THE THEORY OF THE DRAMA

Aristotle's definition of tragedy is the basis of the Renaissance theory of tragedy. That definition is as follows: "Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narration; through pity and fear effecting the proper katharsis or purgation of these emotions."[109]

To expand this definition, tragedy, in common with all other forms of poetry, is the imitation of an action; but the action of tragedy is distinguished from that of comedy in being grave and serious. The action is complete, in so far as it possesses perfect unity; and in length it must be of the proper magnitude. By embellished language, Aristotle means language into which rhythm, harmony, and song enter; and by the remark that the several kinds are to be found in separate parts of the play, he means that some parts of tragedy are rendered through the medium of verse alone, while others receive the aid of song. Moreover, tragedy is distinguished from epic poetry by being in the form of action instead of that of narration. The last portion of Aristotle's definition describes the peculiar function of tragic performance.

I. The Subject of Tragedy

Tragedy is the imitation of a serious action, that is, an action both grave and great, or, as the sixteenth century translated the word, illustrious. Now, what constitutes a serious action, and what actions are not suited to the dignified character of tragedy? Daniello (1536) distinguishes tragedy from comedy in that the comic poets "deal with the most familiar and domestic, not to say base and vile operations; the tragic poets, with the deaths of high kings and the ruins of great empires."[110] Whichever of these matters the poet selects should be treated without admixture of any other form; if he resolves to treat of grave matters, mere loveliness should be excluded; if of themes of loveliness, he should exclude all grave themes. Here, at the very beginning of dramatic discussion, the strict separation of themes or genres is advocated in as formal a manner as ever during the period of classicism; and this was never deviated from, at least in theory, by any of the writers of the sixteenth century. Moreover, according to Daniello, the dignified character of tragedy demands that all unseemly, cruel, impossible, or ignoble incidents should be excluded from the stage; while even comedy should not attempt to represent any lascivious act.[111] This was merely a deduction from Senecan tragedy and the general practice of the classics.

There is, in Daniello's theory of tragedy, no single Aristotelian element, and it was not until about a decade later that Aristotle's theory of tragedy played any considerable part in the literary criticism of the sixteenth century. In 1543, however, the Poetics had already become a part of university study, for Giraldi Cintio, in his Discorso sulle Comedie e sulle Tragedie, written in that year, says that it was a regular academic exercise to compare some Greek tragedy, such as the Œdipus of Sophocles, with a tragedy of Seneca on the same subject, using the Poetics of Aristotle as a dramatic text-book.[112] Giraldi distinguishes tragedy from comedy on somewhat the same grounds as Daniello. "Tragedy and comedy," he says, "agree in that they are both imitations of an action, but they differ in that the former imitates the illustrious and royal, the latter the popular and civil. Hence Aristotle says that comedy imitates the worse sort of actions, not that they are vicious and criminal, but that, as regards nobility, they are worse when compared with royal actions." Giraldi's position is made clear by his further statement that the actions of tragedy are called illustrious, not because they are virtuous or vicious, but merely because they are the actions of people of the highest rank.[113]

This conception of the serious action of tragedy, which makes its dignity the result of the rank of those who are its actors, and thus regards rank as the real distinguishing mark between comedy and tragedy, was not only common throughout the Renaissance, but even throughout the whole period of classicism, and had an extraordinary effect on the modern drama, especially in France. Thus Dacier (1692) says that it is not necessary that the action be illustrious and important in itself: "On the contrary, it may be very ordinary or common; but it must be so by the quality of the persons who act.... The greatness of these eminent men renders the action great, and their reputation makes it credible and possible."[114]

Again, Robortelli (1548) maintains that tragedy deals only with the greater sort of men (prÆstantiores), because the fall of men of such rank into misery and disgrace produces greater commiseration (which is, as will be seen, one of the functions of tragedy) than the fall of men of merely ordinary rank. Another commentator on the Poetics, Maggi (1550), gives a slightly different explanation of Aristotle's meaning. Maggi asserts that Aristotle,[115] in saying that comedy deals with the worse and tragedy with the better sort of men, means to distinguish between those whose rank is lower or higher than that of ordinary men; comedy dealing with slaves, tradesmen, maidservants, buffoons, and other low people, tragedy with kings and heroes.[116] This explanation is defended on grounds similar to those given by Robortelli, that is, the change from felicity to infelicity is greater and more noticeable in the greatest men.[117]

This conception of the rank of the characters as the distinguishing mark between tragedy and comedy is, it need not be said, entirely un-Aristotelian. "Aristotle does undoubtedly hold," says Professor Butcher, "that actors in tragedy ought to be illustrious by birth and position. The narrow and trivial life of obscure persons cannot give scope for a great and significant action, one of tragic consequence. But nowhere does he make outward rank the distinguishing feature of tragic as opposed to comic representation. Moral nobility is what he demands; and this—on the French stage, or at least with French critics—is transformed into an inflated dignity, a courtly etiquette and decorum, which seemed proper to high rank. The instance is one of many in which literary critics have wholly confounded the teaching of Aristotle."[118] This distinction, then, though common up to the end of the eighteenth century, is not to be found in Aristotle; but the fact is, that a similar distinction can be traced, throughout the Middle Ages, throughout classical antiquity, back almost to the time of Aristotle himself.

The grammarian, Diomedes, has preserved the definition of tragedy formulated by Theophrastus, Aristotle's successor as head of the Peripatetic school. According to this definition, tragedy is "a change in the fortune of a hero."[119] A Greek definition of comedy preserved by Diomedes, and ascribed to Theophrastus also,[120] speaks of comedy as dealing with private and civil fortunes, without the element of danger. This seems to have been the accepted Roman notion of comedy. In the treatise of Euanthius-Donatus, comedy is said to deal with the common fortunes of men, to begin turbulently, but to end tranquilly and happily; tragedy, on the other hand, has only mighty personages, and ends terribly; its subject is often historical, while that of comedy is always invented by the poet.[121] The third book of Diomedes's Ars Grammatica, based on Suetonius's tractate De Poetis (written in the second century A.D.), distinguishes tragedy from comedy in that only heroes, great leaders, and kings are introduced in tragedy, while in comedy the characters are humble and private persons; in the former, lamentations, exiles, bloodshed predominate, in the latter, love affairs and seductions.[122] Isidore of Seville, in the seventh century, says very much the same thing: "Comic poets treat of the acts of private men, while tragic poets treat of public matters and the histories of kings; tragic themes are based on sorrowful affairs, comic themes on joyful ones."[123] In another place he speaks of tragedy as dealing with the ancient deeds and misdeeds of infamous kings, and of comedy as dealing with the actions of private men, and with the defilement of maidens and the love affairs of strumpets.[124] In the Catholicon of Johannes Januensis de Balbis (1286) tragedy and comedy are distinguished on similar grounds: tragedy deals only with kings and princes, comedy with private citizens; the style of the former is elevated, that of the latter humble; comedy begins sorrowfully and ends joyfully, tragedy begins joyfully and ends miserably and terribly.[125] For Dante, any poem written in an elevated and sublime style, beginning happily and ending in misery and terror, is a tragedy; his own great vision, written as it is in the vernacular, and beginning in hell and ending gloriously in paradise, he calls a comedy.[126]

It appears, therefore, that during the post-classic period and throughout the Middle Ages, comedy and tragedy were distinguished on any or all of the following grounds:—

i. The characters in tragedy are kings, princes, or great leaders; those in comedy, humble persons and private citizens.

ii. Tragedy deals with great and terrible actions; comedy with familiar and domestic actions.

iii. Tragedy begins happily and ends terribly; comedy begins rather turbulently and ends joyfully.

iv. The style and diction of tragedy are elevated and sublime; while those of comedy are humble and colloquial.

v. The subjects of tragedy are generally historical; those of comedy are always invented by the poet.

vi. Comedy deals largely with love and seduction; tragedy with exile and bloodshed.

This, then, was the tradition that shaped the un-Aristotelian conception of the distinctions between comedy and tragedy, which persisted throughout and even beyond the Renaissance. Giraldi Cintio has followed most of these traditional distinctions, but he is in closer accord with Aristotle[127] when he asserts that the tragic as well as the comic plot may be purely imaginary and invented by the poet.[128] He explains the traditional conception that the tragic fable should be historical, on the ground that as tragedy deals with the deeds of kings and illustrious men, it would not be probable that remarkable actions of such great personages should be left unrecorded in history, whereas the private events treated in comedy could hardly be known to all. Giraldi, however, asserts that it does not matter whether the tragic poet invents his story or not, so long as it follows the law of probability. The poet should choose an action that is probable and dignified, that does not need the intervention of a god in the unravelling of the plot, that does not occupy much more than the space of a day, and that can be represented on the stage in three or four hours.[129] In respect to the dÉnouement of tragedy, it may be happy or unhappy, but in either case it must arouse pity and terror; and as for the classic notion that no deaths should be represented on the stage, Giraldi declares that those which are not excessively painful may be represented, for they are represented not for the sake of commiseration but of justice. The argument here centres about Aristotle's phrase ?? t? fa?e?? ???at??,[130] but the common practice of classicism was based on Horace's express prohibition:—

Giraldi gives it as a universal rule of the drama that nothing should be represented on the stage which could not with propriety be done in one's own house.[132]

Scaliger's treatment of the dramatic forms is particularly interesting because of its great influence on the neo-classical drama. He defines tragedy as an imitation of an illustrious event, ending unhappily, written in a grave and weighty style, and in verse.[133] Here he has discarded, or at least disregarded, the Aristotelian definition of tragedy, in favor of the traditional conception which had come down through the Middle Ages. Real tragedy, according to Scaliger, is entirely serious; and although there are a few happy endings in ancient tragedy, the unhappy ending is most proper to the spirit of tragedy itself. Mortes aut exilia—these are the fit accompaniments of the tragic catastrophe.[134] The action begins tranquilly, but ends horribly; the characters are kings and princes, from cities, castles, and camps; the language is grave, polished, and entirely opposed to colloquial speech; the aspect of things is troubled, with terrors, menaces, exiles, and deaths on every hand. Taking as his model Seneca, whom he rates above all the Greeks in majesty,[135] he gives as the typical themes of tragedy "the mandates of kings, slaughters, despairs, executions, exiles, loss of parents, parricides, incests, conflagrations, battles, loss of sight, tears, shrieks, lamentations, burials, epitaphs, and funeral songs."[136] Tragedy is further distinguished from comedy on the ground that the latter derives its argument and its chief characters from history, inventing merely the minor characters; while comedy invents its arguments and all its characters, and gives them names of their own. Scaliger distinguishes men, for the purposes of dramatic poetry, according to character and rank;[137] but it would seem that he regarded rank alone as the distinguishing mark between tragedy and comedy. Thus tragedy is made to differ from comedy in three things: in the rank of the characters, in the quality of the actions, and in their different endings; and as a result of these differences, in style also.

The definition of tragedy given by Minturno, in his treatise De Poeta (1559), is merely a paraphrase of Aristotle's. He conceives of tragedy as describing casus heroum cuius sibi quisque fortunÆ fuerit faber, and it thus acts as a warning to men against pride of rank, insolence, avarice, lust, and similar passions.[138] It is grave and illustrious because its characters are illustrious; and no variety of persons or events should be introduced that are not in keeping with the calamitous ending. The language throughout must be grave and severe; and Minturno has expressed his censure in such matters by the phrase, poema amatorio mollique sermone effoeminat,[139] a censure which would doubtless apply to a large portion of classic French tragedy.

In Castelvetro (1570) we find a far more complete theory of the drama than had been attempted by any of his predecessors. His work is by no means a model of what a commentary on Aristotle's Poetics should be. In the next century, Dacier, whose subservience to Aristotle was even greater than that of any of the Italians, accuses Castelvetro of lacking every quality necessary to a good interpreter of Aristotle. "He knew nothing," says Dacier, "of the theatre, or of character, or of the passions; he understood neither the reasons nor the method of Aristotle; and he sought rather to contradict Aristotle than to explain him."[140] The fact is that Castelvetro, despite considerable veneration for Aristotle's authority, often shows remarkable independence of thought; and so far from resting content, in his commentary, with the mere explanation of the details of the Poetics, he has attempted to deduce from it a more or less complete theory of poetic art. Accordingly, though diverging from many of the details, and still more from the spirit of the Poetics, he has, as it were, built up a dramatic system of his own, founded upon certain modifications and misconceptions of the Aristotelian canons. The fundamental idea of this system is quite modern; and it is especially interesting because it indicates that by this time the drama had become more than a mere academic exercise, and was actually regarded as intended primarily for representation on the stage. Castelvetro examines the physical conditions of stage representation, and on this bases the requirements of dramatic literature. The fact that the drama is intended for the stage, that it is to be acted, is at the bottom of his theory of tragedy, and it was to this notion, as will be seen later, that we are to attribute the origin of the unities of time and place.

But Castelvetro's method brings with it its own reductio ad absurdum. For after all, stage representation, while essential to the production of dramatic literature, can never circumscribe the poetic power or establish its conditions. The conditions of stage representation change, and must change, with the varying conditions of dramatic literature and the inventive faculty of poets, for truly great art makes, or at least fixes, its own conditions. Besides, it is with what is permanent and universal that the artist—the dramatic artist as well as the rest—is concerned; and it is the poetic, and not the dramaturgic, element that is permanent and universal. "The power of tragedy, we may be sure," says Aristotle, "is felt even apart from representation and actors;"[141] and again: "The plot [of a tragedy] ought to be so constructed that even without the aid of the eye any one who is told the incidents will thrill with horror and pity at the turn of events."[142]

But what, according to Castelvetro, are the conditions of stage representation? The theatre is a public place, in which a play is presented before a motley crowd,—la moltitudine rozza,—upon a circumscribed platform or stage, within a limited space of time. To this idea the whole of Castelvetro's dramatic system is conformed. In the first place, since the audience may be great in number, the theatre must be large, and yet the audience must be able to hear the play; accordingly, verse is added, not merely as a delightful accompaniment, but also in order that the actors may raise their voices without inconvenience and without loss of dignity.[143] In the second place, the audience is not a select gathering of choice spirits, but a motley crowd of people, drawn to the theatre for the purpose of pleasure or recreation; accordingly, abstruse themes, and in fact all technical discussions, must be eschewed by the playwright, who is thus limited, as we should say to-day, to the elemental passions and interests of man.[144] In the third place, the actors are required to move about on a raised and narrow platform; and this is the reason why deaths or deeds of violence, and many other things which cannot be acted on such a platform with convenience and dignity, should not be represented in the drama.[145] Furthermore, as will be seen later, it is on this conception of the circumscribed platform and the physical necessities of the audience and the actors, that Castelvetro bases his theory of the unities of time and place.

In distinguishing the different genres, Castelvetro openly differs with Aristotle. In the Poetics, Aristotle distinguishes men according as they are better than we are, or worse, or the same as we are; and from this difference the various species of poetry, tragic, comic, and epic, are derived. Castelvetro thinks this mode of distinction not only untrue, but even inconsistent with what Aristotle says later of tragedy. Goodness and badness are to be taken account of, according to Castelvetro, not to distinguish one form of poetry from another, but merely in the special case of tragedy, in so far as a moderate virtue, as Aristotle says, is best able to produce terror and pity. Poetry, as indeed Aristotle himself acknowledges, is not an imitation of character, or of goodness and badness, but of men acting; and the different kinds of poetry are distinguished, not by the goodness and badness, or the character, of the persons selected for imitation, but by their rank or condition alone. The great and all-pervading difference between royal and private persons is what distinguishes tragedy and epic poetry on the one hand from comedy and similar forms of poetry on the other. It is rank, then, and not intellect, character, action,—for these vary in men according to their condition,—that differentiates one poetic form from another; and the distinguishing mark of rank on the stage, and in literature generally, is the bearing of the characters, royal persons acting with propriety, and meaner persons with impropriety.[146] Castelvetro has here escaped one pitfall, only to fall into another; for while goodness and badness cannot, from any Æsthetic standpoint, be made to distinguish the characters of tragedy from those of comedy,—leaving out of consideration here the question whether this was or was not the actual opinion of Aristotle,—it is no less improper to make mere outward rank or condition the distinguishing feature. Whether it be regarded as an interpretation of Aristotle or as a poetic theory by itself, Castelvetro's contention is, in either case, equally untenable.

II. The Function of Tragedy

No passage in Aristotle's Poetics has been subjected to more discussion, and certainly no passage has been more misunderstood, than that in which, at the close of his definition of tragedy, he states its peculiar function to be that of effecting through pity and fear the proper purgation (???a?s??) of these emotions. The more probable of the explanations of this passage are, as Twining says,[147] reducible to two. The first of these gives to Aristotle's katharsis an ethical meaning, attributing the effect of the tragedy to its moral lesson and example. This interpretation was a literary tradition of centuries, and may be found in such diverse writers as Corneille and Lessing, Racine and Dryden, Dacier and Rapin. According to the second interpretation, the purgation of the emotions produced by tragedy is an emotional relief gained by the excitement of these emotions. Plato had insisted that the drama excites passions, such as pity and fear, which debase men's spirits; Aristotle in this passage answers that by the very exaltation of these emotions they are given a pleasurable outlet, and beyond this there is effected a purification of the emotions so relieved. That is, the emotions are clarified and purified by being passed through the medium of art, and by being, as Professor Butcher points out, ennobled by objects worthy of an ideal emotion.[148] This explanation gives no direct moral purpose or influence to the katharsis, for tragedy acts on the feelings and not on the will. While the ethical conception, of course, predominates in Italian criticism, as it does throughout Europe up to the very end of the eighteenth century, a number of Renaissance critics, among them Minturno and Speroni, even if they failed to elaborate the further Æsthetic meaning of Aristotle's definition, at least perceived that Aristotle ascribed to tragedy an emotional and not an ethical purpose. It is unnecessary to give a detailed statement of the opinions of the various Italian critics on this point; but it is essential that the interpretations of the more important writers should be alluded to, since otherwise the Renaissance conception of the function of the drama could not be understood.

Giraldi Cintio points out that the aim of comedy and of tragedy is identical, viz. to conduce to virtue; but they reach this result in different ways; for comedy attains its end by means of pleasure and comic jests, while tragedy, whether it ends happily or unhappily, purges the mind of vice through the medium of misery and terror, and thus attains its moral end.[149] Elsewhere,[150] he affirms that the tragic poet condemns vicious actions, and by combining them with the terrible and the miserable makes us fear and hate them. In other words, men who are bad are placed in such pitiable and terrible positions that we fear to imitate their vices; and it is not a purgation of pity and fear, as Aristotle says, but an eradication of all vice and vicious desire that is effected by the tragic katharsis. Trissino, in the fifth section of his Poetica (1563), cites Aristotle's definition of tragedy; but makes no attempt to elucidate the doctrine of katharsis. His conception of the function of the drama is much the same as Giraldi's. It is the office of the tragic poet, through the medium of imitation, to praise and admire the good, while that of the comic poet is to mock and vituperate the bad; for tragedy, as Aristotle says, deals with the better sort of actions, and comedy with the worse.[151]

Robortelli (1548), however, ascribes a more Æsthetic function to tragedy. By the representation of sad and atrocious deeds, tragedy produces terror and commiseration in the spectator's mind. The exercise of terror and commiseration purges the mind of these very passions; for the spectator, seeing things performed which are very similar to the actual facts of life, becomes accustomed to sorrow and pity, and these emotions are gradually diminished.[152] Moreover, by seeing the sufferings of others, men sorrow less at their own, recognizing such things as common to human nature. Robortelli's conception of the function of tragedy is, therefore, not an ethical one; the effect of tragedy is understood primarily as diminishing pity and fear in our minds by accustoming us to the sight of deeds that produce these emotions. A similar interpretation of the katharsis is given by Vettori (1560) and Castelvetro (1570).[153] The latter compares the process of purgation with the emotions which are excited by a pestilence. At first the infected populace is crazed by excitement, but gradually becomes accustomed to the sight of the disease, and the emotions of the people are thus tempered and allayed.

A somewhat different conception of katharsis is that of Maggi. According to him, we are to understand by purgation the liberation through pity and fear of passions similar to these, but not pity and fear themselves; for Maggi cannot understand how tragedy, which induces pity and fear in the hearer, should at the same time remove these perturbations.[154] Moreover, pity and fear are useful emotions, while such passions as avarice, lust, anger, are certainly not. In another place, Maggi, relying on citations from Plato, Aristotle, and Alexander of Aphrodisias, explains the pleasure we receive from tragedy, by pointing out that we feel sorrow by reason of the human heart within us, which is carried out of itself by the sight of misery; while we feel pleasure because it is human and natural to feel pity. Pleasure and pain are thus fundamentally the same.[155] Varchi[156] is at one with Maggi in interpreting the katharsis as a purgation, not of pity and fear themselves, but of emotions similar to them.

For Scaliger (1561) the aim of tragedy, like that of all poetry, is a purely ethical one. It is not enough to move the spectators to admiration and dismay, as some critics say Æschylus does; it is also the poet's function to teach, to move, and to delight. The poet teaches character through actions, in order that we should embrace and imitate the good, and abstain from the bad. The joy of evil men is turned in tragedy to bitterness, and the sorrow of good men to joy.[157] Scaliger is here following the extreme view of poetic justice which we have found expressed in so many of the Renaissance writers. In the last century, Dr. Johnson, in censuring Shakespeare for the tragic fate meted out to Cordelia and other blameless characters, showed himself an inheritor of this Renaissance tradition, just as we shall see that Lessing was in other matters. For Scaliger the moral aim of the drama is attained both indirectly, by the representation of wickedness ultimately punished and virtue ultimately rewarded, and more directly by the enunciation of moral precepts throughout the play. With the Senecan model before him, such precepts (sententiÆ) became the very props of tragedy,—sunt enim quasi columnÆ aut pilÆ quÆdam universÆ fabricÆ illius,—and so they remained in modern classical tragedy. Minturno points out that these sententiÆ are to be used most in tragedy and least in epic poetry.[158]

Minturno also follows Scaliger in conceiving that the purpose of tragedy is to teach, to delight, and to move. It teaches by setting before us an example of the life and manners of superior men, who by reason of human error have fallen into extreme unhappiness. It delights us by the beauty of its verse, its diction, its song, and the like. Lastly, it moves us to wonder, by terrifying us and exciting our pity, thus purging our minds of such matters. This process of purgation is likened by Minturno to the method of a physician: "As a physician eradicates, by means of poisonous medicine, the perfervid poison of disease which affects the body, so tragedy purges the mind of its impetuous perturbations by the force of these emotions beautifully expressed in verse."[159]

According to this interpretation of the katharsis, tragedy is a mode of homoeopathic treatment, effecting the cure of one emotion by means of a similar one; and we find Milton, in the preface to Samson Agonistes, explaining the katharsis in much the same manner:—

This passage has been regarded by Twining, Bernays, and other modern scholars as a remarkable indication of Milton's scholarship and critical insight;[160] but after all, it need hardly be said, he was merely following the interpretation of the Italian commentators on the Poetics. Their writings he had studied and knew thoroughly, had imbibed all the critical ideas of the Italian Renaissance, and in the very preface from which we have just quoted, filled as it is with ideas that may be traced back to Italian sources, he acknowledges following "the ancients and Italians," as of great "authority and fame." Like Milton, Minturno conceived of tragedy as having an ethical aim; but both Milton and Minturno clearly perceived that by katharsis Aristotle had reference not to a moral, but to an emotional, effect.

One of the most interesting discussions on the meaning of the katharsis is to be found in a letter of Sperone Speroni[161] written in 1565. His explanation of the passage itself is quite an impossible one, if only on philological grounds; but his argument is very interesting and very modern. He points out that pity and fear may be conceived of as keeping the spirit of men in bondage, and hence it is proper that we should be purged of these emotions. But he insists that Aristotle cannot refer to the complete eradication of pity and fear—a conception which is Stoic rather than Peripatetic, for Aristotle does not require us to free ourselves from emotions, but to regulate them, since in themselves they are not bad.

III. The Characters of Tragedy

Aristotle's conception of the ideal tragic hero is based on the assumption that the function of tragedy is to produce the katharsis, or purgation, of pity and fear,—"pity being felt for a person who, if not wholly innocent, meets with suffering beyond his deserts; fear being awakened when the sufferer is a man of like nature with ourselves."[162] From this it follows that if tragedy represents the fall of an entirely good man from prosperity to adversity, neither pity nor fear is produced, and the result merely shocks and repels us. If an entirely bad man is represented as undergoing a change from distress to prosperity, not only do we feel no pity and no fear, but even the sense of justice is left unsatisfied. If, on the contrary, such a man entirely bad falls from prosperity into adversity and distress, the moral sense is indeed satisfied, but without the tragic emotions of pity and fear. The ideal hero is therefore morally between the two extremes, neither eminently good nor entirely bad, though leaning to the side of goodness; and the misfortune which falls upon him is the result of some great flaw of character or fatal error of conduct.[163]

This conception of the tragic hero was the subject of considerable discussion in the Renaissance; in fact, the first instance in Italian criticism of the application of Aristotelian ideas to the theory of tragedy is perhaps to be found in the reference of Daniello (1536) to the tragic hero's fate. Daniello, however, understood Aristotle's meaning very incompletely, for he points out that tragedy, in order to imitate most perfectly the miserable and the terrible, should not introduce just and virtuous men fallen into vice and injustice through the adversity of fortune, for this is more wicked than it is miserable and terrible, nor should evil men, on the contrary, be introduced as changed by prosperity into good and just men.[164] Here Daniello conceives of tragedy as representing the change of a man from vice to virtue, or from virtue to vice, through the medium of prosperity or misfortune. This is a curious misconception of Aristotle's meaning. Aristotle refers, not to the ethical effect of tragedy, but to the effect of the emotions of pity and terror upon the mind of the spectator, although of course he does not wish the catastrophe to shock the moral sense or the sense of justice.

Giraldi Cintio, some years after Daniello, follows Aristotle more closely in the conception of the tragic hero; and he affirms, moreover, that tragedy may end happily or unhappily so long as it inspires pity and terror. Now, Aristotle has expressly stated his disapprobation of the happy ending of tragedy, for in speaking of tragedies with a double thread and a double catastrophe, that is, tragedies in which the good are ultimately rewarded and the bad punished, he shows that such a conclusion is decidedly against the general tragic effect.[165] Scaliger's conception of the moral function of the tragic poet as rewarding virtue and punishing vice is therefore inconsistent with the Aristotelian conception; for, as Scaliger insists that every tragedy should end unhappily, it follows that only the good must survive and only the bad suffer. Another critic of this time, Capriano (1555), points out that the fatal ending of tragedy is due to the inability of certain illustrious men to conduct themselves with prudence; and this is more in keeping with Aristotle's true meaning.[166]

It has been seen that Aristotle regarded a perfectly good man as not fitted to be the ideal hero of tragedy. Minturno, however, asserts that tragedy is grave and illustrious because its characters are illustrious, and that therefore he can see no reason, despite Aristotle, why the lives of perfect men or Christian saints should not be represented on the stage, and why even the life of Christ would not be a fit subject for tragedy.[167] This is, indeed, Corneille's opinion, and in the examen of his Polyeucte he cites Minturno in justification of his own case. As regards the other characters of tragedy, Minturno states a curious distinction between characters fit for tragedy and those fit for comedy.[168] In the first place, he points out that no young girls, with the exception of female slaves, should appear in comedy, for the reason that the women of the people do not appear in public until marriage, and would be sullied by the company of the low characters of comedy, whereas the maidens of tragedy are princesses, accustomed to meet and converse with noblemen from girlhood. Secondly, married women are always represented in comedy as faithful, in tragedy as unfaithful to their husbands, for the reason that comedy concludes with friendship and tranquillity, and unfaithful relations could never end happily, while the love depicted in tragedy serves to bring about the tragic ruin of great houses. Thirdly, in comedy old men are often represented as in love, but never in tragedy, for an amorous old man is conducive to laughter, which comedy aims at producing, but which would be wholly out of keeping with the gravity required in tragedy. These distinctions are of course deduced from the practice of the Latin drama—the tragedies of Seneca on the one hand, and the comedies of Plautus and Terence on the other.

In a certain passage of Aristotle's Poetics there is a formulation of the requirements of character-drawing in the drama.[169] In this passage Aristotle says that the characters must be good; that they must be drawn with propriety, that is, in keeping with the type to which they belong; that they must be true to life, something quite distinct either from goodness or propriety; and that the characters must be self-consistent. This passage gave rise to a curious conception of character in the Renaissance and throughout the period of classicism. According to this, the conception of decorum, it was insisted that every old man should have such and such characteristics, every young man certain others, and so on for the soldier, the merchant, the Florentine or Parisian, and the like. This fixed and formal mode of regarding character was connected with the distinction of rank as the fundamental difference between the characters of tragedy and comedy, and it was really founded on a passage in Horace's Ars Poetica,—

and on the rhetorical descriptions of the various characteristics of men in the second book of Aristotle's Rhetoric.

The explanation of the Renaissance conception of decorum may start from either of two points of view. In the first place, it is to be noted that Horace, and after him the critics of the Renaissance, set about to transpose to the domain of poetry the tentative distinctions of character formulated by Aristotle, in the Rhetoric, simply for the purposes of rhetorical exposition. These distinctions, it must be repeated, were rhetorical and not Æsthetic, and they are therefore not alluded to by Aristotle in the Poetics. The result of the attempt to transpose them to the domain of poetry led to a hardening and crystallization of character in the classic drama. But the Æsthetic misconception implied by such an attempt is only too obvious. In such a system poetry is held accountable, not to the ideal truth of human life, but to certain arbitrary, or at best merely empirical, formulÆ of rhetorical theory. The Renaissance was in this merely doing for character what was being done for all the other elements of art. Every such element, when once discriminated and definitely formulated, became fixed as a necessary and inviolable substitute for the reality which had thus been analyzed.

But we may look at the principle of decorum from another point of view. A much deeper question—the question of social distinctions—is here involved. The observance of decorum necessitated the maintenance of the social distinctions which formed the basis of Renaissance life and of Renaissance literature. It was this same tendency which caused the tragedy of classicism to exclude all but characters of the highest rank. Speaking of narrative poetry, Muzio (1551), while allowing kings to mingle with the masses, considers it absolutely improper for one of the people, even for a moment, to assume the sceptre.[171] Accordingly, men as distinguished by the accidents of rank, profession, country, and not as distinguished by that only which art should take cognizance of, character, became the subjects of the literature of classicism; and in so far as this is true, that literature loses something of the profundity and the universality of the highest art.

This element of decorum is to be found in all the critics of the Renaissance from the time of Vida[172] and Daniello.[173] So essential became the observance of decorum that Muzio and Capriano both considered it the most serious charge to be made against Homer, that he was not always observant of it. Capriano, comparing Virgil with Homer, asserts that the Latin poet surpasses the Greek in eloquence, in dignity, in grandeur of style, but beyond everything in decorum.[174] The seeming vulgarity of some of Homer's similes, and even of the actions of some of his characters, appeared to the Renaissance a most serious blemish; and it was this that led Scaliger to rate Homer not only below Virgil, but even below MusÆus. In Minturno and Scaliger we find every detail of character minutely analyzed. The poet is told how young men and old men should act, should talk, and should dress; and no deviations from these fixed formulÆ were allowed under any circumstances. As a result of this, even when the poet liberated himself from these conceptions, and aimed at depicting character in its true sense, we find character, but never the development of character, portrayed in the neo-classic drama. The character was fixed from the beginning of the play to the end; and it is here that we may find the origin of Ben Jonson's conception of "humours." In one of Salviati's lectures, Del Trattato della Poetica,[175] Salviati defines a humour as "a peculiar quality of nature according to which every one is inclined to some special thing more than to any other." This would apply very distinctly to the sense in which the Elizabethans used the word. Thus Jonson himself, in the Induction of Every Man out of his Humour, after expounding the medical notion of a humour, says:—

The origin of the term "humour," in Jonson's sense, has never been carefully studied. Jonson's editors speak of it as peculiar to the English language, and as first used in this sense about Jonson's period. It is not our purpose to go further into this question; but Salviati's definition is close enough to Jonson's to indicate that the origin of this term, as of all other critical terms and critical ideas throughout sixteenth-century Europe, must be looked for in the Æsthetic literature of Italy.[176]

IV. The Dramatic Unities

In his definition of tragedy Aristotle says that the play must be complete or perfect, that is, it must have unity. By unity of plot he does not mean merely the unity given by a single hero, for, as he says, "infinitely various are the incidents in one man's life which cannot be reduced to unity; and so, too, there are many actions of one man out of which we cannot make one action. Hence the error, as it appears, of all poets who have composed a Heracleid, a Theseid, or other poems of the kind. They imagine that as Heracles was one man, the story of Heracles ought also to be a unity."[177] This is Aristotle's statement of the unity of action. But what is the origin of the two other unities,—the unities of time and place? There is in the Poetics but a single reference to the time-limit of the tragic action and none whatsoever to the so-called unity of place. Aristotle says that the action of tragedy and that of epic poetry differ in length, "for tragedy endeavors, so far as possible, to confine itself to a single revolution of the sun, or but slightly to exceed this limit; whereas the epic action has no limits of time."[178] This passage is the incidental statement of an historical fact; it is merely a tentative deduction from the usual practice of Greek tragedy, and Aristotle never conceived of it as an inviolable law of the drama. Of the three unities which play so prominent a part in modern classical drama, the unity of action was the main, and, in fact, the only unity which Aristotle knew or insisted on. But from his incidental reference to the general time-limits of Greek tragedy, the Renaissance formulated the unity of time, and deduced from it also the unity of place, to which there is absolutely no reference either in Aristotle or in any other ancient writer whatever. It is to the Italians of the Renaissance, and not to the French critics of the seventeenth century, that the world owes the formulation of the three unities. The attention of scholars was first called to this fact about twenty years ago, by the brochure of a Swiss scholar, H. Breitinger, on the unities of Aristotle before Corneille's Cid; but the gradual development and formulation of the three unities have never been systematically worked out. We shall endeavor here to trace their history during the sixteenth century, and to explain the processes by which they developed.

The first reference in modern literature to the doctrine of the unity of time is to be found in Giraldi Cintio's Discorso sulle Comedie e sulle Tragedie. He says that comedy and tragedy agree, among other things, in the limitation of the action to one day or but little more;[179] and he has thus for the first time converted Aristotle's statement of an historical fact into a dramatic law. Moreover, he has changed Aristotle's phrase, that tragedy limits itself "to a single revolution of the sun," into the more definite expression of "a single day." He points out that Euripides, in the HeraclidÆ, on account of the long distance between the places in the action, had been unable to limit the action to one day. Now, as Aristotle must have known many of the best Greek dramas which are now lost, it was probably in keeping with the practice of such dramas that their actions were not strictly confined within the limits of one day. Aristotle, therefore, intentionally allowed the drama a slightly longer space of time than a single day. The unity of time, accordingly, becomes a part of the theory of the drama between 1540 and 1545, but it was not until almost exactly a century later that it became an invariable rule of the dramatic literature of France and of the world.

In Robortelli (1548) we find Aristotle's phrase, "a single revolution of the sun," restricted to the artificial day of twelve hours; for as tragedy can contain only one single and continuous action, and as people are accustomed to sleep in the night, it follows that the tragic action cannot be continued beyond one artificial day. This holds good of comedy as well as tragedy, for the length of the fable in each is the same.[180] Segni (1549) differs from Robortelli, however, in regarding a single revolution of the sun as referring not to the artificial day of twelve hours, but to the natural day of twenty-four hours, because various matters treated in tragedy, and even in comedy, are such as are more likely to happen in the night (adulteries, murders, and the like); and if it be said that night is naturally the time for repose, Segni answers that unjust people act contrary to the laws of nature.[181] It was about this time, then, that there commenced the historic controversy as to what Aristotle meant by limiting tragedy to one day; and three-quarters of a century later, in 1623, Beni could cite thirteen different opinions of scholars on this question.

Trissino, in his Poetica (1563), paraphrases as follows the passage in Aristotle which refers to the unity of time: "They also differ in length, for tragedy terminates in one day, that is, one period of the sun, or but little more, while there is no time determined for epic poetry, as indeed was the custom with tragedy and comedy at their beginning, and is even to-day among ignorant poets."[182] Here for the first time, as a French critic remarks, the observance of the unity of time is made a distinction between the learned and the ignorant poet.[183] It is evident that Trissino conceives of the unity of time as an artistic principle which has helped to save dramatic poetry from the formlessness and chaotic condition of the mediÆval drama. So that the unity of time became not only a dramatic law, but one the observation of which distinguished the dramatic artist from the mere ignorant compiler of popular plays.

There is in none of the writers we have mentioned so far any reference to the unity of place, for the simple reason that there is no allusion to such a requirement for the drama in Aristotle's Poetics. Maggi's discussion of the unity of time, in his commentary on the Poetics (1550), is of particular interest as preparing the way for the third unity. Maggi attempts to explain logically the reason for the unity of time.[184] Why should tragedy be limited as to time, and not epic poetry? According to him, this difference is to be explained by the fact that the drama is represented on the stage before our eyes, and if we should see the actions of a whole month performed in about the time it takes to perform the play, that is, two or three hours, the performance would be absolutely incredible. For example, says Maggi, if in a tragedy we should send a messenger to Egypt, and he would return in an hour, would not the spectator regard this as ridiculous? In the epic, on the contrary, we do not see the actions performed, and so do not feel the need of limiting them to any particular time. Now, it is to be noted here that this limitation of time is based on the idea of representation. The duration of the action of the drama itself must fairly coincide with the duration of its representation on the stage. This is the principle which led to the acceptance of the unity of place, and upon which it is based. Limit the time of the action to the time of representation, and it follows that the place of the action must be limited to the place of representation. Such a limitation is of course a piece of realism wholly out of keeping with the true dramatic illusion; but it was almost exclusively in the drama that classicism tended toward a minuter realism than could be justified by the Aristotelian canons. In Maggi the beginnings of the unity of place are evident, inasmuch as he finds that the requirements of the representation do not permit a messenger or any character in the drama to be sent very far from the place where the action is being performed. The closer action and representation coincide, the clearer becomes the necessity of a limitation in place as well as in time; and it was on this principle that Scaliger and Castelvetro, somewhat later, formulated the three unities.

There is, indeed, in Scaliger (1561) no direct statement of the unity of time; but the reference to it is nevertheless unmistakable. First of all, Scaliger requires that the events be so arranged and disposed that they approach nearest to actual truth (ut quam proxime accedant ad veritatem).[185] This is equivalent to saying that the duration of the action, its place, its mode of procedure, must correspond more or less exactly with the representation itself. The dramatic poet must aim, beyond all things, at reproducing the actual conditions of life. The verisimile, the vraisemblable, in the etymological sense of these words, must be the final criterion of dramatic composition. It is not sufficient that the spectator should be satisfied with the action as typical of similar actions in life. An absolutely perfect illusion must prevail; the spectator must be moved by the actions of the play exactly as if they were those of real life.

This notion of the verisimile, and of its effect of perfect illusion on the spectator's mind, prevailed throughout the period of classicism, and was vigorously defended by no less a critic than Voltaire himself. Accordingly, as Maggi first pointed out, if the playwright, in the few hours it takes to represent the whole play, requires one of his characters to perform an action that cannot be done in less than a month, this impression of actual truth and perfect illusion will not be left on the spectator's mind. "Therefore," says Scaliger, "those battles and assaults which take place about Thebes in the space of two hours do not please me; no sensible poet should make any one move from Delphi to Thebes, or from Thebes to Athens, in a moment's time. Agamemnon is buried by Æschylus after being killed, and Lichas is hurled into the sea by Hercules; but this cannot be represented without violence to truth. Accordingly, the poet should choose the briefest possible argument, and should enliven it by means of episodes and details.... Since the whole play is represented on the stage in six or eight hours, it is not in accordance with the exact appearance of truth (haud verisimile est) that within that brief space of time a tempest should arise and a shipwreck occur, out of sight of land."

The observance of the unity of time could not be demanded in clearer or more forcible terms than this. But it is a mistake to construe this passage into a statement of the unity of place.[186] When Scaliger says that the poet should not move any one of the characters from Delphi to Thebes, or from Thebes to Athens, in a moment's time, he is referring to the exigencies, not of place, but of time. In this, as in many other things, he is merely following Maggi, who, as we have seen, says that it is ridiculous for a dramatist to have a messenger go to Egypt with a message and return in an hour. The characters, according to Scaliger, should not move from Delphi to Thebes in a moment, not because the action need necessarily occur in one single place, but because the characters cannot with any appearance of truth go a great distance in a short space of time. This is an approach to the unity of place, and had Scaliger followed his contention to its logical conclusion, he must certainly have formulated the three unities. But by requiring the action to be disposed with the greatest possible approach to the actual truth, or, in other words, by insisting that the action must coincide with the representation, Scaliger helped more than any of his predecessors to the final recognition of the unity of place.

In Minturno[187] and in Vettori[188] we find a tendency to restrict the duration of the epic as well as the tragic action. It has been seen that Aristotle distinctly says that while the action of tragedy generally endeavors to confine itself within a period of about one day, that of epic poetry has no determined time. Minturno, however, alludes to the unity of time in the following words: "Whoever examines well the works of the most esteemed ancient writers, will find that the action represented on the stage is terminated in one day, or does not pass beyond the space of two days; while the epic has a longer period of time, except that its action cannot exceed one year in duration."[189] This limitation Minturno deduces from the practice of Homer and Virgil.[190] The action of the Iliad begins in the tenth year of the Trojan war, and lasts one year; the action of the Æneid begins in the seventh year after the departure of Æneas from Troy, and also lasts one year.

Castelvetro, however, was the first theorist to formulate the unity of place, and thus to give the three unities their final form. We have seen that Castelvetro's theory of the drama was based entirely upon the notion of stage representation. All the essentials of dramatic literature are thus fixed by the exigencies of the stage. The stage is a circumscribed space, and the play must be performed upon it within a period of time limited by the physical necessities of the spectators. It is from these two facts that Castelvetro deduces the unities of time and place. While asserting that Aristotle held it as cosa fermissima e verissima that the tragic action cannot exceed the length of an artificial day of twelve hours, he does not think that Aristotle himself understood the real reason of this limitation.[191] In the seventh chapter of the Poetics Aristotle says that the length of the plot is limited by the possibility of its being carried in the memory of the spectator conveniently at one time. But this, it is urged, would restrict the epic as well as the tragic fable to one day. The difference between epic and dramatic poetry in this respect is to be found in the essential difference between the conditions of narrative and scenic poetry.[192] Narrative poetry can in a short time narrate things that happen in many days or months or even years; but scenic poetry, which spends as many hours in representing things as it actually takes to do them in life, does quite otherwise. In epic poetry words can present to our intellect things distant in space and time; but in dramatic poetry the whole action occurs before our eyes, and is accordingly limited to what we can actually see with our own senses, that is, to that brief duration of time and to that small amount of space in which the actors are occupied in acting, and not any other time or place. But as the restricted place is the stage, so the restricted time is that in which the spectators can at their ease remain sitting through a continuous performance; and this time, on account of the physical necessities of the spectators, such as eating, drinking, and sleeping, cannot well go beyond the duration of one revolution of the sun. So that not only is the unity of time an essential dramatic requirement, but it is in fact impossible for the dramatist to do otherwise even should he desire to do so—a conclusion which is of course the reductio ad absurdum of the whole argument.

In another place Castelvetro more briefly formulates the law of the unities in the definitive form in which it was to remain throughout the period of classicism: "La mutatione tragica non puÒ tirar con esso seco se non una giornata e un luogo."[193] The unities of time and place are for Castelvetro so very important that the unity of action, which is for Aristotle the only essential of the drama, is entirely subordinated to them. In fact, Castelvetro specifically says that the unity of action is not essential to the drama, but is merely made expedient by the requirements of time and place. "In comedy and tragedy," he says, "there is usually one action, not because the fable is unfitted to contain more than one action, but because the restricted space in which the action is represented, and the limited time, twelve hours at the very most, do not permit of a multitude of actions."[194] In a similar manner Castelvetro applies the law of the unities to epic poetry. Although the epic action can be accomplished in many places and at diverse times, yet as it is more commendable and pleasurable to have a single action, so it is better for the action to confine itself to a short time and to but few places. In other words, the more the epic attempts to restrict itself to the unities of place and time, the better, according to Castelvetro, it will be.[195] Moreover, Castelvetro was not merely the first one to formulate the unities in their definitive form, but he was also the first to insist upon them as inviolable laws of the drama; and he refers to them over and over again in the pages of his commentary on the Poetics.[196]

This then is the origin of the unities. Our discussion must have made it clear how little they deserve the traditional title of Aristotelian unities, or as a recent critic with equal inaccuracy calls them, the Scaligerian unities (unitÉs scaligÉriennes).[197] Nor were they, as we have seen, first formulated in France, though this was the opinion of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Thus Dryden says that "the unity of place, however it might be practised by the ancients, was never one of their rules: we neither find it in Aristotle, Horace, or any who have written of it, till in our age the French poets first made it a precept of the stage."[198] It may be said, therefore, that just as the unity of action is par excellence the Aristotelian unity, so the unities of time and place are beyond a doubt the Italian unities. They enter the critical literature of Europe from the time of Castelvetro, and may almost be said to be the last contributions of Italy to literary criticism. Two years after their formulation by Castelvetro they were introduced into France, and a dozen years after this formulation, into England. It was not until 1636, however, that they became fixed in modern dramatic literature, as a result of the Cid controversy. This is approximately a hundred years after the first mention of the unity of time in Italian criticism.

V. Comedy

The treatment of comedy in the literary criticism of this period is entirely confined to a discussion and elaboration of the little that Aristotle says on the subject of comedy in the Poetics. Aristotle, it will be remembered, had distinguished tragedy from comedy in that the former deals with the nobler, the latter with the baser, sort of actions. Comedy is an imitation of characters of a lower type than those of tragedy,—characters of a lower type indeed, but not in the full sense of the word bad. "The ludicrous is merely a subdivision of the ugly. It may be defined as a defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive. Thus, for example, the comic mask is ugly and distorted, but does not cause pain."[199] From these few hints the Italian theorists constructed a body of comic doctrine. There is, however, in the critical literature of this period no attempt to explain the theory of the indigenous Italian comedy, the commedia dell' arte. The classical comedies of Plautus and Terence were the models, and Aristotle's Poetics the guide, of all the discussions on comedy during the Renaissance. The distinction between the characters of comedy and tragedy has already been explained in sufficient detail. All that remains to be done in treating of comedy is to indicate as briefly as possible such definitions of it as were formulated by the Renaissance, and the special function which the Renaissance understood comedy to possess.

According to Trissino (1563), the comic poet deals only with base things, and for the single purpose of chastising them. As tragedy attains its moral end through the medium of pity and fear, comedy does so by means of the chastisement and vituperation of things that are base and evil.[200] The comic poet, however, is not to deal with all sorts of vices, but only such as give rise to ridicule, that is, the jocose actions of humble and unknown persons. Laughter proceeds from a certain delight or pleasure arising from the sight of objects of ugliness. We do not laugh at a beautiful woman, a gorgeous jewel, or beautiful music; but a distortion or deformity, such as a silly speech, an ugly face, or a clumsy movement, makes us laugh. We do not laugh at the benefits of others; the finder of a purse, for example, arouses not laughter but envy. But we do laugh at some one who has fallen into the mud, because, as Lucretius says, it is sweet to find in others some evil not to be found in ourselves. Yet great evils, so far from causing us to laugh, arouse pity and fear, because we are apprehensive lest such things should happen to us. Hence we may conclude that a slight evil which is neither sad nor destructive, and which we perceive in others but do not believe to be in ourselves, is the primary cause of the ludicrous.[201] In Maggi's treatise, De Ridiculis, appended to his commentary on the Poetics, the Aristotelian conception of the ridiculous is accepted, with the addition of the element of admiratio. Maggi insists on the idea of suddenness or novelty; for we do not laugh at painless ugliness if it be very familiar or long continued.[202]

According to Robortelli (1548), comedy, like all other forms of poetry, imitates the manners and actions of men, and aims at producing laughter and light-heartedness. But what produces laughter? The evil and obscene merely disgust good men; the sad and miserable cause pity and fear. The basis of laughter is therefore to be found in what is only slightly mean or ugly (subturpiculum). The object of comedy, according to the consensus of Renaissance opinion, is therefore to produce laughter for the purpose of rendering the minor vices ridiculous. Muzio (1551) indeed complains, as both Sidney and Ben Jonson do later, that the comic writers of his day were more intent on producing laughter than on depicting character or manners:—

But Minturno points out that comedy is not to be contemned because it excites laughter; for by comic hilarity the spectators are kept from becoming buffoons themselves, and by the ridiculous light in which amours are placed, are made to avoid such things in future. Comedy is the best corrective of men's morals; it is indeed what Cicero calls it, imitatio vitÆ, speculum consuetudinis, imago veritatis. This phrase, ascribed by Donatus to Cicero, runs through all the dramatic discussions of the Renaissance,[203] and finds its echo in a famous passage in Hamlet. Cervantes cites the phrase in Don Quixote;[204] and Il Lasca, in the prologue to L'Arzigoglio, berates the comic writers of his day after this fashion: "They take no account of the absurdities, the contradictions, the inequalities, and the discrepancies of their pieces; for they do not seem to know that comedy should be truth's image, the ensample of manners, and the mirror of life."

This is exactly what Shakespeare is contending for when he makes Hamlet caution the players not to "o'erstep the modesty of nature; for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure."[205]

The high importance which Scaliger (1561) gives to comedy, and in fact to satiric and didactic poetry in general, is one of many indications of the incipient formation of neo-classical ideals during the Renaissance. He regards as absurd the statement which he conceives Horace to have made, that comedy is not really poetry; on the contrary, it is the true form of poetry, and the first and highest of all, for its matter is entirely invented by the poet.[206] He defines comedy as a dramatic poem filled with intrigue (negotiosum), written in popular style, and ending happily.[207] The characters in comedy are chiefly old men, slaves, courtesans, all in humble station or from small villages. The action begins rather turbulently, but ends happily, and the style is neither high nor low. The typical themes of comedy are "sports, banquets, nuptials, drunken carousals, the crafty wiles of slaves, and the deception of old men."[208]

The theory of comedy in sixteenth-century Italy was entirely classical, and the practice of the time agrees with its theory. There are indeed to be heard occasional notes of dissatisfaction and revolt, especially in the prologues of popular plays. Il Lasca, in the prologue to the Strega, defiantly protests against the inviolable authority of Aristotle and Horace, and in the prologue to his Gelosia reserves the right to copy the manner of his own time, and not those of Plautus and Terence. Cecchi, Aretino, Gelli, and other comic writers give expression to similar sentiments.[209] But on the whole these protests availed nothing. The authors of comedy, and more especially the literary critics, were guided by classical practice and classical theory. Dramatic forms like the improvised commedia dell' arte had marked influence on the practice of European comedy in general, especially in France, but left no traces of their influence on the literary criticism of the Italian Renaissance.top