Lo Ipocrito

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Lo Ipocrito is a comedy by Pietro Aretino in five acts written in 1542.

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Appropriation

The appropriation is dedicated to Guidobaldo della Rovere , Duke of Urbino . Actually, Aretino wanted to dedicate the comedy to someone else because it seemed too small to dedicate it to him. But his conscience finally taught Aretino otherwise. He had come to the conclusion that the comedy was still a virgin (because it had not yet been performed) and therefore the other person - an adulterer - was not worthy of it. The other person would not have appreciated the Virgo and could have left her at any moment. A third reason Aretino cites is that many princes, with the amusement of comedy, have only tried to calm the people's minds, otherwise they went to great lengths to torment the people with their burdens. Aretino's conscience finally led him to dedicate the comedy solely and exclusively to Guidobaldo, since he was the only one who upheld decency in accordance with his position and perpetuated himself as a prince through divine favors and merits. Guidobaldo should condescend to read the comedy to refresh his mind, the source of which is the heroism and generosity of a prince. The thoughts would bear fruit in due course, which would bring him new praise and previously unfamiliar honor and fame.

prolog

The prologue is performed by two people. The first person parodies Baldassare Castigliones Cortegiano . In Castiglione's work, a court society corresponding to his ideals discusses the various aspects of the ideal courtier. Each member of the court society usually expresses his or her ideas about the courtier in sentences that begin with “io vorrei che” (German: “I wish that” or “I would like that”).

The wishes of the first actor also begin with "io vorrei che". However, his wishes relate to the punishments that should be given to those who do not correspond to his ideal of a person. He wishes that princes who do not behave appropriately should sink into misery and that people, to whom money is worth more than their fellow men, should be stoned. After the first actor has listed about 25 punishment fantasies, the second actor takes the floor. He in no way agrees with the previous speaker, but rather believes that senseless criticism or nagging should be denounced. Useless criticism does nothing but stop the course of things. Like the first actor, the second lists cases in which, he believes, you are criticized for your actions and, if you promise to improve and act accordingly, you are also reprimanded. In his opinion, the world should be purged of pedants .

The protagonist of the following play, old Liseo, appears on stage and tells what bad happened to him. As one of the two speakers in the prologue claims, his ability and the advice of a certain Ipocrito will make Liseo's predicament turn for the better. In the end, Liseo will not only laugh at the misfortune that both his sons-in-law and two of his own five daughters have gotten wrong, but also at the happiness that will finally happen to him. One can learn from Liseo how to make fate a friend and how to fool Fortuna .

first act

Liseo wants advice from a clergyman, the pious parasite Ipocrito, in a difficult situation. He tells him that he has a twin brother named Brizio, whom a soldier snatched from his mother during the war. The thought that his brother is still alive and that he has to share his belongings with him drives him crazy.

Lizio has five daughters. Tansilla, the eldest, is married to a man who has gone mad and has since disappeared. The deadline that the daughter had to wait to be able to remarry expired on that day. So this evening he would like to marry Tansilla again. Porfiria, the second daughter, he had promised a young nobleman. However, Porfiria had made a bet with one of her suitors that she would sleep with him if he had brought her very rare feathers, and the time limit for the bet was expiring today. As far as the three other daughters are concerned, he (Liseo) has no peace, as people are constantly asking for her hand. Ipocrito should now advise him on the choice of sons-in-law.

Zefiro is in love with Annetta, the third daughter, but has not yet asked for her hand, sends Annetta a love letter, but first wants advice from the matchmaker Gemma, who was recommended to him by the bigot Ipocrito.

The twin brother Brizio is, as feared, still alive. He has arrived in Milan, where the action takes place. The soldier Rodalossa, who snatched him from his mother and raised him, died in Naples. He bequeathed him money so that he could return to his hometown in the hope of meeting a relative and being recognized by him.

The fact that Brizio and Liseo are confusingly similar leads to some confusion. Two servants of Liseo inform the unsuspecting Brizio about the progress of the preparations for the wedding of Tansilla and Porfirias. Far more momentous for the couples involved is the fact that Liseo's wife Maja hands over wedding jewelry to Brizio Tansillas, which leads to unjustified allegations, mix-ups and suspicions on the part of the innocent and ignorant involved.

Second act

Tranquillo, Tansilla's future husband and the nobleman Corebo, to whom Porfiria has been promised, are about to have a double wedding. Tranquillo fears that Tansilla's husband will show up again and Corebot that his rival with the feathers that have been bet on will arrive in town the same day. The two men and Porfiria are concerned about the precarious situation. Porfiria implies that she would like to take her own life in case fate turns against her.

The mother of the brides is a long time coming. After unknowingly handing Brizio Tansilla's wedding jewelry, she went to see her relatives to invite them to the wedding. When she comes home, she learns from her servant Guardabasso that Tansilla is still waiting in vain for the wedding jewelry and is desperate.

Mother Maja claims that she gave her husband Liseo the wedding jewelry after all, whereupon Liseo insinuates that his wife gave the jewelry to a secret lover. There is an exchange between the two, which ends in a fight.

As feared, Porfiria's admirer Prelio has arrived in town. According to Prelio himself, it was because of Porfirias that he had traveled all over the world and in the end he succeeded in finding the promised feathers of the phoenix bird in Arabia . He goes to Liseo's house disguised as a pilgrim to find out whether Porfiria is in love with him. Opposite Porfiria, he pretends to be a friend of Prelios, who wants to give her Prelios urn Prelios, who died in search of the phoenix feathers. When trying to get to the feathers of the phoenix, Prelio was burned in the heat of the embers of the bird and crumbled to ashes.

Eventually, however, he reveals his true identity. Porfiria, who loves Corebo, is deeply dismayed, and so is Prelio at the unexpected reaction of his loved one.

Annetta, the third daughter, has received Zefiro's love letter. In a conversation between Ipocrito and Zefiro, it turns out that both Liseo and Brizio are called Rocchetti. Liseo hands Zefiro a love letter from Annetta and he decides to hold the hand of his loved one. Ipocrito then claims that he had long known about Zefiro's intention and had already spoken to Liseo. In the meantime, Artico, Tansilla's husband, who, according to his own testimony, has traveled the world and seen a lot, has returned to Milan ruefully. He wants to ask forgiveness from his in-laws and wife.

Third act

Zefiro wants to ask Liseo for Annetta's hand himself. He thinks he's talking to Liseo, but he's actually talking to his brother Brizio. Brizio is understandably angry at Zefiro's request. Zefiro, on the other hand, is extremely depressed about Brizio's reaction, which he interprets as a rejection. He tells Ipocrito "Liseo's" reaction, Ipocrito in turn wants to talk to Annetta himself, since the interview with Liseo was obviously unsuccessful. Ipocrito's mediator role in the affairs of love between Annetta and Zefiro is not altruistic. Not only does he get rich presents from Zefiro, but also intends to get a chance with Annetta himself. He brings her a love letter from Zefiros and then disappears with her.

He later recommends that Liseo adopt a stoic attitude in the face of the difficult situation - the "disappearance" of Annetta and the appearance of the bridegroom's two rivals - and thus defy fate. Brizio wants to leave the city because he is tired of the frequent mix-ups and the meeting with Zefiro has "finished off" him, as it were. Liseo wants to go to court against his wife, he continues to accuse her of having given the wedding jewelry to a lover. Disguised as a maid, Porfiria goes to the doctor Messer Biondello to get poison, supposedly to fight the rats in the house, she wants to put an end to her life. In a monologue by Porfiria, viewers learn that she did not want to marry Prelio out of love, but out of compassion. Corebo and Tranquillo are also unhappy with their situation and ponder whether to take their own lives or their rivals. Artico's friends found out from friends that his wife wants to marry another man on the same day. He meets his wife's future husband, Tranquillo, whom he does not know, and tells him that he wants to murder the rival.

Fourth act

Corebo and Tranquillo confront Liseo, who - according to Ipocritos' advice - is stoic. However, his indifference in the face of the worrying situation for all concerned is interpreted by the two as a touch of madness. Liseo tells his servant Guardabasso not to let anyone into the house.

  • Tanfuro gives Liseo money and an emerald ring, believing he is Brizio. Liseo accepts the money and the ring because he again believes that his indifferent behavior has made Fortuna inclined. He takes Tanfuro to be a messenger from Fortuna. This confusion is also not without consequences. When Tanfuro tells his master that he has given him the money and the ring, Brizio believes that his servant is trying to betray him. Later, since Tanfuro, initially offended by his master's allegations, keeps the wedding jewelry all the time, but Brizio has not asked him any more about it, he finally wants to comfort his master with it. There is another mix-up. Tanfuro thinks Liseo is Brizio again and in this way gives him back the wedding jewelry. Liseo feels strengthened by the two gifts in his stoic attitude towards Fortuna. When Tanfuro later meets Brizio and mentions the wedding jewelry, his master is no longer angry because the meeting between him and Liseo (see below) has now taken place and it now dawns on him that it is not, as initially suspected, a spell , but is in fact his twin brother.
  • Porfiria reveals her suicidal intentions to Corebo. Since Corebo has no advice because of the difficult situation, he decides to take their own life together with his wife.
  • Artico manages to ask Liseo and Maja for forgiveness for leaving Tansilla. While Liseo continues to play the indifferent, as expected, Maja forgives him and leads him to Tansilla.
  • Liseo and Brizio meet for the first time in the comedy. After all the mix-ups that Brizio experienced, he does not think he is in Milan, but in the bewitched garden in Ludovico Ariostos Orlando furioso (1516/32, cf. 12-13 Canto). Liseo, on the other hand, believes that the cunning Fortuna took his form so that he would no longer be able to hate her. Since the twin brothers remain caught up in their ideas of unreality, they do not recognize each other.
  • Obviously, Ipocrito is also the matchmaker Tranquillos. Since Tranquillo's prospect of a marriage with Tansilla has dwindled, Ipocrito advises him to turn his attention to Angizia. He will make sure that both come together.

Fifth act

  • Porfiria postponed her suicide in order to do her duty and sleep with Prelio. As Porfiria sticks to her fateful view, she punishes Prelio by releasing her from her duty with a kiss. However, Porfiria sticks to her intention of wanting to take her own life. After all, Prelio also wants to take his own life. Porfiria tells Corebo that Prelio released her from her duty to marry him. Then she faints, probably because she knows that Prelio wants to take his own life, but that, in view of Corebo's happy reaction, she no longer has any intention of doing so. However, Prelio's suicide is foiled by Messer Biondello, from whom Prelio probably wanted to buy poison. According to Biondello himself, he found out that Liseo was trying to kill her life due to the alleged misappropriation of the wedding jewelry by his wife and that Liseo was suspicious of the alleged maid Liseo's request for the poison at the same time. He then found out that he had not given the "maid" any poison, only a sleeping pill. This message in turn causes Prelio to refrain from his suicidal intentions. On a later occasion, Porfiria Prelio proposes to marry her sister Sveva. She promises him to work with her parents for this.
  • Brizio, makes sure with Ipocrito that his doppelganger is actually his brother. Since Ipocrito was unable to dissuade Liseo from his stoic attitude, he warns Brizio that Liseo would react inappropriately if the two of them reunited.
  • Due to the stoic attitude that Liseo displays, it seems as if nothing can upset him. That way, all of his daughters are married in the end. Tansilla remains married to Artico, Porfiria marries Corebo, Angizia, Tranquillo, who is no longer in love with Tansilla, Sveva Prelio. Annetta and Zefiro had meanwhile secretly married, which, however, had no consequences, since this, according to Maja, was still better than Annetta ending up as a prostitute. Finally, Brizio is happy that he has found support for old age in the Liseos family.
  • Liseo addresses the audience at the end of the comedy. He claims that he knows he is doing the comedy writer a favor by telling viewers that he will like the comedy if the audience likes it, but that the writer will enjoy it more if the audience doesn't liked. If the audience liked the comedy, this means that the author showed little consideration for the audience; if the audience didn't like the comedy, they didn't take it into account. Liseo finally says goodbye to the audience on the grounds that he did not want to miss the wedding celebrations.

Second assignment

The comedy is followed by a second dedication to Daniello Barbaro (1513–1570), a cleric who was historian of the Republic of Venice and envoy of Venice to England. Ipocrito is portrayed as the brother of Talanta, the protagonist of the subsequent comedy Aretinos. Talanta saw the light of day because of the honor she had received from Daniello's previous reading and praise of the comedy in which she was the main character, thereby giving it a certain authority. But since both Lo Ipocrito and La Talanta (1542) were by the same author, Daniello should give both comedies the same favor, since one of the two could otherwise be viewed as a bastard, especially since the shadow that Daniello casts the comedy is a refuge how the church represents the refuge of a man persecuted by state authority. At the end of the donation, Aretino greets Daniello respectfully again.

people

  • Liseo , old man
  • Guardabasso , Liseo's servant
  • Malanotte , Liseo's servant
  • Perdelgiorno Liseo's servant
  • Brizio , twin brother of Liseo
  • Tanfuro , servant of Brizio
  • Ipocrito , parasite
  • Tranquillo , who should have married Tansilla, but afterwards takes Angizia as his wife
  • Corebo , Porfiria's fiancé
  • Prelio , first Porfiria's lover, then Sveva's bridegroom
  • Zefiro , who later became her husband as Annetta's lover
  • Troccio , servant of Zefiro
  • Artico , husband of Tansilla
  • Tansilla , daughter of Liseo
  • Porfiria , daughter of Liseo
  • Angizia , daughter of Liseo
  • Sveva , daughter of Liseo
  • Annetta , daughter of Liseo
  • Maja , Mrs. Liseos
  • Messer Biondello (Mr. Biondello), doctor
  • Gemma , matchmaker

Further information

  • It is said that Aretino only needed a few days to write Lo Ipocrito
  • In scene 4 of the second act, Prelio wonders ironically, probably alluding to Dante's Divina Comedia (1307–1321), why Porfiria did not demand the fire of hell and the stars of heaven from him.
  • During one of his errands (third act, scene 12), Ipocrito raves to Annetta about the children she will father with Zefiro, which is reminiscent of the prophecies in Il Marescalco (1533) and Ludovico Ariosto's Der Rasende Roland (1516/32, cf. third Singing, verses 23–49)
  • Also in scene 12 of the third act we find a parallel to Machiavelli's Mandragola (1518, cf. third act, scene 11). Ipocrito excuses his intention to seduce Annetta by distinguishing between physical and mental sins, the latter in his opinion being far worse than the former. Like Fra Timoteo in Mandragola, Corebo distinguishes between the sin of the body and that of the soul. He makes this distinction with regard to the fact that Porfiria will be obliged to sleep with Prelio, but will remain true to him in heart.
  • At the end of scene 14 of the fourth act, Malanotte and Perdelgiorno agree that their masters are arbitrary towards the servants. In bad times, when they need the servants' help, be their best friends; but in bad times they treated their servants like dogs. This last section of the scene is reminiscent of La Cortigiana (1525/34, cf. fifth act, scene 15), in which the description of the condition of the canteen and the serving of the servants are supposed to be exemplary of the relationship between master and servant.
  • In contrast to the servants who appear in the ancient Roman comedy and the Italian Renaissance comedy (e.g. in Ariosto and Bibbiena), the servants in Lo Ipocrito are not characterized by any particular cunning. Instead of essentially supporting the action, they merely comment on the event.
  • For Radcliff-Umstead, Lo Ipocrito is groundbreaking because he believes it is the first comedy to incorporate romantic elements.

Literary influences

Ancient Roman Literature

  • In Lo Ipocrito , elements of ancient Roman comedy appear more strongly than Aretino's previous pieces.
  • The mix-up comedy with the two twins Brizio and Liseo is borrowed from Plautus ' Menaechmi .
  • In Plautus' Stichus , as in Artico, Tansilla and Tranquillo, we find the motif of the woman who is abandoned by her husband and then urged by her father to marry another man: the two daughters Philumena and Pamphila are married to two men who have not returned to their city in two years. The father of the two urges them to marry other men, but both remain loyal to their husbands and are rewarded by the return of their now wealthy husbands. However, at Tansilla there is no talk of loyalty.
  • Sophocles ' Electra

Italian literature

  • Aretino was influenced by Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato (1483) at Lo Ipocrito . In the Orlando innamorato there is a story in which the nobleman Prasildo falls in love with Tisbina, the girlfriend of his friend Iroldo. In order to prevent Prasildo (who justifies his suicidal intentions with the hopeless love for Prasilda) from suicide, she demands a bow from him as a pledge for the marriage, which is in the barbarian territory and which is said to be made of the wood of a magical tree. Despite all the dangers, Prasildo actually manages to find the bow and bring it to Tisbina. To save their honor, Tisina and Iroldo then decide to take poison. Prasildo wants to kill himself too, because Tisina doesn't love him. The pharmacist who sold them the suicide poison informs Prasildo that he gave them a harmless potion. Prasildo brings the two of them the news of the ineffectiveness of the alleged poison. Iroldo is so impressed by Prasildo's magnanimity that he decides to leave town and leave Tisina Prasildo. Prasildo later learns that Iroldo was in danger and left the city to save him from greater misfortune. In contrast to Boiardo's story, the love drama in Lo Ipocrito is resolved by the fact that Prelio releases Porfiria from her obligation with a kiss.
  • The release of Porfiria's duty to sleep with Prelio is possibly inspired by the fifth novella of the tenth day in Boccaccio's Decamerone (~ 1349-1353) (which in turn may have inspired Boiardo to the story mentioned above) in which the noblewoman Dianora dated Mr. Ansaldo, who would like to have sexual relations with her, demands that her garden bloom in winter. With the help of a magician, Ansaldo succeeds in complying with the lady's request. Dianora's husband allows his wife to sleep with Ansaldo, which is why Ansaldo, who is impressed by Dianora's husband's generosity, releases her from her duty. A similar story can also be found in Boccaccios Filocolo .

literature

Text output

  • Pietro Aretino: Lo Ipocrito. In: Pietro Aretino: Tutte le commedie . Mursia, Milano (Milan) 1968.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Cf. Douglas Radcliff-Umstead: The Birth of Modern Comedy in Renaissance Italy. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London 1969, p. 170.
  2. ↑ Dieter Kremers also sees Ipocrito as a revenant Fra Timoteos, cf. Dieter Kremers: The Italian Renaissance Comedy and the Commedia dell'Arte. In: August Buck (Ed.): Renaissance and Baroque. I. part. Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion, Frankfurt am Main 1972, p. 320.
  3. ↑ See Douglas Radcliff-Umstead: The Birth of Modern Comedy in Renaissance Italy. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London 1969, p. 174.
  4. ↑ See Douglas Radcliff-Umstead: The Birth of Modern Comedy in Renaissance Italy. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London 1969, p. 175.
  5. ↑ See Douglas Radcliff-Umstead: The Birth of Modern Comedy in Renaissance Italy. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London 1969, pp. 170-171.
  6. ↑ See Douglas Radcliff-Umstead: The Birth of Modern Comedy in Renaissance Italy. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London 1969, p. 171.
  7. ↑ See Douglas Radcliff-Umstead: The Birth of Modern Comedy in Renaissance Italy. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London 1969, p. 172.
  8. ↑ See Douglas Radcliff-Umstead: The Birth of Modern Comedy in Renaissance Italy. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London 1969, pp. 172-173.