s at the close of the
Middle Ages, and fixes the limits beyond which their dramatic poets,
with a few exceptions, were not destined to advance. Nor was the
choice of the fable without significance. Quitting the Bible stories
and the Legends of Saints, which supplied the mediaeval playwright
with material, Poliziano selects a classic story: and this story might
pass for an allegory of Italy, whose intellectual development the
scholar-poet ruled. Orpheus is the power of poetry and art, softening
stubborn nature, civilising men, and prevailing over Hades for a
season. He is the right hero of humanism, the genius of the
Renaissance, the tutelary god of Italy, who thought she could resist
the laws of fate by verse and elegant accomplishments. To press this
kind of allegory is unwise; for at a certain moment it breaks in our
hands. And yet in Eurydice the fancy might discover Freedom, the true
spouse of poetry and art; Orfeo's last resolve too vividly depicts the
vice of the Renaissance; and the Maenads are those barbarous armies
destined to lay waste the plains of Italy, inebriate with wine and
blood, obeying a new lord of life on whom the poet's harp exerts no
charm. But a truce to this spinning of pedantic cobwebs. Let Mercury
appear, and let the play begin.

_THE FABLE OF ORPHEUS_

MERCURY _announces the show_.

Ho, silence! Listen! There was once a hind,
Son of Apollo, Aristaeus hight,
Who loved with so untamed and fierce a mind
Eurydice, the wife of Orpheus wight,
That chasing her one day with will unkind
He wrought her cruel death in love's despite;
For, as she fled toward the mere hard by,
A serpent stung her, and she had to die.

Now Orpheus, singing, brought her back from hell,
But could not keep the law the fates ordain:
Poor wretch, he backward turned and broke the spell;
So that once more from him his love was ta'en.
Therefore he would no more with women dwell,
And in the end by women he was slain.

_Enter_ A SHEPHERD, _who says_--

Nay, listen, friends! Fair auspices are given,
Since Mercury to earth hath come from heaven.

SCENE I

MOPSUS, _an old shepherd_.

Say, hast thou seen a calf of mine, all white
Save for a spot of black upon her front,
Two feet, one flank, and one knee ruddy-bright?

ARISTAEUS, _a young shepherd_.

Friend Mopsus, to the margin of this fount
No herds have come to drink since bre