188宝金博页面版

Heliotropia 1.1 (2003) http://www.heliotropia.org The Marriage of Plautus and Boccaccio iological children come from a coupling of parents, and this is often true for intellectual children as well. In the case of the reinvention of comedy in Italy at the beginning of the sixteenth century, two sources, Plautus and Boccaccio, converged in a happy and productive mar-riage that would have a long list of offspring. The marriage was promi-nently performed in 1513, although an engagement had taken place some-what earlier. During the carnival festivities of 1513, two plays were per-formed, one in Florence and one in Urbino, that combined Plautine and Boccaccian materials. The Urbino performance was Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena’s Calandra 1 ; the Florentine play was Iacopo Nardi’s I due felici rivali. Bibbiena’s combination of the two models was the more complicated as well as the more famous. When Baldassare Castiglione asked his friend Bibbiena to contribute something to the Duke of Urbino’s 1513 carnival festivities, of which Castiglione had been put in charge, Bibbiena, despite the intense political negotiations in which he was engaged at Rome, sent in his Calandra, which drew almost evenly from Plautus’s Menaechmi and Boccaccio’s Decameron, taking much more from Boccaccio than a plot. 2 This play was so successful that it was performed and printed many times already within the first half of the century, 3 thus influentially introducing Boccaccio as a major source for theatre. 1 The play has appeared as both Calandra and Calandria; I am following here the spelling of Giorgio Padoan’s recent edition, La Calandra. Commedia Elegantissima per Messer Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena, Medioevo e Umanesimo 57 (Padova: Editrice Antenore, 1985). 2 On Bibbiena’s borrowings from Boccaccio, see Anna Fontes-Baratto, “Les fêtes à Urbin en 1513 et la Calandria de Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena” in André Rochon et al. eds., Les Écrivains et le Pouvoir en Italie à l’Époque de la Renaissance (Paris: Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1974), 69–75; G. L. Moncallero, Il Cardinale Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena Umanista e Diplomatico (1470–1520) (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1953), 574–86; Padoan’s introduction, 19–25. 3 Padoan’s introduction (35ff.) lists a dozen editions before 1550, and the play continued to be frequently reprinted after that date as well. Performances included 1514 and 1515 B http://www.heliotropia.org/01-01/smarr.pdf 49