giovan battista andreini as a theatrical innovator

Giovan Battista Andreini as a Theatrical InnovatorAuthor(s): Winifred SmithSource: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Jan., 1922), pp. 31-41Published by: Modern Humanities Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3714328 .

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GIOVAN BATTISTA ANDREINI AS A THEATRICAL INNOVATOR.

GIOVAN BATTISTA ANDREINI is slightly known to English students

because a few eighteenth-century critics, beginning with Voltaire, de- cided that his mystery play, L'Adamo, must have been the inspiring origin of Milton's Paradise Lost'. That theory is now regarded as an

interesting supposition merely, and Andreini is ignored far more than he should be by theatrical historians. The importance of this once famous Capocomico and writer of tragedies, comedies, histories, pastorals, lies not so much in his creative power as a writer, for that was not re- markable, but in his unwearied efforts to improve stage production, efforts that influenced the French theatre of the seventeenth century quite as much as the Italian and that left a tradition carried over into

England in 1660. Many of the devices which Pepys remarks in the

plays he saw, the echo song, the machines, the changes of background, all new and wonderful in the London theatre of his day, were a direct inheritance from the court spectacles that Andreini and his troupe, the Fedeli, invented and elaborated for their patrons, the ducal houses of Mantua and Modena and the royal house of France.

Early in the seventeenth century when Andreini began his inde-

pendent work for the theatre, after a rigorous training under his parents, the notable actors, Francesco and Isabella Andreini, there was the

greatest irregularity in the manner of producing plays, although, con-

tradictorily enough, there was much narrowness of critical dogma as to the way they should be produced. It was believed that scenic magnificence was only appropriate to pastoral dramas or to intermedj; tragedies and comedies were given in a less spectacular fashion and usually with a fixed stage arrangement which included painted scenery but not

changes of scene. Andreini, working with a group of talented actors and under rich and enlightened patrons, brought into the regular drama much of the magnificence inherited from the Sacre Rappresentazioni and the intermedj, published his plays with full stage directions which allowed their performance by companies other than his own, recognized and encouraged the melodrama, paid close attention to costume and

1 Cf. E. Allodoli's edition of L'Adamo, Lanciano, Carrabba, 1913, for a summary of the history of this question and for a modern judgment of it.



32 Giovan Battista Andreini as a Theatrical Innovator

properties in their relation to the plays he gave, in short contributed in

every way toward what his age and the next regarded as realism and

beauty in the drama. He had of course a rich background to work from. Since 1491, when

Leonardo da Vinci invented the apparatus for plays given before the Sforza in Milanl, and 1519 when Raphael painted the setting for Ariosto's

Suppositi given before Leo X in Rome2, great artists and princes had devoted their serious attention to the stage. The principle of realism had been partly recognized; Raphael, in the performance of the Sup- positi just alluded to, made his background to represent Ferrara, the scene of the comedy, and other artists followed his example, reproducing well-known aspects of certain Italian cities such as were required by the

plays they set3. Such realism was however confined to comedies, with their 'imitation' of the everyday life of men. Tragedies, often closely following classical originals, had a more general and symbolic setting, as magnificent as the producer could afford, with palaces and towers built up on the stage sometimes to the-number of ten, and with particular attention to the lighting, which was early recognized to have a definite relation to the mood of the spectator and to reflect the feeling of the tragedy4. For pastorals much license of fancy was allowed, with

machinery moved about against an immovable background and with

lights, representing the heavenly bodies, turning in the ceiling. In 1598 at Ferrara Angelo Ingegneri published his interesting little

essay on dramatic poetry, Della poesia rappresentativa, and summed up toward the end of it his theories as to how plays should be presented in order to make them as true to life as possible. The pages on 'l'apparato' (pp. 62 ff.) contain such statements as:

The stage ought to resemble as closely as may be the place in which the story of the play is laid. For example if the tragedy takes place in Rome, the Campidoglio should be shown with the chief palace, and the principal temples and other buildings. If the play is a comedy, the Pantheon should appear with the column of Antony or of Trajan, and the Tiber and some other points that would cause the city to be recognized.... But if a pastoral is to be played, since the whole thing is rustic, any setting will serve...so that it contain woods, mountains, valleys, rivers, fountains, temples, huts and, especially, distant backgrounds....

1 W. E. Flechsig, Die Dekorationen der modernen BiLhnen in Italien, Dresden, 1894, p. 33, and Luzio-Renier, Delle relazioni di Isabella d'Este Gonzaga con Ludovico e Beatrice Sforza, in Archivio storico lombardo, 1890, p. 941.

2 A. Ademollo, Alessandro VI, Giulio II e Leone X nel Carnevale di Roma, Firenze, 1886, pp. 88-93. Also Flechsig, op. cit., pp. 65 ff.

8 For one example among several that might be given, cf. the description of the 'bellissima scenetta, la qual era finta Venezia,' in Solerti-Lanza, II teatro ferrarese nella seconda meta del secolo XVI, in Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, 1891, p. 172, n. 1.

4 Cf. quotation from L. de' Sommi, the actor-manager at the Mantuan Court, 1567 ff., in A. D'Ancona, Origini del teatro italiano, Torino, 1891, ii, pp. 417ff., and F. Neri, La tragedia italiana nel cinquecento, Firenze, 1904, p. 172.



WINIFRED SMITH

Ingegneri agrees in the main with de' Sommi in his emphasis on

magnificence in the presentation of plays and still more on the importance of natural costumes and manners in actors. He insists again and

again that the aim of dramatic art is the imitation of life, suggesting that the time has come to eliminate the ghost from tragedy,' for I have never seen a ghost on the stage that was not ridiculous,' remarking that the chorus often led the way to absurdities, as when it was brought in

revering a king who had just been driven from his throne and who

ought therefore to be shown as without a follower (p. 23), and discussing ways of producing naturalness of effect, such as the accounting logically for exits and entrances and the making occasions for choral odes and other music in the introduction of festivals, weddings, dances and other diversions (p. 17). Above all he urges in true classic spirit that tone should be preserved in dramatic art, as one way of bringing the spectator into touch with the story presented.

This essay by Ingegneri Andreini must surely have known, since he was in 1598 an eager young student of drama and an actor in his

parents' troupe, the Gelosi, a company frequently engaged to play at Ferrara for the Don Cesare d'Este to whom the little book was dedicated. His own work reflects many of Ingegneri's ideas, though he never men- tions this particular authority in any of his numerous acknowledgments of indebtedness to his predecessors in the prefaces to his published works, where he tells how he learned from them and how he ventured to improve upon their practices. His first play, a tragedy, La Florinda, printed in Milan, 1606, and written for his wife, whose stage name was Florinda, is illustrated with a frontispiece showing how its author

arranged his stage to represent the 'forest of Scotland,' where he set his play. In the midst is a large castle, not unlike the central structure on the Elizabethan stage, with a tower over it, a balcony and numerous windows as well as two doors for its two stories. At one side of the rather large stage is a small pseudo-classical circular temple, with

pillars around it, on the other is a rustic hut with a waterfall behind it and a sunburst in the sky overhead; two paths bordered with trees lead to the temple and the hut and in the centre, before the castle, stands a group of four hunters, with a horse, a dog and three long lances. Obviously this set is of the composite kind used in the tragedies of the Cinquecento, demanding no change of scene, since all the three

principal places mentioned in the text are on the stage at the same time. It is the point of departure for Andreini's theatrical experiments and shows how conventionally he began his career as actor-manager.

His next plays, L'Adamo, Milan, 1614, and La Maddalena, Venice,

33

M. L. R. XVII. 3




1616, are almost as traditional in some respects as the tedious tragedy of La Florinda, though these two derive from the Sacre Rappresenta- zioni rather than from the classical imitations of learned playwrights in the sixteenth century. Yet both these plays show advance in knowledge of the stage and a great deal of daring in the use of scenic magnificence. All that their author had learned in years of experience with courtly spectacles he uses here, adding to his knowledge his own inventions. He says in the preface to La Feritnda, the comedy he printed in Paris, 1622, 'for my happy fortune I saw in Florence and in Mantua many dramatic and musical works; I saw O feo, Arianna, Silla, Dafne, Cerere and Psiche, wonderful things, all of them,' and goes on to speak enthusi-

astically of the 'angelic' music which helped to give them charm.

Accordingly he broqght into his mystery plays as much music as he could arrange for, giving to L'Adamo a chorus of Cherubim and Sera- fim and an answering chorus of 'spiriti igni, aerei, acquatici ed in-

fernali,' with a ballet of the Seven Deadly Sins and other allegorical characters, and to La Maddalena a chorus of many angels, revealed when the 'Gloria' opens ' to the sound of many trumpets'.'

Perhaps Andreini was conscious that it would take a good deal of

spectacular appeal to cover the tedium of his long poetic dialogues and the amount of moralizing that he managed to insert in the speeches of his principal characters; certainly it is hard for a modern reader to

imagine these two long religious plays even as operas, unless he visua- lizes rather vividly the full stage directions the author supplies. The Maddalena is undoubtedly the more beautiful of the two; it opens with a description of the 'apparato,' which 'must be all sea and rocks; and in the distance on the sea a small bark, before the Prologue appears, with some fish frisking about; but after this the fish must never appear except when the symphony plays, and even then rarely. The sky should be all starry and in the midst of it the Moon, full; the Divine Grace

(Favor) will appear as Prologue, on a car exceedingly bright, all adorned with stars and supported with clouds of both gold and silver, and the clouds shall be borne by two angels'; at the disappearance of the Pro-

logue, 'little by little the stars shall vanish and from the sea shall rise the dawn and after the dawn the sun, and as the Prologue has ended to the sound of melodious music, the setting, which was all maritime, shall

represent in part lofty palaces, in the midst of them the residence of Maddalena, the proudest possible.'

1 Andreini followed Ingegneri's advice in the use of much music in his plays; he also made occasions for his songs and choruses, just as Ingegneri suggested, and varied the style of them, introducing the echo refrain, for instance, in his pastorals, as his father had done in his pastoral, L'Alterezza di Narciso, Venezia, 1611.



WINIFRED SMITH

It is hardly an exaggeration to call La Maddalena, as does Luigi Rasi,'il pih bel pasticcio comico-drammatico-tragico-melodrammatico- mimo-danzante che sia mai stato visto sulla scena1,' though perhaps it is hard to agree with him that it is 'rich in original beauties.' The text

provides every opportunity for musicians, as Monteverdi and Salomone De Rossi discovered when they set it to music in 1618, and it is equally appealing to the stage carpenter and costumer. The thirty speaking characters outside the chorus are dressed with an eye to their parts in the fable, from the Magdalene herself, with her changes from worldly splendour to a penitential garb of hair shirt, rope girdle and sandals, 'with a skull in her'hand,' to the Divine Grace in glory and the Arch- angel Michael in full shining armour.

L'Adamo is less free in its treatment of its theme than is La Mad- dalena. It contains some pageant-like features evidently imitated from the allegorical intermedj of Andreini's youth, such as the traditional

procession of Pride (Vanagloria) drawn on her chariot by a giant, and the beautiful Serpent with the head, breast and arms of a man; mixed with these characters from religious history are several of classical in-

spiration, equally picturesque on the stage, such as Vulcan with his forge, constructing Hell, and infernal scenes that owe as much to Virgil as to the Biblical source of the story.

In the preface to L'Adamo (first edition, Milan, 1613)-a letter 'to the benign Reader'-the poet gives expression to the artistic conscience which was constantly alive in him and which drove him on from one

experiment to another. Here he tells his difficulties with dramatic diction.

The dispute of Eve with the Serpent before she ate the apple was difficult.... Equally difficult was the debate of Eve with Adam, persuading him to eat (though she had then the gift of all knowledge). And this language was most difficult for my little strength, because the composition of it had to be naked of all the poetic ornaments so dear to the Muses and deprived of all reference to the things created in the years since then, for in the time of the first man there was nothing made. For instance I had to omit mentioning, when Adam spoke or when anyone talked with him, bows, arrows, pennants, urns, knives, swords, lances, trumpets, drums, trophies, ensigns, harangues, hammers, torches, bellows, funeral pyres, theatres, treasuries and similar things...all introduced on account of original sin.... Moreover it was difficult to know in what way to make Adam speak, because so far as his knowledge was concerned he merited long, grand, full, sustained verses, but considering him as a shepherd and an inhabitant of the forest, he ought to be simple and sweet in his language; so I did the best I could with full verses, some broken and some com- pleted. I have reason to think that the kindness of God, regarding my good inten- tions rather than my defects,...moving my- hand, helped me to finish my work.

This nervous care for diction Andreini reveals again and again in the confidences to his patrons or to his 'benign readers' which preface

1 L. Rasi, I comici italiani, Firenze, 1897, i, p. 122.

3-2

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his various plays. He was among the first playwrights to meditate the Horatian laws for character decorum and to interpret them- more liberally than the French academicians later in the century. He believed in the use of dialect as a method of characterization as well as for humorous appeal; in the description of 'l'apparato' prefixed to Lelio bandito, Milano, 1620, he says he hopes no one will object to the use of various

languages and dialects in this play, for he has followed the rule of making each person speak 'as he would do in real life.' In La Ferinda, Paris, 1622, it is perhaps hardly realistic to bring on to the stage at once Frenchmen, Germans, Italians speaking the Venetian, Lombard, Genovese and Neapolitan dialects, a pedant using bad Latin, and a stutterer-here Giovan Battista was following the practice of the actors of the improvised plays who used dialect for comic effect-but he pre- serves the characteristics of each kind of speech with rather more care than would some of his contemporaries; that is, for all the personages except the German, in whose language no amount of good will can find much likeness to the speech of the Teutonsl.

Costume, like speech, Andreini regarded as a means of characterization. He criticizes, in the preface to La Centaura, Paris, 1622, the practice of some of his contemporaries who write plays about twins, 'a notable and improbable error,' namely the dressing of these twins differently. 'They should be dressed alike,' says Andreini, since in life no two faces are alike, and their being twins must be emphasized in such a way that the audience will understand their relationship, but 'an invention must account for this likeness of costume: such as that used by my father and me in I due Leli (a play on which Giovan Battista and his father, Francesco, collaborated); our twins had both heard of their father's death and so came on the stage dressed alike in black of the fashion of that city where the scene was laid.' In La Cen- taura he gives detailed directions for costumes, taking particular care that the two mad characters shall be dressed as wildly and as ridicu- lously as possible, that the nymphs shall present a 'bizarre' appearance and that the family of four Centaurs, parents and two children, who give their names to the play, shall impress the eye with their strange- ness. His symbolic characters in the same play, and in others where such figures appear, are given the usual conventional properties, such as a bellows and rope for Adulation, a bouquet of flowers with a serpent in the middle of it for Deceit, an enveloping black and white mantle for Falsehood, etc. The medieval influence is strong here, as will be seen

'1 A real Babel,' says Bevilacqua of this comedy; cf. E. Bevilacqua, Giambattista Andreini e la compagnia dei Fedeli, in Gior. stor. della lett. ital., 1895, p. 114.



WINIFRED SMITH

from the description of Divine Justice in the same play, La Centaura: 'A Woman of singular beauty, dressed in gold, with a crown of gold on her head, above it a dove in a halo of light, her hair spread on her shoulders, in her right hand a naked sword, in her left the scales.'

Realism, the confessed aim of Andreini's art, it will be seen is here

quite subordinated to scenic appeal and that is aided wherever possible by the use of elaborate symbolic figures. In fact he admits in his most

important prefatory letter, that to La Centaura, that he could easily have done without allegorical figures such as Deceit, Adulation and their sisters, because the fable 'is knit and unravelled without disguises or miracles,' but that for the adorning of the stage, 'to which one must

pay great attention,' and for 'tragic pomp,' which is equally important, he introduced such ornaments as well as his unusual and splendid stage machinery.

It is to be feared that his wish to strike the eye of his spectators led the poet to forget himself in the stage carpenter at times. Certainly he devotes a great deal of careful attention to the magnificent bed on which his sick king is carried in (La Centaura) and justifies the use of it on the grounds of royal magnificence and of the improbability that an invalid monarch would stagger into the street to die. In La Turca, Venice, 1622, he uses 'warlike maritime accidents,' to great effect; in Leio bandito, Milan, 1620, he describes an 'apparato' which represents 'cavernous and woody mountains; at the right a castle, situated high and distant, from which one can descend into the middle of the stage; at the left a cottage on a hill, from which...one can descend by a stair-

way which is made to look like living rock.' In the middle is a spacious cavern under which is a chest, covered with 'a most beautiful carpet,' the bed of Lelio, the bandit. The scene was supposed to be the Abruzzi

mountains, but there are no directions for peasant costumes. The scene for La Turca was of a different sort and included a 'painted

background' (prospettiva) with a sea in the distance and around it 'many high mountains, with huts of painted cardboard on them together with certain castles, showing that one could walk in these mountains and descend to the stage from them'; and in the last of the houses 'there must be a window large enough to permit a woman to flee from it; and there must be two towers...one on the one side of three houses and the other on the other side of the other three.'

Such painted scenery, it will be seen, Andreini used in his comedies, combining with the traditional houses of the Italian comic stage, a

landscape or seascape background to give some of the beauty and

variety which similar sets contributed to the pastoral drama of his day.

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He tells how he came to venture upon his innovation, in the preface to La FerindajParis, 1622; he realized, he says, how 'poor and bare' his little comedy looked on the stage, lacking the decorations to which his audiences were accustomed in the gorgeous allegorical and pastoral entertainments to which they were attached; 'it lost much in the way of variety of scenes, since into a comedy no god comes nor is there any reason for violent and rapid changes.' Accordingly he set his story in Venice, that picturesque city, half land, half water, and tried to bring into his commedietta some of the charm of those other spectacular pieces, by having an allegorical prologue recited by Thalia standing on a shell in the midst of a sea, by introducing a ballet of fishermen and by giving lifelikeness to his Venetian scene through the use of gondolas and

gondoliers incidentally. In La Turca he repeated the Venetian theme, but bettered his own invention by adding to his maritime scenery Turkish costumes for his chief characters, an enslaved brother and sister, and by concluding the comedy with a 'trionfo,' a 'chariot, ornamented with

many Turkish arms and banners with various lights painted on them.' 'Commedia boschereccia et marittima' Andreini calls La Turca, in

order, probably, to silence academic criticism of his mixing the genres of

comedy and pastoral. He was always sensitive to such criticism, being himself a member of the Florentine academy of the Spensierati and well educated in Aristotelian theory, though not such a stickler for it as to permit his learning to stand in the light of his practical experience. He calls comedy 'a mirror of human life, an image of virtue and an

example to it' (prologue to Lo Schiavetto, Venice, 1620), yet he is always willing to introduce romance and splendour and quaintness in order to

vary his plot and his scene. He uses birds in I due Baci, another 'commedia boschereccia,' many roses in La Rosa, a group of dogs, 'large and small,' in La Rosella (1632). The scenery for La Rosa (1638) must have been particularly pretty, consisting as it did of a 'prospettiva' painted with rows of cypresses, a lovely fountain in the middle, 'arranged at the

pleasure of the man who has charge of such things,' houses on either side, hedged and almost covered by roses in flower, 'so that the Villa where the comedy is to be laid, shall be called Bellarosa because of the abundance of roses there.'

That he used devices for changing his scenery in the middle of some plays is abundantly evident. He remarks more than once that such

changes 'are now quite easy,' though unfortunately he does not tell pre- cisely how they were managed. We know that Leonardo invented a 'Paradiso with seven planets which turned about1' and that he was

Flechsig, op. cit., p. 33.



WINIFRED SMITH

followed by other mechanicians who helped actors with similar devices, as Inigo Jones helped Ben Jonson with his Masques. Sometimes it was the lights only which were made to revolve', sometimes the whole aspect of the stage changed, as in one of Andreini's most ambitious 'opere reali,' L'Ismenia, Bologna, 1639; here the first stage direction reads: 'Here appear many Cupids carrying a Temple, all gilded, putting it down at the right side of the stage, then, singing the following madrigal, they go.' In the same play a Hypogriff' with a pleasant hiss,' dances a ballet to the tune of his hissing (Act iii), and in Act iv another monster, not particularized, makes off with one of the maidens. The chief sensa- tion comes in the fifth act where 'thunder is heard, the stage shakes, the lights disappear, and, the theatre being darkened for a moment, the

lights come on again, showing that the iron Rock of Death has vanished and there remain only the two prostrate persons.'

A still more ingenious device, not, however, involving a change of

scene, was used for La Rosa, Andreini's reworking into pastoral romance of the Tancred and Gismunda story. He obligingly gives a detailed de-

scription of his management of the chief incident in his plot, so that other actors can easily produce the play if they wish. As for the device of Lelio's head in a basin, says the author, it may be well arranged as

follows, so that the audience will be quite deceived: 'A basin of brass or of silvered wood' must be filled with flowers, and it must have 'an

opening in the bottom like that in a lantern'; when it is brought in to Florinda by Cavaletta, he [the servant] must take care to keep his hands over it as he puts it on the floor; while it is there,' Lelio from a trap door underneath must put his head up through the bottom of the

basin, so that, when Florinda moves the flowers a little, she will at once see the head of Lelio. He withdraws instantly as she drops the flowers in horror and takes up the basin.' Thus the company is saved the

expense of having a stucco head made to resemble the hero of the play, and that hero himself, acted by the author of the tragicomedy, keeps in his own power the delicate management of his climax.

For the end of La Maddalena Andreini invented a machine similar to that used in modern representations of Berlioz' Damnation of Faust, if one can judge from the directions for the tableau of the Magdalene's salvation. 'Suddenly Maddalena shall be raised somewhat from the earth by a subterranean device (ingegno sotterraneo) and at the same instant angels shall sustain her on either side, and at the same time the theatre shall be made to look like the most barren desert.' After the

1 As in a contract for the construction of a ' teatro di legname,' Jan., 1575, quoted by Neri, op. cit., p. 170, n. 3.

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heroine looks 'languidly' at the desert and laments her sins for awhile, 'the cavern opens, where an immensity of light shall be seen'; she

recognizes the sepulchre of Christ, since 'if it is desired a beautiful Crucifix, not too large may appear there'; she kneels and prays, then 'to the sound of a gentle Miserere,' goes away, the Gloria with its chorus of chanting angels finally replacing all the desert and receiving the penitent to eternal happiness.

I forbear to quote others of Andreini's painstaking stage directions, which have a close likeness to those already given. His taste, it will be evident, was as much toward theatrical magnificence as it was toward emotional and burlesque acting. He of course wrote most of his plays for the use of the Fedeli, in which for many years his wife, the beautifuil

singer and actress, Virginia, 'called Florinda,' took the prima donna's roles and he himself played the first lover. It is amusing to trace the

way he 'featured' his own and his wife's accomplishments, and prepared here and there little opportunities for 'hits' of different sorts. The tears and laments and fainting fits of Florinda in Andreini's first

tragedy must have cost some pains in the performance of them, yet un-

doubtedly, as contemporaries witness, the fair-haired Virginia carried them off successfully and made the audience forget the interminable

length of her speeches. Lelio, as Andreini invariably called himself on the stage, preferred comic effects to tragic, and rarely missed a chance for burlesquing his role or for introducing some of those dubious allusions or jests which most of his critics have found it so hard to reconcile with his bigoted piety.

As an actor Andreini was probably less original than as a stage manager. He was surrounded by excellent actors, and had a good deal of trouble at times to keep himself and Virginia from being eclipsed by some of them. Yet no one in the course of his career seems to have

challenged his supremacy in putting on plays, either his own or those of his contemporaries. He was in constant demand at the courts of France and Mantua and elsewhere during the fifty years of his active life. Moreover he took a lively part in the controversial literature of his day, defending with unusual intelligence and persistence both his pro- fession and his own innovations in the theatre. He pointed out in true Horatian fashion that the stage was a great prophet of righteousness, teaching the useful through the beautiful, and that he himself never set aside morality for mere amusement. 'If there be here or there some little licentious word,' he observes in the preface to Lo Schiavetto, 'put into the mouth of a low character, it is only there like a thorn among roses,' and can but call attention to the contrasting truths and beauties.



WINIFRED SMITH

More important than these conventional declarations of intent are Andreini's actual practices and the use of his really formidable learning in the bringing the theatre of his time to a sensible and intelligent re-

cognition of its opportunities and its limitations. He never ceased to

protest against the tactlessness of beginning plays with long uninterest-

ing speeches which left the audience cold', or, a proof that his thought had surpassed his teachers, against the academic rigidity which forbade the mixing of tears and laughter and of scenes 'proper' to comedy with those associated with the melodrama or the pastoral. He never forgot that spectators like variety and brilliance, wit and movement and an

image of their times. He sums up his own theory in a few words, and these might have been used by Ingegneri or any other classicist 'La forza della Poesia, o sia Epica o sia Drammatica, si riduce sotto

questo termine ristretto di facere aut fingere verisimilia' (preface to La Centaura).

It was undoubtedly in large part his influence exercised on and

through his company, the Fedeli, that helped actors and dramatists to

adopt such aids towards realism as strict localization of action and definition of time, as it was his restless search for novelty that introduced and fixed stage improvements so that at the end of the century Perrucci could say, 'We do not know whether the ancients had as many changes of scene as the moderns, or of such a variety that thought cannot search for more, seeing that in a moment the stage is transformed from a palace into a city, from a hall into a wood, from a gallery into a

garden, from a meadow into a heaven, from a heaven into a hell; into so many forms and with such swiftness and art that it seems rather an enchantment of the eyes than the work of machines 2.' Such magic was universal on the continental stage through the seventeenth century and, passing from Italy to France, from thence to London, transformed the

English theatre in the Restoration period and called out the naive

raptures of the astonished Pepys and his friends, who found 'the machines' used for the witches of Macbeth and the spirits of the

Tempest, 'beyond description.' WINIFRED SMITH.

POUGHKEEPSIE, N. Y.

Cf. in the preface to La Centaura, the sensible comments on the folly of a messenger's beginning his news with 'Deh, perche non son nato cieco? Deh, perche non bevei latte avvelenato ?' etc., for the poet says such speeches will sooner move an audience to laughter than to pity, for they will not fail to think the messenger out of his mind instead of broken-hearted.

2 A. Perrucci, Dell' arte rappresentativa premeditata ed all' improvvisa, Napoli, 1699, p. 26.

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giovan battista andreini as a theatrical innovator

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