from the rich cities of the
North and the devastated fields of the South, and the wilds and rocks of
the West and the East, alike in nothing save in its wonder and dread and
delight and horror at this strange invaded Italy--the play performed for
the entertainment of this encamped army was no ordinary play. No clerkly
allegorical morality; no mouthing and capering market-place farce; no
history of Joseph and his brethren, of the birth of the Saviour, or of
the temptations of St. Anthony. It was the half-allegorical,
half-dramatic representation of the reigning Borgia pope and his
children; it was the rude and hesitating moulding into dramatic shape of
those terrible rumours of simony and poison, of lust and of violence, of
mysterious death and abominable love, which had met the invaders as they
had first set their feet in Italy; which had become louder and clearer
with every onward step through the peninsula, and now circulated around
them, with frightful distinctness, in the very capital of Christ's vicar
on earth. This blundering mystery-play of the French troopers is the
earliest imaginative fruit of that first terrified and fascinated
glimpse of the men of the barbarous North at the strange Italy of the
Renaissance; it is the first manifestation of that strong tragic impulse
due to the sudden sight, by rude and imaginative young nations, of the
splendid and triumphant wickedness of Italy.

The French saw, wondered, shuddered, and played upon their camp stage
the tragedy of the Borgias. But the French remained in Italy, became
familiar with its ways, and soon merely shrugged their shoulders and
smiled where they had once stared in horror. They served under the flags
of Sforzas, Borgias, Baglionis, and Vitellis, by the side of the bravos
of Naples and Umbria; they saw their princes wed the daughters of
evil-famed Italian sovereigns, and their princes' children, their own
Valois and Guises, develope into puny, ambiguous, and ominous Medicis
and Gonzagas, surrounded by Italian minions and poison distillers, and
buffoons and money-lenders. The French of the sixteenth century, during
their long Neapolitan and Lombard wars and negotiations, and time to
learn all that Italy could teach; to become refined, subtle,
indifferent, and cynical: bastard Italians, with the bastard Italian art
of Goujon and Philibert Delorme, and the bastard Italian poetry of Du
Bellay and Ronsard. The French of the sixteenth century therefore
tran