten except in skeleton (_scenario_), were connected together by the ligatures or links (_lazzi_) of the _arlecchino_, the descendant of the ancient Roman _sannio_ (whence our _zany_). Harlequin's summit of glory was probably reached early in the 17th century, when he was ennobled in the person of Cecchino by the emperor Matthias; of Cecchino's successors, Zaccagnino and Truffaldino, we read that "they shut the door in Italy to good harlequins." Distinct from this growth is that of the _masked_ comedy, the action of which was chiefly carried on by certain typical figures in masks, speaking in local dialects,[26] but which was not improvised, and indeed from the nature of the case hardly could have been. Its inventor was A. Beolco of Padua, who called himself Ruzzante (joker), and is memorable under that name as the first actor-playwright--a combination of extreme significance for the history of the modern stage. He published six comedies in various dialects, including the Greek of the day (1530). This was the masked comedy to which the Italians so tenaciously clung, and in which, as all their own and imitable by no other nation, they took so great a pride that even Goldoni was unable to overthrow it. Improvisation and burlesque, alike abominable to comedy proper, were inseparable from the species.

Early Italian regular comedy.