La prima oratione by Angelo Beolco (Il Ruzante), Linda L. Carroll

Abstract

576 Reviews La prima oratione. By Angelo Beolco (Il Ruzante). Ed. by Linda L. Car roll. (MHRA Critical Texts, 16) London: Modern Humanities Research Association. 2009. 158 pp. ?12.99. ISBN 978-0-947623-79-1. After centuries of neglect caused by the obscurity of its favoured languages and the corruption of the textual tradition, the theatre of the Paduan dialect playwright, director, and actor Angelo Beolco, better known as Ruzante (c. 1496-1542), has in recent decades returned centre stage. This reappraisal was stimulated initially by the impact of the ground-breaking editions of the plays by Ludovico Zorzi (Turin: Einaudi, 1967) and Giorgio Padoan (Padua: Antenore, 1978, 1981). In the English-speaking world the revival has been led by Nancy Dersofi, Ronnie Ferguson, and Linda Carroll, while Beolco's wider positioning between scripted regular comedy and improvised commedia delVarte has been explored by Renais sance theatre historians, notably Richard Andrews and Robert Henke. The most significant Ruzante monographs inEnglish remain Dersofi's Arcadia and theStage (Madrid: Porriia Turanzas, 1978) and Ferguson's The Theatre of Angelo Beolco (Ruzante): Text, Context and Performance (Ravenna: Longo, 2000). In addition, a number of Beolco's plays have recently received English translations, with critical apparatus: VAnconitana by Dersofi and La Moscheta, the Parlamento de Ruzante, and Bilora by Ferguson. Lacking so far inEnglish, until thepresent volume by Linda Carroll, has been an edition/translation and detailed study specifically dedicated to a Ruzantian monologue. The Prima oratione (c. 1521) is the first of the four free-standing vilanesca theatrical monologues by Beolco thathave survived. Delivered as alternative post prandial entertainment for the investiture, as Bishop of Padua, of the Venetian cardinal Marco Cornaro or Corner (1482-1524), the Oratione is an exceptional piece of bravura comic rhetoric aswell as being the sunniest exposition of Beolco's materialistic morality. In his rustic dialect the peasant spokesman for the region, 'Ruzante', welcomes the new bishop. He extols the virtues of the Paduan coun tryside, itsfruit,vegetables, wildlife, and women, and the central role of the region's peasant subjects. In linewith Beolco's trademark anti-humanist bias, 'Ruzante' ex alts Paduan dialect over the 'Florentinish' which was becoming the favoured written language of Italy's elites, counterposing natural rurality to artificial urbanity, and all thewhile joking, at times provocatively, with his host. He concludes with a series of mock-serious recommendations on behalf of his fellow country-people ostensibly aimed at improving the conditions of the peasantry in the direction of the natural over the spiritual. Beolco mingles parody, satire, and sheer fun, using his clown's status to tread a fine line between entertainment and provocation, theatricality and topicality. The Oratione exists in threemanuscript versions from the firsthalf of the six teenth century, by different and unknown hands. Two are in the Biblioteca Civica inVerona; the third, and best known, is in the Biblioteca Marciana inVenice, part of the fundamental miscellany Ital. XI 66 (6730) that contains the largest extant collection ofmanuscript works by Beolco as well as numerous other,many as yet MLR, 105.2, 2010 577 unpublished, dialect compositions from the early Cinquecento. One of the chief merits ofCarroll's monograph is that all threemanuscript versions are presented to the reader side by side for the firsttime, and some of their variants?traditionally seen asminor?contrasted and valorized within awider interpretative schema than heretofore. Rather than theMarciana manuscript, supplemented by the princeps (Venice: Alessi, 1551), opted for by Zorzi, or the composite version favoured by Padoan, Carroll uniquely selects as the core redaction of the Oratione Verona Codex 36,which, she argues, represents the first-performance text. She provides a lively and generally accurate English translation of it. Carroll's substantial introduction (seventy-four pages) is contre-courant in a number ofways. On the basis of internal evidence she revises the date of the Ora tione spremiere from the universally accepted 1521 to 1518. She also hypothesizes that themonologue was performed at several different venues and times: 1518 in Asolo for the bishop's elevation and some months later in Venice at a festa organized by theCornaro, with a possible mainland reprise in 1521. She considers each manuscript to reflect a process...