Part 4

Meanwhile, the Latin imitations of Roman, varied by occasional translations of Greek, comedies early led to the production of Italian translations, several of which were performed at Ferrara in the last quarter of the 15th century, whence they spread to Milan, Pavia and other towns of the north. Contemporaneously, imitations of Latin comedy made their appearance, for the most part in rhymed verse; most of them applying classical treatment to subjects derived from Boccaccio's and other _novelle_, some still mere adaptations of ancient models. In these circumstances it is all but idle to assign the honour of having been "the first Italian comedy"--and thus the first comedy in modern dramatic literature--to any particular play. Boiardo's _Timone_ (before 1494), for which this distinction was frequently claimed, is to a large extent founded on a dialogue of Lucian's; and, since some of its personages are abstractions, and Olympus is domesticated on an upper stage, it cannot be regarded as more than a transition from the moralities. A. Ricci's _I Tre Tiranni_ (before 1530) seems still to belong to the same transitional species. Among the earlier imitators of Latin comedy in the vernacular may be noted G. Visconti, one of the poets patronized by Ludovico il Moro at Milan;[27] the Florentines G. B. Araldo, J. Nardi, the historian,[28] and D. Gianotti.[29] The step--very important had it been adopted consistently or with a view to consistency--of substituting prose for verse as the diction of comedy, is sometimes attributed to Ariosto; but, though his first two comedies were originally written in prose, the experiment was not new, nor did he persist in its adoption. Caretto's _I Sei Contenti_ dates from the end of the 15th century, and Publio Filippo's _Formicone_, taken from Apuleius, followed quite early in the 16th. Machiavelli, as will be seen, wrote comedies both in prose and in verse.

But, whoever wrote the first Italian comedy, Ludovico Ariosto was the first master of the species. All but the first two of his comedies, belonging as they do to the field of _commedia erudita_, or scholarly comedy, are in blank verse, to which he gave a singular mobility by the dactylic ending of the line (_sdrucciolo_). Ariosto's models were the masterpieces of the _palliata_, and his morals those of his age, which emulated those of the worst days of ancient Rome or Byzantium in looseness, and surpassed them in effrontery. He chose his subjects accordingly; but his dramatic genius displayed itself in the effective drawing of character,[30] and more especially in the skilful management of complicated intrigues.[31] Such, with an additional brilliancy of wit and lasciviousness of tone, are likewise the characteristics of Machiavelli's famous prose comedy, the _Mandragola_ (_The Magic Draught_);[32] and at the height of their success, of the plays of P. Aretino,[33] especially the prose _Marescalco_ (1526-1527) whose name, it has been said, ought to be written in asterisks. It may be added that the plays of Ariosto and his followers were represented with magnificent scenery and settings. Other dramatists of the 16th century were B. Accolti, whose _Virginia_ (prob. before 1513) treats the story from Boccaccio which reappears in _All's Well that Ends Well_; G. Cecchi, F. d'Ambra, A. F. Grazzini, N. Secco or Secchi and L. Dolce--all writers of romantic comedy of intrigue in verse or prose.

The pastoral drama.

During the same century the "pastoral drama" flourished in Italy. The origin of this peculiar species--which was the bucolic idyll in a dramatic form, and which freely lent itself to the introduction of both mythological and allegorical elements--was purely literary, and arose directly out of the classical studies and tastes of the Renaissance. It was very far removed from the genuine peasant plays which flourished in Venetia and Tuscany early in the 16th century. The earliest example of the artificial, but in some of its productions exquisite, growth in question was the renowned scholar A. Politian's _Orfeo_ (1472), which begins like an idyll and ends like a tragedy. Intended to be performed with music--for the pastoral drama is the parent of the opera--this beautiful work tells its story simply. N. da Correggio's (1450-1508) _Cefalo_, or _Aurora_, and others followed, before in 1554 A. Beccari produced, as totally new of its kind, his Arcadian pastoral drama _Il Sagrifizio_, in which the comic element predominates. But an epoch in the history of the species is marked by the _Aminta_ of Tasso (1573), in whose Arcadia is allegorically mirrored the Ferrara court. Adorned by choral lyrics of great beauty, it presents an allegorical treatment of a social and moral problem; and since the conception of the characters, all of whom think and speak of nothing but love, is artificial, the charm of the poem lies not in the interest of its action, but in the passion and sweetness of its sentiment. This work was the model of many others, and the pastoral drama reached its height of popularity in the famous _Pastor fido_ (written before 1590) of G. B. Guarini, which, while founded on a tragic love-story, introduces into its complicated plot a comic element, partly with a satirical intention. It is one of those exceptional works which, by circumstance as well as by merit, have become the property of the world's literature at large. Thus, both in Italian and in other literatures, the pastoral drama became a distinct species, characterized, like the great body of modern pastoral poetry in general, by a tendency either towards the artificial or towards the burlesque. Its artificiality affected the entire growth of Italian comedy, including the _commedia dell' arte_, and impressed itself in an intensified form upon the opera. The foremost Italian masters of the last-named species, so far as it can claim to be included in the poetic drama, were A. Zeno (1668-1750) and P. Metastasio.

Comedy in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Goldoni.

Gozzi.

The comic dramatists of the 17th century are grouped as followers of the classical and of the romantic school, G. B. della Porta (q.v.) and G. A. Cicognini (whom Goldoni describes as full of whining pathos and commonplace drollery, but as still possessing a great power to interest) being regarded as the leading representatives of the former. But neither of these largely intermixed groups of writers could, with all its fertility, prevail against the competition, on the one hand of the musical drama, and on the other of the popular farcical entertainments and those introduced in imitation of Spanish examples. Italian comedy had fallen into decay, when its reform was undertaken by the wonderful theatrical genius of C. Goldoni. One of the most fertile and rapid of playwrights (of his 150 comedies 16 were written and acted in a single year), he at the same time pursued definite aims as a dramatist. Disgusted with the conventional buffoonery, and ashamed of the rampant immorality of the Italian comic stage, he drew his characters from real life, whether of his native city (Venice)[34] or of society at large, and sought to enforce virtuous and pathetic sentiments without neglecting the essential objects of his art. Happy and various in his choice of themes, and dipping deep into a popular life with which he had a genuine sympathy, he produced, besides comedies of general human character,[35] plays on subjects drawn from literary biography[36] or from fiction.[37] Goldoni, whose style was considered defective by the purists whom Italy has at no time lacked, met with a severe critic and a temporarily successful rival in Count C. Gozzi (1722-1806), who sought to rescue the comic drama from its association with the actual life of the middle classes, and to infuse a new spirit into the figures of the old masked comedy by the invention of a new species. His themes were taken from Neapolitan[38] and Oriental[39] fairy tales, to which he accommodated some of the standing figures upon which Goldoni had made war. This attempt at mingling fancy and humour--occasionally of a directly satirical turn[40]--was in harmony with the tendencies of the modern romantic school; and Gozzi's efforts, which though successful found hardly any imitators in Italy, have a family resemblance to those of Tieck and of some more recent writers whose art wings its flight, through the windows, "over the hills and far away."

Comedians after Goldoni.

During the latter part of the 18th and the early years of the 19th century comedy continued to follow the course marked out by its acknowledged master Goldoni, under the influence of the sentimental drama of France and other countries. Abati Andrea Villi, the marquis Albergati Capacelli, Antonio Simone Sografi (1760-1825), Federici, and Pietro Napoli Signorelli (1731-1815), the historian of the drama, are mentioned among the writers of this school; to the 19th century belong Count Giraud, Marchisio (who took his subjects especially from commercial life), and Nota, a fertile writer, among whose plays are three treating the lives of poets. Of still more recent date are L. B. Bon and A. Brofferio. At the same time, the comedy of dialect to which the example of Goldoni had given sanction in Venice, flourished there as well as in the mutually remote spheres of Piedmont and Naples. Quite modern developments must remain unnoticed here; but the fact cannot be ignored that they signally illustrate the perennial vitality of the modern drama in the home of its beginnings. A new realistic style set fully in about the middle of the 18th century with P. Ferrari and A. Torelli; and though an historical reaction towards classical and medieval themes is associated with the names of P. Cossa and G. Giacosa, modernism reasserted itself through P. Bracco and other dramatists. It should be noted that the influence of great actors, more especially Ermete Novelli and Eleanora Duse, must be credited with a large share of the success with which the Italian stage has held its own even against the foreign influences to which it gave room. And it would seem as if even the paradoxical endeavour of the poet Gabrielle d' Annunzio to lyricize the drama by ignoring action as its essence were a problem for the solution of which the stage can furnish unexpected conditions of its own. In any event, both Italian tragedy and Italian comedy have survived periods of a seemingly hopeless decline; and the fear has vanished that either the opera or the ballet might succeed in ousting from the national stage the legitimate forms of the national drama.

(b) _Greece._

Modern Greek and Dalmatian drama.

The dramatic literature of the later Hellenes is a creation of the literary movement which preceded their noble struggle for independence, or which may be said to form part of that struggle. After beginning with dramatic dialogues of a patriotic tendency, it took a step in advance with the tragedies of J. R. Nerulos[41] (1778-1850), whose name belongs to the political as well as to the literary history of his country. His comedies--especially one directed against the excesses of journalism[42]--largely contributed to open a literary life for the modern Greek tongue. Among the earlier patriotic Greek dramatists of the 19th century are T. Alkaeos, J. Zampelios (whose tragic style was influenced by that of Alfieri),[43] S. K. Karydis and A. Valaoritis. A. Zoiros[44] is noteworthy as having introduced the use of prose into Greek tragedy, while preserving to it that association with sentiments and aspirations which will probably long continue to pervade the chief productions of modern Greek literature. The love of the theatre is ineradicable from Attic as it is from Italian soil; and the tendencies of the young dramatic literature of Hellas which is not wholly absorbed in the effort to keep abreast of recent modern developments, seem to justify the hope that a worthy future awaits it.

Under Italian influence an interesting dramatic growth attained to some vitality in the Dalmatian lands about the beginning of the 16th century, where the religious drama, whose days were passing away in Italy, found favour with a people with a scant popular literature of its own. At Ragusa Italian literary influence had been spread by the followers of Petrarch from the later years of the 15th century; here several Servo-Croatian writers produced religious plays in the manner of the Italian _rappresentazioni_; and a gifted poet, Martin Drzic, composed, besides religious plays and farces, a species of pastoral which enjoyed much favour.

(c) _Spain._

Spain is the only country of modern Europe which shares with England the honour of having achieved, at a relatively early date, the creation of a genuinely national form of the regular drama. So proper to Spain was the form of the drama which she produced and perfected, that to it the term _romantic_ has been specifically applied, though so restricted a use of the epithet is clearly unjustifiable. The influences which from the Romance peoples--in whom Christian and Germanic elements mingled with the legacy of Roman law, learning and culture--spread to the Germanic nations were represented with the most signal force and fulness in the institutions of chivalry,--to which, in the words of Scott, "it was peculiar to blend military valour with the strongest passions which actuate the human mind, the feelings of devotion and those of love." These feelings, in their combined operation upon the national character, and in their reflection in the national literature, were not confined to Spain; but nowhere did they so long or so late continue to animate the moral life of a nation.

Outward causes contributed to this result. For centuries after the crusades had become a mere memory, Spain was a battle-ground between the Cross and the Crescent. And it was just at the time when the Renaissance was establishing new starting-points for the literary progress of Europe, that Christian Spain rose to the height of Catholic as well as national self-consciousness by the expulsion of the Moors and the conquest of the New World. From their rulers or rivals of so many centuries the Spaniards derived that rich, if not very varied, glow of colour which became permanently distinctive of their national life, and more especially of its literary and artistic expressions; they also perhaps derived from the same source a not less characteristically refined treatment of the passion of love. The ideas of Spanish chivalry--more especially religious devotion and a punctilious sense of personal honour--asserted themselves (according to a process often observable in the history of civilization) with peculiar distinctness in literature and art, after the period of great achievements to which they had contributed in other fields had come to an end. The ripest glories of the Spanish drama belong to an age of national decay--mindful, it is true, of the ideas of a greater past. The chivalrous enthusiasm pervading so many of the masterpieces of its literature is indeed a distinctive feature of the Spanish nation in all, even in the least hopeful, periods of its later history; and the religious ardour breathed by these works, though associating itself with what is called the Catholic Reaction, is in truth only a manifestation of the spirit which informed the noblest part of the Reformation movement itself. The Spanish drama neither sought nor could seek to emancipate itself from views and forms of religious life more than ever sacred to the Spanish people since the glorious days of Ferdinand and Isabella; and it is not so much in the beginnings as in the great age of Spanish dramatic literature that it seems most difficult to distinguish between what is to be termed a religious and what a secular play. After Spain had thus, the first after England among modern European countries, fully unfolded that incomparably richest expression of national life and sentiment in an artistic form--a truly national dramatic literature,--the terrible decay of her greatness and prosperity gradually impaired the strength of a brilliant but, of its nature, dependent growth. In the absence of high original genius the Spanish dramatists began to turn to foreign models, though little supported in such attempts by popular sympathy; and it is only in more recent times that the Spanish drama has sought to reproduce the ancient forms from whose masterpieces the nation had never become estranged, while accommodating them to tastes and tendencies shared by later Spanish literature with that of Europe at large.

Early efforts.

Gil Vicente.

The earlier dramatic efforts of Spanish literature may without inconvenience be briefly dismissed. The reputed author of the _Coplas de Mingo Revulgo_ (R. Cota the elder) likewise composed the first act of a story of intrigue and character, purely dramatic but not intended for representation. This tragic comedy of _Calisto and Meliboea_, which was completed (in 21 acts) by 1499, afterwards became famous under the name of _Celestina_; it was frequently imitated and translated, and was adapted for the Spanish stage by R. de Zepeda in 1582. But the father of the Spanish drama was J. de la Enzina, whose _representaciones_ under the name of "eclogues" were dramatic dialogues of a religious or pastoral character. His attempts were imitated more especially by the Portuguese Gil Vicente, whose writings for the stage appear to be included in the period 1502-1536, and who wrote both in Spanish and in his native tongue. A further impulse came, as was natural, from Spaniards resident in Italy, and especially from B. de Torres Naharro, who in 1517 published, as the chief among the "firstlings of his genius" (_Propaladia_), a series of eight _comedias_--a term generally applied in Spanish literature to any kind of drama. He claimed some knowledge of the theory of the ancient drama, divided his plays into _jornadas_[45] (to correspond to acts), and opened them with an _introyto_ (prologue). Very various in their subjects, and occasionally odd in form,[46] they were gross as well as audacious in tone, and were soon prohibited by the Inquisition. The church remained unwilling to renounce her control over such dramatic exhibitions as she permitted, and sought to suppress the few plays on not strictly religious subjects which appeared in the early part of the reign of Charles I. Though the universities produced both translations from the classical drama and modern Latin plays, these exercised very little general effect. Juan Perez' (Petreius') posthumous Latin comedies were mainly versions of Ariosto.[47]

Lope de Rueda and his followers.

Classical dramas.

Thus the foundation of the Spanish national theatre was reserved for a man of the people. Cervantes has vividly sketched the humble resources which were at the command of Lope de Rueda, a mechanic of Seville, who with his friend the bookseller Timoneda, and two brother authors and actors in his strolling company, succeeded in bringing dramatic entertainments out of the churches and palaces into the public places of the towns, where they were produced on temporary scaffolds. The manager carried about his properties in a corn-sack; and the "comedies" were still only "dialogues, and a species of eclogues between two or three shepherds and a shepherdess," enlivened at times by intermezzos of favourite comic figures, such as the negress or the Biscayan, "played with inconceivable talent and truthfulness by Lope." One of his plays at least,[48] and one of Timoneda's,[49] seem to have been taken from an Italian source; others mingled modern themes with classical apparitions,[50] one of Timoneda's was (perhaps again through the Italian) from Plautus.[51] Others of a slighter description were called _pasos_,--a species afterwards termed _entremeses_ and resembling the modern French _proverbes_. With these popular efforts of Lope de Rueda and his friends a considerable dramatic activity began in the years 1560-1590 in several Spanish cities, and before the close of this period permanent theatres began to be fitted up at Madrid. Yet Spanish dramatic literature might still have been led to follow Italian into an imitation of classical models. Two plays by G. Bermudez (1577), called by their learned author "the first Spanish tragedies," treating the national subject of Inez de Castro, but divided into five acts, composed in various metres, and introducing a chorus; a _Dido_ (c. 1580) by C. de Virues (who claimed to have first divided dramas into three _jornadas_); and the tragedies of L. L. de Argensola (acted 1585, and praised in _Don Quixote_) alike represent this tendency.

Cervantes.

Such were the alternatives which had opened for the Spanish drama, when at last, about the same time as that of the English, its future was determined by writers of original genius. The first of these was the immortal Cervantes, who, however, failed to anticipate by his earlier plays (1584-1588) the great (though to him unproductive) success of his famous romance. In his endeavour to give a poetic character to the drama he fell upon the expedient of introducing personified abstractions speaking a "divine" or elevated language--a device which was for a time favourably received. But these plays exhibit a neglect or ignorance of the laws of dramatic construction; their action is episodical; and it is from the realism of these episodes (especially in the _Numancia_, which is crowded with both figures and incidents), and from the power and flow of the declamation, that their effect must have been derived. When in his later years (1615) Cervantes returned to dramatic composition, the style and form of the national drama had been definitively settled by a large number of writers, the brilliant success of whose acknowledged chief may previously have diverted Cervantes from his labours for the theatre. His influence upon the general progress of dramatic literature is, however, to be sought, not only in his plays, but also in those _novelas exemplares_--incomparable alike in their clearness and their terseness of narrative--to which more than one drama is indebted for its plot, and for much of its dialogue to boot.

Lope de Vega.