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The Italianist

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A VERNACULAR RENAISSANCE OF PLAUTUS: TEXTSAND PERFORMANCES OF BATTISTA GUARINO’SCOMEDY I MENECHINI

Chiara Sbordoni

To cite this article: Chiara Sbordoni (2014) A VERNACULAR RENAISSANCE OF PLAUTUS:TEXTS AND PERFORMANCES OF BATTISTA GUARINO’S COMEDY I MENECHINI, TheItalianist, 34:3, 379-399, DOI: 10.1179/0261434014Z.00000000098

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/0261434014Z.00000000098

Published online: 14 Sep 2014.

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AVERNACULAR RENAISSANCE OF PLAUTUS:TEXTS AND PERFORMANCES OF BATTISTA

GUARINO’S COMEDY I MENECHINI

CHIARA SBORDONI

University of Leeds, UK

This paper focuses on the language of the first translation of Plautus into Italian,Battista Guarino’s two redactions of Menaechmi, entitled Menechini, which wasstaged in Ferrara in 1486 and then in Milan and Venice. Guarino’s innovativetranslation theory is set against the linguistic debate among humanists over therelationship between Latin and vernacular languages, revealing the new attentiongiven to the expectations of patrons and publics, beyond elite intellectuals.Guarino translates Plautus’s comedy into a contemporary language rooted in theFlorentine literary tradition. Moreover, as a text clearly destined for oralperformance on stage, the Menechini presents grammatical and syntacticalfeatures typical of speech, which are investigated both in the monologuesaddressed to the public and in the dialogues between characters. The threemanuscripts and two printed editions that transmit the text and the accounts ofperformances reveal precious information about how the various social groupsinvolved in the creation and performance of this text determined or were affectedby specific linguistic choices.

KEYWORDS: spoken and written languages, Plautus, comedy, performance,translation, Ferrara, Venice

On 25 January 1486, Battista Guarino’s vernacular translation1 of Plautus’sMenaechmi, entitled Menechini, was performed on stage at the court of Ferrara.2

This was one of the events organized to celebrate the visit of Francesco Gonzaga,marquis of Mantua, betrothed to Isabella d’Este, daughter of the duke of FerraraErcole I.3 This performance is the first of its kind that we know of: before 1486,Latin comedies had only circulated in writing or had been read aloud or perhaps insome cases acted in the original language among very select academic contexts4 orcircles of scholars, pupils, and men of letters, as in Rome within Pomponio Leto’sAccademia Pomponiana. These readings or performances of classical comedies inLatin were the concrete result of the philological work on the texts done byhumanists. In Florence, performances of Roman comedies also took place in Latin;for instance, Terence’s Andria was performed during Carnival in 1476 by thepupils of Giorgio Antonio Vespucci, parish priest of Santa Maria del Fiore, first inhis school, then at the Medici palace, and finally in Palazzo Vecchio before the

The Italianist, 34. 3, 379–399, October 2014

# Italian Studies at the Universities of Cambridge,

Leeds and Reading 2014 DOI: 10.1179/0261434014Z.00000000098

Signoria;5 and the Menaechmi was performed by the pupils of ser PaoloComparini da Prato, master of the schola cantorum in San Lorenzo, on 12 May1488, with a prologue by Angelo Poliziano. These performances responded to aspecific cultural agenda: comedies in their original texts were at the centre of apedagogic approach based on Cicero’s and Quintilian’s precepts, according towhich theatrical performance should be used as an educational tool for learningthe arts of rhetoric and eloquence.6

In contrast, the 1486 Ferrarese performance made a classical comedy accessibleto a wide public for the first time, simultaneously serving as a means of publicentertainment and as cultural and political propaganda. The Menechini wasperformed both in translation and on a real stage, before a socially and culturallydiverse audience. This performance aimed at promoting the cultural pre-eminenceof the Ferrarese court and displaying its wealth and power. Moreover, this stagedproduction was only the first of a long series of performances of Latin comediestranslated into the vernacular between the late fifteenth century and the earlysixteenth. It therefore marked an extraordinary transformation in the way classicalcomedies were approached, compared to the purely philological interest in theoriginal text and its pedagogic use. This revolution, however, was made within acoherent framework of philological knowledge: translation into the vernacular,while necessarily moving away from the Latin text, entailed considering thevernacular language as a means of cultural adaptation of themes, concepts, andeven simple terms referring to material objects, in the context of Renaissancesociety. The translators were often humanists who, like Guarino, could appreciatethe distance between the two worlds and carry out a linguistic and culturalmediation in order to bring them closer to, or better to bring back to life, theclassical world. Moreover, a great part of the translator’s task was to recreate atext performable on stage, which is to say a written text destined for oralperformance, and more specifically a theatrical text that by its own naturerepresents oral speech to be acted (as opposed to written text representing directspeech).

This essay focuses specifically on the language of the translation of theMenechini in its two redactions, and how it reflects the oral dimension of the textand its theatrical performability. The first part of the essay focuses on the approachof the translator, Battista Guarino, to the original Latin text, especially with regardto its lexis, within the broader context of the discussions among humanists of theprevious and the current generations about the relationship between Latin and thevernacular, and the question of volgarizzamenti. The second part is dedicated toan analysis of the vernacular used in the translation, and specifically itsimplications for the use of literary Florentine as a model as well as the extent towhich the translator engages in a realistic representation of oral speech. Lexis,morphology, syntax, and style will be considered in relation to the Latin text, theliterary vernacular, and the spoken language as the means through which thetranslator engages with establishing enduring forms (in terms of literary genre asdefined by its language) of and for the new Italian Renaissance theatre (namelycomedy). The third and last part of this essay will deal with the dialectic betweenthis aspiration to find a language fit for vernacular comedy and the ephemeralnature of individual performances: this tension emerges when looking at thelinguistic changes the play underwent in the three manuscripts. From this last

380 CHIARA SBORDONI

perspective this essay is concerned with the social and cultural context in which thetext was conceived as well as the contexts of the performances and their reception.In particular the focus will be on whether and how the patrons of the performancesinfluenced linguistic choices, what the influence of an intended audience was onthe same choices, and how the various audiences received the performed text at thelinguistic level. This will entail examining sources such as accounts of theperformances, which tell us something about the impact of the linguistic featuresof this comedy in different moments, places, and social environments.

Indeed, Guarino’s Menechini provides an ideal point of departure to study howthe vernacular that was used to translate classical Latin comedies for the stagesought to address the ephemeral demand to entertain an audience on a specificoccasion, and at the same time to establish permanent and canonical features of anew genre and a new language.

THEORIES: BATTISTA GUARINO AND THE LANGUAGE OF

VOLGARIZZAMENTI

Battista Guarino (c. 1434–1513) was one of the leading exponents of Ferraresehumanism under Ercole I. He was the son and intellectual heir of GuarinoVeronese (1374–1460), who had spent the last thirty years of his life in Ferrara,first as preceptor to the future duke Leonello and then as lecturer in Latin andGreek languages, rhetoric, and literatures at the Studium. It had been GuarinoVeronese who had received and had copied in Ferrara in 1432 the Orsinianomanuscript (Vat. Lat. 3870), containing the twelve comedies of Plautus discoveredby Nicholas of Cusa in Cologne three years previously.7

More than forty years later and several years before the performance of theMenechini, Battista Guarino made it clear that his goals as a translator ofPlautus were to make Plautus’s texts intelligible and also pleasing to the public, bymeans of a consistent linguistic modernization that would however not betray themeaning of the original text. In a letter of 18 February 1479 addressed to Ercole I,the translator defended his lexical choices in his vernacular version of another ofPlautus’s plays, the Aulularia, in response to some of Ercole’s criticisms. Probablyprompted by one of Ercole’s advisers who must have been a rival of Guarino’s inthe lively debate on the nature of vernacular translations that was taking place inthose years,8 the Duke had complained that Guarino’s translation ‘despartissedalla sententia di Plauto’. In response, Guarino wrote:

non credo essere per niente lontanato dal sentimento di Plauto ne anchora da li

vocabuli. Et se ho posto moschio9 et zibetti10 el gi e pero in lo testo venditori de odori

da ongerse per sapere da buon. Ma parevami molto melgiore translatione nominare li

ditti odori et ridure la cosa ad la moderna che volendo esprimere de parolla in parolla

fare una translatione obscura et puocho saporita.11

Guarino offered more detailed examples of his approach to the choice ofvocabulary, and suggested that Ercole (who could not read Latin) should havePlautus’s words explained to him by somebody who understood them. Guarinoexplained his purpose:

A VERNACULAR RENAISSANCE OF PLAUTUS 381

mi parse di convertire ad la consuetudine nostra per fare lo sermone piu delectevole

perche in vero ad volere seguire de parolla in parolla se faria, secondo lo mio iudicio,

cosa goffa et che harebbe puocho del piacevole et bisogna alcune fiate adiungere et

minuire et ridure in forma de lo usitato parlare quelle cose antiche.12

The idea of adapting Plautus’s text to ‘la consuetudine nostra’, in order to ensureits pleasantness, on the one hand points to the dimension of entertainment thatthese texts addressed, and on the other raises the question of what this expressionmeans. Does it really refer to the spoken language or more generally to thevernacular language, not necessarily in one of its spoken varieties? Guarino seemsto have assimilated his father’s view on how comedies, especially because of theireventual oral destination, must necessarily be understood by a wide public. Theprevious generation of humanists had indeed used the example of Latin comedy inorder to support their views about whether in ancient Rome illiterate people spokea proto-vernacular language different from Latin, as Leonardo Bruni according tosome of his contemporaries had affirmed, or spoke a lower register of Latin, lesspure and grammatically correct than that of canonical authors, as Biondo Flavioargued. According to Bruni, in ancient Rome uneducated people went to thetheatre not in order to listen to Plautus’s and Terence’s comedies, since they couldnot understand the language in which those comedies were written and performed,but in order to enjoy the music of the instruments and to watch the dances andmime shows that accompanied the performances.13 Guarino Veronese, on theother hand, had used the opposite argument, affirming that the fact that evenwomen went to the theatre proved that they understood what was said on stageand that this is also evident from the exhortations of playwrights to the public tolisten and applaud.14 If Guarino Veronese would never have considered translatingPlautus into the vernacular, this was Battista Guarino’s task, and he followed hisfather’s view that the audience must understand and be moved (or at least amused)by the text by choosing to use modern vernacular terms for common objects. Onthe other hand, Guarino also shows faithfulness, at the lexical level, towards thespirit of the original text because his translation is based on his profoundphilological knowledge of Latin, which allowed him to draw legitimateequivalences between concepts and words in the two traditions. Like Plautus inhis own times, Guarino, too, evokes a realistic contemporary context, as thesecond part of this essay will show in more detail.

Turning to the text of theMenechini, we find that Guarino explicitly emphasizedhis work as translator. In the address to the public at the beginning of theprologue, he translates ‘Apporto vobis Plautum lingua, non manu’ (‘I bring youPlautus with my tongue, not with my hand’) with ‘Cum la mia lingua e cum paroleaccute | vi porto Plauto non gia cum le mani’. If ‘lingua’ refers to the physical partof the body, on the other hand it also refers to the language itself, the Italianvernacular, and the ‘parole acute’ to the quality of this language that subtlytranslates the original text. On another level in Guarino’s translation, ‘cum la mialingua’ refers to the practice of performance: in the Estense manuscript, one of thethree that transmit our text (see the section on Language below), there is a portraitof Caliopio, the traditional recitator of the prologues, while at the end of theprologue itself there is a reference to Plautus’s text: ‘Questa e quella citta che letto

382 CHIARA SBORDONI

habiamo’, with Guarino marking the dependence of the ephemeral oralperformance on a legitimate and permanent written source.

LANGUAGE

Guarino’s theoretical approach to translation was based on a knowledge ofPlautus’s original text introduced into Ferrara by his father that made him wellaware of the gap between classical culture in Latin and contemporary culture inItalian. The task of bringing Plautus’s texts in translation to the stage for thecontemporary public posed the problem of finding a language mediating betweenthe two cultures. The issue here in terms of linguistic choices — on different levels,from a more general underlying cultural approach to a more concrete need toselect a set of specific features — was, first of all, the adoption of one of the manyvernaculars used in the peninsula, and then its register in both lexical andsyntactical terms as well as in terms of rhetorical images.

The language of Guarino’s translation of the Menechini is based on literaryTuscan, although it retains some of the major phonetic features specific to theNorthern linguistic koine. The Menechini survives in three manuscripts:Sessoriano 413 of the Biblioteca Nazionale in Rome (S), It. 836 (a H 6, 1) ofthe Biblioteca Estense in Modena (E), and It. IX 368 (7170) of the BibliotecaNazionale Marciana in Venice (M), in the hand of Marin Sanudo.15 The survivalof three manuscripts of this text is quite exceptional, given that most theatricalscripts had a very ephemeral life, since the text of the play was divided among theactors for them to memorize it (the so-called parti scannate), and often never putback together.16 Maria Luisa Uberti reconstructed the relationship between themanuscripts and printed editions of the Menechini and their performances asfollows. The comedy was first performed in 1486 in Ferrara in the short versionhanded down by S, as the correspondence between certain directions contained inthe manuscript and the descriptions of the performance recorded in thecontemporary chronicles prove, then in Ferrara (1491, 1493, 1501, 1503) in thelonger and more faithful to Plautus’s text version of E, and finally in Venice wherethe script, similar in its structure to E, nevertheless underwent a major revisionthat must have corresponded more or less to the text of M by Marin Sanudo. It isreasonable to think that the passage from the version transmitted by S to thattransmitted by E was originally Guarino’s work, both because the revision shows asophisticated awareness of both linguistic and plot matters and because the text inE corresponds to the post-1486 Ferrarese performances. However, we can assumethat for each performance the text may have undergone changes linked to thespecific event, and that in particular in the passage from E to M the text may veryprobably have been revised by someone other than Guarino. Again most probablythis reviser must have been the actor Francesco de’ Nobili from Lucca, known asCherea, who introduced the volgarizzamenti of Plautus into Venice, as we will see.The Menechini was also printed by Girolamo Penzio for Cristoforo Stampone(1528) and by Nicolo Zoppino (1530).17 According to Uberti, Penzio’s edition isclose to E but also shares some characteristics of M and must thus reflect the waythe Ferrarese script transmitted by E travelled to Venice.18 Zoppino’s edition isfundamentally a reprint of Penzio’s. The text was revised and adapted for eachperformance and every time it underwent linguistic changes.

A VERNACULAR RENAISSANCE OF PLAUTUS 383

PHONOLOGY

The three manuscripts present certain common phonological characteristics thatreflect on the orthographic level the pronunciation of Northern Italy, in some caseseven in a Latinizing fashion, as well as some distinctive features:

1. The voiceless affricate z [z/zz] replaces the pre-palatal voiceless affricate c [tʃ]and cc [ttʃ]: minaze (minaccie in E, M), sagaze, seguazi, spazato (S), scaziata(M), mordaze (M), piaza (M), brazo, impazia (M), fanzullo (M) etc., but alsopertinace (S); and the voiced affricate z [dz/dzz] replaces the pre-palatalvoiced affricate g [dʒ] and gg [ddʒ]: dilezar (this becomes caleffar in E, M),dilezo (S; deleggio in E, M), dilezato (S; delegiato in E, M), zonzeno (M),zanzi (M), depinze (M).

2. Use of -s- and -ss- [s] instead of -sc- [ʃ]: finisse, lassa, concupisenza, consienza (S).3. Single for double consonants: ochio (M), orechie (M), richo, cita (M), inamorato,

inamorando, arivato, arosto, aviene, alor, pelegrino, alevati, putana, etc.4. Hypercorrect double consonants, especially in M: erra (instead of era, ‘it

was’), gentille, scalle (S), cenne (S), stranna (S).5. Prevalence of assimilation over dissimilation of the Latinizing consonantal groups

ct and pt; but adoptivo scriptura, intellecto, doctrina (all in E), admirativo (S).6. Etymological h is preserved in most cases for the verb avere: hanno, havesse,

havrebbe, havendo, etc.; in herede, hora, hom, humana, etc. H is also used inmany cases with velar c and g: richa/o, cercho, cercharia, mancha (but giottoand girlanda); and with t: cathene (in S but not in E).

7. The t is preserved inmalitiosa,militia, tristitia, etc. and used as a hypercorrectfalse etymology in giuditio.

8. Characteristics of E: consistent use of Latinizing cum (while S andM have con);frequent use of sum (sono: first-person singular and third-person plural); scio,sciai, and scia (corrected in M to so, sai, sa) which on the one hand reflects thepalatal pronunciation [ʃ] still typical of Emilia Romagna, on the other handcould have seemed to be legitimized as a Latinizing etymological rendering(from the verb scio);19 diphthong in mieco, tieco, sieco; spiero, dispiero,priego, buon; pseudo-Latinizing diphthong in moeretrice.

MORPHOLOGY

The three manuscripts present a mix of literary and Northern features. Some of themain Northern characteristics present in the two manuscripts that transmit thetext performed in Ferrara (S, E) are Tuscanized in the Marciano manuscript, withsome exceptions:

1. While the masc. sing. definite article is the Northern el in S and M, it is theTuscan il in E.

2. The conditional in -ıa: cercharia, haria (but also avrebbe), meritaria, seria,potria, faria, daria, terialo, giovaria, etc. is both a literary ‘Sicilian’ feature and onthe other hand it reflects the form of conditional found in the Northern koine.20

3. The past participle in -so as in conquiso and rimaso are literary features.4. The future: all three manuscripts have the literary fia (sara), fian, but also

the Northern forms (2nd person sing.) serai, aro (1st person). S and E use the

384 CHIARA SBORDONI

-ar- future quite strong in the North restarai, passarai, vantarai, tornaro,m’adiraro, systematically Tuscanized in M: resterai, avanterai, m’adirero(passarai and tornaro are missing in M which changed the entire verses).

5. Present indicative (1st person plural): abiano, andiano, portian[o]; future:potren[o].

6. Present indicative third-person plural of -are verbs: negono, curon.7. Characteristics of E: the masc. sing. definite article il prevails over el; the

preposition de over di.8. Characteristics of M: consistent use of the pronouns mi and ti in alternation

with me and te, and systematic Tuscanization of the future and otherNorthern aspects (see below).

Other features typical of Northern Italy undergo a Tuscanization in the passagefrom the texts of Ferrarese origin to the Venetian redaction: the use of the indirectthird-person pronoun ge [ge]: ‘tu ge (E f102r: gli) l’ha tolto e tu ge lo allontani’ (S835); ‘Io ge (E f102r: gli) la die’ (S 837); Ver ch’io ge l’ho prestata:[…] (S, 847 andE f102v) but then corrected into ‘tu gliel’hai tolta e tu gliela allontani’ (M 1050);‘Io gliela dei’ (M 1052); Vero e gliela prestai (M, 1062).21

Translating Plautus into an Italian vernacular in 1480s Ferrara, and especiallytranslating it for performance on stage, meant importing classical comedy into aliterary tradition that did not yet include the genre of comedy in its canon. Morethan a translation, the Menechini should be considered a rewriting of Plautus’soriginal text: Guarino’s linguistic choices carried out a cultural adaptation thatpromoted, on the one hand, the vernacular over Latin, and, on the other hand, theliterary language and metres of the poetic tradition based on Tuscan over theFerrarese dialect. Ferrarese in itself did not have the necessary cultural prestige forperformance in a courtly context, and indeed Guarino’s translation is notconcerned with a realistic portrayal of everyday speech in Ferrara. In fact, Guarinoaims to modernize Plautus’s text by renewing the genre of classical comedy in thelanguage of the Tuscan literary tradition. The ephemeral occasion of thisperformance becomes the workshop for the foundation of a new ‘permanent’language and genre within the literary canon. The Tuscan literary tradition hadimposed its prestige on the Italian peninsula, and was increasingly becoming partof the cultural experience of Italians in various cities and across social classes,through its circulation in both oral and written forms. Guarino thus looked both atliterary genres that circulated orally, such as the cantari in ottava rima, the sacrarappresentazione (in the same metre) imported into Ferrara from Florence, andpoetry in terza rima; and to written genres that aimed at portraying orality, such asthe novella, and/or made use of oral speech such as poesia giocosa. Guarino’stranslation drew its vocabulary from all these genres and was composed in acombination of ottava and terza rima. These two metres had been prominent sincethe Trecento in the Florentine literary tradition, associated with genres whichcirculated widely in an oral form, either read aloud or sung. From the pure point ofview of sound, Plautus’s text was based on Latin quantitative metres, alternatinglong and short syllables. Dialogues between characters were in the iambic senarius(consisting of six iambic feet), which reproduced something of the rhythm of oralspeech. What prevails in the translated Italian metres instead is, rather than themimesis of oral speech that can be partly rendered by the rhythm of the verses

A VERNACULAR RENAISSANCE OF PLAUTUS 385

determined by the positions of the accents in the syllables, the system of rhymes.This tends to place attention on the semantic value of the word and a sophisticatedgame of combinations between meanings and sounds of rhyme-series, and alsoengages the listener, as we will see, with an intertextual recognition of these seriesconnected with other literary works. If the use of verse rather than prose aimed atmaintaining a continuity with the Latin original, written in a variety of metres, theadaptation to the metres used in the Italian vernacular tradition prevented a senseof realistic oral exchange. In fact, even on a methodological level, one of the mainconsequences of the pattern of ottava and terza rima in trying to determine theimpact of syntactic structures particular to oral speech on the text of theMenechini is precisely that the context of verse makes it unproductive to analysesome of those syntactic structures generally associated with markers of orality inprose texts. In particular, the word order and displacement of certain syntacticfunctions usually associated with oral speech might very probably be due tometrics. However, other relevant syntactical and morphological features will bebriefly noted after focusing on the lexis and the semantic connotation of words: thetension between the ephemeral nature of spoken language and its enduringrepresentation in a text is resolved through a literary idealization of oral speech.

In Guarino’s Menechini, all characters express themselves using the literarylanguage, mainly in ottava rima, always in those parts that have a more decisivelydiegetic function (such as the argumento and monologues, but also in manydialogues), and in terza rima in some of the dialogues between characters. Noattention is paid to a realistic differentiation between the languages of charactersof different social classes and geographical origins. What distinguishes thecharacters on the linguistic level is rather their association with particular semanticfields. The register is always comic (low). Penicolo, the scrounger, is associatedwith food, servile flattery of his patron, and invective against the prostitute Eroziaand Menechino. Erozia speaks in a debased stilnovistic love discourse, which isconsistently undermined by Penicolo’s misogynist ‘countermelody’. Menechino Ioscillates between the misogynist tirade against his wife in the first act (using atheme of comic poetry that is present even within the lyric tradition)22 and the lyriclanguage of the stilnovo. Messeno, the wise old servant, often cites proverbs.

For example, the characterization of Penicolo is based on lexical choices thatrely on the model offered by the tradition of the novella and of cantari, especiallyLuigi Pulci’s Morgante. The Morgante was first printed in 1478 and thencirculated immediately thereafter in Ferrara, since Ercole d’Este had asked one ofhis agents in Florence for a copy of it.23 Guarino greatly amplifies Penicolo’sreferences to food in his version:

Menaechmi, ll. 77–78:24 MS Sessoriano, ll. 49–52

Iuventus nomenfecit Peniculo mihi,Ideo quia mensam,quando edo, detergeo.

(Young people calledme Peniculo, becausewhen I eat I clean the table.)

O come drittamente i giovenetti| m’hanno el cognome diPenicol posto, | perche itaglier so far puliti e netti |quanto piu unti son da lessoe arosto!

386 CHIARA SBORDONI

And several lines later, added details complete the picture:

In translating Plautus’s text, Guarino’s challenge is that of expressing in aTuscan-based language an ‘everyday’ setting. He provides more culinary contextfocusing on objects of common use, and multiplying them, compared to the moresuccinct Latin text, while only choosing terms largely attested in Italian literaryworks: for instance, tagliere, unto, scudelle, piatelli, tovaglia are already found inBoccaccio, Sacchetti, Pulci, and Boiardo, where we also find the phrase ‘lesso earosto’, absent from Plautus’s text, which does not refer to any specific food.25

Moreover, as an example of Guarino’s sense of what would be too far removedfrom the public’s cultural experience and understanding, he transforms theexpression ‘Ceriales cenae’ (Menaechmi, 101: a banquet in honour of the goddessof agriculture Ceres, too erudite a reference for the spectators), in ‘cene grasse ebelle’ (l. 73 in S, l. 105 in M), and translates the ‘triclinium’ (on which the Romansused to lie while eating) of Plautus’s text as the ‘banche’ on which people sat attable in the Renaissance.

The translation more than doubles the number of the verses of the original. Thesimple ‘detergeo mensa’ is translated ‘i taglier so far puliti e netti’. Moreover, thelines attributed to Menaechmus in Plautus’s original (ll. 208–12), where the loverasks the prostitute to buy foods, are attributed in the volgarizzamento (E, fol. 90r;M, ll. 331–34) to Penicolo, and this emphasizes even more his characterization inGuarino’s text. He orders, in a quite faithful translation of the Latin text:

Menaechmi, ll. 98–103 MS Sessoriano, ll. 73–86

Nam illic homo hominesnon alit, verum educat |recreatque: nullus meliusmedicinam facit. Ita estadulescens; ipsus escaemaxumae | Cerialis cenasdat; ita mensas extruit, |Tantas struices concinnatpatinarias. | Standumst inlecto, siquid de summo petas.

(In fact he [Menaechmus I]does not just feed men, butnourishes them, he restoresthem: nobody gives bettermedicines [than him]. Theyoung man is like this: hehimself, great eater, givesdinners worthy of Ceres;he sets such tables, heprepares so many piles ofdishes. You have to standon the bed [the triclinium]if you want to reach the top.)

Tanto fa le sue cenne grasse e belle |che mai nanzi mi stan tovaglie bianche; |edifica sı alte le scudelle | l’una sopra del’altra, e’ piatelli anche | che a voler torrela piu alta di quelle | te bisogna salir super le banche; | ne mai si mangia senzalesso arosto: | beato e ben colui che li vatosto. | Ben si posson color tener beati |che stano insieme alla mensa di lui! | Nonson da quel nutriti, anzi alevati, | ne meglioalcun gli tracta di costui, | con sue vivande ecibi dilicati: | duolme che sempre maiservo non fui!

A VERNACULAR RENAISSANCE OF PLAUTUS 387

Scanature de porco e della schena

d’un bon cingiale, e collo (casio) con persuto,

grugno, mento, summate a mensa piena,

morbidi da cavar bon construto.26

This is probably the only passage in which Guarino is forced to resort to a morecommon oral language: ‘scanature’ translates ‘glandionidam’ (the thymus, a glandbehind the sternum); ‘persuto’ is the old word for ‘prosciutto’, especially in theVeneto; ‘summate’ (‘somate’) is pork belly.

We find concrete evidence that Guarino drew particularly on Pulci’s Morgantein the same monologue of Penicolo. Penicolo argues against putting servants inchains, suggesting instead that their loyalty should be secured by offering them thepleasure of delicious food. The table below shows the passage from Plautus, Pulci’sverses, and Guarino’s translation:

Plautus’s text obviously does not contain any reference to ladders and ropes,which have nothing to do with breaking chains and fetters, but Guarino has inmind Pulci’s Morgante and precisely Canto XVIII, where he could also find thereferences to roast and boiled meat and other culinary terms used in his renditionof Plautus’s comedy. In this canto, the ladders made of ropes (‘corde’) are part of athief’s equipment and they rhyme nicely with the ‘lime sorde’, the files that do notmake noise. Guarino appropriates these rhymes even though the words they arebased on are problematic in the context he is dealing with. In one of themanuscripts, S (ll. 311–13), Guarino also makes an explicit reference to chivalricliterature in the opening of the second act, when Meseno, Menechino II’s servant,trying to convince his master to go back home and avoid being robbed by thepeople of Epidano, says:

Menaechmi, ll. 84–86 Pulci, Morgante,XVIII. 133

MS Sessoriano, ll.57–60

Nam se excatenis eximuntaliquot modo, |Tum compeditianum lima praeterunt |Aut lapideexcutiunt clavom;nugae sunt eae.

(Somehow [theservants] freethemselves from thechains, andif they are in fettersthey cut thelink with a file orthey pull thenail out with a stone;these are trifles.)

E trapani e palettie lime sorde |e succhi d’ogni fattae grimaldelli | escale o vuoi di legnoo vuoi di corde

E molte volte fatto aquesti aviene: | con sassi,con martelli, scalle e corde |romponsi i ferri, spezon lecatene, | e con tanaglie olime crude e sorde.

388 CHIARA SBORDONI

Meglio fia di tornarci a casa nostra,

se gia del tuo viagio non vo’ fare

qualche gran libro di battaglie o giostra.

The reference in the last line clearly alludes to the courtly literature of the cantari.In Plautus’s text (ll. 247–48) the servant simply says:

Quin nos hinc domum

Redimus, nisi si historiam scripturi sumus?27

On the other hand, the vocabulary of the conversation(s) between Erozia andMenechino I comes from the Italian lyric tradition. Guarino again expands onPlautus’s more sober text:

The stilnovistic language is debased by the context: Erozia is a prostitute whomPenicolo calls ‘meretrice vaga e fella’ (S189), ‘porca’, ‘vacca’, and ‘putana’,28 andPenicolo mocks Menechino’s tone as the stage directions make clear (‘Penicolocalefando’). Menechino will soon refer to the ‘batagliar, non aspro o duro, […] inloco oscuro’, which of course refers to making love.

The semantic connotations of the various characters will be a tendency oforiginal comedies in the vernacular as well. But once comedies are written in prose,authors will include more popular vocabulary and even dialect, which willcontribute to a more realistic outcome and result in a more nuanced relationshipbetween the transient status of oral speech and the prestige of the fixed andpermanent literary language.

Beyond the lexical level, it is more complicated to investigate the morpho-syntactic structure of this play with the purpose of establishing the degree ofmimesis of orality in the dialogues. The fact remains that, as a text written to beperformed on stage or, in Giovanni Nencioni’s terms, as a fabula agenda that onstage becomes a fabula acta and parlato recitato,29 the Menechini can beapproached by paying specific attention to its oral dimension, in relation to thedestination of the text to a given audience. In this perspective, the parameters that

Menaechmi, ll. 180–81 S, ll. 198–203

Menaechmus (Peniculusin the 1472 edition):Oh, solem vides | Satinut occaecatust prae huiuscorporis candoribus?

(Oh, can you see a sun,enough so that you areblinded by the whitenessof this body?)

Ora escie Irotia fuora dellaporta. Menechino admirativodice:O dio, ecco la dolce Irotiamia, | Ecco colei che nacquein paradiso | Nella piugloriosa girarchia!Penicolo calefando si ponla mane al volto e dice:O che bel sole! Ella miabaglia il viso! | Com’elucente la sua chiara spiera |Tal che mi par del lumeesser conquiso!

A VERNACULAR RENAISSANCE OF PLAUTUS 389

Paolo D’Achille uses in his study of the syntax of oral speech in Italian writtentradition are quite useful:30 if the Menechini is conceived for public performance(and thus lacks the adherence to the spoken language that can be found in otherforms of private writing, such as letters) and it is written in a very elaborate literarylanguage (as opposed to a spontaneous style close to oral speech), it is neverthelesswritten to be orally performed on stage. It is both written in the form of dialoguesbetween the characters on stage and, even if the public is not always explicitlyaddressed, the public is nevertheless its final addressee.

There are specific features that scholars have indicated as markers of orality inwritten texts and whose function is that of bridging the gap between the text itselfand its performance. These markers can be considered in a domain betweengrammar and pragmatics, to borrow an expression of Pietro Trifone’s.31 In thisanalysis some of these features will be considered, namely deixis (the use ofpersonal and demonstrative pronouns, demonstrative adjectives, and adverbs ofspace and time in order to situate the speech in its pragmatic context); illocutiveconstructions, which perform what they declare as in the expressions ‘I say’, ‘Ideclare’, ‘I promise’, and so on; jussive constructions, which contain anexhortation to do something (especially to listen and watch); and interrogativeconstructions, which aim to engage the interlocutor’s attention.

As already mentioned, in a text for the stage there are two levels of oralcommunication: the explicit address to the public, especially in those parts of theperformance that accomplish a diegetic function and in the dialogues betweencharacters whose main function is instead mimetic. For this reason, in the followingsection, where each of these features are considered, the examples have been chosenfrom the Argumento and from some scenes from the first act, in which characters ofdifferent social classes and different relationships are engaged in dialogues.

Beginning with the Argumento, corresponding to Plautus’s prologue thataddressed the public throughout, it is interesting to note how in the passage fromthe first to the second redaction of the text (which is to say from manuscript S tomanuscript E), there is an impressive increase of the use of features characteristic oforal speech. A possible explanation for this is that Guarino, or whoever laterintervened on the second redaction of his translation and adapted it for otherperformances, was more sensitive to these pragmatic aspects of Plautus’s text andmore conscious of the impact that a more enthusiastic engagement of the audiencewould have on the success of the play as entertainment. While the Argumento in Scontains only one jussive imperative in the first verb, to encourage the public to listento the comedy, ‘Udite’, and one illocutive, ‘vedrete nel contemplar’, the Argumentoin both manuscripts E and M is much richer in markers of oral speech, especially atthe start and end, which are the passages that enclose the presentation of the plot andin which a rhetorical display of captatio benevolentiae has the function of recallingthe audience’s attention to what is told and what is going to happen on stage:

Anuntio lieta e propitia salute

a voi e a me, o spectatori umani.

Con la mia lingua e con parole acute

vi porto Plauto, non gia con le mani;

mostrovi la sua immensa e gran virtute

che gia piu volte fu nota ai romani:

390 CHIARA SBORDONI

pero atenta stia tutta la gente

con l’ochio, con le orechie e con la mente.

Lo argumento di questa comedia […] (ll. 1–9)

doi figli maschi, come noi leggiano (l. 14)

del patre ch’io ve dissi primamente (l. 44)

quel che sequı vedrete finalmente

nel contemplar la comedia presente.

Per far vedere el ver tutto a coloro

che hanno ad intender le sue voglie accese,

dei due fratel la differentia loro

sera che quel che fia l’Epidanese

in el capello ara una penna d’oro;

e l’altro che vedrete qui palese

aver la penna bianca in el capello,

sera el Siracusam, l’altro fratello.

Questo signal ch’io ho mostrato a voi,

vo’ solamente che denoti e sia

una chiareza qual sara per voi,

non a costor che sonno in comedia.

Apri adonque ciascun le orechie soi,

senza troppo variar la fantasia;

e stati ben attenti e riguardate,

accio che l’um per l’altro non togliate.

Questa e quella cita che lecto abbiano

famoso e antiquo porto in Albania,

dove menato fu el primo germano,

tolto alla fiera ch’io ve dissi pria:

el qual per nome e chiamato Epidano,

dove fine avera la comedia:

cosa de assai piacere e di constructo,

se con silentio ascoltereti el tutto. (ll. 55–80)

In the opening and closing sections of the Argumento and in a couple of passagesin the middle, in the redactions of E and M we can observe several cases of deixis:personal deixis (‘a voi e a me, come noi legiano’; ‘ch’io primamente ve dissi’;‘ch’io ho mostrato a voi’; ‘una chiareza qual sara per voi’; ‘ch’io ve dissi pria’),spatial deixis (‘vedrete qui palese’), and deixis that refers to objects or conceptsand is expressed by demonstrative adjectives or pronouns or by adjectives with ademonstrative function (‘questa comedia’, ‘la comedia presente’, ‘questo signal’,‘questa e quella citta’); temporal deixis (‘ch’io ve dissi primamente’; ‘nelcontemplar la comedia’, 5 ‘mentre contemplano’; ‘ch’io ve dissi pria’). Thereare then cases of illocutive constructions (‘Anuntio’, ‘portovi’, ‘mostrovi’, ‘vedissi’, ‘ch’io ho mostrato’) and jussive constructions (‘atenta stia tutta la gente’,‘Apri adonque ciascum le orechie soi / […] e stati ben attenti e riguardate’).Finally, a few other cases explicitly refer to the oral dimension: one case of avocative with an allocutive function, ‘o spectatori umani’, and two final clausesand one conditional clause with an allocutive function with respect to the

A VERNACULAR RENAISSANCE OF PLAUTUS 391

audience: ‘Per far vedere el ver’, ‘accio che l’um per l’altro non togliate’, ‘se consilentio ascoltereti’.

Moving on to the mimetic realm of the play and the dialogues between the variouscharacters, very similarmarkers of oral communication can be found, andmostly, as wehave seen, still within a literary register of language. I will provide a couple of examples.The first is taken from the Act I and is a dialogue between Menechino I and his wife:

DONNA Menichin, dove vai? Dimme per quello

che cosı ratto vai for de la porta:

mostrami un po’ quel che hai sotto el mantello!

EPIDANESE Deh, tornati mo’ su per la piu corta,

bestia, che sempre me togli el cervello,

e in ogni tempo tu sei poco accorta!

DONNA Tu porti qualche cossa alla tua amanza:

la robba spesso manca e il tempo avanza.

(M, ll. 121–28)

This short passage is quite similar in the three manuscripts and it is interesting thatthe wife appears on stage with her own lines, while in Plautus’s original this scenestarts with Menechino enraged in a monologue against his wife, who is however noton stage. It seems that Guarino’s text here amplifies the realistic sense of the wholescene. We find a vocative with an allocutive function (‘Menichin’); an interrogativeconstruction (‘dove vai?’); three jussive constructions (‘dimme’, ‘mostrami’, ‘tornatisu’); personal deixis (‘tu sei poco accorta’, ‘tu porti’); spatial deixis (‘for de la porta’,‘sotto el mantello’, ‘tornati su’); and a modal deixis (‘cosı ratto’).

In another passage, from the same first act, in which Plautus’s text is rewrittenwith some changes (as has already been mentioned), the dialogue between Erotia,Menechino I, and Penicolo and then between Erotia, her servant, and the cook,displays oral features as well:

EPIDANESE Sai quel ch’io vo da te, anima mia? E summamente me compiacerai, et

a costui che e meco in compagnia.

PENNICULO Sı ch’ela el sa, io el so e tu lo sai:

tu voi che questa sera sia da cena,

qui per noi tre: ve’ ch’io lo indivinai!

[…]

EROTIA Va tu, mia fante, e Chilindro mi chiama,

che in questa terra e verra oppinione

lui esser miglior coco e di piu fama.

Chilindro, io vo’ di te far parangone:

to’ questo argento, piglia questa sporta

e compra robba assai per tre persone

a questo pregio; subbito la porta,

che non mi avanzi o manchi. Torna presto,

senza mandarte compagnia ne scorta.

CHILINDRO Erotia, el me bisogna saper questo,

chi son costor, perche l’onore e mio,

essermi tutto el facto manifesto. (M, ll. 325–30 and 344–55)

392 CHIARA SBORDONI

In these verses and very similarly in the two other redactions of the Menechini, thedialogue between Menechino I, Erotia, and Penicolo presents various kinds ofdeixis: demonstrative pronouns (‘et a costui che e meco’; ‘chi son costor’);demonstrative adjectives referring to time (‘questa sera’) and space (‘in questaterra’), to concrete as well as abstract objects (‘to’ questo argento’; ‘piglia questasporta’; ‘a questo pregio’); adverbs indicating space (‘qui’) and time (‘subbito laporta’, ‘torna presto’); and personal pronouns (‘Sai quel ch’io vo’’, ‘Sı ch’ela el sa,io el so e tu lo sai’, ‘tu voi’, ‘ve’ ch’io lo indivinai’, ‘va tumia fante’, ‘io vo’’). Thereis an interrogative construction incorporating a vocative with allocutive function(‘Sai quel ch’io vo’ da te, anima mia?’); and various jussive constructions followedor introduced by vocatives with allocutive function (‘Va tu, mia fante, e Chilindromi chiama’; ‘Chilindro, […] | to’ questo argento, piglia questa sporta | e comprarobba assai per tre persone | […] subbito la porta | […] Torna presto’).

In these examples from the first act, it is clear that beyond the basically literarylanguage used by Guarini, tending towards the written, literary register (as thelexical examples have shown), the dialogues between characters in spokenexchanges at different social levels and reciprocal relationships (husband and wifeof high social class; man of high social class, his prostitute/mistress, and thescrounger; the prostitute and her servant and the prostitute and her cook) offerabundant features typical of mimetic oral speech. These show a conscious effort onthe part of the translator to engage in both levels of orality: the one destined toaddress and engage the public, and to fulfil a diegetic function in the opening of theplay, and the mimetic level of the dialogues among the characters on stage.

THE PERFORMANCES

The Menechini was performed several times between 1486 and 1526, and indifferent cities. Table 1 summarizes these performances.

The Ferrarese performance was set up in one of the courtyards of the ducal palace,and open to a very large and diverse audience, as all the chronicles of the timeemphasize. For instance Giovanni Maria Ferrarini writes in his Cronaca ferrarese:

A dı 25 zenaro il dı di S. Paulo, mercori, lo duca nostro di Ferrara fece fare la festa di

Menechino, la qual festa comenzo ad hore 22 credo et duro insino ad hore 24. […]

Erano in lo cortile ducale tribunali parechiati: uno primo dal lato de la Capella

ducale, longo da un capo a l’altro del cortile, sopra il qual con banchete li sento il

duca nostro, lo marchexe de Mantoa, altri nobili citadini scholari doctori et populani

de la cita di Ferrara; […] Madama con le done stava suso il pozolo, lı e in dicto

cortile, a vedere.32

And Ugo Caleffini, while focusing on the public of this performance in his Cronacaferrarese, also briefly comments on the language:

Mercuri a dı 26 dicto, che fue S. Paulo, converso in lo cortile del Duca se fece

vigibilmente la comedia de Menegin et de Domenegin de li quali in Plauto, cum

lanave, et citade, et generaliter tute le cosse che in quello se contiene de verbum ad

verbum, et cussı erano travestiti li homeni in mascara, che jn rima vulgariter in canto

disseno tuti li versi de la dicta comedia, cum razi de fogo et mille zentileze; ove

A VERNACULAR RENAISSANCE OF PLAUTUS 393

furono da mille done de conditione suso tribunali, pozoli et fenestre, il Duca, il

Marchese de Mantua, misser Niccolo da Correzo, et la madre, la Duchessa di

Ferrara, el vicedomino et altri terreri et forasteri, tanto che non ge ne potea stare piu.

La qual festa fu cum riso assai et piacere, et duro da quatro in cinque ore.33

Thus in Ferrara the public attending the 1486 performance ranges from the duke,his court, and his guest of honour, the marquis of Mantua, with his retinue, andthen citizens of Ferrara, including students and doctors (notaries and other men oflaw), to populani, a middle class of artisans and wage-earners as well as‘foreigners’, spectators coming probably from other Italian regions and cities. Andof course women belonging to all of these social classes.

Reading Marin Sanudo’s diaries, it is clear that an even more pronouncedvariety characterized the audiences of the performances in Venice, where theMenechini was brought and performed by Francesco de’ Nobili (Cherea). Theperformances in Casa Corner were promoted by Caterina Cornaro, the queen ofCyprus, whose entourage comprised artists and writers (Pietro Bembo set hisdialogues Gli Asolani at her villa in Asolo): the public there must have included

TABLE 1. Summary of Performances of the Menechini, 1486–1526

Ferrara Milan Venice

1486 25 January:Carnival and visitof Francesco Gonzaga

1491 13 February: Weddingsof Alfonso d’Este toAnna Sforza and ofBeatrice d’Esteto Ludovico ilMoro

1493 24 May: Visit ofLudovico il Moroand Beatrice d’Este

Visit of ErcoleI and Alfonsod’Este

1501 23 February

1503 27 February

1507 23 September: Chereaperforms probably theMenechini at the houseof Caterina Cornaro

1508 10 January: Chereaperforms the Menechinifor a paying public

1516 Menechini performedin ca’ Corner

1526 Cherea performs theMenechini in casaMorexini

394 CHIARA SBORDONI

mainly noble Venetians and leading political figures. For instance, in 1507 the playwas performed for the wedding of Filippo Cappello, son of Caterina’s sister and ofPaolo Cappello, who in those years held the highest offices of Venice’s government:‘fo recita’ la Comedia in caxa di la Rezina di Cypri per le nozze di Sier PhilippoCapello […] da sier Pollo, el cavalier’.34 The performance in 1508 was given byCherea in one of the first theatres for a paying public, and we have to imagine thatthe audience would have included both the nobility and the middle class:

la sera a San Canzian in Biri fo fato la demonstration di la comedia di Plauto dita

Menechin. Fo bellissima. La fa Francesco Cherea; sı che piu avanti in questa terra e

sta fato tal demonstration cha questo anno, per ditto Francesco; vadagna e tien in

festa la terra. Fece a una festa la Asinaria, et poi egloge pastoral.35

In the 1516 performance, again in Casa Corner, zoveni popolari (young Venetiansof low social class) acted:

Fu fato la Comedia del Menechin a san Cassian in ca Corner, dove stava la Rayna di

Cipri, per alcuni zoveni popolari: era assae zente: recitono do atti, ma non poteno

seguir a compirla.36

Finally, the 1526 Venetian performance of the Menechini was put on again byCherea, in a private house but open to the paying public, organized not by thenobility but by a customs officer:

Fo etiam fato una comedia a Sant’Aponal in cha’ Morexini per Zuan Francesco

Beneti dacier e alcuni soi compagni, in la qual se intrava per bolletini; erra loco

piccolo, la fece Cherea, et fo una di Plauto di do fratelli, non molto bella, la qual

compite a hore 4 di note.37

We have news of this particular performance of the Menechini also from a letterwritten by a Sienese citizen established in Venice, Giovanni Manenti,38 toMachiavelli on 28 February 1526, where Manenti refers to the organizers as ‘unacompagnia di gentilhomeni’.

Thus both in Ferrara and Venice the performances were attended by a sociallyvery diverse public. But while in Ferrara the patron of the first and futureperformances was the duke himself, linking this kind of entertainment to a culturalagenda connected with the need to assert the political prestige of the Este family,the Venetian performances were associated with a more diverse series of initiatives.In Venice, in other words, not only was the public varied, but the organizersbehind the various performances belonged to different social classes as well and, asUberti pointed out, the figure who seems to have been the trait d’union amongthese different initiatives, patrons, and publics was Francesco de’ Nobili.

If, in Ferrara, the cultural legitimation of the reborn genre of comedy in thevernacular was used by the central political leadership as one of its instruments(both generally cultural and specifically linguistic) to establish and secure its ownprestige and the experience of the new genre was radiated from the top down to allsocial classes, in Venice the social diversity of the organizers of the differentperformances, ranging from the noble elite of the performances taking place in the

A VERNACULAR RENAISSANCE OF PLAUTUS 395

palace of Caterina Cornaro, to that in a public theatre, to the 1526 performancegiven in a private house of a citizen holding a political office but open to a payingpublic, demonstrates a polycentric interest in the new genre of entertainment. Thisalso confirms that openness of the Venetians to literature in the Florentinelanguage that was in the same years shown by the printing industry (it is nocoincidence that the two editions of the Menechini, Penzio 1528 and Zoppino1530, were both printed in Venice), as well as by Venetian authors — PietroBembo, but also others who, coming from the terraferma but with strong links toVenice, such as Ruzante, developed their own dialectal version of comedies basedon classical models — and on a theoretical level by Giovan Francesco Fortunio(who had spent many years in Venice) and again Pietro Bembo, who made ofFlorentine language and literature the standard model for Italy for centuries tocome.

In Ferrara, again, the choice of translating the Menaechmi into literaryFlorentine, and of using as models, as we have seen, the literary genres writtenin that language which were already part of an established canon, happened withinthe court and was carried out by Battista Guarino, completely linked with anddependent on that court and its cultural tastes and trends. It is not known who theactors were who played the Menechini and the other volgarizzamenti of Plautus inFerrara. We must assume, though, given the custom of the time, that they musthave been amateurs connected to or within the court as well. We know, forinstance, that Ludovico Ariosto himself in the early stages of his career performedas an actor and he could have even performed in the Menechini staged in Milan in1493. In any case, both patrons and actors and much of the public must have beenvery familiar with the various literary genres in Florentine and possessed quite ahigh degree of understanding of the literary Florentine language and must havebeen able to enjoy listening to it being spoken on stage.

In Venice, the volgarizzamenti of Plautus’s comedies were imported byFrancesco De’ Nobili, who had probably done his apprenticeship as an actor inFerrara and Mantua before 1508.39 So it was a Tuscan who first introduced theVenetian audiences to comedies in literary Florentine, and Cherea must also haveplayed a part in the adaptation of Guarino’s text to the Venetian context. Aspossible evidence of his influence on the text as it circulated in Venice, M, themanuscript copied by Sanudo, corrects some morphological features in a Tuscandirection, as in the case of the third-person indirect pronoun ge, found in theFerrarese Sessoriano manuscript (ll. 835, 837 ff.): while this form had partiallybeen Tuscanized even in E, it totally disappeared in M. On the one hand, Sanudoas a copyist was more in control of the morphological structure of the literarylanguage than other copyists; on the other hand, if we assume that the scriptscirculating in Venice and performed by Cherea had been also revised and adaptedby him, we can assume that as a Tuscan he must have contributed to the process ofeliminating the more evident signs of the Northern koine in these scripts.

Moreover, as a sign of the circular relationship between oral and written culturein Renaissance Italy, it is well known that in 1508 Cherea asked the Venetiangovernment for official permission to publish the Menechini (as well as many playshe was performing in) though he probably ended up never publishing it.40

Soon enough the ability to act in literary Florentine, though probably with anorthern inflection, must have spread among Venetians if the performance of 1526

396 CHIARA SBORDONI

was given by ‘zoveni popolani’, Venetian amateur actors from the popolo, a signthat in Venice as well a wide public was able to understand literary Florentine andits genres and eager to enjoy performances in that language.

In the end, the presence in the three manuscripts of features of the phonology,and in part even of the morphology, typical of the Northern linguistic koineprobably mirrors the linguistic fluidity of this text at the oral level. The Menechinimust have sounded different each time it was performed by actors coming fromvarious parts of Italy with a pronunciation typical of their region or trying to adaptto the language of their public, and it must have been perceived differently by theaudiences of Ferrara, Venice, and Milan who spoke different dialects. The tensionbetween the ephemeral and permanent re-emerges in the performances, in such away as to leave significant traces on the phonological level in the manuscriptsthemselves. While the language of the text is evidently literary Florentine, it musthave been reproduced by the actors and perceived by the audiences, and writtendown by the copyists, through the filter of northern phonology and morphology.Indeed, this is so much the case that even the two sixteenth-century editions stilltransmit a very uncertain and fluctuating text on the orthographic level: here thetraces of an aural and oral transmission, before reintroduction into written cultureand presentation to a public of readers, are still visible.

NOTES

1 Franco Ruffini has convincingly pro-posed that Guarino, in his elegy ‘Ludiscenici duci Herculis in quibus Plautifabula Menaechmi acta fuit’, while notexplicitly saying that he was the authorof the volgarizzamento, subtly wantsthe reader to think he actually is. SeeFranco Ruffini, ‘Preliminari per unanalisi dei Menaechmi ferraresi del1486’, Schifanoia, 3 (1987), 125–35.Tissoni Benvenuti comes to the sameconclusion when analysing the style ofthe comedy in Teatro del Quattro-cento, ed. by Antonia Tissoni Benven-uti and Maria Pia Mussini Sacchi(Turin: UTET, 1978), p. 82, in whicha text of the Menechini based on acollation of the three surviving manu-scripts is provided. See also IMenechini di Plauto: volgarizzamentirinascimentali, ed. by Maria LuisaUberti (Ravenna: Longo, 1985), pp.53–70.

2 The title Menechini appears in the firstedition of Plautus’s comedies (Venice,1472) and in some manuscripts. Oncethe correct form was re-established,Menechini indicated only the translation

(Teatro del Quattrocento, p. 78, n. 1).The Menaechmi is the story oftwin brothers from Syracuse, one ofwhom, Menechino I, is kidnapped in hischildhood and brought up in Epidamnusin Albania, where he inherits a fortune,marries a woman and loves a prostitutecalled Erozia. The other brother is givenhis lost twin’s name in his memory andwhen he grows up he sails the seas insearch of Menechino I with his servantMessenio. The play starts the dayMenechino II arrives in Epidamnus: hisresemblance with Menechino I creates aseries of equivocations and misunder-standings, until the final recognitionscene between the two brothers.

3 Anna Maria Coppo, in her essaySpettacoli alla corte di Ercole I,Contributi dell’Istituto di FilologiaModerna, Serie Storia del Teatro, I

(Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1968), pro-vides a bibliography on these volgariz-zamenti (pp. 39–42).

4 Usually the text was read aloud ratherthan truly performed by differentactors. See Antonio Stauble, La com-media umanistica del Quattrocento

A VERNACULAR RENAISSANCE OF PLAUTUS 397

(Florence: Istituto Nazionale di Studisul Rinascimento, 1968), esp. pp. 187–202.

5 See Isidoro Del Lungo, ‘Di altre recita-zioni di commedie latine in Firenze nelsecolo XV’, in Florentia: uomini e cosedel Quattrocento (Florence: Barbera,1897), and Francesco Pintor, Le primerecitazioni di commedie latine aFirenze, Studio per le nozze Ferrari-Toniolo (Perugia: Unione Tipografica,1906).

6 Ruffini, p. 135, n. 11. See also PaolaVentrone, Gli araldi della commedia:teatro a Firenze nel Rinascimento (Pisa:Pacini, 1993).

7 Among the twelve comedies, unknownduring the Middle Ages, was the Men-aechmi. See Cesare Questa, Parergaplautina: struttura e tradizione mano-scritta delle commedie (Urbino: Univer-sita degli studi di Urbino, 1984), pp.169–242.

8 At least since the end of the 1470s therehad been a debate within intellectualcircles gravitating around the dukeabout how Latin plays should betranslated. In those years translationswere probably destined for readingand in prose, whereas those destinedfor performance starting from theMenaechmi-Menechini would be inverse (though prose and verse transla-tions would still coexist, as the corre-spondence between translators andclients shows).

9 A secretion of a gland of the musk deer,used to make perfumes.

10 Secretion of the glands of the civet ormusk cat, also used to make perfumes.

11 Battista Guarino, letter to Ercole I, 18February 1479, quoted from AlessandroLuzio and Rodolfo Renier, ‘Commedieclassiche in Ferrara nel 1499’, Giornalestorico della letteratura italiana, 11(1888), 177–89 (p. 177, n. 2).

12 Ibid.13 See Mirko Tavoni, Latino, grammatica,

volgare: storia di una questione uma-nistica (Padua: Antenore, 1984) andChristopher S. Celenza, ‘End Game:Humanist Latin in the Late Fifteenth

Century’, in Latinitas Perennis, II:Appropriation and Latin Literature,ed. by Y. Maes, J Papy, and W.Verbaal (Leiden: Brill, 2009), pp. 201–44 (pp. 213–20).

14 See Celenza, pp. 226–30.15 The quotations from S and E are

directly from the manuscripts that Iwas able to photograph. Those from Mare from the transcription in IMenechini, ed. by Uberti, since it wasimpossible to obtain a digital version ofthe manuscript. For the quotationsfrom S, I use Uberti’s line numbering.

16 D’Ancona, Origini del teatro italiano,2nd edn, 2 vols (Turin: Loescher, 1891),II, 368–69.

17 On these editions, see Uberti in IMenechini, ed. by Uberti, pp. 19–22.

18 Uberti, I Menechini, ed. by Uberti, p.51.

19 See Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo, La linguadel Boiardo lirico (Florence: Olschki,1963), p. 94.

20 Ibid., pp. 132–33.21 For a complete description of the man-

uscripts and their linguistic features,see I Menechini, ed. by Uberti, pp. 13–19.

22 Menechini, (MS Sessoriano ll. 93–94and 97–101). In the second passage,‘ingrata, scognoscente, dispetosa’ (l.101) uses the same adjectives found inBoiardo’s Amorum libri tres, II. 10:‘Ingrata fiera, ingrata e scognoscente’.See Matteo Maria Boiardo, Amorumlibri tres, ed. by Tiziano Zanato (Turin:Einaudi, 1998), p. 209.

23 The letter to the banker AntonioGondi, to whom the duke of Ferraratrusted important business in Florence,is dated 11 November 1478. See ErnestHatch Wilkins, ‘On the EarliestEditions of the Morgante’, in TheInvention of the Sonnet and OtherStudies in Italian Literature (Rome:Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1959),pp. 203–23 (p. 205).

24 All quotations from the Menaechmi aretaken from Tito Maccio Plauto, IMenecmi, intr. by Cesare Questa, trans.by Mario Scandola (Milano: BUR,

398 CHIARA SBORDONI

2010 [1984]), based on the text estab-lished by Alfred Ernout.

25 There is further lexical evidence of theinfluence of the cantari and novelle onGuarino’s translation: ‘mentire per lagola’ is also found in Sacchetti, Trecen-tonovelle; Boccaccio, Corbaccio andDecameron; La Spagna; Pulci, Mor-gante; ‘cervogia’ in Cecco Angiolieri;Giovanni Villani, Nuova cronica; Pulci,Morgante (one occurrence in the samestanza as ‘lesso e arosto’); ‘caleffare’ inSacchetti, Trecentonovelle.

26 These lines are not translated in theSessoriano manuscript. I quote fromthe Marciano manuscript.

27 Translated more faithfully in the latermanuscripts of theMenechini, E and M,which have: ‘Meglio fia di tornare a casanostra, | se gia del tuo viaggio non voifare | istoria che nei libri si dimostra!’

28 Menechino himself, at the end of hisscene against his wife in Act I, had said:‘Farmi la guardia di dreto e davante, |per questo voglio solo una putana | inqualche loco a cenna, o qualche amica,| per torti del guardar tanta fatica’ (S, ll.117–20).

29 See Giovanni Nencioni, ‘Parlato-par-lato, parlato-scritto, parlato-recitato’(1976), inDi scritto e di parlato: discorsilinguistici (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1983),pp. 126–79 (esp. pp. 169–76).

30 See Paolo D’Achille, Sintassi del parlato etradizione scritta della lingua italiana:analisi di testi dalle origini al secoloXVIII (Rome: Bonacci, 1990), pp. 24–31.

31 Pietro Trifone, ‘Una maschera di par-ole: la commedia fra grammatica epragmatica’, in La sintassi dell’italianoletterario, ed. by Maurizio Dardanoand Pietro Trifone (Rome: Bulzoni,1995), pp. 193–235.

32 Giovanni Maria Ferrarini, Cronacaferrarese, fol. 173r–v, quoted in Coppo,p. 45.

33 Ugo Caleffini, Cronaca ferrarese, quotedin Coppo, p. 44.

34 Marin Sanudo, Diarii (Bologna: Forni,1969–70), VII, 152.

35 Ibid., VII, 243.36 Ibid., XXI, 467.37 Ibid., XL, 785.38 For the identification of the author of

the letter, see Luca Degl’Innocenti, I‘Reali’ dell’Altissimo: un ciclo di cantarifra oralita e scrittura (Florence: SocietaEditrice Fiorentina, 2010), p. 69.

39 See the entry by Giovanna Romei inthe Dizionario biografico degli Italianionline, ,http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/francesco-de-nobili_(Dizionario-Biografico)/. [accessed 15 December 2013].

40 See D’Ancona, p. 111, n. 1. Onperformer-publishers, see Luca Degl’In-nocenti’s article in this issue.

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTOR

Chiara Sbordoni holds a PhD in Italian Renaissance Literature from the University of RomeSapienza, with a focus on fictional love letters. She is currently a postdoctoral researchfellow at the University of Leeds within the project ‘Oral Culture, Manuscript and Print inEarly Modern Italy, 1450–1700’ funded by the European Research Council. Her researchconcentrates on linguistic variety in Renaissance theatrical texts and their performance.Before coming to Leeds she was a Devers Program in Dante Studies postdoctoral fellow andthen visiting assistant professor at the University of Notre Dame from 2006 to 2011, whereshe taught Italian language and Italian Medieval and Renaissance literature.

Correspondence to: Chiara Sbordoni, School of Languages, Cultures and Societies,University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK. Email: c.sbordoni@leeds.ac.uk

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