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Somewhere in these huge chambers, the courtiers sat before a torch-lit stage, when Bibbiena's "Calandria" and Castiglione's "Tirsi," with their miracles of masques and mummers, whiled the night away.
So too in the matter of metrical form, the strict terza rima of the earlier examples came to be diversified with rime sdrucciole, and by being intermingled with verses with internal rime, with ottava rima, settenarî couplets, and lyrical measures. Castiglione's representation at Urbino has been noticed previously.
Talleyrand called this form of human intercourse man's greatest and most beautiful blessing. The classic dialogue was revived, with only the difference that cultivated women also took part in it. As samples of the refined social intercourse of that age, we have Castiglione's Cortegiano and Bembo's Asolani, which was dedicated to Lucretia Borgia.
It is found equally in the religious or quasi-religious plays such as the Vuelta de Egypto with its shepherds and gypsies, and the Pastor lobo, an allegorical satire on the church Lope afterwards entered and in such purely secular, amorous, and on the whole less dramatic pieces as the Arcadia not to be confused with his romance of the same name and the Selva sin amor, a regular Italian pastoral in miniature, both of which were acted, besides many others intended primarly for reading, though they may possibly have been recited after the manner of Castiglione's Tirsi.
There was Castiglione's Tiger; this was Jones's Black; here was Pralitsky's "Torkershell," and this was Madame Danton's White; there sneaked Blenkinshoff's Maltee, and that climbing on the barrow was Sawyer's old Orange Billy, an impudent fraud that never had had any financial backing, all to be remembered and kept in account. This one's owner was sure pay, a dime a week; that one's doubtful.
Yet Bembo's Asolani, Castiglione's panegyric of Platonic Love, and much of the lyrical poetry in vogue warn us to be cautious. The old romantic sentiment expressed by the Florentines of the thirteenth century still survived to some extent, adding a sort of dignity in form at least to these affections.
The tone of Machiavelli's Principe, the whole tenor of Castiglione's Cortigiano, prove this without the need of further demonstration. It is well known that Savonarola's objection to classical culture was based upon his perception of its worldliness. It is very remarkable to note the feeling on this point of some of the greatest northern scholars.
Fano is very habitable, and we may get to Pesaro and the footsteps of Castiglione's 'courtier, to say nothing of Bernardo Tasso; and Ancona beckons from the other side of Sinigaglia, and Loreto beside, only we shall have to restrain our flights a little.
Thomas Hoby translated Castiglione's 'Courtier' in 1561.
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