Rome, Arrigo falls sick of leprosy, and has to go forth and wander up and down the earth. Chance brings him to the house of the Genoese who had received such benefits from him upon their pilgrimage. They consult doctors and wise men together, who assure them that no cure can be wrought unless the leper bathe from head to foot in the blood of virgins. This determines Constantino to sacrifice all that he holds dearest in the world. He kills his three sons, and prepares a bath of their blood, which restores his old benefactor to health. But the Saint of Compostella has still his eye upon his servants. A miracle brings the three boys back to life. They are found with golden apples in their hands, and the play ends with a general thanksgiving. The prosy bluntness with which the incidents of this strange story are treated as matter of fact, is scarcely less remarkable than the immorality which substitutes mere thaumaturgy for the finer instincts of humanity. The exaggerated generosity of Constantino might be paralleled from hundreds of novelle. This one virtue seems to have had extraordinary fascination for the Italians. I tre Pellegrini is based upon a legend of medieval celebrity, versified by Southey in his 'Pilgrimage to Compostella.'1 A father, a mother, and a son of great personal beauty set forth together for the shrine of S. Iago. On the road they put up at an inn, where Falconetta, the host's daughter, falls in love with the boy and tempts him. Thwarted in her will, she vows to ruin him; and for this purpose, puts a silver cup into his travelling bag. In the morning the pilgrims are overtaken by the

1 Sacre Rappr. iii. 466.

man.

INADEQUACY OF RESULTS.

357

police, who find the cup and hang the beautiful young The parents complete their vow, and on the way back discover their son upon the gallows alive and well. Falconetta is burned, and her parents are hanged the old host remarking, not without humour, that, though he was innocent of this crime, he had murdered enough people in his day to have deserved his fate. The style of this play merits more praise than can be bestowed on the Rappresentazioni in general. Falconetta is a real theatrical character, and the bustle of the inn on the arrival of the guests is executed with dramatic vigour.

In their Sacre Rappresentazioni the Florentines advanced to the very verge of the true drama. After adapting the Miracle-plays of medieval orthodoxy to their stage, they versified the Legends of the Saints, and went so far as to dramatise novels of a purely secular character. The Figliuol Prodigo and the farce appended to the Pellegrino contain the germs of vernacular comedy. S. Maddalena is a complete character. S. Uliva is delicately sketched and well sustained. The situation at the opening of the Tre Pellegrini is worked out with real artistic skill. Lastly, in the Esaltazione della Croce a regular fiveact tragedy was attempted.

From the oratories of the Compagnie and the parlours of the convents this peculiar form of art was extended to the Courts and public theatres. Poliziano composed a Rappresentazione on the classical fable of Orpheus, and Niccolò da Correggio another on the myth of Cephalus and Procris.1 Other attempts to

1 The date of the former is probably 1472, of the latter 1486.

secularise the religious drama followed, until, in 1521, Francesco Mantovano put the contemporary history of the French General Lautrec upon the boards.

Still the fact remains that the Sacre Rappresentazioni did not lead to the production of a national Italian theatre. If we turn to the history of our Elizabethan stage, we shall find that, after the age of the Miracles and Moralities had passed, a new and independent work of art, emanating from the creative genius of Marlowe and Shakspere, put England in the possession of that great rarity, a Drama commensurate with the whole life of the nation at one of its most brilliant epochs. To this accomplishment of the dramatic art the Italians never attained. The causes of their failure will form the subject of a separate enquiry when we come to consider the new direction taken by the playwrights at the Courts of Ferrara and Rome.

As an apology for the space here devoted to the analysis of plays childish in their subject-matter, prosaic in their treatment, and fruitless of results, it may be urged that in the Sacre Rappresentazioni better than elsewhere we can study the limitations of the popular Italian genius at the moment when the junction was effected between humanism and the spirit of the people.

CHAPTER VI.

LORENZO DE' MEDICI AND POLIZIANO.

Period from 1470 to 1530-Methods of treating it-By Chronology-By Places By Subjects-Renascence of Italian-At Florence, Ferrara, Naples -The New Italy-Forty Years of Peace-Lorenzo de' Medici-His Admiration for and Judgment of Italian Poetry---His Privileges as a Patron-His Rime-The Death of SimonettaLucrezia Donati-Lorenzo's Descriptive Power-The Selve-The Ambra-La Nencia-I Beoni-His Sacred Poems-Carnival and Dance Songs-Carri and Trionfi—Savonarola—The Masque of Penitence-Leo X. in Florence, 1513-Pageant of the Golden AgeAngelo Poliziano-His Place in Italian Literature-Le StanzeTreatment of the Octave Stanza-Court Poetry-Mechanism and Adornment-The Orfeo-Orpheus, the Ideal of the Cinque CentoIts Dramatic Qualities-Chorus of Mænads-Poliziano's Love Poems -Rispetti-Florentine Love-La Bella Simonetta-Study and Country Life.

In dealing with the mass of Italian literature between the dates 1470 and 1530, several methods suggest themselves, each of which offers certain advantages, while none is wholly satisfactory. In the first place we might adopt a chronological division, and arrange the chief authors of whom we have to treat, by periods. Lorenzo de' Medici, Poliziano, Luigi Pulci, Boiardo, and Sannazzaro would be the leading names in the first group. In the second we should place Ariosto, Machiavelli, Guicciardini and the minor historians of Florence. Bembo would lead a third class, including Castiglione, La Casa, and the Petrarchistic poets of the Academies. A fourth would be headed by Pietro

Aretino, and would embrace the burlesque writers and minor critical prosaists of the decadence. The advantage of this method is that it corresponds to a certain regular progression in the evolution of Italian genius during that brief space of brilliant activity. Yet the chronological stages are not sufficiently well marked to justify its exclusive adoption. The first group is separated from the rest by a real interval, since the men who compose it died, with one exception, before the close of the fifteenth century, about the year of Charles VIII.'s entrance into Italy. But the authors of the second, third, and fourth groups lived almost contemporaneously, covering the whole period of Italy's greatest literary glory and deepest national discomfiture, and witnessing the final extinction of her liberty in the settlement effected by the policy of Charles V.2 Nor, again, can we trace in the several phases of literature they represent, so clear a process of expansion as may be detected in the successive stages of artistic or humanistic development. When the work effected by the first group was accomplished, both the language and the literature of Italy became in a true sense national, and the cultivated classes of all districts, trained in the common discipline of humanistic studies, set themselves with one accord and simultaneously to the task of polishing the mother tongue. This fact in the history of Italian literature

1 Lorenzo de' Medici, b. 1448, d. 1492. Poliziano b. 1454, d. 1494. Luigi Pulci, b. 1432, d. about 1487. Boiardo, b. about 1434, d. 1494. Sannazzaro, b. 1458, d. 1530.

2 Machiavelli, b. 1469, d. 1527. dini, b. 1482, d. 1540. Bembo, b. 1529. La Casa, b. 1503, d. 1556.

Ariosto, b. 1474, d. 1533. Guicciar1470, d. 1547. Castiglione, b. 1478, d. Pietro Aretino, b. 1492, d. 1557.