Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/248

230 The first Italian comedies, like the tragedies, were written in rhyme. One early example is entitled to notice, both on account of the subject and as the work of an excellent poet, the Timone of Boiardo. It is little more than a translation of Lucian's Dialogue, yet was, we feel confident, the channel through which Shakespeare gained the acquaintance with that work revealed in his Timon of Athens. The history of Italian comedy as a recognised form of art should, however, be dated from the Calandra of Cardinal Bibbiena, first performed about 1508. It hardly attempts delineation of character, but, as Symonds remarks, "achieved immediate success by reproducing both the humour of Boccaccio and the invention of Plautus in the wittiest vernacular." The plot is taken from the Menæchmi of Plautus, the source of Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors; but Bibbiena's idea of making the indistinguishable twins brother and sister enhances the comic effect at the expense of morality, little considered by cardinals in those days.

The great success of Bibbiena's comedy was calculated to encourage rivalry, and it chanced that two of the first men in Italy of the day possessed the dramatic instinct, combined with a decided gift for satire. In the year following the exhibition of the Calandra (1509), Ariosto gave the Cassaria, a comedy of intrigue on the Plautine model. The same description is applicable to his other comedies, the Suppositi, the Lena, the Negromante, and the Scolastica. In all except the Negromante the action turns upon the stratagems of a knavish servant to obtain for his master the money indispensable for the gratification of his amorous desires. This style of comedy requires a well-contrived plot, and the maintenance of the interest throughout by a series of ingenious surprises and