such small education as hardly
to be worthy of the title of composers, makers of carnival songs and
frottole, predominated and determined the musical character not only of
the Sacre Rappresentazioni, but also of the secular lyric plays which
succeeded them and which continued to exist in Italy even after the
"stile rappresentativo" had been introduced in the primitive dramma per
musica of Caccini and Peri.

A closer examination of the songs of this period and of the manner in
which they affected the lyric character of the sacred plays and the
succeeding secular dramas may be postponed until we have permitted
ourselves a glance at the character of the sacred plays as literary
products and have taken into account the manner of their performance.

The Disciplinati di Gesu began by intoning their lauds before a crucifix
or the shrine of some saint. Presently they introduced antiphonal
singing and in the end dialogue and action. By the middle of the
fourteenth century the laud came to be called "Divozione." After being
written in a number of meters it finally adhered to the _ottava rima_,
the stanza generally used in the popular poetry of the fifteenth
century. It was the custom to sing these dramatic lauds or "Divozioni"
in the oratories. Every fraternity had a collection of such lauds and
that they were performed with much detail is easily ascertained.

Records of the Perugian Confraternity of San Domenico for 1339 show that
wings and crowns for angels, a crimson robe for Christ, black veils for
the Maries, a coat of mail for Longinus, a dove to symbolize the Holy
Ghost and other properties had been used. By 1375 the "Divozioni" were
acted in church on a specially constructed stage, built against the
screen separating the choir from the nave. The audience sat in the nave,
and a preacher from time to time made explanations and comments. The
stage had two stories, the upper of which was reserved for celestial
beings.

The "Divozione" appears to be, as Symonds declares it to be, the Italian
variety of liturgical drama. The Sacra Rappresentazione, which was
developed from it, was a very different affair. Just when these
representations took definite individual form is not known, but the
period of their high development was from 1470 to 1520. It was precisely
at this time that their entire apparatus was adapted to the
dramatization of secular stories and the secular lyric drama came into
existence.

This whole subject has