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The stones in Nostradamus' "Lives of the Troubadours," the incidents in Gottfried's "Tristan und Isolde," nay, the adventures even in our expunged English "Morte d'Arthur," relating to the birth of Sir Galahad, are as explicit as anything in Brantôme or the Queen of Navarre; the most delicate love songs of Provence and Germany are cobwebs spun round Decameronian situations.
The Nibelung story possesses, both in the Norse and in the Middle High German version, a tragic fascination; and a quaint fairy-tale interest, every now and then rising to the charm of a Decameronian novella, is possessed by many of the Keltic tales, whether briefly told in the Mabinogion or lengthily detailed by Chrestien de Troyes and Wolfram von Eschenbach.
In default of pleasant stories of filthy intrigue or lewd jest, men like Cinthio and Bandello will gabble off occasionally some tragic story, picked out of a history book or recently heard from a gossip: the stories of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, of Disdémona and the Moorish Captain, of Roméo Montecchio and Giulietta Cappelletti, of the Cardinal d'Aragona and the Duchess of Amalfi, of unknown grotesque Persian Sophis and Turkish Bassas stories of murder, massacre, rape, incest, anything and everything, prattled off, with a few words of vapid compassion and stale moralizing, in the serene, cheerful, chatty manner in which they recount their Decameronian escapades or Rabelaisian repartees.
With wonderful realization of character and situation he painted the prosperous of the world, the dapper youths and damsels seated with dogs and falcons beneath the orchard trees, amusing themselves with Decameronian tales and sound of lute and psaltery, unconscious of the colossal scythe wielded by the gigantic dishevelled Death, and which, in a second, will descend and mow them to the ground; while the crowd of beggars, ragged, maimed, paralyzed, leprous, grovelling on their withered limbs, see and implore Death, and cry stretching forth their arms, their stumps, and their crutches.
While we fully exonerate his writings from the charge of grossness, and recognise the absence of those immoral and pernicious tendencies which disfigure the works of many gifted French writers of the day, we would yet gladly see him abstain from the somewhat too Decameronian incidents and narratives with which he occasionally varies his pages.
All this is a purely artistic world, a world of decorative arabesque incident, intended to please, scarcely ever to move, or to move, at most, like some Decameronian tale of Isabella and the Basil Plant, or Constance and Martuccio. On the other hand, there is none of the grotesque irreverence of Pulci.
It contains exact descriptions of all the rarities of ancient art, and of things Oriental which he had seen, and pages of transcripts from obscure Latin and Greek authors, descriptive of religious ceremonies; varied with Platonic philosophy, Decameronian obscenities, in laboured pseudo-Florentine style, and Dantesque visions, all held together by the confused narrative of an allegorical journey performed by the author.
While, in Italy, Giraldi Cinthio prattles off to a gay party of ladies and gentlemen stories of murder and lust as frightful as those of "Titus' Andronicus," of "Giovanni and Annabella," and of the "Revenger's Tragedy," in the intelligent, bantering tone in which he tells his Decameronian tales; in England, Marston, in his superb prologue to the second part of "Antonio and Mellida," doubts whether all his audience can rise to the conception of the terrible passions he wishes to display: If any spirit breathes within this round Uncapable of weighty passion, Who winks and shuts his apprehension up From common sense of what men were and are, Who would not know what men must be: let such Hurry amain from our black visaged shows; We shall affright their eyes.
Moreover, the all-pervading consciousness of the existence of Homer, Virgil, nay, Statius and Lucan, every trumpery antique epic-monger, annoys me, giving an uncomfortable doubt as to whether Ariosto did not try to make all this nonsense serious, and this romance into an epic; all this occasional Virgilian stateliness, alternated with a kind of polished Decameronian gossipy cynicism, diverts my attention, turns paladins and princesses too much into tutor-educated gentlemen, into Bandello and Cinthio-reading ladies of the sixteenth century.
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