madrigal style to its most beautiful development and whose influence molded the methods of the English glee and madrigal writers, is believed to have been his pupil for a short time. Marenzio unquestionably lived for some months in Mantua, where according to Calvi9 he completed his studies under the guidance of the Duke.

Of Alessandro Striggio and his art work at the court of Mantua and elsewhere special mention will be made in another part of this work. Moreover it is not necessary that anything should be said here of the epoch-making creations of Claudio Monteverde, who was long in the Gonzaga service and who produced his "Orfeo" at Mantua. Sufficient has been set forth in this chapter to give some estimate of the importance and activity of Mantua as a literary and musical center. The culture of the age was confined almost exclusively to churchmen, professors, literary laborers and the nobility. The long line of musical and dramatic development followed at Mantua had no relation to the general art life of the Italian people. But its importance in its preparation for the birth of the art form finally known as opera is not easily overestimated, especially when we remember that this form did not become a public entertainment till 1637. It was at Mantua that Angelo Poliziano's "Orfeo," the first lyric drama with a secular subject, was produced, and it must be our next business to examine this work and set forth the conditions under which it was made known.

CHAPTER IV

THE ARTISTIC IMPULSE

The non-existence of the drama in the Middle Ages is one of the strikingly significant deficiencies of the period. The illiterate condition of the people, and even of the nobility, the fragmentary state of governments, the centralizing of small and dependent communities around the feet of petty tyrants, the frequency of wars large and small, and the devotion of men to skill in the use of arms, made it impossible that attention should be bestowed upon so polite and sedentary a form of amusement as the drama.

It is generally held that the church made the first movement toward the abolition of the drama by placing its ban on the plays handed down from the Greeks and the Romans, partly because of their inculcation of reverence for heathen deities and partly because of the shameless indecencies which had invaded them. But this could have been only one of many causes which operated in keeping the play out of Europe for so many centuries. When it was revived, as we have seen, in the form of the liturgical drama and afterward of the sacred representation, it bore little or no resemblance to the splendid art product bequeathed to the world by the Greeks.

The sudden and glorious return of the dramatic subjects of the Greeks to the stage of medieval Europe marks the beginning of the modern era. When the Italians turned to the stories of ancient fable for material for their secular drama they were without doubt quite unconscious of the importance of the step they were taking. It is only the reflective eye of retrospective study that can discern all the significant elements happily combined in this event by the overmastering laws of human progress.

To enter into a detailed examination of the matter would demand of us a review of the whole movement known as the Renaissance. This, however, is not essential to an appreciation of the precise nature of the step from the sacred representation to the lyric drama and its importance in laying the foundations of opera. This momentous step was taken late in the fifteenth century with the performance of Angelo Poliziano's "Favola di Orfeo" at the Court of Mantua to celebrate the return of the Cardinal Gonzaga. The Italian authorities are by no means agreed as to the importance of this production. Rossi says:10

"The circle of plot in the religious drama, at first restricted to the life of Christ, had been gradually broadened. Some writers, wishing to adapt attractive themes to the aristocratic gatherings of the princely courts, availed themselves of the very form of the sacred drama of the people in the treatment of subjects entirely profane. Thus did Poliziano, whose 'Orfeo,' as the evident reproduction of that form in a mythological subject is an isolated type in the history of the Italian drama."

Alessandro D'Ancona11 in his monumental work on the sources of the Italian play says:

"The 'Favola di Orfeo,' although it drew its argument from mythology, was hardly dissimilar in its intrinsic character from the sacred plays, and was moreover far from that second form of tragedy which was later given to it, not by the author himself, but probably by Tebaldeo, to serve the dramatic tastes of Ferrara. So then the 'Fable of Orpheus' is a prelude, a passage, an attempt at the transformation of the dramatic spectacle so dear to the people, and while it detaches itself in subject from the religious tradition, it is not yet involved in the meshes of classic imitation. If, indeed, from the stage setting and from the music introduced into it, it is already an artistic spectacle, it cannot be called an example of ancient art restored. It was a theatrical ornament to a prince's festival."

Perhaps both of these admirable Italian authors had their eyes too closely fixed on the spoken drama to perceive the immense significance of Poliziano's "Orfeo" in the field of opera. If they had paused for a moment to consider that Peri and Caccini chose the same story for the book of their operas, in which the musical departure was even more significant than the dramatic innovation of Poliziano had been, that Monteverde utilized the same theme in his epoch-making "Orfeo," and that for nearly two centuries the poetic and musical suggestiveness of the Orpheus legend made it hold its grip on the affections of composers, they might have realized better the relative value of the achievement of Poliziano.

Let us then briefly review the influences which led to the selection of the subject and the character of its literary investiture by the Italian poet. The nature of the music and the manner of performance will have to be examined separately. The transformation which came upon Italian life and thought under the influence of the revival of the study of ancient literature and philosophy has been extensively examined in numerous works. But at this point we must recall at least the particular effect which it had on Italian poetry. The creations of Dante might seem to us tremendous enough in themselves to have originated an era, but as a matter of fact they marked the conclusion of one. They were the full and final fruition of medieval thought, and after them Italian literature entered upon a new movement.