IV. The Chandler

The same year (1582) saw another work from Bruno's rapid pen. This time he wrote in Italian, and the book was printed by an Italian who had settled in Paris, Guglielmo Giuliano by name. Bruno tells us it was the fruit of " a few burning days."^ It differs wholly from his other writings, for it is a stage-play, full of rattling, roaring fun and furnished with a satiric probe for credulity, pedantry and pretence. Its world is full of the pursuers and huck- sters of illusions ; rogues abound, and fools are duped by miracle-mongers, alchemists and pretenders to magic arts. This comedy is entitled " II Candelajo," which may be translated as " The Chandler." In Bruno's time the person who supplied candles also made them. Now the manu- facture of tallow-dips is a noisome and undignified trade. Bruno, like Dante, loved to load words with more than their surface-meaning.^ " Behold," he says in the dedication, " behold in the candle borne by this Chandler, to whom I gave birth, that which shall clarify certain shadows of ideas." This product of imagination which shall set forth truth is dedicated with a letter to the lady Morgana, a name very suggestive of Fata Morgana — the mirage — which is illusion. In this dedication a multitude of ideas surge pell-
^ Cena de le Ceneri, Dial JV.
" // Candelajo, a la signora Morgana.
' Bacelli, A ; // Candelajo, Soc. Dante At., 1901,/. 86 sq.
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mell ; they only get themselves out as obscure half-hints ; the language is tortuous and the syntax involved. Priests and pedants may banish his body and make chaos of his life, but they shall not shackle his soul or obscure its vision. Here he presents some shifting shadows, but all the moving shadows of the Universe are really the expression of One Reality. " I need not instruct you of my belief: Time gives all and takes all away ; everything changes but nothing perishes ; One only is immutable, eternal and ever endures, one and the same with itself. With this philosophy my spirit grows, my mind expands. Whereof, however obscure the night may be, I await daybreak, and they who dwell in
day look for night Rejoice therefore, and keep whole,
if you can, and return love for love." ^
The characters of the play, being vicious, are inversions of virtue, integrals in the scheme of things, fulfilling an office to higher ends, as does the one who gives the play its title, our provider of gross matter which shall furnish shin- ing flame. The title of the play is repeated in three of its scenes. In the two first of these our protagonist, who aims at writing amorous poetry, is told, to his great perplexity, that he is trying to change himself from chandler to gold- smith.^ In the last, it is related how all the folk with a bee in the bonnet, who hanker after miracle-mongering priests and their " water of St Peter the Martyr, seed of St John, heaven-sent food of St Andrew and marrow from the bones of St Piantorio " are wont to consult an ancient dame who poses as a wise-woman. An intended bride, doubtful as to her marriage, goes to this old lady. The dialogue, though orlly recorded by one of the characters, may be translated as fairly illustrative of Bruno's brisk and vigorous dramatic manner. It reminds us of that of Plautus and Moliere. " Mother mine, they want me to marry Bonifacio Trucco.
' // Cana., A La Sig" Morgana. « Ibid., Act I, sc. VIII, IX.
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He is well off." " Have him ! " " Yes, but he is too old." " My daughter, don't have him ! " " But my parents advise me to." " Have him ! " " But he don't please me too well." " Then don't have him ! " "I know he comes of good blood." " Have him ! " " But I hear he has not teeth enough to bite a bean." " Don't have him ! " " They tell me he has a pure-bred greyhound." " Have him ! " " But, oh dear me, I hear he is only a chandler." " Don't have him ! " " Everybody thinks him mad." " Take him ! Take him ! seven times over ! His being a chandler doesn't count ; it's no concern of yours if he can't eat; if he doesn't please you, no matter ; what if he be old ; but he is mad, so take him." ^ Herein are furtive thrusts all round.
The play begins with a few verses. Then comes the mock-dedication. By a convention dating from classic times every play required a prologue. Bruno will none of this. A love of buffoonery pervaded his age, so our author next gives us a synopsis of the characters and of the three closely interwoven but distinct plots of his comedy for prologue and follows this up with an anti-prologue, then with a pro-prologue and finally, before the curtain rises, there is a speech from the beadle; all this, excepting the synopsis, being done in that spirit of humorous provocation so characteristic of Rabelais.
The play has five acts and eighteen characters, whereof Bonifacio, an elderly, amorous miser; Bartolomeo, an avaricious seeker after the philosopher's stone, and Man- furio, pedant and fool, are chief.
The pedant is of poor but pretentious intelligence; naturally a vessel of mean capacity, which bursts into absurdities when crammed with more than it was designed to hold. His ineptitude overflows in affectation and self- conceit, and he speaks in inappropriate Latin or latinized » Ibid., Act V, Sc. XXIV.
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Italian. He is a man of words and phrases, of subtle distinctions with no value in them, and of painstaking accuracy about trumpery matters. He lugs in classical lore at every breath. He is unmarried and is specially attached to his pupil Pollula : it is significant that a female name is given to the boy.^ Manfurio has a hand in every- thing that is going on and understands nothing of it ; he is fooled and laughed at, eventually falls into the clutch of a sham watch, and is soundly thrashed, as are the other protagonists.
Bonifacio, married to the youthful Carubina, is in love with Vittoria, a lady no better than she should be, who only pretends to return his affection in order to bleed his purse. He commits endless absurdities in order to keep her to himself, and goes to a professor of magic to help him. This gentleman drains him dry; whereupon Vittoria manages to substitute Carubina for herself. Bonifacio, in the dress of Bernardo, a painter, who is also in love with Carubina, is thus confronted by his own wife dressed in Vittoria's clothes. The pretended watch appear and force Bonifacio to give a bribe to their captain; meanwhile Carubina is t6te-a-t6te with the painter. Finally the deceived husband has to entreat his wife to pardon him, and sails into more tranquil waters " by the grace of the Lord and the Madonna."
The third protagonist, Bartolomeo, trusts himself to the direction of a designing alchemist who well-nigh exhausts his lean purse. A mixture, which contains a fictitious " powder of Christ " fails to work ; and after amusing scenes of roguery, the false watch appear and, by threatening prison, make their profit.
The play is a series of pictures of the seamy side of
* For the morals of schoolmasters, see Garzoni, T. ; La piazza Universale di tutte le professioni del mondo, Venezia, 1617.
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Neapolitan life and repeats the coarse talk which Bruno would have heard as a boy. He may have written the work when he was in the monastery: certain references and its fresh and vigorous touches smack of the direct transcript of recent impressions. But a reference to a recent event shows that it received at least finishing strokes in France, if not in Paris. In his castigation of vice, the very unpleasant is unduly prominent; but the play is not so foul as those of Machiavelli, Bibbiena and Aretino. It must be admitted that this comedy exhibits a great knowledge of the seamy side of life and is a queer product of monastic discipline. But not so many years before a Prince of the Church had officiated at the altar of the Cyprian as well as at that of Christ, and his comedy brought a blush to the face of that by no means severe prude, Isabella D'Este, while Erasmus tells us of a priest who took a part in a Latin play. Even in Bruno's stricter days of Catholic Reform the full effect of the Council of Trent was not felt, and no great blame attached to such lapses. We must not press too heavily on the fault. The Renaissance found frank indecency attractive; we have become more "delicately indelicate." Natural instincts held in leash are apt to manifest themselves in this vicarious and disagreeable way, and a "virile" young man, in a " virile " century at least, will roll in the obscene with the unconstrained gratification of a puppy dog. Moreover, many young men indulge in obscene speculation for pre- cisely the same reason that lunatic maidens are said to utter foul oaths: there is fascination in the repellent and it is apt to produce an undue impression on the mind.
' The plot is unduly complicated and reminds the reader of the Spanish stage. The characters are abstract types, like those of Ben Jonson and dramatists of the second rank ; but they are drawn with rare felicity. The dialogue
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is quite as vivacious and clever as any by Aretino. "The Chandler" is quite sui generis — a new development in comedy. It is easy, spontaneous, the overflow of an ardent and imaginative temperament. Both the obscenity and buffoonery of the play are half intended to keep the audience amused; buffoonery and indelicacy are also introduced with this purpose in Bruno's more serious writings.
The rediscovery of the classics led, in time, to degenerate humanists : Bruno is less tender to these pedants than to knaves — probably because he had suffered more at their hands.^ Philosophical theory peeps out in the play here and there.''
He believes that his enemies rejoice at his exile ; but he is convinced he will obtain his due, " if not under one hood, then under another ; if not in one life yet in another " ; * a remark which some have thought to show that he believed in an immortality not guaranteed by the mere pantheistic Neo-Platonism he had so far expounded.
In a somewhat earlier and more liberal age, Machiavelli expressed his contempt for the miraculous. Guicciardini thought those wonders which were best attested to be examples of natural phenomena not yet understood.* This was Bruno's attitude, as is clear from many passages in his books. In " The Chandler " he pours his scorn on the trickery of the priesthood. He hints at the miseries of monastic discipline.
He is aware of his own originality and declares it; he does not disguise his Horatian contempt for the herd.
There is no evidence that the play was ever performed ;
' Cfr. Baccelli, A; op. cit.,p. 74.
* Cfr. Telli, Carlo; // Cand., Prefaz., Biblioteca Rara, Dalit, 1862. » // Cand., A La Sig" Morgana.
♦ Guicciardini, F ; Opere Ined., I, 129.
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but, influenced by prior productions, it left its mark in its turn on those which followed.'^ The comedies of that many- sided genius, Giambattista della Porta (who was a Neapolitan and a contemporary of Bruno), which were published more than twenty years later than the Candelajo, show a singular resemblance to it.^ Within two generations, a French adapta- tion, entitled Boniface et le Pedant, was staged, and this was followed by Cyrano de Bergerac's Le PSdant j'ouL Cyrano concentrated Bruno's trifold plot to the advantage of the play; but he missed much of the vivacity of the original dialogue. He indirectly admits this, for he vows that " Italian twins would joke in their mother's womb." These adaptations influenced Moli^re; he extracted what suited him from Cyrano's version, saying that he had a right to it : " On reprend son bien partout on le trouve." * Prof. Adamson suggested that Manfurio was the prototype of Holofernes in Shakespeare's " Love's Labour's Lost."
• Spampanato, P ; Alcuni antec. e imitaz.fr. del Candelajo, Portici, Delia Torre, 1905.
'^ Spampanato, P ; Somiglianze tra due commediografi Napoletani, Napoli, 1906.
^ Bartholmfess ; op. cit., I, p. 262, n. iv.