Most of them showed some artistic or poetical
feeling. The mixture of pantomime and drama at the Court of Ferrara has
been already referred to in the treating of poetry. The entertainments
given in 1473 by the Cardinal Pietro Riario at Rome when Leonora of
Aragon, the destined bride of Prince Hercules of Ferrara, was passing
through the city, were famous far beyond the limits of Italy. The plays
acted were mysteries on some ecclesiastical subject, the pantomimes, on
the contrary, were mythological. There were represented Orpheus with
the beasts, Perseus and Andromeda, Ceres drawn by dragons, Bacchus and
Ariadne by panthers, and finally the education of Achilles. Then
followed a ballet of the famous lovers of ancient times, with a troop
of nymphs, which was interrupted by an attack of predatory centaurs,
who in their turn were vanquished and put to flight by Hercules. The
fact, in itself a trifle, may be mentioned as characteristic of the
taste of the time, that the human beings who at all festivals appeared
as statues in niches or on pillars and triumphal arches, and then
showed themselves to be alive by singing or speaking, wore their
natural complexion and a natural costume, and thus the sense of
incongruity was removed; while in the house of Riario there was
exhibited a living child, gilt from head to foot, who showered water
round him from a spring.
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