Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/343

Rh is not perhaps very extraordinary, though assuredly it is very amusing, that the Italian literati of the present day, as reported by their interviewer-general, Signor Ojetti, should gravely pronounce the drama which they cannot write a rudimentary and superannuated form of art in comparison with the novel which they can—ein ueberwundener Standpunkt, as would be said in Germany. The idea of modern romancers transcending the art of Shakespeare and Sophocles is delightful from its modesty; but it must be evident that the short story alone can rival the artistic finish of a perfect drama, for every romance on a large scale must necessarily be eked out by descriptions, reflections, and episodes unessential to the main action.

The cause of the failure of the drama to establish itself in the land of opera is certainly not to be found in any preference on the part of the public for the tedious psychological analysis of the modern school of fiction over the rapidity and variety of the stage, but rather in some deep-seated trait of the national character. This is most probably the prevailing sensuousness of the people—a term not here used in any disparaging sense, but as expressing the national preference for the eye to the ear. Segnius irritant, as an ancient. Italian has it. The shows of the Rappresentazioni were undoubtedly more attractive to the Florentine public than the verses which expounded them; and we have seen that magnificent scenic equipments were needed to bring the people to share the dramatic amusements of the courts of the sixteenth century. This tendency would probably be found to be inveterate, and to date from the period when the Atellan farces of Latium prefigured the Commedia dell' Arte. It was not mere love of bloodshed that