Let us begin with that kind of festival which is perhaps the oldest of
all--the Mysteries. They resembled in their main features those
performed in the rest of Europe. In the public squares, in the churches
and in the cloisters, extensive scaffolds were constructed, the upper
story of which served as a Paradise to open and shut at will, and the
ground-floor often as 8 Hell, while between the two lay the stage
properly so called, representing the scene of all the earthly events of
the drama In Italy, as elsewhere, the biblical or legendary play often
began with an introductory dialogue between Apostles, Prophets, Sibyls,
Virtues, and Fathers of the Church, and sometimes ended with a dance.
As a matter of course the half-comic 'Intermezzi' of secondary
characters were not wanting in Italy, yet this feature was hardly so
broadly marked as in northern countries. The artificial means by which
figures were made to rise and float in the air--one of the chief
delights of these representations--were probably much better understood
in Italy than elsewhere; and at Florence in the fourteenth century the
hitches in these performances were a stock subject of ridicule. Soon
afterwards Brunellesco invented for the Feast of the Annunciation in
the Piazza San Felice a marvelous ap- paratus consisting of a heavenly
globe surrounded by two circles of angels, out of which Gabriel flew
down in a machine shaped like an almond.
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