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HER IMMORTALITY.

217

if these sentences can help her on for a year or two more in her fight against oblivion, she is heartily welcome to the lift.

The dialogues are on similar themes, and of exactly similar quality. I have read one (being probably the only living man who has done so), between Palamedes and Cleopatra, entitled, "An amorous dispute respecting a fainting fit caused by love." It is truly wonderful to consider, that human beings, with minds similarly constituted to our own, did read these writings with admiration and delight! And when one looks on the long, long road that human intellect must have travelled over, since that was possible, one cannot but reflect on the probability, that a yet more extended career must lie before it.

These are the means by which the beautiful Isabella Andreini sought to "avoid death," as she phrases it in one of her prefaces, and to live in the memory of mankind; means which have been successful, so far as to insure the registering of her name in the folio pages of those gatherers of literary crumbs, who have been more abundant in Italy than in any other country.

But it is evident that in the day when she was really famous, her fame was that of a great actress. Of all the modes by which one mind may influence its fellows and obtain their admiration, it has been said that that of the histrionic artist is, from its nature, necessarily the most evanescent and perishable. The poet's song, the sculptor's statue, the architect's building, the historian's history, the painter's picture, remain to us, and their authors "being dead, yet speak" to after generations. But the actor, whose immediate power over his public is more intense, perhaps, than that of any of these! His triumphs, however much involving the

necessity of intellectual power, having been achieved by means of a perishable machine, are condemned to be equally mortal. The only manner in which some memory of his power, and some conception of its working may be retained in the minds of men, is by attaching his name to that of the characters he has represented. It is thus that the great names of our own dramatic annals have still a real meaning and significance.

But Isabella Andreini has left us no such memorial. Of all the very numerous contemporaries who speak in rapture of her performances, not one has recorded a single hint as to the characters in which she enchanted them. The omission seems a most singular one, and can be accounted for on no other supposition, than that the written words which the actress was to speak were considered a comparatively insignificant part of her performance: and the nature of the praises lavished on her acting seem to point to the same conclusion. We hear much of voice, action, grace, and charm of elocution, but nothing of those higher matters of histrionic art which raise it to the level of an intellectual profession. Nothing is said of the effect produced on the minds of the audience, nothing of conception and interpretation of character, nothing of empire over the sources of smiles and tears.

And these facts seem to furnish an explanation of the difficulty of accounting for a great dramatic reputation, at a time when dramatic literature was such as has been described.

There was indeed one form of dramatic composition, not properly to be classed with either tragedy or comedy, that has not been mentioned. These were the pastoral pieces, "favole boschereccie," poems rather than dramas, of which Tasso's "Aminta" is the great

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example, and to which Isabella's own "Mirtilla" also belonged. From the circumstance of her having herself written in that style, and more still from the high place which the "Aminta" occupied in the public favour, it may be deemed almost certain that the leading actress of the day must have appeared in the part of Silvia. The superiority of this charming little gem of Tasso's to the generality of the contemporary dramatic writings is very marked. But its charms, its idyllic elegance, its Theophrastic echoes, its melodious verse, are not dramatic charms. And though we may fancy a beautiful woman, mistress of graceful elocution, and skilled in drawing all its music from polished Italian verse, uttering Silvia's disclaimer,

"Pianto d' amor non già, ma di pietade,"

with infinite charm of expression, still, any pleasure to be derived from the stage presentation of such a poem as the "Aminta," and any histrionic excellences to be manifested by the exponents of it, must be deemed to be of a very inferior rank indeed, to aught that modern times have learned to expect from those whom the world now considers great actors. And on the whole, this record of a great Italian actress contemporary with Shakspeare, must be considered to indicate that even if the great master's works be left out of the question as exceptional, drama stood higher, and was more appreciated in the great sixteenth century among the "toto divisos orbe Britannos," than in Italy, the metropolis of literary culture.

BIANCA CAPPELLO.

(1548-1587.)

CHAPTER I.

The pretty version of the story ;-and the true version of the same.Saint Mark's Square at Florence.-Bianca's beauty.-The Medici en famille.-The Casino of St. Mark.-The Proprieties." Cosa di Francesco."

IN one of the twelve million volumes* of the Archives of Venice, preserved in the two hundred and ninetyeight rooms of the suppressed convent of St. Maria dei Frari, there is one pointed out to our notice by the learned and accurate Emmanuele † Cigogna, in which certain passages have been blotted out; and in the margin opposite to them are written, in clerk's Latin, the words, "Obliterated by order of the Council of Ten." The volume in question is a register of criminal processes before the court of the "Avvogaria" for the year 1563. But the "Avvogadori" (members of one of the numerous magistracies of Venice, whose attributions were partly those of police magistrates, and partly such as belong to a public prosecutor), in obeying the commands of "The Ten," did not reckon on the lynxeyed curiosity of modern peerers into the secrets of the

* Venezia e sue Lagune. Vol. ii. part 2. Ap. p. 6.
+ Bianca Capello. Cenni storico-critici. Venezia, 1828.

THE SUPPRESSED PASSAGE.

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past. "As this obliteration," says Signor Cigogna, "was not effected by the knife, but only by drawing a pen with a different ink over the lines, the passages scratched out have been very clearly decyphered by the skill and sharp eyes of Signor Marco Solari, the paleographer." And the secret, which the terrible "Ten " thought to hide for evermore, thus divulged, and stripped of its clerk's Latin dress, is to this effect.

"Whereas Pietro Bonaventuri of Florence, resident in this city with his uncle Giovanni Batista Bonaventuri, close to the church of St. Apollinore, hath been accused before the criminal court of the Forty; that with audacious insolence and disrespect for the nobles of Venice, he, knowing that Bianca, the daughter of Bartolommeo Cappello, was an heiress of no small fortune, and thinking that he could get possession of such property if he could in any way lead the girl astray―(si puellam ipsam aliquâ ratione falleret)— dared to take her from the house of her father in the night following the 28th day of November, in the year 1563, having deceived her by many falsehoods, while she has barely completed her sixteenth year, and afterwards to take her with him from Venice, thus contaminating the race and house of a noble Venetian, in contempt of the laws, and against the public morals of this city; and whereas the said Pietro, notwithstanding diligent search, hath not been taken into custody, it is ordered, that if at any time he shall be arrested, he shall be brought to Venice, where, at the accustomed hour, on a lofty scaffold erected between the two columns on the piazza, his head shall be stricken from his shoulders by the public executioner, so that he die." Then follows the promise of a reward offered by Bartolommeo Cappello, the father, in addition to that

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