Part 20

It was his custom to reside during the summer at Codevigo, the Venetian villa of Aloysio Cornelio, a munificent and liberal gentleman who was his Mæcenas, and who cherished Ruzzante and his troupe. In return this troupe gave many performances at Cornelio’s house.

According to Scardeon, the city of Padua was about to honour Ruzzante when he died, on the 17th March 1542. His friends and numerous admirers raised him, in 1560, a tomb in the church of San-Daniele in Padua, near the Prato della Valle, with the following epitaph in remembrance of him and “in earnest of affection, esteem and admiration”:—

V. S.

ANGELO BEOLCO

Ruzanti Patavino, nulli in scribendis, agendisque comœdiis ingenio, facundia, aut arte secundo, jocis et sermonibus agrest. applausu omnium facetiss., qui non sine amicorum mœrore e vita discessit anno Domini MDLII die xvii martii, ætatis vero xl. Jo. Baptista Rota Patavin. tantæ præstantiæ admirator pignus hoc sempiternum in testimonium famæ ac nominis P. C. anno a mundo redempto MDLX.

Ultimately, however, this inscription having been found too profane—we do not know by whom—it was removed.

Bernardino Scardeon tells us that Ruzzante was of a joyous and amiable character, invariably pleasant and affable. His face, to judge from the portrait of him which survives, denotes a fine wit, gifts of observation and satire, and a firm and melancholy character.

Almost all the characters of his comedies bore surnames which afterwards became generic names, and so remained in the theatre.

“In the performance of his comedies, his stage companions were young people of the nobility of Padua, such as Marco Aurelio Alvarotto, called _Menato_; Girolamo Zanetti, called _Vezzo_; Castegnola, called _Bilora_; and some others who were able to imitate the language of the peasantry.”

It is even possible that Aloysio Cornelio himself, Ruzzante’s splendid protector, took part in their performances, and may have been, by antithesis, the character of the miserly Pantaloon, who, under the name of Cornelio, fills so large a number of rôles in Ruzzante’s pieces.

Benedetto Varchi, the famous author of _The History of Florence_, speaking of the various kinds of comedy, writes on the subject of the ancient plays:

“If one may judge from experience and give faith to conjectures, I think that our _zanni_ are more comical than were their mimes, and that the comedies of Ruzzante of Padua, treating of rustic subjects, surpass those which the ancients called _atellanæ_.”

“Our best writers” (says Riccoboni) “have been loud in praise of Ruzzante. His comedies, superior to the Latin atellanæ in comicality, admit all the dialects of the corrupted languages of Lombardy. It was he who settled for the theatre the character and the language of Scapin, Harlequin, Pantaloon and the Doctor.”

In truth Ruzzante was the first to open the doors of comedy to popular dialects. All his characters speak different languages, from Paduan, Bergamese, Bolognese, Venetian and Tuscan to Latin, Italianised Spanish and modern Greek. But it is the dialects of Padua, Venice and Bergamo that are chiefly employed by him.

His early efforts were in the academic manner, and he sought to rival by the purity of his style Bembo, Speroni and the other authors of his epoch. Notwithstanding that he had quite as much talent as his colleagues he was dissatisfied with his success. Perceiving too that he remained far below the level at which he aimed, he devoted himself to the study of rustic dialects, and of the customs, manners and characters of the peasantry. So admirably had he acquired their language and their ways, so exactly did he seize all their naïveté, originality and humour, that he deceived the very rustics, who, when they saw him disguised, assumed him to be one of themselves. Beolco manifested a quite peculiar predilection for them, and criticised for their profit the manners of the great, the learned and the luxurious.

“Would you not be a hundred times more worthy” (he asks in one of his prologues), “if you were to content yourselves as we do in our country homes with eating good bread and good solid cheese, and drinking an honest red wine, rather than consume sauces and all sorts of dishes which swell your stomachs? You would be fresh and rosy as apples instead of withered as you are. I dare swear that if one of your gentlemen came to grips with one of our women he would be worsted? Why? Because our women are not nourished upon sweetmeats but upon natural food, and because, living as they do in the open air, their limbs are stronger and their thews more vigorous.”

Ruzzante never misses an occasion to exalt the uses of rustic language. In a letter written in Paduan, addressed to the Most Reverend Cardinal Cornaro Vecchio, he says:

“I do not see why, since I take my peasant characters and present them on the stage, I should expect them to use Tuscan (_in lenguazo fiorentinesco_) rather than Egyptian. At present the world is all awry, and everyone seeks to lift his head higher than is possible to him. No longer is anything done according to nature; every man permits himself to be dazzled by the pretensions of his neighbour instead of remaining in a state of simplicity. It is also sought to change our language rather than to allow us to speak in the language which is proper to us. Instead of keeping to his own straight road, everyone runs to that which dazzles him, and that, as I say, is bad. Shall I do the same, I who am a Paduan of Italy (_che a son Pavàn, della Italia_)? Shall I go and convert myself into a Tuscan or a Frenchman? No, by the blood of the scorpion! No, I shall not. It is my desire to remain and to walk in the way of truth and of naturalness.

“Let no one amongst you be surprised to hear me speak a language that is not Florentine; I will not exchange my language for any other. I think that I may just as sincerely desire your health, fortune and happiness in my coarse Paduan as another might do in a finer and lighter tongue.”

Beolco played a number of parts in his own pieces, and came forward always to announce the argument. Arrayed usually in an allegorical or fantastic costume, he would deliver his little address to the public:

“Let us amuse ourselves a little. Is there anyone amongst you who knows who I am? You have the air of wishing to reply that I am Mercury, or a reciter of arguments of comedies. No, you will never guess it! I won’t leave you in doubt any longer. I am an elfin spirit. Do you know why I show myself, why I permit you to see me? Do you know whence I come? From the other world; and I will tell you why. One of those who is there, called Actius by some and Plautus by others, has sent me to tell you that since a comedy is to be played this evening you are not to blame me if it is not in Latin and in verse and in beautiful language, because if to-day he were among the living he would not write comedies in any other style than that of this which you are about to witness. He begs you not to judge by this one those which he left written; for he swears to you by Hercules and Apollo that they were recited in other days, in terms very different from those which you see printed now, for the good reason that many things which look well upon paper look ill upon the stage.”

It seems to us that the whole _raison d’être_ of comedy improvised in free dialect is to be found in these few words.

Everywhere, whether from personal instinct, whether from contagion from the pastoral mode, Ruzzante presents apologias of the rustic life. Nevertheless it must not be assumed that he was a writer of _bergeries_ like Florian; he is a realist in his pictures of the miseries and passions of the precarious and savage life of the peasants of his day. The brutal passion which induces him, in _La Fiorina_, to carry off by force a young girl, gagging her by the aid of a friend, is probably an instance copied from nature in those days of war and rape and violence. But if he dares to present such dramas upon the stage with an almost ferocious recklessness, he also makes heard the voice of indignation or of pity.

“By the blood of the ill of the cripple!” (exclaims old Teodosia—we cannot undertake to explain this bizarre malediction), “we see strange things to-day. Ill living is the fashion, and I think that before long we shall know no safety in our huts. Consider what a surprise awaits this poor father and this unfortunate mother! I am overwhelmed by the desire to weep.”

In a letter which he addressed under his stage name to Cardinal Francesco Cornaro, he thanks Rome for having sent to the city of Padua this noble prelate who revives his failing hopes. These letters, written in the old Paduan dialect, are his masterpieces. They are the inditings of a naïve peasant who has the right to say anything. Therefore they are gay, because to ensure their being read it was necessary that they should excite laughter. But this laughter is fraught with tears. They are not the letters of a historian paying his court, they are those of a brave and generous man who loves his country and speaks the truth. Here are a few brief fragments—very brief lest we should be charged with too great a digression from our subject:

“Rome, our grandmother, who gave you your hat, O good cardinal, did not give it you to shield you from the sun, and to save your complexion, but so that it may shelter us all; and under your purple cloak it is your duty to gather us all to your heart as a hen gathers her chickens. Restore to us our trust and our peace. Consider what this country has become. No longer are young men and maidens to be heard singing on the highways and in the fields. The very birds sing no longer, and I believe—may the plague choke me!—that the voice of the nightingale is no longer as beautiful as of yore. No longer do we see games and merry-makings. Such is the misery that has fallen upon our land that one may truly say: blessed are the dead who are beyond the touch of war, of ruin and of pestilence! We are worse off than in the days of the great slayings, days in which men saw incredible happenings, days in which fathers butchered their sons. To-day the times are so ill that husband and wife will go each a separate way to seek a livelihood. And love too has departed hence. Seek to find me a lover! There is no longer anyone who will take a wife. Wives must be nourished and how may that be done when there is nothing in the house? So that, instead of sighs of love one hears naught but groans of hunger. Charity goes knocking from door to door, and none will give her shelter under his roof. We no longer dare so much as to weep when following the bier of a beloved dead, lest we should drench too many handkerchiefs.” (Then, adopting a tone of pleasantry, he proceeds:) “Be our friend, for I am well disposed to be yours. You may invite me as often as you will to dine with you; I can refuse you nothing, not even good advice.”

It is necessary to remember that Ruzzante lived in the early days of the sixteenth century, amid the wars of Francis I. and Charles V., who were disputing for the possession of Italy, when the terrible invasion of the German army was descending upon Rome, leaving behind it a country devastated and in ashes. The holy city was taken by assault, sacked and given over to two months of pillaging by the Lutherans. Florence was ravaged by the plague; and Ruzzante’s own country, Padua, was desolated by famine. And so, in his comedies, he pours furious curses upon Spaniards and Germans.

“May the plague consume them all,” he cries, “wars and soldiers, soldiers and wars! But we must laugh nevertheless, my friends, we must render ourselves numb to our sufferings!”

It is also noteworthy that in the midst of the liveliest buffooneries Ruzzante will often confront us suddenly with a terrible situation, a flash of real passion, a profound reflection or a cry from the heart. The serious side of his spirit reveals itself in the most concise, but also the most energetic manner, and in the truest and most touching terms; unfortunately these are often untranslatable because the dialects are inseparable from the characters. He was a thousand times right in his contention that had he given these another language they would have been no more than conventional types.

[Illustration]

Chiefly to concern us here, however, is the buffoon side of Ruzzante, for it is through this that he belongs to the Commedia dell’ Arte. His gaiety is very often bitter, tragic and hideous, some of his pieces bear no title; they are printed simply under the designation of dialogues.

BILORA. Who could have foretold that love would so rudely have thrust me out of my own house, to throw me amid people whom I do not know? It is said that love will not or cannot do anything. But I see instead that it does what it likes. As for me, it is love which has compelled me to come to seek my hidden wife. Had it been otherwise I should not have tramped all yesterday, all last night and all this morning through woods and fields. I am so tired that I can scarcely stand. A lover is drawn by his love more irresistibly than by three pairs of oxen. There are those who say that love lodges with young people and drives them mad. For my part I see that it can also haunt old men, for had it not pierced the heart of that old gossip—may a scorpion eat him!—he would not have brought my wife into this town. Could not that old usurer have taken pleasure in his ducats without seeking it in my wife? By the blood of the scorpion! it was an ill turn to have served me! But I shall so contrive that in some way I shall wrest her from him. Ah, but who knows whether I shall so much as get a glimpse of her? I should have done well to have gone to his house.... I am dying of hunger and I have neither bread nor money with which to buy it. If I but knew at least where she is living, that is to say where he has lodged her, I should so move her that at least she would give me bread.

(He is about to withdraw when he meets an old acquaintance. This is Pittaro, an old peasant whom he qualifies as barba, as who would say bearded.)

PITTARO. Eh, _cagasangue_! Is it Bilora? What are you seeking here?

BILORA. I am come about the affair of Messer Andro—help me to pronounce his name—Androtene or Ardochene, that old foreign gentleman who carried off my wife.

PITTARO. You were wrong to come. What do you expect of your wife, who seems to have forgotten you? It will hardly suffice just to go and ask for her to ensure her returning with you. She is leading a pleasant life with him, without care or trouble; she eats and drinks as much as she pleases and she is well served, for there is a lackey to wait upon them both.

He relates that old Andronico is madly in love with Bilora’s wife and that she appears to manifest some attachment for him. He advises Bilora to depart, assuring him that there is nothing to be done, but Bilora does not heed the advice.

“Would it not be better that she should return home with me? If I were to meet the old man I might strike him. I want so much to see my Dina! Is she alone at the house?”

Pittaro repeats that no course is open to him but to depart. That he must not be seen thereabouts. But Bilora consigns him to the devil; he is so tormented with love, fear and rage, that he cannot resist his desire to behold his wife. He knocks at the door of the house; Dina appears at the window.

DINA. Who knocks? Who is there? Is it you, poor man? Depart in peace.

BILORA. Yes, I am very poor, but that is no reason why I should depart. I am your friend; approach, Dina. It is I.

DINA. And who are you? What friend? The master is not at home. Begone!

BILORA. Ah, Dina, come here a moment, it is I. Is it possible that you don’t recognise me?

DINA. I tell you to be gone, and that I don’t know you, that the master is absent. He went out upon business and I have no wish to gossip.

BILORA. Oh, my dear Dina! Do come here! I wish to speak to you sincerely. It is I, Dina. Do you not see that I am Bilora, your husband?

DINA. Alack! Is it indeed you? What do you seek here? Speak!

BILORA. What are you saying? Come down here that I may see you.

DINA. I am coming.

BILORA. Yes, come with me, and I shall hold you good and true as you were before.

DINA (_below_). Good evening! I am here since you insist. How are you? Are you well?

BILORA. I—I am well. And you? How well you look!

DINA. Heaven be thanked! Nevertheless, to tell you the truth I feel none too well. This old man wearies me.

BILORA. Youth and age never can agree. You and I would be better suited to each other.

DINA. And then, he is always ailing. He coughs at night and keeps me from sleeping. At every hour he comes to seek and weary me, to take me in his arms and kiss me.

BILORA. Well then, tell me, would you not sooner return home, or do you wish to remain here with this old man? Speak!

DINA. I should be glad enough to come, but he does not wish it. Neither does he wish that you should come here. If you but knew the care he takes of me, how he caresses me! By the fever! he loves me dearly and I am very well with him.

BILORA. But what does it matter what he wishes if you wish it? Oh, I understand. You don’t wish it either, and you are telling me lies, eh?

DINA. How shall I answer you? I should like to come, and yet I should not like to come (_vorràe e si no vorràe_).

BILORA. Heaven is not propitious to me to-night. Will it be long before the old man returns?

DINA. He should return almost at once, but I should not like him to find me with anyone. Come, my dear. You will return in secret and we will come to an understanding.

BILORA. Yes, we will come to an understanding by means of kicks! Take care, by the blood! If I begin I shall be worse than a soldier!

After further threats from Bilora, Dina tells him that she will advise him when the old man returns home, so that Bilora may demand of him her return, whether he wishes it or not. Dina will do what her husband wishes. After that Bilora asks her for a piece of bread, saying that he is dying of hunger because he has not eaten since he left home. But Dina, saying that she can abstract nothing from the house, gives him money to go to an inn, where he may eat and drink at his ease. She re-enters the house, and Bilora goes off, after some reflections upon hunger and love, and after cursing the old man and considering the coins which Dina has given him, whose effigies supply him with witticisms that it would be difficult to translate.

Messer Andronico then enters, discoursing alone upon women, and upon love at a ripe age. He knocks at the door, saying: “Open, my pretty, my beauty.” The door opens, and he is about to embrace her when he discovers that it is his lackey, Tonin, who has received his honeyed praises, and whom he now denounces for a brute and a donkey. Thereupon both go within.

Bilora and Pittaro re-enter. Pittaro asks him whether he has fared well, if the wine was good, and so forth. Bilora, after replying that he is “full,” begs him to be the mediator between himself and Messer Andronico, whom he continues to call _Ardoche_: “You will tell him that Dina has a husband, and that he must let her go, whether he desires it or not, because she desires it. And that I will kill him if he refuses—that I am a soldier, and a bravo, which will intimidate him. If he surrenders her all will be well; if not, let him look to himself.”

Bilora goes off, and Pittaro, after having knocked at the door, and undergone the usual interrogations from Dina, is permitted to speak to Messer Andronico.

PITTARO. Good evening, Messer and Excellency.

ANDRONICO. What brings thee, Pittaro?

PITTARO. I want ten words with you in confidence. Come this way, sir.

ANDRONICO. What is there, then, so interesting?

PITTARO. You shall learn. You know without my telling you that you carried off Dina, the wife of that poor lad Bilora. He has lost his head over the affair. I beseech you, Excellency, in your own interest, to let her depart with her husband. For reflect, my very dear sir, that it was highly imprudent in you to have carried off the wife of another. And further let me tell you as a friend that she is far from old, whilst you are too advanced in years to have so young a woman. Forgive me, Messer, the frankness of my speech.

ANDRONICO. Do you want the truth? I shall do nothing of what you ask because I cannot give her up. Do you understand? I am resolved to spend my life with her. What the devil! Do you think I should let that girl return to the country to suffer with that great coward Bilora, who gives her more cudgellings than bread? No, no! I want her for myself. I will not throw nutmeg to swine. Do you suppose that I should have carried her off as I did to let her go again so easily? I, who have worn a cuirass and carried a shield all summer, like a Rodomont? I, who have gone armed day and night, who have suffered so much fatigue to save her trouble? Bid Bilora seek elsewhere what he requires.

PITTARO. But what is he to do? Do you want him to go mad?

ANDRONICO. And what of me? Do you want me to die of despair? Let him go mad, how can I help it? You are tiresome. You begin to anger me. Go to the devil! And not another word on this subject!

PITTARO. Do not become heated, sir. Let us be wise. Let us call Dina, let us question her, and let us see what she will say. If she wants to go, let her go; if she does not, keep her and do as you please. What do you say?