Early plays from the Italian

University Of Toronto - Crrs Library For Renaissance Studies, R. Warwick (Richard Warwick) Bond

Informations

• Publié par: enkou
• Nombre de lectures: 23
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 23 Mo

Extrait

7 CENTRE for REFORMATION and RENAISSANCE STUDIES VICTORIA M UNIVERSITY jf EARLY PLAYS FROM THE ITALIAN EDITED, WITH ESSAY, INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES BY R. WARWICK BOND M.A. EDITOR OF THE OXFORD LYLY AND OTHER WORKS OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS MDCCCCXI HENRY FKOWDE, M.A. PUDLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORK TORONTO AND MELBOURNE PREFACE WHAT I have endeavoured to do in this little book is something wider than an edition of three plays, and closer than can well be done in a literary history. I started with the wish to show how ancient Greek and Roman Comedy finds representation in our own, not only in subject and spirit, but in matters of form and technique; and to show this not only by statement and discussion, but by giving therewith actual plays to which the reader might instantly turn for verification of indicated parallelism or imitation. I wished to bring under the purely English reader's notice some facts about ancient comedy for its own sake, facts usually too cursorily dismissed in histories of the modern drama to leave a very distinct impression on the mind ; and at the same time I wished to show the great impor- tance of Italian Renaissance Comedy in handing on the classical form and substance to modern Europe, while introducing considerable modifications of it. The general influence of Italy has been stated again and again. Critic after critic has raked together the allusions to Italian fashions, Italian books, Italian acting, found in English treatises of the first twenty or thirty years of Elizabeth, or in English plays of the latter half of her reign. But the illustration offered has been inade- quate to ensure the due realization of the Latin or Italian connexion ; and that largely because English exemplars of classical dramatic form were so few and so inaccessible. Until quite recently Roister Doister was the only early a 2 iv PREFACE Latinized play that the ordinary student had a chance of making his own ; and the Latin Comedy relations even of that piece were inadequately stated, the Ennnc/nis being overlooked. Jack Juggler was, and remains, buried in the fifteen volumes of Hazlitt's Dodsley. Of Supposes, so important for Latin and Italian Comedy alike, the only modern reprints were in large collections, or in the same editor's expensive and limited edition of Gascoigne's collected Works. I well remember how long it was before I had any opportunity of reading the actual text for myself; and my case must have been that of countless others. The Bttggbears and Afisogoitus, admirable examples of Italian and Latin influence, and of the way these combined with the native spirit, were never printed before 1897 and 1X98, and then in Ger- many. And it may well be questioned whether the failure to emphasize the Latin connexions of our drama has not been due to inadequate knowledge of Latin Comedy itself. Terence has fared better than Plautus, in modern as in mediaeval days : he has always seemed more possible as an educational subject, whether on philological or moral grounds. With the twenty surviving plays of his more vigorous and original predecessor it is permissible to doubt the existence among us of any very full acquain- tance, even in the case of professed scholars. Plautus, abounding in good things, is very seldom quoted; and outside histories of Roman literature, of the existence of which the average student of English is quite unconscious, there is but little to be found about his work and influ- ence. Admirable service to Plautine literary study was done by the Spdtere Bearbeitungen plautinischer Lust- spiele of Dr. Karl von Reinhardstottner (Leipzig, 1886): but for the English reader there was nothing of similar PREFACE v kind before Professor M. VV. Wallace's capital Introduc- tion to his edition of The Birtlie of Hercules published at Chicago, 1903, which discussed his influence on our sixteenth-century drama, whether direct, or filtered through Germany or Italy. His subject is very similar to that of the present book ; though our lines are different, approximating most nearly, perhaps, on the Education- drama, where we had to sketch the same plays. But the particularity of Professor Wallace's title will probably limit the merited diffusion of his essay; while of actual Italian work he says but little, though he enumerates, after Messrs. Churchill and Keller (Shakespeare-Jakrbuc/i, xxxiv), some prominent Latin university-plays of the last decade of the century, which show Latin influence strained through Italian work. Of Italian Comedy, it is safe to say, our ignorance is greater than of Roman. The two volumes dealing with Italian Literature in Symonds' Renaissance in Italy con- stituted the sole source in England whence anything could be gleaned until Dr. Garnett's brief and general chapter on the subject in his Italian Literature of 1898. Mr. Lewis Einstein in his Italian Renaissance in England (Columbia University Press, New York, 1902, pp. 365-7) dismisses Italian drama as almost without direct influence on ours ; while admitting that it assisted the transition from morality to comedy, that dumb shows and the play within the play were of Italian origin, that Supposes began the refinement of dialogue, and that Italian influence ' contributed to bring to life the ancient forms of tragedy and teach the canons of Aristotle as interpreted in Italy'. This is, indeed, the general attitude; adequately represented before by Dr. Ward (English Dramatic Literature, ch. \\passim), and as much, no doubt, as should be expected in a work of scope so large as his. Yet if Italian drama did all vi PREFACE this, it surely demands our closer consideration. Gosson assures us that, not only novclle, but Italian ' comedies' were ransacked to furnish our playhouses; we have the undoubted fact of Italian actors travelling in France, Spain, Germany, and England in the latter half of the century; and John Wolfe thought it worth while to pub- lish four of Aretino's comedies (all except // Filosofo] in Italian in London, 15^8. His attention and that of Petruccio Ubaldini, perhaps his partner, would have been better devoted to the dramatic output of Ariosto, Cecchi, or Grazzini; but what they neglected has remained in neglect. There is no modern English edition, still less translation, of any Renaissance comic playwright-nothing beyond the elegant verse-rendering of Tasso's pastoral by Leigh Hunt (1820), which had predecessors and has one recent successor, and T. L. Peacock's abbreviated prose-version of Gl Ingannati in 1862: while the only critical work which comes to really close quarters with any branch of Italian drama is Dr. W. VV. Greg's recent book on Pastoral, 1906. While believing as firmly as any one in the substantial originality of our English drama, I have long felt that we were doing something less than justice to Italian precedence; that a comedy so enormously prolific as theirs must needs be more than prurience and barren husks and was worth attention for its own sake -, and that until that attention was given something of the truth about our own would still remain hidden. In Germany the work of Klein, Gaspary, and Creizenach has done full justice to the commedia entdita: I hope English critics will be patient of an attempt to bring the student a little nearer to it, and to that ancient comedy on which it is based. Only now at the last moment have I met with Professor G. Saintsbury s The Earlier Renaissance (1901) in the