More than natural cleverness and native humour went to the making of a good comedian. To begin with, he had to be a man of sense, tact, and obliging disposition. "When we speak of a good comedian in the Italian style," says Gherardi,[48] "we mean a man of solid parts, who depends on imagination more than memory in his performance, and composes everything he says upon the spot; he is one who knows how to play up to his companions on the stage, combining his words and gestures so well with theirs that he responds at a touch to their hints, and who is so ready with a repartee or movement that the audience believes the scene to have been concerted beforehand." In truth, fertility of fancy, quickness of intelligence, a brain well stocked with varied learning, facility of utterance, command of language, and imperturbable presence of mind, were required in a first-rate improvisatory actor. When he undertook to sustain one of the masks, he had first of all to live himself into the character. If, for instance, he chose the Dottore, nothing might escape his lips upon the stage out of harmony with that character, nothing which could remind the audience that anybody but a pedant from Bologna was speaking. His every gesture had to contribute to the same effect.
The second nature of his part had so to supersede his own instincts, that no sudden accidents, the maladroitness of a comrade, an unexpected turn in the dialogue, or any of the inconveniences to which unpremeditated acting was liable, should throw him off his guard.
It was further necessary that he should stock his mind with what the actors called the _doti_ of a play, and with a repertory of what they called _generici._[49] The _doti_ or dowry of a comedy consisted of soliloquies, narratives, dissertations, and studied pa.s.sages of rhetoric, which were not left to improvisation. These existed in ma.n.u.script, or were composed for the occasion. They had to be used at decisive points of the action, and formed fixed pegs on which to hang the dialogue. The _generici_ or common-places were sententious maxims, descriptions, outpourings of emotion, humorous and fanciful diatribes, declarations of pa.s.sion, love-laments, ravings, reproaches, declamatory outbursts, which could be employed _ad libitum_ whenever the situation rendered them appropriate. Each mask had its own stock of common topics, suited to the personage who used them. A consummate artist displayed his ability by improving on these, introducing fresh points and features, and adapting them to his own conception of the part. They had to become incorporated with the ideal self he represented, and not to betray their origin in study. The tradition of the drama and the daily practice of rehearsing together made each member of a company know when such premeditated pieces were to be expected. They did not therefore break the general style of the performance. Habit enabled the actors to lead up to them and pa.s.s away from them upon the stream of impromptu dialogue.
Another highly important branch of the art was what were called the _lazzi_. "We give the name of _lazzi_," says Riccoboni in his history of the theatre, "to those sallies and bits of by-play with which Harlequin and the other masks interrupt a scene in progress--it may be by demonstrations of astonishment or fright, or by humorous extravagances alien to the matter in hand--after which, however, the action has to be renewed upon its previous lines." It was precisely in these _lazzi_ that a comic actor displayed his personal originality to best advantage; but it required great tact and sense of the dramatic situation to render them natural, appropriate, and to keep them within bound and measure.
We have now seen what was expected of a first-rate artist, and understand to what extent the _Commedia dell" Arte_ depended upon study and premeditation. Long familiarity with their own repertory undoubtedly reduced the improvisatory element to a minimum in the case of troupes who were accustomed to play together for years. Yet they strove to gain novelty by inventing fresh situations, giving unexpected turns to dialogue, and varying their action on successive nights. The best companies were those in whose hands a hackneyed comedy was always plastic, and who kept their improvisatory powers in exercise.
The defect of the art was that it tended to become stereotyped. The Zanni repeated their jokes. The Dottore used the same malapropisms over and over again. The _primo amoroso_ served up the _crambe decies repet.i.ta_ of his monologues. The _lazzi_ degenerated into unmeaning horse-play and buffooneries, which had nothing to do with the action of the piece. Nature was forgotten. Every actor over-played his part, ranted, raged, turned caricature into burlesque, spoke in and out of season, exaggerated his gestures, diction, gait, and declamation, until a pack of madmen seemed to have run wild upon the stage. To control these tendencies towards a false and artificial style of presentation, which formed the inherent vice of improvisatory acting, was the duty of an able Capocomico. It could only be done by forcing the members of the troupe to study and reflect on what they had to represent, by compelling them to subordinate their several parts to the general effect, and by raising the tone of their intelligence. Thus there was the greatest difference between a well-conducted company, intent on the perfection of their art, and a wandering rabble, satisfied with appealing to the lowest instincts of the proletariate. The value of these remarks will be apparent after reading what Gozzi has to say about Antonio Sacchi"s company and the causes of its dissolution.
XI.
There is no doubt that during their flourishing period the companies of the _Commedia dell" Arte_ afforded the rarest amus.e.m.e.nt, not only to the vulgar, but also to refined and cultivated audiences throughout Europe.
They were especially appreciated at Paris. From the year 1572, when the _Confidenti_ and _Gelosi_ made their first appearance, to the close of the eighteenth century, Italian troupes at the Hotel de Bourbon, the Hotel de Bourgogne, the Palais Royal, and the Opera Comique, formed the delight of the French court and the Parisian public. Under various names, _Uniti_, _Fedeli_, _Barbieri"s_, _Bianchi"s_, and Cardinal Mazarin"s men, actors who had learned their trade in Italy continued to seek larger profits and a wider audience in that capital. "The way in which Italian comedians compose, study, and represent their plays," says a French critic in the year 1716,[50] "is quite beyond the powers of language to describe. I might venture to call it inconceivable; with such a wealth of new and agreeable sallies and of unpremeditated dialogue do they adorn their scenes." Many anecdotes regarding these Italian players in their French homes have been transmitted to us, with detailed descriptions of their qualities. I will confine myself to two extracts.[51] One is taken from Constantini"s Life of Tiberio Fiorelli (1608-1694), the famous Scaramouche. "He was one of the most perfect mimes who have appeared in these last centuries. I call him mime advisedly, because he played his part by action more than speaking.
Scaramouche was not satisfied with making what he represented intelligible by speech; he translated everything into movements of his face and body, adapting his gestures to his words and his words to his gestures with incomparable art. Everything became vocal in this man, his feet, his hands, his head; the slightest att.i.tude he took had meaning and significance." Gherardi adds that "he could keep an audience in fits of laughter for a long quarter of an hour without uttering a word. A great prince, who saw him act at Rome, uttered these words, "_Scaramuccia does not talk, and yet he says everything_," and at the end of the performance presented him with his coach and six horses." Of Tommaso Vicentini, called Il Tommasino, who made his debut at Paris as Harlequin in 1716, we read: "His suppleness, his natural gaiety, his graceful airs of rustic simplicity, made him a first-rate Harlequin. But nature had also made him an excellent actor in the more extended sense of that phrase. True, nave, original, pathetic, amid the laughter he excited by his buffooneries, a single trait, a single reflection which became a sentiment by his manner of expressing it, drew tears from the audience, and surprised the author of the piece no less than the public, and that too in spite of the mask, which seemed intended to inspire as much fear as merriment. Often, when one had begun to laugh at his way of simulating grief or pain, one finished by being melted with the tenderness of the emotion which came from the bottom of his heart."
Italian companies delighted the court of Spain during the reign of Philip II., and were welcomed in Portugal. We find them in Bavaria, at Dresden, and in other parts of Germany. Nor were they entirely unknown in England. Collier, in his "History of the English Drama," speaks of a certain Drousiano, who played with his troupe in London during the winter of 1577-78.[52] This was probably Drusiano Martelli. The extempore plays of the Italians are mentioned by Whetstone, Kyd, Jonson, and Brome; and it seems probable that the plat-comedies, ascribed to the famous fools Tarleton and Wilson, were modelled on Italian _Commedie a Soggetto_. Kyd, in the _Spanish Tragedy_, shows that the method of studying an improvised play was well understood. Hieronymo, who wishes to have a certain subject mounted in a hurry, says to his confidant--
"The Italian tragedians were so sharp of wit, That in one hour"s meditation They would perform anything in action."
Lorenzo replies--
"I have seen the like In Paris, among the French tragedians."
The full history of Italian companies in foreign lands still remains to be written; but I have said enough in this place to prove their wide popularity.
In its native country, the _Commedia dell" Arte_ was long regarded as the special glory and the unique product of Italian dramatic genius.
Gozzi, though he wrote as its apologist, only expressed common opinion when he said:[53] "I reckon improvised comedy among the particular distinctions of our nation. I look upon it as quite a different species from the written and premeditated drama; nor have I the shameless audacity to stigmatise with the t.i.tle of an ignorant rabble those n.o.ble and cultivated persons whom I see with my own eyes following and enjoying a play of this description. I esteem the able comedians who sustain the masks, far higher than those improvisatory poets, who, without uttering anything to the purpose, excite astonishment in crowds of gaping listeners."
XII.
This essay would be incomplete if I failed to describe the decadence of the _Commedia dell" Arte_, and the various inconveniences which attended its performance by incompetent or wilfully scurrilous actors. Without such a sequel to the history of its development, Goldoni"s reform of the theatre, and Gozzi"s energetic attempts to sustain the old style by works of a peculiar and hybrid character, will not be intelligible.
In its higher manifestations, this comedy, as we have seen, allied itself to fine art by singularly delicate links of connection. More than in other kinds of drama, where actors make themselves the mouthpieces of poets whose creations they incarnate, the performers of improvised comedy had to be complete and finished works of living art in their own persons. So long as they were conscious of their mission, and earnestly aspired to the highest points within the range and scope of their achievement, they supplied a scenic travesty of actual life unequalled for its freshness and its truth to nature--sparkling with salient traits of character, seasoned with mirthful sarcasm, and pungent by its satire of contemporary manners. But the roots of this unique and singular species of the drama were grounded in a deep sub-soil of vulgar instincts and dishonest proclivities. It clung to the tradition of mountebanks and mimes, acrobats and jongleurs, circus-clowns and rope-dancers. The rare flower of racy humour and refined parody, which fascinated Paris in the age of Louis XIV., sprang from a stock discredited and outcast through fifteen centuries of Christian teaching.
The Church in council and in synod had anathematised the ancestors of Andreini and Fiorelli, Sacchi and Darbes. Burial with the sanct.i.ties of religion was forbidden them, as it is forbidden to suicides. They were reckoned among the enemies of social order and civil discipline. The State, in its sumptuary laws, forbade their entrance into decent houses, relegating them to dark corners of the city, where they lurked with thieves and prost.i.tutes. Saintly pastors of the flock, like Carlo Borrommeo, carried on a crusade against these corruptors of public morals.[54] Even in Venice, the city of their adoption--the sea-Sodom, as Byron called it, of carnival licentiousness, the mart of pleasure for all Europe, the modern Corinth--an Inquisitor of State scourged them with these words of stinging reprobation:[55] "Bear in mind, you actors, that you are folk beneath the ban of blessed G.o.d"s almighty hatred, and that the prince allows you only as pasture for the common people, who take pleasure in your ribaldries." With such a record of contempt and disesteem and outlawry, the _Commedia dell" Arte_ was always sinking back into the slime from which it rose. Unhappily, the same eyes which delighted in its glory during the years when genius shed brilliant l.u.s.tre on its n.o.blest representatives, had only to look on this side or on that, and a crowd of shameless merry-andrews, the sc.u.m and dregs of the histrionic profession, made the evidences of its inherent immorality only too apparent.
I have already touched upon the scurrilities and obscenities which were common in improvised comedy. To enlarge upon the topic is not necessary.
Everybody can perceive that a drama relying in great part upon buffoonery, restrained by no obligation to literary precedents, dependent on the favour of mixed audiences, among whom women scarcely showed their faces, and varying at each performance with the whims and humours of masked actors, who were _ex hypothesi_ beyond the pale of social decency, may have allowed itself licenses which were well-nigh intolerable.
I have already described the tendencies toward exaggerative emphasis, stilted declamation, ill-concerted action, impertinent extravaganza, and wearisome repet.i.tion of exhausted motives, to which the species was peculiarly liable. There is no need to expand those observations. They justify the severe remarks of Goldoni in the preface to his theatrical works, which, as these have a direct bearing upon the subject of my next essay, I will summarise here:[56]--"The comic theatre of Italy for more than a century past had so degenerated that it became a disgusting object for general abhorrence. You saw nothing on public stages but indecent harlequinades, dirty and scandalous intrigue, foul jests, immodest loves. Plots were badly constructed, and worse carried out in action, without order, without propriety of manners. If translations of French or Spanish pieces were given, the improvisatory comedians mutilated and deformed them beyond recognition. The same fate befell the plays of Plautus and Terence, and of our elder Italian dramatists.
People of culture, nay, the common folk, cried out against these miserable travesties. Every one was wearied with the insipidities and conventionalities of an art upon the wane. You knew what Harlequin or Pantaloon was going to say before he opened his lips."
Readers of Gozzi"s Memoirs, to which these pages serve as a prolusion, have means of judging, on the testimony of a very partial critic and avowedly Quixotical defender of the old _Commedia dell" Arte_, to what extent the system of the theatre in Italy was faulty. Students of Casanova"s Memoirs will remember the dark picture of the actress whom he met at Ancona, with her epicene brood of children and of changelings exposed to indiscriminate contamination.[57] The lighter pages of Goldoni"s Memoirs reveal a spectacle less revolting, but far from edifying, of a comic troupe in its pa.s.sage from one Italian capital to another.[58] Leaving these accessible sources of information regarding the social status of the dramatic profession in Italy untouched, I will close this chapter with some extracts from a well-nigh forgotten book--Garzoni"s _Piazza Universale_. One of the most frequent charges brought against the acting companies was that they dressed their women up in men"s clothes, and sent them about the public squares of cities to attract the rabble. "No sooner have they made their entrance," says Garzoni, "than the drum beats to let all the world know that the players are arrived. The first lady of the troupe, decked out like a man, with a sword in her right hand, goes round, inviting the folk to a comedy or tragedy or pastoral in the precincts of the Pellegrino.[59] The populace, inquisitive by nature and eager for any new thing, hurries to take places. Paying their pennies down, they crowd into a hall, where a temporary stage has been erected, the scenes scrawled with charcoal as chance and want of sense will have it. An orchestra of tongs and bones, like the braying of a.s.ses or the caterwauling of cats in February, performs the overture. Then comes a prologue in the manner of a quack-doctor"s oration to his gulls. The piece opens; you behold a Magnifico, who is not worth the quarter of a farthing; a Zanni, who straddles like a goose; a Gratiano, who squirts his words out from a clyster-pipe; a lover, who acts like a narcotic on the senses of his neighbours; a Spanish captain, with nothing but a couple of musty oaths in his whole repertory; a stupid and foul-mouthed bawd; a pedant, who trips up in Tuscan phrases at each turn; a Burattino, whose whole humour consists in taking off and putting on his greasy cap; a prima donna, who goes yawning, drawling, twaddling through her mumbled part, with eyes well open to the chance of selling her overblown charms in quite another market than the theatre. The show is seasoned with loathsome buffooneries and interludes which ought to send their performers to the galleys." Enlarging on this theme, Garzoni proceeds as follows: "These profane comedians pervert the n.o.ble use of their ancient art by presenting nothing which is not openly disreputable and scandalous. The filth which falls continually from their lips infects themselves and their profession with the foulest infamy. They are less civil than donkeys in their action, no better than pimps and ruffians in their gestures, equal to public prost.i.tutes in their immodesty of speech.
Knavery and lewdness inspire all their motions. In everything they stink of impudicity and villainy. When occasions offer for veiling grossness under a cloak of decorum, they do not take these, but pique themselves on bringing beastliness to sight by barefaced bawdry and undisguised indecency."
One of the degradations to which these comedians willingly submitted was that of playing jackals to quack-doctors on the squares of the Italian cities. Goldoni in his Memoirs[60] speaks of a certain Buonafede Vitali who "maintained at his own cost a troupe of actors. It was their business to collect the money thrown to them in pocket-handkerchiefs, and to return the handkerchiefs filled with pots of ointment and boxes of pills to the purchasers, after which they performed plays in three acts with a certain kind of pomp under the light of wax candles." In order to form a conception of the scenes which were enacted on an Italian piazza crowded with charlatans, mountebanks and players, we must have recourse again to Garzoni. It is almost impossible to understand or to reproduce his language at the present day. Sarcastic sallies, which were doubtless piquant in their time, but to which the key has now been lost, abundance of ephemeral slang and racy innuendo, allusions to forgotten people and obsolete customs, topical jests, the coa.r.s.est Lombard patois seasoned with the salt of euphuistic rhetoric, all combine to render his motley descriptions untranslatable. Garzoni and writers of his cla.s.s still lack the pains which Casaubon bestowed on Athenaeus, and perhaps their matter is not worthy of such vast expenditure of industry. Yet the pith may be seized; and following our garrulous cicerone, we stroll out on the piazza. "In one corner of it you will see our swaggering Fortunato and his boon companion Fritata spinning yarns, and keeping the whole populace agape into the night with stories, songs, improvisations, dialogues; quarrelling, making-up, dying of laughter, coming to blows again, bustling about their stage, settling the dispute by fisticuffs and violent language, and lastly handing round the cap to reap the harvest of the pennies they have earned. In another corner, Burattino sets up his bray of bra.s.s. You would think that the hangman had got hold of you, to hear him yell into your ears. He carries a scavenger"s bag and a common sailor"s cap, and screams until the whole world gathers around him. The people crowd, the groundlings jostle, men of quality press forward to the platform. When the burlesque prologue comes to a conclusion, Burattino"s master puts in his appearance. It is our old friend the Doctor, with his Bolognese jargon, long-winded citations, insipid tomfooleries, and absurd pretensions to omniscience.
The droning of this arrant humbug drives as many of the audience away as the zany"s merry pranks and roguish whiskers and apish tricks have drawn together. Meanwhile the curtains of the booth open, and the Tuscan comes forth with his tumbling girl. He begins some silly story in the Florentine tongue, during which the girl draws her circle and puts herself in position, straddling with arms and legs abroad, flinging her body backwards to pick up a piece of money with her mouth from two crossed swords, and tickling the greasy varlets of the market-place by the exhibition of her lascivious graces. Not far away, you may see the Milanese quack, dressed like a n.o.ble gentleman, velvet cap on head and white Guelf feathers waving to the wind. He is telling his man Gradello some story of his hapless love. The groom cuts indecent jokes and gibes in the background; then swaggers forward, twirls his moustachios, vows to uphold his master"s cause against all rivals, and bristles like an enraged bloodhound; but, on a sudden, feigning to see foemen near, he drops his arms, knocks his knees together, befouls his breeches on the stage, and lets himself be soundly drubbed. When that interlude is over, Gradello acts another part. He is a blind man squalling out a ditty, and thrumming on a puppy in his lap instead of a theorbo. The climax of all this buffoonery is a panegyric of some famous pills, which lasts an hour or two, and leaves the charlatan wrangling over cents and farthings with his swiftly dwindling audience. Toward evening the crowd of quacks and blind musicians and acrobats thicken. Here is Zan della Vigna with his performing monkey; there Catullo and his guitar; in another corner the Mantuan merry-andrew, dressed up like a zany, Zottino singing an ode to the pox, and the pretty Sicilian rope-dancer.
Tamburino spins eggs on a stick; the Neapolitan capers about with br.i.m.m.i.n.g bowls of water on his pate; and Maestro Paolo da Arezzo makes his solemn entry with a waving banner, on which you see St. Paul, holding a huge falchion in one hand, while the rest of the field is painted over with twining hissing serpents. The mountebank clears his throat and relates his fabulous pedigree. St. Paul was his great ancestor, and ever since that accident upon the island of Malta, all the family have possessed miraculous powers over the snaky tribe. Hereupon boxes are opened, and horrid vipers, water-snakes, and adders are drawn forth to the terror of the bystanders. "Do not be afraid," continues Maestro Paolo; "I have delivered your fields and woods from these plagues and their poison." The trembling country-lads creep up and buy a box of powders from the condescending hands of the impostor. After the sight of all those asps and crocodiles, stuffed basilisks, tarantulas, and Indian armadilloes, there is not one of them would venture out into the country lanes without a prophylactic. Meanwhile, Settecervelli has laid his mantle on the pavement, and is making his little b.i.t.c.h go through her tricks, bark at the worst-dressed fellow in the circle, howl at the name of the Grand Turk, dance for joy in honour of her master"s sweetheart, and carry round the cap for pennies in her mouth. The Parmesan is not to be outdone by these performances; he has his nanny-goat, whose antics are at least as sight-worthy as the puppy"s.
The Turkish athlete climbs the campanile, lets his brawny chest be hammered like an anvil, dislodges a stout pillar by the strength of his huge arms and shoulders, and wins a bag of coppers heavy enough to pay his expenses to the holy town of Mecca. The baptized Jew wails in a lamentable tone of voice, _goi, goi, badanai, badanai_, till he has attracted a crowd round him; then he tells the romance of his conversion to the true faith, which leaves a strong impression on our mind that if he has become a sincere Christian, which is more than doubtful, he has certainly not lost the arts of an accomplished cheat. Soon the whole piazza is swarming with folk of this sort; pills and powders, for all the ills that flesh is heir to, are being hawked about; men are eating fire, and swallowing tow, and pulling yards of twine from their throats, and washing their faces in molten lead, and finding cards in the pockets of their unsuspecting neighbours; every conceivable article, which ingenuity can force on the attention of simpletons, is flirted in one"s face, and vaunted with a deafening din by hoa.r.s.e and squeaking salesmen."
Garzoni has carried us somewhat astray from the main subject of this essay. Yet it is not amiss to have gained a full conception of the medium out of which the _Commedia dell" Arte_ emerged, and into which it always tended to relapse, as well as of the various low and ign.o.ble branches of industry with which the players were a.s.sociated.
Part III.
_GOZZI"S DRAMATIC FABLES, OR FIABE TEATRALI; TOGETHER WITH A BRIEF HISTORY OF HIS QUARREL WITH GOLDONI AND CHIARI._
1. Venice in the last century--The Liberals and Conservatives--Invasion of French theories in politics, philosophy, and social manners--Prevalence of French taste in literature--Conservative resistance to this revolutionary state of things.--2. Carlo Goldoni and Carlo Gozzi--Popularity of French sentimental dramas--The Academy of the Granelleschi founded in 1747 by literary Conservatives, to restore a taste for pure Italian style, and to promote the study of the Tuscan cla.s.sics--Carlo Gozzi belongs to this Academy, and becomes one of its chief supporters--Goldoni, and the qualities of his genius--His perception that nature has to be closely followed in the drama.--3.
A sketch of Goldoni"s career, and of the steps whereby he became a professional playwright--Settles at Venice in 1747 as poet to Medebac"s company--Goldoni"s Venetian comedies, comedies in the French manner, melodramas--Goldoni"s rivalry with the Abbe Chiari--Chiari"s bombastic pseudo-Pindaric style--Martellian verses.--4. Indignation of the Granelleschi with both Goldoni and Chiari--Carlo Gozzi confounds them in one common hatred as corruptors of the language--His particular dislike for Goldoni, who had declared war against the _Commedia dell" Arte_, of which Gozzi professed himself the champion--Publication of Gozzi"s satirical poem _La Tartana degli Influssi_ in 1756--Return of Sacchi"s company of impromptu comedians to Venice in that year--Vigorous warfare carried on by the Granelleschi against both Goldoni and Chiari during the next four years--Gozzi first shows his dramatic faculty in a severe Aristophanic satire upon Goldoni, ent.i.tled _Il Teatro Comico_--Chiari makes up his differences with Goldoni, and both playwrights now join forces against their conservative antagonists--Chiari defies the Granelleschi to produce a comedy--Goldoni appeals from their criticisms to the public, who idolise him--Gozzi determines to write a satirical play upon a nursery-tale, which shall prove no less popular than Goldoni"s comedies--The _Amore delle Tre Melarancie_ appears in January 1761--The true character of Carlo Gozzi"s dramatic fables--It is a mistake to suppose that he was actuated by spontaneous Romantic genius--His affinity with the elder Tuscan burlesque poets--His wish to rehabilitate the Comedy of Masks--His conservative and didactic spirit.--5. A translation of Gozzi"s own account of _The Love of the Three Oranges_, important in the history of the _Commedia dell" Arte_, and ill.u.s.trative of the way in which Gozzi handled his fabulous material.--6. Success of _L"Amore delle Tre Melarancie_--Production and dates of the remaining nine dramatic _Fiabe_.--7. Gozzi"s method of writing, and employment of the Four Masks and the Servetta--Interweaving of the comic element with the fairy-tale--Gozzi does not rise to the height of imaginative poetry.--8. His satire, humour, feeling for poetic situations--His conservative philosophy of life.--9. Sources of the _Fiabe_--The artistic superiority of _L"Amore delle Tre Melarancie_.--10.
a.n.a.lysis of _L"Augellino Belverde_.--11. Gozzi"s temporary success--Goldoni retires to Paris, and Chiari to Brescia--Posterity has reversed the verdict of contemporary Venice--Fate of the _Fiabe_--Vicissitudes of Gozzi"s fame in Italy, Germany, France--Paul de Musset"s condensed abstract of the Memoirs, and their distorted picture of Carlo Gozzi.
I.
About the middle of the eighteenth century, Venetian society was divided into two main parties, representing what we should now call Liberal and Conservative principles in politics and thought. The Liberals were imbued with French philosophical ideas, French fashions, and French phrases. The boldest of them, men like Angelo Querini, Carlo Contarini, Giorgio Pisani, openly aimed at remodelling the const.i.tution. They aired new-fangled theories of government, based upon the Social Contract and the Rights of Man, within ear-shot of the terrible Inquisition of State.
Some of them went in consequence to end their days in the dungeons of Cattaro or Verona. These patricians created a body of restless opposition in the Grand Council, agitated the bourgeoisie and proletariate with the expectation of impending changes, and succeeded in effecting some salutary but superficial reforms. Outside the sphere of politics, that spirit of innovation which in France was silently but surely working toward the Revolution, made itself felt among the educated cla.s.ses. The University of Padua, while preserving external forms of mediaevalism in its discipline and teaching, fermented with the physical hypotheses of modern science. The deism of the Encyclopaedists and Voltaire came into vogue. Sentimentalism, thinly cloaking a desire for liberty and license, ruled in morals. Rousseau"s speculations and the humanitarian utopias of the _philosophes_ disturbed the old foundations on which social inst.i.tutions rested. The word _prejudice_ was upon the lips of everybody, to indicate the restraining influences of public order in the state and of ethics in the family. These new ideas permeated society and saturated literature. In the drawing-rooms of great ladies, the clubs and coffee-houses of the gentry, the theatres, concert-rooms, and little houses, where men and women congregated, French books were discussed, French fashions were affected, the French language was engrafted on the old Venetian dialect.
Frivolous b.u.t.terflies of pleasure in that great mart of the world"s amus.e.m.e.nt a.s.sumed fine airs of philosophy and science. Wide-sweeping and far-reaching theories, which called in question the whole groundwork of man"s previous beliefs, were freely ventilated by chatterers, who caught their jargon from flippant manuals of science and popular essays, poured forth by thousands from the press of Paris. Unhealthy novels spread subversive moral doctrines flavoured with a spice of philanthropic sentiment. It was considered _rococo_ to admire the old Italian cla.s.sics. Staunch Liberals paraded their independence of precedent and prejudice by adopting a masquerade style which set the traditions of the language at defiance.
All this indicated a deep and irresistible fermentation in society. The great catastrophe of the eighteenth century was preparing. The stage of Europe was being made ready for that transformation-scene which opened a new era. But few could foresee the inevitable future; few could distinguish what was wholesome progress from the delirious or somnambulistic ravings of the moment. Therefore the Conservatives clung fast to their prejudices and precedents; to established forms of government, the national religion, the traditional customs of civil and domestic life. To superficial observers it appeared that these men held the strongest cards. Yet even rigid Conservatives were bound to admit that there was something ominously rotten in the state of Venice. Her commerce dwindled year by year. Her provinces were ill-administered, and yielded less and less to the exchequer. Social demarcations disappeared in the luxury and corruption which invaded all cla.s.ses. Pauperism a.s.sumed appalling dimensions. In the decay of industries and manufactures thousands of workpeople were thrown famished upon public charity. The ranks of the Barnabotti, or impoverished n.o.bles, who claimed state support, swelled, grew clamorous in the Grand Council, gave signs of insubordination, and contaminated the fountain-head of government by their venality. Meanwhile, the old machinery of the const.i.tution had fallen into the hands of a close oligarchy or commission of a few powerful patricians. These corruptors of the State pulled wires, bought votes, and manipulated the College and the Senate to secure their own ends in the Consiglio Grande. The more far-sighted among the Conservatives felt the necessity of temporising. Influenced by the all-pervasive spirit of the age, but not prepared to join the Liberal forces, they compromised, tampered with inst.i.tutions, and tried by stopping leaks to keep the deep sea out. This was the att.i.tude of men like Marco Foscarini, Alvise Emo, and Paolo Renier.
Apart from politics, the Conservatives stood on firmer ground. There is no doubt that the so-called philosophy of the eighteenth century, both in its principles and in its consequences, offered points of patent weakness to hostile criticism. It was subversive without being reconstructive. Its foundations were sentimental and fanciful rather than logical and reasoned. Hazy in the minds of its projectors, it was almost universally misunderstood by the mult.i.tude which it illuded.
Immorality was encouraged; not that any speculative system is inherently immoral, but that the confused postulates regarding personal liberty, the right of private judgment in matters of conduct, the light of Nature, and the tyranny of custom and prejudice, from which this philosophy started, enabled foolish or ill-minded people to hide their vices and caprices beneath the specious mask of systematic thinking.
Again, the literature which sprang into existence under the predominance of such theories, was in some respects pernicious, and in many points of view ridiculous. The Conservatives had a definite course before them when they determined to vindicate the purity of Italian diction, to maintain the traditions of a glorious past in art, and to expose the foibles of the Liberal school of thinkers and of writers.
II.
This brings me to the proper subject of the present chapter, which is the conflict of Liberalism with Conservatism in the theatre at Venice.
The two protagonists are Carlo Goldoni and Carlo Gozzi, both Venetians, and both of nearly the same age. Goldoni was born in 1707, Gozzi in 1720. Gozzi entered the lists against Goldoni in 1756, when the latter had been working for the Venetian stage since 1748, and when he had already turned the heads of the public by his brilliant dramatic novelties.
The old _Commedia dell" Arte_, as we have seen, had sunk into decrepitude. It was not merely that the type itself was exhausted, though subsequent circ.u.mstances proved this to be the case. What was more important is, that the popular taste veered round against it. Under the prevailing dominance of French fashions, a style of drama, hitherto unknown to the Italians, came into vogue. The so-called _Comedie Larmoyante_, or pathetic comedy (of which Nivelle de la Chaussee, a now-forgotten archimage of middle-cla.s.s sentimentalities and sensibilities, is the reputed inventor), caught the ear of Europe. The Pere la Chaussee, to adopt an epigram of Piron"s, preached every evening from his pulpit in a score of theatres through Europe. The t.i.tles of his most famous plays, _Melanide_, _La Gouvernante_, _Prejuge a la Mode_, _L"ecole des Meres_, remind us of the revolution in the drama which converted the public stage from a place of amus.e.m.e.nt into a platform for the dissemination of political or social sentiments. Saurin"s _Beverley_, Mercier"s _Deserteur_ and _L"Indigent_, De Falbaire"s _Honnete Criminel_, Voltaire"s _ecossaise_, Diderot"s _Pere de Famille_, carried on La Chaussee"s tradition. Regarding their popularity at Venice, enough is related in the verbose and bilious diatribes prefixed by Gozzi to his dramatic works. Among plays of this description, an adaptation of our _George Barnwell_--much in the style of Thackeray"s parody upon Lord Lytton"s novels--attracted great attention by the pathos with which a nephew murdering his uncle from the highest motives was exalted to the rank of hero. The Conservatives not unjustly protested against the contamination of public morals by the false sentiment of these tearful dramas. The perversion of taste by low domestic arguments and clumsy realism, which had nothing real but its vulgarity, seemed to them no less a sin.
They were particularly sensitive, moreover, upon the point of language, diction, style. Translations and adaptations of French plays confirmed the growing carelessness of authors. Gallicisms were so fashionable that a stage-hack allowed himself all license in that direction. The jargon of science introduced unheard-of phrases, which would have made the fathers of the Della-Cruscan Academy shudder in their tombs. Moreover, the prevalent affectation of independence and the fashionable revolt against prejudice led ignorant scribblers to plume themselves upon their solecisms and plebeian lapses into dialect.
With the main object, therefore, of maintaining a standard of propriety in style, and with the secondary object of opposing theatrical innovations, the Venetian Conservatives (in literature) founded their Academy de"Granelleschi. It came into existence about 1747; and I need not enlarge upon its const.i.tution, except to say that it was an academy of the good old Tory type, like the _Gelati_, _Sonnacchiosi_, _Storditi_, and so many scores of literary clubs with absurd names and trivial customs, whose members wasted their time over pedantic studies, and occasionally issued a piece of solid work among their otherwise ephemeral transactions. A sufficient account of this Academy is given in Gozzi"s Memoirs. Its importance at the present moment is that out of this little camp Carlo Gozzi marched like David to attack the Goliath of Philistinism, Carlo Goldoni.
It is difficult to speak adequately and fairly of Goldoni. In making this man, Nature cast her glove down in the face of criticism, and defied a.n.a.lysis. He possessed indubitable genius; what is more, his genius obeyed generous enthusiasms, unselfish aims, pure-hearted sentiments. He perceived instinctively and correctly that a new age was dawning for the literature of Europe. He devoted his life to creating a comic drama adequate to the intellectual dignity of his nation. Goldoni was a good man, a modest man, a man complete in all the social virtues.
But he was not a great man. And his genius, that innovatory force of his, that infinite adaptability, that inexhaustible scenic faculty which he possessed, that intuition into the necessity of change, was, after all, a genius of thin and threadbare quality. Can we point to a single masterpiece produced by Goldoni? After allowing the sediment to settle down of his prolific works and various experiments, can we select any one play which bears the stamp of the supreme master? I think not. I shrink from placing Goldoni, as a peer, in the company of Shakespeare, Moliere, Calderon, and Schiller. But, while saying this, it is impossible to deny his actual achievement. It is impossible not to recognise the honest motives which prompted him to copy Nature"s book.
That was his great discovery; and that keeps the memory of Goldoni ever green among us. He saw that Nature had to be loved and studied and followed by the artist. He discerned this luminous point in a period befogged by prejudice, tradition, pedantry, conventionality, subservience to antiquated humours and insurgent eccentricities. It was not Goldoni"s fault that birth and fortune denied him those higher capacities and favourable openings which might have made his art-work monumental. His genial, shifty, pliable, and yet persistent personality was forced to humour obstacles and to fawn on circ.u.mstance. As an inevitable consequence, his productions are mediocre and unsatisfactory.
Mediocrity of talent and of character is stamped upon his plays, and self-revealed in his good-humoured Memoirs. But what confounds criticism is that this mediocrity in the man and his equipment was combined with undeniable originality. His genius, though not of the purest water, was genuine. He had a correct perception of the requirements of his age, a clear intuition into the practical possibilities of the dramatic art he handled, and a vivid consciousness of the ground-principle that no artist can afford to lose sight of reality in practice. What would Goldoni not have been, we say, after summing up the survey of his qualities, had he been gifted with a finer fibre, a wider range of knowledge, a deeper philosophy, a more robust temper, a poetic talent equal to the task of externalising his just perceptions in forms of meditated art? As it is, he presents the curious spectacle of a man born to inaugurate a new epoch, but without the faculty to impose his own ideal successfully upon his contemporaries.
The general public acclaimed him, and understood his aims. But the aristocrats of literature were able to inflict telling blows in their fight against him. We, who stand aloof, when all the dust of that conflict has subsided, see that Goldoni really won the day. It is only to be regretted that a champion of such small dimensions, soft heart, and feeble sinews, was commissioned to effect the revolution.
III.