Play in Renaissance Italy. Peter Burke

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Название Play in Renaissance Italy
Автор произведения Peter Burke
Жанр Документальная литература
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Издательство Документальная литература
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isbn 9781509543441



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avoid this problem, one might define play as a bundle or, better, a system of practices that are recognized as playful in a particular culture. The practices resemble one another like members of a family, who share various traits though any one of these traits may be lacking in a particular individual. It may be easier to recognize what counts as play by thinking about what is excluded (the process of exclusion is discussed in Chapter 6). In Renaissance Italy, playful practices were distinguished from serious ones, and play was often justified as light relief from the serious business of everyday life as well as an escape from boredom.

      However, as Huizinga for one was well aware, there are no fixed borders between play and the surrounding culture. ‘The contrast between play and seriousness is always fluid.’9 For example, what was a joke for the joker and the bystanders might be a deadly serious offence from the point of view of the victim. The satires of the Renaissance were playful in form but serious in content, aimed at the destruction of the person targeted. Popular protest often took place during festivals, especially Carnival, and it made use of carnivalesque forms such as cross-dressing, masks and joyous violence, but the goals of the protest were serious ones. Ambiguity was common and might even be the purpose of the game. The sixteenth-century garden of Bomarzo, to be discussed in Chapter 5, was filled with stone monsters and images of the underworld that probably provoked fear as well as laughter. One of the aims of the reformers of play was to eliminate ambiguities, drawing clear distinctions between what was playful and what was serious, as well as between what was permissible and what was not.

      In our own culture, most of us recognize playfulness most of the time, though not always – hence the frequency of the remark ‘just kidding!’. In the case of other cultures, past or present, recognition is more difficult. To assist in this task, we need to study the language of play in different times and places.

      The equivalent central term in Huizinga’s Dutch was spel. In the French of Caillois, it was jeu. In Italian, the central term was and is gioco, referring to a spectrum of meanings, from joy via jests, games and plays to insult and deceit, not forgetting sexual intercourse.10 The medieval Italian terms ludere and ludo were less frequent and had a more restricted meaning – more or less, ‘game’ (although the term ludicro, like the English ‘ludicrous’, reminds us of the links with humour). In this respect, Italian was the opposite of classical Latin, where ludus was the central term while the term iocus, like the English ‘joke’, was limited to wordplay.11

      As in English, the Italian keyword was surrounded by a periphery of associated terms. Some of these described the effects of play, frequently mentioned in the defences discussed in Chapter 4: effects such as allegria (‘joy’), diletto (‘delight’), diporto (‘sport’), divertimento (‘diversion’), passatempo (‘pastime’), piacevolezze (‘pleasantries’), recreazione (‘recreation’), riposo (‘relaxation’), sfogo (‘release’), solazzo (‘solace’), spasso (‘fun’), svago (‘distraction’), trastullo (‘pleasure’) and trattenimento (‘entertainment’).

      Other terms were more precise. Inganno meant ‘deceit’, itself a keyword that will recur in this essay, just as the practice recurred in Italy at this time. Burla was defined by Castiglione in his famous Book of the Courtier (Il Cortegiano) as ‘a friendly trick’ (un inganno amichevole). The literary term ‘burlesque’ is derived from it, and a leading comic poet of the sixteenth century, Francesco Berni, was described by a colleague as ‘master and father of the burlesque style’ (maestro e padre del burlesco stile). Beffa refers to a practical joke, a common practice in Renaissance Italy – a word that generated related terms such as the adjectives beffardo and beffabile. The term scherzo ranged from child’s play to adult wit.

      In the Middle Ages, only a few of these terms were in use, among them buffone, derisione, diletto, diporto, giocare, ludere, recreazione, solazzo, spasso, svagare (‘to amuse’) and trastullo (‘pleasure’). A witty saying was already described as a motto, while to produce one was known as motteggiare. In the fourteenth century, the writer Giovanni Boccaccio used the words beffa, festevole (‘light-hearted’), piacevole (which meant ‘witty’ as well as ‘courteous’), scherzare, trastullare (‘to deceive’) and trattenimento, (‘entertainment’).

      In the sixteenth century, leading Renaissance writers such as Aretino, Ariosto, Bembo, Berni, Castiglione, Grazzini, Machiavelli and Vasari added terms such as acutezza (‘wit’); arguzia (‘shrewdness’ or ‘wit’); bagatelle (‘frivolities’); bizzaro; buffoneria; burla, burlesco; capriccio, capriccioso; commedia (in the sense of ‘comedy’); faceto (‘witty’); furbesco (‘sly’); ghiribizzi; giocamente (‘for fun’); grottesco (‘grotesque’); passatempo; pazzeggiare (‘to act like a mad person’); piacevolezze; ridicolo and ridicoloso. The proliferation of words is surely a sign that more attention is being given to play than before, a conclusion that