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ad omnia autem quæ sunt utilia conversationi humana deputari possunt aliqua officia licita: et ideò etiam officium histrionum quod ordinatur ad solatium hominibus exhibendum, non est secundum se illicitum, nec sunt histriones in statu peccati, dummodo moderatè ludo utantur; id est, non utendo aliquibus illicitis verbis vel factis, ad ludum, et non adhibendo ludum negotiis et temporibus indebitis, unde illi qui moderate eis subveniunt, non peccant, sed juste faciunt mercedem ministerii eorum eis tribuendo. Et licet D. August. super. Joan. dicit quod donare res suas histrionibus vitium est immane, hoc intelligi debet de illis qui dant histrionibus qui in ludo utuntur illicitis, vel de illis qui superflue sua in tales consumunt, non de illis histrionibus qui moderate ludo utuntur."

Saint Anthony gives his sanction to Saint Thomas on this point: "Histrionalis ars, quia deservit humanæ recreationi, quæ necessaria est vitæ hominis secundum D. Thomam, de sa non est illicita, et de illa arte vivere non est prohibitum."1 (S. Antonius in 3 part. suæ Summæ, tit. iii., cap. 4.) Saint Anthony, indeed, adds the reasonable restriction that no clergyman should play Harlequin, and that Punch should not exhibit in the church.

Under this venerable authority, these Mimi went on and flourished. Other characters enlarged their little Drama. The personages appeared in masks. "Each of these,” says Mr Walker, "was originally

1 The art of stage-playing, according to Saint Thomas, is not in itself unlawful, nor is it forbidden to live thereby, seeing that it tends to human recreation, which is necessary to human life.

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intended as a kind of characteristic representation of some particular Italian district or town. Thus Pantalone was a Venetian merchant; Dottore, a Bolognese physician; Spaviento, a Neapolitan braggadocio; Pullicinella, a wag of Apulia ; Giangurgolo and Coviello, two clowns of Calabria; Gelsomino, a Roman beau; Beltrame, a Milanese simpleton; Brighella, a Ferrarese pimp; and Arlecchino, a blundering servant of Bergamo. Each of these personages was clad in a peculiar dress each had his peculiar mask; and each spoke the dialect of the place he represented. Besides these, and a few other such personages, of which at least four were introduced in each play, there were the Amorosos or Innamoratos; that is, some men and women who acted serious parts, with Smeraldina, Colombina, Spilletta, and other females, who played the parts of servettas or waiting-maids. All these spoke Tuscan or Roman, and wore no masks." (Essay on the Revival of the Drama in Italy, p. 249.)

The pieces acted by this class of actors were called Commedia dell' arte, and were congenial to the taste of the Italians, with whom gesticulation and buffoonery are natural attributes. Their Drama was of the most simple kind. Each of the actors was already possessed of his dramatic character, which was as inalienable as his dress, was master of the dialect he was to use, and had his imagination and memory stored with all the characteristic jests, or lazzi as they were termed, peculiar to the personage he represented. All that the author had to do was to invent the skeleton of a plot, which

should bring his characters into dramatic situation with respect to each other. The dialogue suited to the occasion was invented by the players, just as ours invest their parts with the proper gestures and actions. This skeleton had the name of scenario, and the precise action as well as the dialogue was filled up by the performers, either impromptu, or in consequence of previous arrangement and premeditation. This species of comedy was extremely popular, especially among the lower class of spectators. It was often adopted as an amusement in good society, and by men of genius; and Flamineo de la Scala has left about fifty such scenarios adapted for representation. The fashion even found its way into England, and probably the part of Master Punch, who first appeared in the character of the Vice of the English morality, was trusted to the improvisatory talents of the actor. Mr D'Israeli, a curious as well as elegant investigator of ancient literature, has shown, that at least one scheme of a Commedia dell' arte has been preserved to us. It is published in the Variorum edition of Shakspeare, but remains unexplained by the commentators. Such comedies, it is evident, could require no higher merit in the composer than the imagining and sketching a few comic situations; the dialogue and diction was all intrusted to the players.

The Italians, however, became early possessed of a regular comedy, which engrossed the admiration of the more cultivated classes of society. Bibbiena's comedy, entitled La Calandra, is composed in imitation of the Dramas of Terence and Plautus. It was first acted in 1490. La Calandra is remark

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able not only for being the first Italian comedy but also for the perfection of scenic decoration with which it was accompanied in the representation. It was followed by the productions of Ariosto and Trissino, and other authors in the same line. But appears from the efforts used to support this style of Drama, that it did not take kindly root in the soil, and lacked that popularity which alone can nurse it freely. Various societies were formed under the whimsical titles of Gli Intronati, Gli Insensati, and so forth, for the express purpose of bringing forward the regular Drama; exertions which would certainly have been unnecessary, had the legitimate stage received that support and encouragement which arises from general popularity.

Goldoni, in a later age, at once indulged his own fanciful genius and his natural indolence, by renouncing the classical rules, and endeavouring to throw into the old and native Italian Mascherata the variety and attributes of the proper comedy. He adopted Harlequin and the rest of his merry troop in the characters which they held, and endeavoured to enlist them in the more regular service of the Drama; just as free corps and partisans are sometimes new-modelled into battalions of the line. This ingenious and lively writer retained all the license of the Commedia dell' arte, and all the immunities which it claimed from regular and classical rules; but instead of trusting to the extempore jests and grotesque wit of the persons whom he introduced, he engaged them in dialogues, as well as plots, of his own invention, which often display much humour and even pathos. It required, how

ever, the richness of a fancy like Goldoni's to extract novelty and interest from a dramatic system in which so many of the actors held a fixed and prescriptive character, hardly admitting of being varied. Accordingly, we do not find that the Italian stage is at present in a more flourishing condition than that of other modern nations.

The revival of the regular Drama in France was attended with important consequences, owing to the nature of her government, the general use of her language throughout Europe, and the influence which, from her situation, she must necessarily hold over other nations. It is the boast of Paris that the regular classical Drama, banished from every other stage, found a safe and honourable refuge on her own. Yet France has reluctantly confessed

that she also had her hour of barbarism. Her earlier Drama was borrowed, like that of other countries, from Spain, who, during the whole of the sixteenth and great part of the seventeenth century, held such a formidable predominance in the European republic. While the classical stage was reviving in Italy, and the historical and romantic Drama was flourishing in Spain, France was torn to pieces by civil discord. The first French tragedy composed upon a regular plan was that of Mairet, imitated from the Sophonisba of Trissino; and Riccoboni boasts with justice, that whoever shall compare the Italian tragedy of the sixteenth century with that of the French of the same period, will find the latter extravagant and irregular, and

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