And when the latter did at length appear, it at once gave itself up to
magnificence of scenic effects, to which the mysteries had already
accustomed the public taste to far too great an extent. We learn with
astonishment how rich and splendid the scenes in Italy were, at a time
when in the North the simplest indication of the place was thought
sufficient. This alone might have had no such unfavorable effect on the
drama, if the attention of the audience had not been drawn away from
the poetical conception of the play partly by the splendor of the
costumes, partly and chiefly by fantastic interludes (Intermezzi).
That in many places, particularly in Rome and Ferrara, Plautus and
Terence, as well as pieces by the old tragedians, were given in Latin
or in Italian, that the academies of which we have already spoken, made
this one of their chief objects, and that the poets of the Renaissance
followed these models too servilely, were all untoward conditions for
the Italian stage at the period in question. Yet I hold them to be of
secondary importance. Had not the Counter-reformation and the rule of
foreigners intervened, these very disadvantages might have been turned
into useful means of transition. At all events, by the year 1520 the
victory of the mother-tongue in tragedy and comedy was, to the great
disgust of the humanists, as good as won.
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