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Il Capriccio: an Unpublished Italian Renaissance Comedy and its Analogues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2019

Beatrice M. Corrigan
Beatrice M. Corrigan*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Extract

Those peculiarly Italian institutions, the Renaissance academies, left behind them a most varied heritage of erudition and polite literature. From city to city they differed according to the differing tastes of their members, and just as the academies of Florence won renown for their research in philology, so those of Siena gained a reputation for fostering the art of play-writing. Isidoro Ugurgieri Azzolini says in his Pompe sanesi, ‘De’ Comici poi ci diffidiamo raccorre il numero preciso per la gran moltitudine che Siena n'ha havuti'. He adds that the Accademia dei Rozzi alone had printed almost one hundred comedies, and in his catalogue of Sienese men of letters he mentions constantly that his subjects had left at their death unpublished comedies, often boschereccie or rusticali. It is not surprising, then, that many plays of this period survive only in manuscript form, and that a few have even found their way to the new world.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in the Renaissance , Volume 5 , 1958 , pp. 74 - 86
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1958

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References

1 Azzolini, Isidoro Ugurgieri, Le pompe sanesi overo Relazione delli huomini e donne illustri di Siena, e suo state (Pistoia, 1649), 1, 619 Google Scholar.

2 Another MS. play by an anonymous Sienese author is in the Gray Collection of the South African Public Library in Cape Town. See Bizzari, Edoardo, ‘L'Aurelia’, Riv. it. del dramman (1938), 335–352 Google Scholar.

3 The only published play with this title is by Giovanni Maria Cecchi, but the names of its characters do not correspond with those in our MS.

4 Rossi's play seems to be unavailable in North America, but Signora Valerio Marini of Rome has kindly examined for me the first edition (Naples, 1598) which is part of the Allacci Collection in the Vatican Library, and has sent me a detailed description of it. It has no similarity to our Capriccio except in its title, which, by the way, it borrows from one of its characters, Capitan Capriccio.

5 Giovanni, and Salvioli, Carlo, Bibliografia universale del teatro drammatico italiano (Venice, 1903), I, 644 Google Scholar. ‘Questa composizione’, says Carlo Salvioli, ‘ha tra gli Interlocutori un Burattino che park bergamasco, il Graziano che park bolognese, il Magnifico che park veneziano, il Tedesco che park mezzo italiano, ecc'

6 The authorship of this play, which has been erroneously ascribed to Piccolomini, is discussed by Cerreta, Florindo V., ‘Clarifications concerning the Real Authorship of the Renaissance Comedy Ortensio’, Renaissance News X (1957), 63–68 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 This is a generally accepted method of dating a Renaissance comedy, and seems reasonably reliable. See Cavazzuti, Giuseppe, ‘Lodovico Castelvetro e la commedia Gli Ingannati’, GSLIXL (1902), 346–347 Google Scholar.

8 Other plots which have borrowed details from the Casina are Dovizi's La Calandria, Gelli's L'errore, Strozzi's Commedia in versi, and Giannotti's Il vecchio amoroso. I am considering here only direct imitations of the Latin plot.

9 Review of Reinhardstoettner, Karl von, Plautus: Spätere Bearbeitungen plautinischer Lustspiek (Leipzig, 1886), in GSLI VII (1886), 454–456 Google Scholar.

10 Review of the same book by Stiefel, A. L. in Litteraturblatt für germanische und romanische Philologie XI (1890), 191–199 Google Scholar.

11 Gregorini, Alberto, ‘Di una rassomiglianza fra i Rivali di Cecchi e la Casina di Plauto', GSLI XXII (1893), 417–420 Google Scholar. No exact date can be ascribed either to this play or to La fantesca.

12 Cecchi was born in 1518, died in 1587, but the date of composition of this play is unknown. It was first printed from a MS. in the Biblioteca Communale of Siena by Gaetano Milanesi in 1856. The play contains no mention of historical events or personages and so cannot be dated from internal evidence. Like Dolce's Il ragazzo, it presents a Spaniard and his impudent boy, but Cecchi's Spaniard is the conventional cowardly blusterer, whereas Dolce's is noble and chivalrous.

13 Rizzi, Fortunato, Le commedie ossavate di G. M. Cecchi (Rocca S. Casciano, 1904), pp. 124–125 Google Scholar.

14 Sferzi, Giuseppe, ‘Parere di Ludovico Castelvetro sopra ciascuna comtnedia di Plauto, tratto di un codice Vaticano’, If Propugnatore I (1868), 61–74 Google Scholar.