Lo Stufaiuolo by Anton Francesco Doni: A Scholarly Edition
Edited by Elena PierazzoLo Stufaiuolo by Anton Francesco Doni
A Scholarly Edition
The critical reception of Anton Francesco Doni (Florence 1513–Monselice 1574) has
known ups and downs. His works were authentic best sellers during his lifetime, with
him constantly producing sequels and reprints to satisfy high demand; this success
was also helped by Doni’s engagement with the booming print industry in Venice, in
particular through his collaboration with avant-garde printers such as Gabriel
Giolito de’ Ferrari and Francesco Marcolini. But by the turn of the sixteen century,
however, a few years after his death his works were almost completely forgotten, at
least in Italy.1 Doni had considerable success
in France, with many of his works translated and published well into the
seventeenth century. See, for instance, Giovanna Rizzarelli, “Traduzione e
mediazione tra Francia e Italia. Gabriel Chappuys e ‘Les dix plaisans
dialogues,’” in Dissonanze concordi. Temi, questioni e
personaggi intorno ad Anton Francesco Doni, ed. G. Rizzarelli
(Bologna, il Mulino, 2013), 375–404. The establishment of the
Counter-Reformation’s control over the print industry and changes in literary taste
meant that Doni’s works were only sought after by lexicographers who appreciated his
inventive Florentine language. In all his productions Doni displayed a great
awareness of his own language—the language spoken in Florence at the time—and
advocated for its use for literary purposes. This was in contrast to the
contemporary linguistic theories championed by Pietro Bembo, who promoted the use of
the Florentine language used two centuries earlier by Petrarch and Boccaccio.
Doni’s language has been studied for centuries by scholars and authors alike, both of
whom have been fascinated by his vivid and flamboyant expression. His main works
were also cannibalized by the authors of the most important Italian dictionary of
the early modern period, that is the Vocabolario degli Accademici
della Crusca. This literary misfortune lasted well into the twentieth
century, with the few critical contributions that were produced focusing only on
what scholars considered the most “serious” and “engaged” part of his production,
namely the religious and the utopian works. It was not until 1988 with the seminal
work by Giorgio Masi2 G. Masi, “‘Quelle
Discordanze sì Perfette’. Anton Francesco Doni 1551–1553,” in Atti e Memorie dell’Accademia Toscana di Scienze e Lettere, 53, n.s.
39 (1988), 9–112. that he started to return to favor. In contrast,
the last thirty years or so have seen Doni’s critical fortune constantly on the
rise, with monographs and new editions being published.3 See, for instance, Giorgio Masi, ed., “Una Soma di Libri”: L’Edizione delle Opere di Anton Francesco Doni,
Atti del seminario, Pisa, 14 Ottobre 2002 (Firenze: Leo Olschki Editore,
2008). Considered at times a bohemian intellectual, a plagiarist, a
heretic, a compiler without originality, and a utopist, Doni’s intellectual profile
has puzzled more than one scholar. When I prepared my edition of the Zucca, published in 2003,4 A. F. Doni, Le Novelle, Tomo II: La Zucca, ed. E.
Pierazzo (Roma: Salerno Editrice 2003). I did not even attempt a critical
evaluation of the man, of the writer, or of the work itself: Doni and Doni’s
production is to be taken “as is” and all labels mentioned above apply and certainly
some more. Mid-sixteenth-century Italy was a period of great intellectual and
cultural fervor: the classical culture that characterized so much of the fifteenth
century was now considered boring and passé (“pedantic”) by a generation of young
“hungry” intellectuals that used the roaring print industry to promote themselves on
the cultural market. This classical culture was then stripped and repackaged in bits
and pieces through the wholesale, unashamed plundering of quotations, as Paolo
Cherchi has magisterially demonstrated.5 Paolo
Cherchi, Polimatia di Riuso: Mezzo secolo di Plagio,
1539–1589 (Roma: Bulzoni, 1998).
The Stufaiuolo (the “Spa-tender” or the “Spa-man,” more or
less) is the only play we know from Doni's proteiform and extensive production. It
is preserved in two autograph manuscripts, both beautifully crafted fair copies,
written in 1557 (Camerino: Biblioteca Valentiniana di Camerino, MS 2 [henceforth
V]) and 1559 (Florence: Biblioteca Mediceo-Riccardiana, MS 1184 [henceforth R]),
respectively. The play more or less follows the traditional plot of many classical
comedies: an old and a young man compete for the love of an honest young woman, then
by means of a series of recognitions, identities are recovered, lost children are
found, and everything ends in a string of weddings. What strikes the modern reader
about this comedy is the number of sex crimes perpetrated or plotted: in rapid
succession we witness a rape, sexual harassment, and incest. To be fair the latter
is not consummated, since the girl in question is discovered to be the daughter of
her seducer before any sexual act could take place, in the darkness of an alcove,
after a candle has been fetched in order for the characters' identities to be
ascertained by the means of some providential markings on their bodies. As for the
other two sex crimes, there is little redemption. The rape is plotted as a rape (“Il
letto, il buio, la comodità, la fragilità, i danari, la fede del secreto fanno gran
violenza”: MS V, act II, scene 2); only because two women have changed place does
the victim find out that her rapist is in fact the man she loves, and so a remedial
wedding is quickly organized. Though we usually refrain from judging
sixteenth-century Italy by today’s morality and values, this the comedy stands out
for its sexual content even for the time. The only obvious precedent is perhaps
Machaivelli’s Mandragola, which displays a similar case of
rape “redressed,” so to speak, and indeed this parallel is just one hint of how the
Stufaiuolo draws on the Mandragola
as a model; the Stufaiuolo in fact contains a few direct
quotations from Machiavelli's masterpiece.
The plot of the comedy is fairly strightforward, despite the obligatory exchange
of clothing and faked identities. The eponymous character is Gottardo, the owner and
tender of a “stufa,” a sort of spa where people go regularly to bathe, have their
hair and nails cut, or have leeches applied. In Renaissance Italy, such spas were
traditionally owned by Germans, and in fact Gottardo (in German, Gotthard) declares
himself to be “di razza tedesca” (that is, German). His stufa in Venice is where most of the plot
takes place. Messer Niccolò, a middle-aged Venetian lawyer, is married to the
beautiful young Laura, whose family is unknown. He is constantly unfaithful to her,
and the lack of proper intimacy with her husband makes her miserable. Laura confides
her sorrows to Maddalena, a very smart and capable housekeeper; Maddalena is also
the confidante of Taddea, Niccolò's widowed sister, who is hopelessly in love with a
young merchant, Vincenzo. But Vincenzo fancies Laura instead. Maddalena is soon
discovered to be the wife of a rich exile, Cesare; they have both left Genoa and
lost two children, a boy and a girl, in the process. Cesare discloses to Maddalena
that he is in love with Laura, and Maddalena agrees to help him to obtain her.
Niccolò fancies a beautiful German courtesan, Druda, who is the girlfriend and
business partner of the Stufaiuolo, the spa-tender.
All the action happens in one night: Niccolò goes to the spa to take a bath but plans
to force Druda to submit to his will instead; while he is in the bath, however,
Vincenzo steals his clothes and goes to his house to rape Laura. Meanwhile Laura
plots to catch her husband at the spa and leaves the house with Maddalena, leaving
Taddea in her bed instead. At the spa, Maddalena convinces Druda to allow Laura to
get in Druda's bed, making sure that Niccolò is kept out, and sends Cesare to join
Laura in bed. While in bed with Cesare, Laura, instructed by Maddalena, shows Cesare
a few moles on her body, whereupon he recognizes her as his—and
Maddalena’s—estranged daughter. In the meantime Maddalena discovers Vincenzo in bed
with Taddea and, again by means of moles, recognizes him to be her other lost child;
Maddalena makes Vincenzo marry Taddea, Cesare confronts Niccolò about his behavior
and then all turns into happiness and weddings: Vincenzo and Taddea, the Stufaiuolo
and Druda, and Bigio and Caterina, both servants of Niccolò. The latter couple,
Bigio and Caterina, are also responsible for most of the comic moments of the play:
in particular, Caterina’s speeches are laced with sexual double entendres. Other
slapstick moments are provided by Messer Niccolò, who fits perfectly the stereotype
of the old man in love.
All the action takes place during the period of carnival, accentuating the
carnivalesque plot. The dizzying exchanges of identity and clothing, including the
moment when the servants dress up in their masters’ garments, cannot but remind today’s
reader of Bakhtin’s interpretational framework.
The dating of the Stufaiuolo is not clear: while the two
manuscripts date to 1557 and 1559, respectively, there are reasons to believe that
the work was instead composed before 1551, if not even earlier. The Stufaiuolo is in fact mentioned in the Zucca, which was published in 1551, in the Chiacchera
Ultima (Ic 16 9). In this passage Doni also mentioned that the play had
been staged by Antonio Carafulla (nicknamed “Piè d’Oca”).6 Doni, La Zucca, 192: “L’autorità del
Carafulla, strione della mi a comedia dello Stufaiuolo
.” Carafulla was a very famous Florentine actor, and since Doni left
Florence in 1547, it is likely that the play was indeed composed and staged before
that date. A Florentine origin also seems more plausible than a Venetian one: given
the ridicule of Niccolò, a Venetian magistrate, it is more likely that the play was
not conceived while in Venice but in Florence, with Venice representing a
recognizable and yet conveniently “other” location that was apt to be ridiculed.
This could also explain why the Stufaiuolo was not printed
during Doni’s stay in Venice but was circulated as a manuscript from 1557, the year
when Doni left the city.
The two versions present interesting differences in content and style. The earlier
one, transmitted by the manuscript preserved in the Biblioteca Valentiniana of
Camerino, seems close to the stage script, characterized as it is by movement,
dance, acrobatics, and by shorter speeches and heavy sexual innuendo. The version
transmitted by the manuscript preserved in the Biblioteca Mediceo-Riccardiana of
Florence, on the other hand, is more literary, barely mentions dance, reduces the
sexual subtext, and seems instead conceived for reading, probably aloud, as I will
argue shortly.7Namely towards the end of the section “A Comparison of the Two
Witnesses.” The two versions have their individuality, then, even if they
look very much alike at first sight. The characters are the same, the number of
speeches is more or less identical, and the underlying content does not change at
all, besides the differences mentioned above. However, the collation of the two
versions reveals thousands of variants, with the largest number of differences
residing at the micro level of the language. For instance, at the lexical level many
words in one version are substituted with synonyms in the other—a phenomenon that
applies particularly to adjectives—and there is considerable diversification in the
so-called accidentals: punctuation, orthography, capitalization, cases, word
spacing, and so on, the importance of which will be discussed below. Rewriting that
takes place between the two preserved versions is what one might call a “variation
on a theme,” to use musical terminology, a tactic deployed by Doni throughout his
whole career.8 See, among others, G. Masi,
“‘Quelle Discordanze sì Perfette.’”
Both manuscripts are pristine fair copies: Doni was a gifted calligrapher and skilled
at drawing (as shown in Figure 1), and the third phase of his career is
characterized by the production of highly decorated and sophisticated manuscripts
which were sent to rich noblemen in the hope of receiving financial support.
[Click on image to enlarge] Figure 1: Frontispieces of the two manuscripts, the Valentiniano to the left and the Riccardiano to the right.
Doni had worked as resident editor for three different publisher-printers and had
become a printer himself, but in the last phase of his life (1556–1572) he almost
completely dropped his engagement with printing and devoted himself to the
production of manuscripts. He conceived these as handcrafted works, produced with
painstaking attention to detail, intended for the dedicatee only, and reminiscent
more of the epistolary model than the publishing one. In this way literature seems
to become a private affair between the author and his unique reader, and this author
aims to cash in on the exclusivity of the experience rather than on its diffusion.
This phenomenon is particularly evident for the Ville,
another series of manuscripts/works that are completely rewritten from one copy to
the next. Each time the dedicatee is changed, the work undergoes a rewriting that
includes changing even the title: the Villa Fucchera get its
title from Jacob Fuegger, the famous banker; the Villa
Attavanta gets its title from Pandolfo Attavanti; the Villa Montecuccola is so entitled from Lodovico Montecuccoli, while the
lost Villa Saracca might get its name from Giovan Battista
Saracco to whom Doni dedicated Il Cancellieri: Libro dell’Eloquenza.9
See Elena Pierazzo, “Dalle Nuove Pitture al Seme della Zucca,” in Masi, “Una Soma
di Libri,” 271–97, especially appendix 2, “Nota sulla datazione delle
Ville,” 295–97.
Despite this manuscript work, Doni’s experience as a printer was not forgotten. With
these manuscripts we could say that we have completed the circle of remediation. The
early days of printing saw the attempts of printers to imitate manuscripts in order
to make them more attractive to a class of snobbish intellectuals who were nurtured
by the freshly rediscovered classics. With the Stufaiuolo,
almost exactly one century later, it is the manuscript that imitates print. This is
evident from the very beginning, since both versions are provided with a
frontispiece and benefit from the most modern book architecture and layout. Features
such as dramatis personae and the division and numbering of acts and scenes had been
gradually introduced in Venetian publishing houses around the end of the
1530s,10For instance, the edition of the Suppositi by
Ludovico Ariosto, published in Rome in 1524, is presented in divided scenes but
not yet with stage directions or dramatis personae. The latter, however, is
presented in the edition of the Lena by the same author,
published in 1535 in Venice by Francesco Bindone Matteo Pasini. and were
slowly spreading throughout the rest of Europe. These innovations are evident in the
vernacular plays before they were integrated into the editions of classics; as late
as 1576 a Parisian edition of Plautus’s Comedies still did not
include a dramatis personae.
The layout of the Stufaiuolo is extremely regular and
painstakingly controlled. The manuscripts are beautifully decorated with drop
capitals, head- and tailpieces, cartouches and cadels. This type of decoration is a
sort of branding of Doni’s work and can be found in most of his autograph
manuscripts; for instance, one can see them in I Numeri, La Villa Fucchera, and Le Nuove Pitture
.11 A. F. Doni, I
Numeri, ed. A. Del Fante (Roma: Bulzoni, 1981). La
Villa Fucchera is available as a digital facsimile (from microfilm)
from the website of the Bayerische Staats Bibliothek, Cod. ital. 36 (see
website). The facsimile edition of the Le Nuove Pitture
has been recently published by Sonia Maffei: Le nuove pitture
del Doni fiorentino: libro primo consacrato al mirabil signore Donno Aloise
da Este illustrissimo et reverendissimo: Biblioteca apostolica Vaticana, MS
Patetta 364, edizione a cura di Sonia Maffei; cura del testo,
presentazione, trascrizione, commento e saggio critico di Sonia Maffei; con una
nota musicale di Virgilio Bernardoni e una nota linguistica di Carlo Alberto
Girotto (Napoli: La stanza delle Scritture, 2006). The latter is a
particularly fine specimen, with Doni decorating an accompanying musical piece where
the notes are represented by little bells, rattles, flowers, and mice.
The Current Edition
The Stufaiuolo was published for the first time in 1861 by
Salvatore Bongi.12
Lo Stufaiolo Commedia in Prosa di Anton Francesco
Doni (Lucca: B. Canovetti, 1861). In her catalogue, Cecilia
Ricottini Marsili-Libelli relates the unverified presence of another
autograph of Stufaiuolo at the Biblioteca Melziana,
which is allegedly dedicated to Ottavio Farnese (Cecilia
Marsili-Ricottini-Libelli, Anton Francesco Doni: Scrittore
e Stampatore [Firenze: Sansoni Antiquariato, 1960], pp. 186);
however, Salvatore Bongi denies its existence as well as the existence of a
printed edition in Venice from 1585. There is no way to ascertain the
existence of such a manuscript since the Biblioteca Melziana was severely
damaged during the Second World War, and only a small portion of its
holdings survives as a collection in the Biblioteca Braidense in Milan. Yet
it is not implausible for Doni to have made more than two versions of the
manuscript, since he made up to four copies of his Ville . This edition was then reprinted in 1863 within a
larger collection of Novelle,13
Tutte le Novelle, Lo Stufaiuolo, Commedia e la Mula e la
Chiave, dicerie di Antonfrancesco Doni (Milano, G. Daelli Editore,
1863): see Ricottini Marsili-Libelli, 189–90. and again probably in
1916.14 Doni, Scritti (Roma: Istituto Editoriale Italiano, [1916?]). The date of
publication is postulated by Ricottini Marsili-Libelli, 220–21. All
these editions are based on the Riccardiano manuscript alone; the current
edition will be the first that takes into consideration the Valentiniano
manuscript.
The witnesses
The Valentiniano manuscript (V) is preserved in pristine condition, still in
its original binding, which is decorated with gold penwork, similarly to the
manuscript of the Nuove Pitture preserved in the
Vatican Library, MS Patetta 364.15
The binding is probably similar to that of La
Villa Fucchera; however, because of the bad
quality of the available images, it is not possible to tell whether
there is a gold decoration on the cover.
[Click on image to enlarge] Figure 2: Valentiniano manuscript, upper cover
The codex has been recently restored by the “Laboratorio di Restauro del
libro S. Maria di Rosano,” as indicated by the label pasted onto one of the
flyleaves. The flyleaves themselves were probably added during this
restoration, since they are not mentioned in the library catalogue of
1993.16 Giacomo Boccanegra and
Daniela Branciani, Inventari dei Manoscritti delle
Biblioteche d’Italia, Vol. CVII: Camerino Biblioteca Comunale
Valentiniana (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1993), 12.
No trace has been found of the musical score of the interludes that,
according to the dedication, was supposed to have accompanied the
manuscript; the codex is intact and nothing seems to be missing from it.
However, the score could have been bound separately from the play, as
it may have been more practical to have them detachable in order to
facilitate reading the text aloud with the musical performance at the same
time.
The frontispiece (f. 2r) contains a note of ownership: “Francisci Liberati”,
who has not been otherwise identified; the style of the handwriting suggests
the note was written in the late sixteenth-seventeenth century. The
manuscript was bought by Milziade Santoni, librarian and curator at the
Biblioteca Valentiniana, on May 9, 1880, from Rossi, a book dealer in Rome.
Enclosed with the manuscript is a page of the catalogue by Rossi on which
the sale price is reported to be 250 lire, a considerable price for the
time. A letter of authentication by Prospero Viani, dated Bologna 1870, is
similarly enclosed; this letter is mentioned in Rossi’s catalogue entry and
was probably commissioned by the dealer prior to the sale. The discrepancy
of the dates (letter 1870, purchased 1880), together with an annotation by
Santoni under the catalogue cutting that declares that the manuscript went
unsold for a while, suggests that the final price may have be considerably
reduced, but it is still unlikely to have been a trivial purchase. The
reasons why Santoni bought it are unknown: he was mainly interested in local
history and numismatics and held no evident interest in plays or the type of
literature produced by Doni.17 A
profile of the figure of Milziade Santoni can be read in his obituary by
B. Feliciangeli in “Atti e memorie della Regia Deputazione di Storia
Patria per le provincie delle Marche,” 1907, 5:109–28. A detailed
description of the manuscript can be found
X
.
Manuscript Description, Valentiniana MS
Camerino, Biblioteca Valentiniana, MS 2
Physical Description
Material:
Paper, chain lines at 32 mm; two crossed arrows with a star in the middle. End part of the arrows in the shape of a drop, similar to Briquet 6299 f. 3
Dimensions: 275mm x409mm
i, 1–18, ii; 2 attachments. Foliation in a blue ink, probably by Giacomo Boccanegra, director of the library until the early 1990s. Earlier foliation (contemporary to the writing or soon thereafter), possibly autograph, starting from the current f. 5r (corresponding to act I, scene 1) 1-14
2, 1 (stub between 7v and 8r)+4, 4, 4 +1 (stub between 11v and 12r), 2
Excellent conditions; recently restored including restitching.
Layout: No sign of ruling or pricking. Area of writing is about 312–317 × 177 mm; 35 lines per page. Left margins vary from 55 mm for f. 10v to 47 mm for f. 16v; right margin is 47 mm on the verso and 50 mm on the recto, but 17v has 42 mm; bottom margin ranges from 52 to 54 mm.
Autograph; scripts:
- Humanistic
- Humanistic cursive (italics), used for dedication, prologue, stage direction and the embedded letter at f. 10r
Decorations:
Frontespiece:
- f. 2r 335 × 217 mm
Drop capitals:
- f. 4r, 56 × 50 mm × 7 lines: "S", grotesque in a box
Head pieces:
- f. 4r, 176 × 69 mm
- f. 5r, 174 × 49 mm, embedding LO STVFAIVUOLO COMEDIA
- f. 10r, 175 × 58 mm
Tail pieces:
- f. 8r, 176 × 145 mm embedding LO STVFAIVOLO COMMEDIA
- f. 12v, 180 × 93 mm embedding DEL TERZO ATTO IL FINE
- f. 14v, 203 × 176 mm
- f. 18v, 196 × 150 mm
Cadels:
- f. 3r
- f. 5r
Cartouces:
- f. 8v, embedding SCENA PRIMA
- f. 12v, embedding QVARTO
- f. 15r, embedding SCENA PRIMA
Additions and annotations: Ownership note at f. 2r, at the bottom of the frontispiece: Francisci Literati
Original binding in vellum, with autograph penwork on both sides (similar to the one in MS Patetta 364 containing the Le Nuove Pitture and preserved at the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana). Recently restored, all gatherings have been resawn. There is a "n. 2" on the front side of the binding, which is the current shelf number, probably added after the new ordering was done (1990); New strings substitute for the original leather strings.
Accompaining Material: 2 items. Allegato 1: letter of authentication by Prospero Viani of 1870, Allegato 2: fragment of a book dealer's catalog with notes by Milziade Santoni, declaring the date of acquisition (March 9, 1880) and certification of the above note by Giacomo Boccanegra, who was director of the Biblioteca Valentiniana until the early 1990s.
The copy in the Biblioteca Mediceo–Riccardiana (R) has lost its original
binding and is now part of a miscellaneous codex of which it is the first
item, ff. 1–24.18 Salomone
Morpurgo, I Manoscritti della Biblioteca Riccardiana
di Firenze: Manoscritti Italiani (Roma, 1900), 1:235–39.
The frontispiece (f. 2r) contains a note of ownership: “Questa
commedia e del S. Cav. Raff(aell)o di Lionardo Carnesecchi” (Figure 3).
[Click on image to enlarge] Figure 3: Possession note in R, f. 2r.
Raffaello di Lionardo Carnesecchi (1547–1621) was senator of the Grand Duchy
of Tuscany. It is not clear how Carnesecchi gained possession of the
manuscript. The dedicatee, to whom the manuscript was probably sent, was
Giacomo Piccolomini; he was Duke of Montemarciano in the Marche region but
probably lived in Siena where his son Alfonso, the famous outlaw, is
reported to have been born.19Alfonso
Piccololomini (Siena ca. 1550–Florence 1591) was a mercenary who then
became a renegade and an outlaw, leading for years a group of bandits,
until his capture and successive execution. After Alfonso’s
execution, his possessions in Montemarciano were confiscated by the Pope,
while those in Siena were seized by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, so it is
possible that the accession of Carnesecchi was a consequence of the
dispersion of the Piccolomini estate after the execution of Alfonso (1591).
Carnesecchi died in 1615. Next, we know the manuscript was possessed by
Anton Maria Salvini, a famous linguist and intellectual of the time, a
member of the Accademia della Crusca and initial impetus behind the fourth
edition of the Vocabolario (1729–38); this ownership
confirms the interest of linguists in the work of Doni. Salvini died in
1729; after his death, his heirs negotiated the sale of his library to
Gabriello Riccardi, the bibliophile of the Riccardi family whose personal
library became the original installment of the Biblioteca Riccardiana (later
Mediceo-Riccardiana).20 Guglielmo
Bartoletti, “I Manoscritti Riccardiani Provenienti dalla Libreria di
Anton Maria Salvini,” Atti e Memorie dell’Accademia
Toscana di Scienza e Lettere “La Colombaria” 74, n.s. 60
(2009): 121–49. The shelf mark of the Stufaioulo, MS 1184, is still the one originally attributed by
Gabriello Riccardi.
It is not clear how the Stufaiuolo ended up bound
with the other items that compose the miscellanea. The codex has been
foliated on the lower right corner with the help of a mechanical numerator,
a practice in use in the library between the 1950s and the 1960s. However,
an earlier handwritten foliation on the upper right corner shows that the
miscellanea was once ordered differently, with the current f. 232, which
corresponds to the beginning of the current item 7, a collection of
letters,21 Morpurgo, I Manoscritti, 237. foliated as 1; the Stufaiuolo started then at f. 354 which, is now f. 1.
The miscellanea was given its present configuration in 1858 when it was
rebound by G. Berti.22 This
information comes from the Biblioteca Mediceo-Riccardiana’s archive and
has been kindly provided by the librarian there. A detailed
description of the manuscript can be found
X
.
Manuscript Description, Riccardiana MS
Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, ms. 1184MS 1184
Physical Description
Material:
Paper; chain lines at 32 mm, f. 2; lily inscribed within a circle and a star, similar to Briquet 7116/7
Paper; chain lines at 31 mm, ff. 4, 5, 7, 10, 12, 15, 16, 17, 19crown surmounted by star, similar to Briquet 4833
Paper; chain lines at 32mm, f. 21, two crossed arrows with a star in the middle. End part of the arrows in the shape of a drop, similar to Briquet 6299
Dimensions: 230mm x329mm
1–24 ff.
Sequence of twelve bifolia
Generally in good condition. Dried humidity stains on several pages, in particular the upper right corner of versos and from f. 20, also the upper internal corner.
Layout: No sign of ruling or pricking. The layout is very regular; the text occupies an area of 240 mm × 132 mm that gradually becomes 135 mm. On the large left margin (usually about 56 mm on the versos and 34 mm on the rectos) we find the name of the speakers. No speaker for the dedication or the prologue (ff. 3–4). Top margin ranges from 39 mm (at f. 3r) to 33 mm (at f. 20r). Bottom margin around 52 mm throughout apart from f. 22v where margin is 42 mm. Average of 28 lines per page throughout, apart from the dedication, which is much shorter (f. 3r).
Autograph; scripts:
- Humanistic
- Humanistic cursive (italics), used for dedication, prologue, stage direction and the embedded letter at f. 12r
Decorations:
Frontespiece:
- f. 2r, 240x160 mm
Penwork initials:
- f. 10r: "L"
- f. 10r: "S"
- f. 15v: "A"
- f. 18v: "S"
Drop capitals:
- f. 4r "S," 49 × 33 mm × 5 lines, penwork
- f. 5r "T," 17 × 17 mm × 3 lines, boxed, similar to woodcut
Head pieces:
- f. 4r 27 × 132 mm
- f. 5r 45 × 132 mm
Tail pieces:
- f. 9v 103 × 133 mm
- f. 12v 150 × 135 mm, embedding LO STVFAIUOLO COMMEDIA DEL DONI
- f. 15v 39 × 134 mm, embedding FINE DEL III ATTO
- f. 18r 49 × 132 mm, embedding FINE DEL QUARTO ATTO
- f. 22v 46 × 139 mm
Cadels:
- f. 1r
- f. 5r
- f. 10r
- f. 10v
- f. 12r
- f. 12v
- f. 18v
- f. 20v
- f. 22r
Additions and annotations: Ownership note at f. 2r, at the bottom of the frontispiece: "Questa Commedia é del signor Cav. Raffaello di Lionardo Carnesecchi."
A comparison of the two witnesses
The text of the two manuscripts is very similar in some way and very
different in others. Apart from a few substantial variants that concern
principally the characters of Caterina and Bigio, whose carnivalesque
potential is strongly reduced in the shift from the Valentiniano (V) to the
Riccardiano (R), as we will see shortly, most of the variants are lexical
and orthographical. The tables below demonstrates this situation.
Table 1
| Valentiniano | Riccardiano |
| parecchi mesi | sei mesi |
| quà | qui a canto |
| lunga et lentamente | lenta, o lunga |
| cosa | Masseritia |
| drizzata | Rizzata |
| fuori uscito sconosciuto | fuori uscito della sua terra |
| sta al governo | sta per governo |
| in casa | della casa |
| scambiamenti di panni | rubamenti di panni |
| si traveston | si travestiscon |
| bella tirata | bella rinvoltura |
| inparerete | v’insegnerà |
| Tollererete | Imparerete a tollerare |
The following provides only a sample from the prologue, where one can also
find more substantial variants, but these consist only in paraphrases of the
same concept, and do not much add to or change the meaning of the
readings:
Table 2
| Valentiniano | Riccardiano |
| Signori Spettatori Illustrissimi magnifici, reali, et come voi volete | Signori spettatori |
| queste bellissime donne | queste nobilissime et bellissime donne |
| ha presa la mia lingua | ha presa la lingua |
| nata in Italia come me | nata in Italia |
| Senza dirvi che la carne tira. Non si dice egli per proverbio, tagliami le mani, e i piei: et gettami fra miei | per tenere del sangue del paese, meglio sodisfó all’apetito suo: et poi |
| Hora, per non havermi lasciato mio padre possession, sto qui | Hora io sto qui |
| et per una porta | insieme per una porta |
| riceve i nudi stufati | accomoda da ogni parte ne I letti I nudi stufati |
| hora state fermi et datemi dolcemente udienza | Porgetemi voi donne/ da un canto et voi huomini dall’altro garbatamente udienza |
| hora in comedia ridotto | hora ridotto in Commedia |
Another set of comparisons consists of graphic or morphological
variation:23For a discussion about graphic and other types of
variation, see the “The Digital Edition: Layout and
Tools” section.
Table 3
| Valentiniano | Riccardiano |
| bellissime | bellißime |
| Todesca | Tedesca |
| apicco | appicco |
| ch’ella ha | che l’ha |
| Comedia | Commedia |
| menar | menare |
| indietro | in dietro |
| sta | stá |
| et | & |
| lei | essa |
| credete | crediate |
Some patterns of correction can be detected, but these are only general
tendencies and lack the consistency that one normally attributes to a
campaign of revision. For instance, V seems to prefer apocopate words, while
R tends to avoid them (Table 3 menar ] menare); V presents a certain number
of degeminate consonants, while R has them doubled (V Comedia ] R Commedia;
apicco ] appicco). Counterexamples are V honore ] R honor (act I, scene 2); V cottone ]
R cotone (act V, scene 5).
In some parts the text is completely rewritten, almost word for word,
nevertheless without altering the meaning. This is the case, for instance,
in this speech by Cesare (act IV, scene 5):
Table 4
| Valentiniano | Riccardiano |
| Ogni cosa s’aconcerà: lasciate dire a me che comincerò con le brusche, e poi verremo alle dolcezze, all’amicizie e parentadi. Doh vecchio senza cervello, è questa ora d’un pari vostro d’andare in maschera a torno? | Ogni cosa si acconcerà: lasciate dire a me che io comincerò con le brusche, e poi verremo alle dolci parole, all’amicizie e parentadi. Doh vecchio senza pensieri, è questa ora da un pari vostro a ritrovarsi in maschera? |
As one can see, the meaning is only slightly altered: Cesare calls Niccolò
“brainless” in V and “thoughtless” in R, where the latter is a slightly less
offensive epithet. This form of rewriting is applied throughout the text.
Another example is the following, where Maddalena is speaking:
Table 5
| Valentiniano | Riccardiano |
| O che bello accidente! Andiamo dentro, che voi udirete cose nuove, e Laura si ha da riempire anch’ella d’un maggior diletto, e voi e tutti! Or ditemi un poco, che fu di messer vecchio? |
O che nuovo accidente! Andiamo dentro
e lo intenderete. Laura poi s’ha da riempire d’un nuovo diletto, e voi e tutti! Or
ditemi, che fu di messer vecchio?
|
Here the most notable change is that the “bello” and “maggior” of V both
become “nuovo” in R, the reason for which is obscure; on the other hand V
has “cose nuove” which is suppressed in R.
Other differences lie in the number and quality of the speeches. For instance
in act II, scene 2, the dialogue between Caterina and Bigio is more granular
in V where there are twenty-five utterances against the twenty in R. In act
II, scene 4, in the dialogue between Niccolò and Bigio, we note in V the
repetition of the same structure (“N: Conficcasti tu tutte le finestre, come
io ti dissi? B: Messer sì! N: Quella del tetto? B: Messer sì. N: Quella
della volta? B: Messer sì. N: Quella del granaio?”); in R the answers of
Bigio are more varied (“B: Messer sì. [. . .] B: La fu la prima. [. . .] B: Messer
sì.”). The version of V is in general less compact and allows for some
repetition, while that of R is more literary and efficient; however, the
rhythm of the anaphoric repetitions of V would probably hold the scene
better.
As anticipated above, a major difference is created by the different handling
of the characters of the two servants, Caterina and Bigio. In V, all the
speeches of Caterina are sexually connoted; this characteristic is more or
less maintained in R but with a much smaller dose of innuendo and explicit
sexual reference. For instance, in the first act, Caterina goes to fetch
Taddea on behalf of Laura, her mistress, and lets her enter the house via
the back door. The door and key are a fairly common sexual metaphor, and
here this is played at all levels. Taddea expresses her surprise at being
lead via the back door, and here is Caterina’s reply, in both versions (V on
the left):
Table 6
| Bisogna accomodarsi a’ tempi, cara madonna! Il vecchio vuol la porta dinanzi a suo diminio e vuol vedere e sapere chi va e chi viene; noi che abbiamo qualche vogliuzza di comperare delle cosette, non volete voi che ce la possiamo cavare? La sarebbe bella che sempre avessimo a stare a bocca secca! |
Bisogna accomodarsi a’ tempi, cara madonna! Il vecchio vuole
aprire e serrare la porta dinanzi come gli piace: che volete che
noi stiamo in prigione? La sarebbe bella!
|
| Ell’è una comodità non conosciuta e vi potrete usandola dar qualche spasso senza esser vergognata che i vicini vi stieno a sindacare o a vedervi. |
Ell’è una comodità non conosciuta: a me ha ella giovato più
volte.
|
The sexual innuendo can be found in the readings of R too, yet it could have
been missed if it were not for the more explicit version of V where key
words like “vogliuzza,” “bocca secca,” “spasso,” and “vergognata” provide a
more obvious hint.
Even more clear is the example of act IV, scene 4, where Caterina proposes to
Bigio; he initially refuses since he will not marry her without a dowry, but
then she convinces him by revealing that she receives the income of an
“estate”:
Table 7
|
Caterina: Ha’ lo tu a sapere ora! Con un
orto apiccato a quello, con fichi e nespole, e altri frutti che
sono quasi insalvatichiti per non avere un ortolano che ci
attenda, gagliardo, di buon nerbo, a modo mio: o frutterebbe
bene!
Bigio: Seccosi eh? Io ti torrò, e lavorerò a
mano ciò che vi è, e annesterò quei frutti che diventeranno
dimestichi e saporiti.
Caterina: Se tu provederai qualche marza
rigogliosa, la farà una prova grande, perch’egli è terreno
smosso, soffice soffice, e per tal segnale vi fanno naturalmente
i fichi lardegli tanto lunghi.
|
Caterina: Con un pezzo d’orto (o che terreno
grasso!), con nespole e fichi lardegli tanto lunghi. E se io ci
avessi tenuto sempre un ortolano di buon nerbo, farebbe tanta
rendita ora che te ne staresti agiato largamente; ma egli è
bisognato che io ci abbi messo a chi io mi sono abbattuta, in
modo che la maggior parte del tempo e’ si sta sodo.
Bigio: Se così è, ti torrò e metterovvi di
bei nesti.
Caterina: Se tu provederai qualche marza
rigogliosa, la si appiccherà bene.
|
The sexual metaphor is obvious in both readings, but in V it is more
developed and explicit.
The version of V also contains references to dance and acrobatics, which were
common components of sixteenth-century theatre. It is again Caterina who
brings the festive element in act IV, scene 4: “S’io mi metto a ballare o
che salti! Guarda capriuola che è questa”; the speech is missing in R. Again
in act IV, scene 5, she runs away, dancing and singing: “Va’ là Bigio in
qualche luogo andren noi: tantara tantararan ta ta! O che buon tempo!”
Again this speech is missing from R. One could conclude here that the
version of V seems closer to the stage than R is: acrobatics, dance, and
sexual puns and innuendos heavily characterized the staged plays of the
time. We know that the Stufaiuolo was first composed
probably a decade before the oldest preserved witness (V), and that Doni
presumably kept it in a drawer during his stay in Venice. V was written in
1557, immediately after Doni left Venice and at a moment when he was trying
to establish himself in the Emilia Romagna.24 In 1558 he obtained permission to open a printing house in
Ancona, but then he left the city, probably because of the injunction
issued by the Church that all clergy should return to their convent.
Emilia Romagna and the Marche were in fact part of the State of the
Church. Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani
(Roma: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 1960), vol. 41 (1992),
158–67. It is probably no coincidence, then, that this version
is dedicated to Pier Donato Cesi, president of Emilia Romagna, and therefore
a quick reworking of a text Doni already had at hand could have served this
need for patronage. Such an assessment agrees with the observation that the
linguistic face of R seems more polished than that of V: if we assume that
Doni prepared the version of V quickly from the staged version, then we
would expect more linguistic consistency in R than in V. The analysis of the
manuscript also suggests relatively rapid production, as toward the end of V
Doni becomes less accurate with his writing. One can compare, for instance,
the following two specimens, where the first shows Doni’s writing at f. 5r
and the second at f. 17v. It is evident that the writing of the second
specimen is more rapid and less accurate; the ascenders lean toward the
right and the pen is lifted less, a sign of faster writing.
[Click on image to enlarge] Figure 4: Specimens from V, ff. 5r (top) and 17v (bottom).
The R version is more controlled from a linguistic and codicological point of
view; for instance, no noticeable difference can be spotted between the
style of writing on the first and the last page. This greater accuracy
reflects on the content too: R’s text is more mature and reads better than
V. Repetition and ambiguities are avoided and the text is in general tidier,
all of which is consistent with a text intended for reading rather than for
staging. On the other hand, however, it is also less lively and interesting,
as demonstrated by the samples discussed earlier.
The Digital Edition: Layout and Tools
The analysis of the peculiarities of the different witnesses determined which
kind of edition to produce. It was clear from the first survey of the
manuscripts that a critical edition of the Stufaiuolo
could not be produced by conflating the variant readings of the two versions.
Each version had a different aim, and the amount of variation between the two
was so great that the two witnesses had to be considered each on its own. When
it comes to multiple published versions, one should always consider that the
author considered each one “the work” at a given time and that it was, if not
“perfect,” then at least good enough to circulate under his or her name. That is
also the opinion of Cesare Segre, who in turn builds on the theories of
Gianfranco Contini.25 Cesare Segre, “Il
problema delle redazioni plurime,” in La filologia
testuale e le scienze umane, Convegno internazionale organizzato in
collaborazione con l'Associazione Internazionale per gli Studi di Lingua e
Letteratura Italiana (Roma, 19–22 aprile 1993) (Roma: Accademia Nazionale
dei Lincei, 1994), 175–87. An alternative to an eclectic edition
could have been to choose for publication only one of the two versions, but
which one? The earlier and “shabby” one, which is also so much more lively and
interesting, or the later one, providing a more mature version of the work? This
was a decision I could not make. Or, rather, the decision was to publish both,
producing therefore a synoptic edition. The choice of the medium also proposed
itself spontaneously: which publishing house would have supported a synoptic
edition of an obscure play of the sixteenth century? It was relatively simple to
secure the rights to publish the complete facsimile of the two manuscripts, the
aesthetic value of which is second only to their importance as documents;
however, only the digital medium would be able to support a synoptic edition
featuring a digital facsimile for each of the witnesses, given the very high
cost and little prospect for financial return that a print edition would
entail.
There was another reason why the digital edition imposed itself as the only
possible editorial output. Anton Francesco Doni’s language has been praised,
sampled, and admired by readers and scholars, yet it is very little studied.
Most of his production is preserved only in printed, not handwritten, works;
therefore, it is always difficult to establish how much of the language on the
printed page is actually Doni’s own choice. Fortunately the small corpus of
autograph works makes it possible for us to study Doni’s accidentals without the
risk of being misled by the filter of the typesetters. However, perhaps not
surprisingly, the editions of his autograph works have privileged content over
language; the editions of I Numeri, Le
Ville, and Le Nuove Pitture all present the
texts in a modernized reading version, leaving any reader interested in the
language to resort to direct inspection of the facsimile (except for the edition
of Le Ville, which does not include a facsimile edition
at all); a few autographs remain unpublished. One of the main purposes of this
edition was to provide the reader with easy access to Doni’s language, including
his inconsistencies in orthography, as well as a reading edition that can appeal
to a wider readership. The deciding factor, therefore, was a digital edition’s
capability of providing multiple perspectives on the same text.
In this respect, I hope that readers will allow me a personal anecdote. When I
started to work on the Stufaiuolo, more years ago than I
would like to remember, I had just begun my engagement with text encoding and
Digital Humanities. This had started only as a temporary job, yet the
opportunities offered by text encoding and the TEI hooked me with the
possibility of encoding the same feature in more than one way at the same time,
particularly both original and regularized spellings. I have called this a
paradigmatic encoding and the editions resulting from such practice paradigmatic
editions.26E. Pierazzo, “Digital
Documentary Editions and the Others,” Scholarly
Editing 35 (2014),
http://www.scholarlyediting.org/2014/essays/essay.pierazzo.html. The
realization of this possibility, of preserving the original appearance of a text
while providing a reading edition, was the reason I chose digital editing, for
better or worse, as my form for all future intellectual endeavors. In the case
of the Stufaiuolo, digital editing has also allowed me to
measure, quantitatively, the amount of editorial work involved in producing a
reading edition, which in turn has helped me to reflect on the heuristics of
editing overall. Let us consider the text of V, for instance. It is made of
about 11,500 words; the number of editorial interventions required to transform
a diplomatic edition into a (rather conservative) reading edition amounted to
4,821;
to this, one might add the regularization of u/v and U/V, which for this edition
has been done silently given the complete consistency of their usage (namely
only “u” for lowercase and “V” for uppercase, whatever their orthographic
value); adding this brings the total number of editorial interventions to
6,652,
that is to say, more than one for every other word, and this in a text that has
a very modern linguistic aspect. Traditional paper-based editions cope with
these normalizations by giving a summary notice of them in the introduction; a
TEI-XML framework, in contrast, allows the editor to record each normalization
where it occurs, namely within the text, making the editorial work much more
transparent and accountable. Furthermore, the practice of encoding each
editorial intervention allows these interventions to be categorized, enabling in
turn better insight into the editorial work.
In the present edition, each editorial intervention has been encoded using
TEI-XML, which allows for registering the original reading as well as the
editorial transformation; the latter has also been categorized according to the
following types.
- lat: orthographical Latinism
- lat-h: etymological or pseudo-etymological “h.” Subset of Latinisms. Pseudo-etymological has its own label because of its preponderance among orthographic Latinisms.
Latinisms
- diacritic-i: editorially removed overabundant diacritic “i”
- mp-mb: editorially regularized “np” and “nb” into “mp” and “mb”
- graphematic: editorially regularized graphemes (“j” to “i," “&” to “e,” “ß” to “ss”)
- spelling: editorially regularized other irregular spellings
Spelling
- w-separation: editorially added spaces between words, or more rarely, editorially deleted spaces between parts of words
Word separation
- accent-add: editorially added accent
- accent-del: editorially suppressed accent
- dir-acc: accent direction editorially regularized
- apo-add: editorially added apostrophe
- apo-del: editorially suppressed apostrophe
Diacritics
- U2l-reg: uppercase to lowercase to match modern use
- l2U-reg: lowercase to uppercase to match modern use
- U2l-pc: uppercase to lowercase due to editorially changed punctuation
- l2U-pc: lowercase to uppercase due to editorially changed punctuation
Capitalization
A few words are necessary to justify the editorial choices made here. In moving
from diplomatic to reading versions, among the aforementioned normalizations, I
have not regularized double consonants according to modern use. This is normal
for editions of autograph material from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in
Italian Studies where the tradition is to try to intrude as little as possible
into the habits of the author.27See A. Stussi, Introduzione Agli Studi di Filologia Italiana (Bologna: Il Mulino
1995), 150–54 (chap. 4, §§2.2–2.3). For the same reason, words have
been separated or joined only in cases of linguistic ambiguity. In addition, a
single consonant has been kept even when for the editorially joined words the
modern use would have required a double consonant; therefore, forms such as "de
la" and "a Dio" have been rendered as "dela" and "adio." This practice is
consistent with the purpose of this edition, which is to showcase as much as
possible the linguistic patina of the author who was inconsistent and oscillated
among different graphic possibilities. The orthography and graphic affordances
of Renaissance Italy were much larger than those of modern Italian, and these
included the use of different allographs. Doni shows irregular and unambiguous
variation in three allographic forms: the use of the ampersand "&" for the
conjunction "e" (also realized as "et" and "e"), the use of long "j" for simple
"i," and the use of "sharp s" ("ß") for double "s." Doni seems to have used the
forms interchangeably and without obvious rationale, and so these forms could
have been silently normalized here. However, it is not clear if the "sharp s" is
a ligature or a grapheme (as it was in German). Furthermore, given the almost
complete absence of any statistical assessment of the incidence of this form,
ampersands, or the long "j" in the language of sixteen century (or of any
century, probably) I have therefore preferred to retain these distinctions in
the diplomatic version. The irregular variation in these forms is in contrast
with the use of "u" versus "v" in these witnesses, which consistently follows
regular usage of the time and is therefore silently normalized in this
edition.
As well as the texts, then, this edition also provides statistical data about the
incidence of all marked phenomena as well as lists all occurrences of
normalization, making it possible for the reader to not only read the text in its
original linguistic aspect but also appreciate the impact of editorial work on
the final text. The lists, accessible from each version of the edition, are
given in order of the frequency of each phenomena.
Another purpose of the encoding was to be able to study the entire
paragraphematic system of the text. For this reason every authorial punctuation
mark, as well as each instance of punctuation newly introduced by the editor,
has been encoded. Also marked are the so-called soft hyphens used at line breaks
to indicate that a word will continue on the next line; this latter category is
particularly interesting since Doni also used such hyphens between some complete
words, not only between parts of words (and in both cases they can also take the
form of an equals sign). An account of the paragraphematic system and its
pattern can be found further
below.
The digital edition therefore presents each of the two versions in a triple
format: the facsimile, diplomatic, and reading editions. The comparison between
the two versions is performed by Juxta Commons, software
developed within the NINES project, that allows for a dynamic comparison between
two or more witnesses of any given work. The comparison is performed between the
two diplomatic editions; this choice facilitates comparison among the so-called
accidentals of the texts rather than only at the level of substantive variants.
Although doing so increases the number of variants, it also reveals the lack of
consistency in Doni’s orthographic choices, providing better insight into the
orthographic writing habits of the time.
The Paragraphematic System
The signs used by Doni in this manuscript are as follows: <. , ; : :~ .~ (
)>. He uses punctuation in a very modern way; one could easily read the
text today with his punctuation intact. Of the 2,573 authorial punctuation
marks, 768 (29 percent) have been retained by the editor for the reading
edition. However, Doni employs two signs that do not have a direct
correspondence in the modern paragraphematic system: a sign for the period,
which looks like the combination of a colon and a tilde (:~), and a sign the
appearance of which is in between a question and an exclamation mark (Figure
5). This is the so-called punctus interrogativus, the
ancestor of our question mark, and in the reading edition it has been mostly
translated into a question mark but sometimes as an exclamation mark.28
A late medieval Ars Punctandi that has been
attributed to Coluccio Salutati and Petrarch, among others,
describes it as follows: “punctus planus et super
ipsum punctus longus ad modum cornu.” Rosario Coluccia,
“Teorie e Practiche Interpuntive nei Volgari d’Italia,” in Storia della Punteggiatura in Europa, ed.
Bice Mortara Garavelli (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2008), 65–98; 96.
To be precise, in the text of V, of the 170 occurrences of this
sign, 50 have been converted into an exclamation mark, 101 to a question
mark, 6 to a comma, 9 to a period, 2 to a colon, and 1 to a semicolon. In the
text of R, of the 169 occurrences, 48 have been converted into an
exclamation mark, 109 to a question mark, 7 to a comma, and 4 to a period.
Figure 5: Four specimens of the punctus interrogativus mark. The first two are from V, f. 4r; the second two from R, f. 5r.
For want of something better, this sign has been rendered in the diplomatic
edition with a digraph made of a period and a tilde (.~); this latter sign
is attested for instance in the manuscript of the Andria by Machiavelli.29
Brian Richardson, “Dalla metà del Quattrocento alla metà del
Cinquecento,” in Mortara Garavelli, Storia, 113.
Both accents and apostrophes are used; as for the former, only acute accents
are found. With respect to modern usage, many monosyllabic words that in
modern Italian do not require accents receive them in our manuscripts (nó,
quá, stá), while others that have them today lack them in Doni’s text (piu,
di, la). Apostrophes are used in case of truncated words (son’, cercar’,
amorevol’) but are missing in pronouns and verbs (e > e’, se > se’,
vo > vo’).
Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of Doni’s paragraphematic system is offered
by the hyphens and equals signs he used at the ends of lines in between
complete words (also called semipunctus), rather than
only between parts of the words that are divided by the break. An
inexhaustive yet extensive investigation into contemporary printed and
manuscript books has not shown any evidence of this being a trend of some
sort, nor does the excellent Storia della Punteggiatura in
Europa edited by Bice Moratara Garavelli report such use of the
hyphen. However, one can also find it in the other autograph copies of works
by Doni, such as I Numeri or Le
Nuove Pitture, for instance. One must therefore conclude that this
feature is specific to Doni. Examining the pairs of words connected by these
signs does not reveal any particular pattern, either. When we look at
the first ten occurrences of the phenomenon in V (Table 8), no obvious grammatical pattern emerges.
Table 8
| End of line - Beginning of following line | POS |
| 1. onorati - signori | adjective - noun |
| 2. al - mondo | preposition - noun |
| 3. come - udirete | adverb - verb |
| 4. nata - in | adjective - preposition |
| 5. lunga - et | adjective - conjunction |
| 6. rubamenti - et | noun - conjunction |
| 7. dire - d’esser | verb - verb |
| 8. fuori - della | adverb - preposition |
| 9. mai - lo | adverb - pronoun |
| 10. ti - prego | pronoun - verb |
When we look at words separated by the equals sign, or the occurrences of the
phenomenon in R, the situation is the same. So where does this sign come
from and what is its meaning? It may have been used as line filler in order
to justify the right margin, but in many cases its use makes the line exceed
its optimal length; this is the case, for instance, in V f. 4r, in the
fourth line from the top, where the hyphen is added after the word "nata."
As Figure 6 shows, the letter "a" has been stretched to fill the line, yet
the little hyphen extends well into the margin. On the previous line,
however, the hyphen after "come" does appear to have been used as a
filler.
Figure 6: V f. 4r, end of lines 3, 4, and 5.
This fact is even more evident at f. 6v, where the speech of Vincenzo is
interrupted by an aside of Caterina, and the equals sign is in the middle
of the line, to signify, most probably, that even if the speech is
interrupted, the sentence continues.
It is of course impossible to give a decisive answer to these questions.
However, some hints may come from two domains very close to Doni and to the
Stufaiuolo: reading practices and music
performance. Marzia Pieri in her 1992 article focuses on the richness of punctuation
in theatrical plays, seeing punctuation as a sort of stage direction, that
is, indicating to the actors how to enact a particular speech.30 Marzia Pieri,
“Fra scrittura e scena: la cinquecentina teatrale,” in Storia e teoria dell’interpunzione: Atti del Convegno
Internazionale di Studi Firenze 19–21 maggio 1988, ed. E.
Cresti, N. Maraschio, and L. Toschi (Roma: Bulzoni, 1992),
245–67. Sixteenth-century theoreticians such as Chiantera and
Maraschio emphasize that one of the main purposes of punctuation is to
support the practice of reading aloud.31 Angela Chiantera, “Pubblico e punteggiatura nel Cinquecento,” in
Problemi 4 (1983): 237–49; Nicoletta Maraschio, “Il Secondo Cinquecento,” in Mortara
Garavelli, Storia, 122–37.
Could these signs have been for that purpose? Could they be
directing the reader not to pause too long at the line break? The hypothesis
is tempting and finds support in the musical practice of the time. In
Gregorian musical notation it was normal to add a small note at the end of
each line to alert the singer to the first note of the following line; this
little note is called custos (“guardian” or “guide”),
and although it was a practice falling out of use in Doni’s time, Doni
himself used it in his musical manuscripts (see Le Nuove
Pitture). The richness of the punctuation of the Stufaiuolo, along with its modernity, seem to suggest that reading
aloud was indeed the intended aim for the play. This, and the usage of
hyphens, as well as Doni’s musical education and the fact that the V version
was supposed to have been accompanied by musical scores, all seem to
indicate that we could consider the Stufaiuolo a sort
of score for voice reading.
Conclusions
The Stufaiuolo is certainly not the most beautiful or
original play of the Italian Renaissance, yet it holds much to tempt the modern
reader. From its unusual plot to the aesthetic value of the manuscripts to the
originality of its language and the ingenuity of the punctuation, it seems clear
that the Stufaiuolo has been neglected for too long. The
current edition fills this gap and offers its readers the tools for a full
appreciation of all aspects of this comedy. Despite being around for more than
twenty years, digital editions still seem to need to justify themselves. This
edition of the Stufaiuolo is no exception to that rule,
in particular because it is very unusual in the field of Italian Studies to
offer the edition of a single work on the web. I can only hope that presenting
the text in this way will establish a practice that has so much to offer to
editors and readers alike.
Notes
1. Doni had considerable success
in France, with many of his works translated and published well into the
seventeenth century. See, for instance, Giovanna Rizzarelli, “Traduzione e
mediazione tra Francia e Italia. Gabriel Chappuys e ‘Les dix plaisans
dialogues,’” in Dissonanze concordi. Temi, questioni e
personaggi intorno ad Anton Francesco Doni, ed. G. Rizzarelli
(Bologna, il Mulino, 2013), 375–404. 
2. G. Masi, “‘Quelle
Discordanze sì Perfette’. Anton Francesco Doni 1551–1553,” in Atti e Memorie dell’Accademia Toscana di Scienze e Lettere, 53, n.s.
39 (1988), 9–112.
3. See, for instance, Giorgio Masi, ed., “Una Soma di Libri”: L’Edizione delle Opere di Anton Francesco Doni,
Atti del seminario, Pisa, 14 Ottobre 2002 (Firenze: Leo Olschki Editore,
2008).
9.
See Elena Pierazzo, “Dalle Nuove Pitture al Seme della Zucca,” in Masi, “Una Soma
di Libri,” 271–97, especially appendix 2, “Nota sulla datazione delle
Ville,” 295–97.
10. For instance, the edition of the Suppositi by
Ludovico Ariosto, published in Rome in 1524, is presented in divided scenes but
not yet with stage directions or dramatis personae. The latter, however, is
presented in the edition of the Lena by the same author,
published in 1535 in Venice by Francesco Bindone Matteo Pasini.
11. A. F. Doni, I
Numeri, ed. A. Del Fante (Roma: Bulzoni, 1981). La
Villa Fucchera is available as a digital facsimile (from microfilm)
from the website of the Bayerische Staats Bibliothek, Cod. ital. 36 (see
website). The facsimile edition of the Le Nuove Pitture
has been recently published by Sonia Maffei: Le nuove pitture
del Doni fiorentino: libro primo consacrato al mirabil signore Donno Aloise
da Este illustrissimo et reverendissimo: Biblioteca apostolica Vaticana, MS
Patetta 364, edizione a cura di Sonia Maffei; cura del testo,
presentazione, trascrizione, commento e saggio critico di Sonia Maffei; con una
nota musicale di Virgilio Bernardoni e una nota linguistica di Carlo Alberto
Girotto (Napoli: La stanza delle Scritture, 2006).
12.
Lo Stufaiolo Commedia in Prosa di Anton Francesco
Doni (Lucca: B. Canovetti, 1861). In her catalogue, Cecilia
Ricottini Marsili-Libelli relates the unverified presence of another
autograph of Stufaiuolo at the Biblioteca Melziana,
which is allegedly dedicated to Ottavio Farnese (Cecilia
Marsili-Ricottini-Libelli, Anton Francesco Doni: Scrittore
e Stampatore [Firenze: Sansoni Antiquariato, 1960], pp. 186);
however, Salvatore Bongi denies its existence as well as the existence of a
printed edition in Venice from 1585. There is no way to ascertain the
existence of such a manuscript since the Biblioteca Melziana was severely
damaged during the Second World War, and only a small portion of its
holdings survives as a collection in the Biblioteca Braidense in Milan. Yet
it is not implausible for Doni to have made more than two versions of the
manuscript, since he made up to four copies of his Ville .
13.
Tutte le Novelle, Lo Stufaiuolo, Commedia e la Mula e la
Chiave, dicerie di Antonfrancesco Doni (Milano, G. Daelli Editore,
1863): see Ricottini Marsili-Libelli, 189–90.
14. Doni, Scritti (Roma: Istituto Editoriale Italiano, [1916?]). The date of
publication is postulated by Ricottini Marsili-Libelli, 220–21.
15.
The binding is probably similar to that of La
Villa Fucchera; however, because of the bad
quality of the available images, it is not possible to tell whether
there is a gold decoration on the cover.
16. Giacomo Boccanegra and
Daniela Branciani, Inventari dei Manoscritti delle
Biblioteche d’Italia, Vol. CVII: Camerino Biblioteca Comunale
Valentiniana (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1993), 12.
17. A
profile of the figure of Milziade Santoni can be read in his obituary by
B. Feliciangeli in “Atti e memorie della Regia Deputazione di Storia
Patria per le provincie delle Marche,” 1907, 5:109–28.
18. Salomone
Morpurgo, I Manoscritti della Biblioteca Riccardiana
di Firenze: Manoscritti Italiani (Roma, 1900), 1:235–39.
19. Alfonso
Piccololomini (Siena ca. 1550–Florence 1591) was a mercenary who then
became a renegade and an outlaw, leading for years a group of bandits,
until his capture and successive execution.
20. Guglielmo
Bartoletti, “I Manoscritti Riccardiani Provenienti dalla Libreria di
Anton Maria Salvini,” Atti e Memorie dell’Accademia
Toscana di Scienza e Lettere “La Colombaria” 74, n.s. 60
(2009): 121–49.
22. This
information comes from the Biblioteca Mediceo-Riccardiana’s archive and
has been kindly provided by the librarian there.
23. For a discussion about graphic and other types of
variation, see the “The Digital Edition: Layout and
Tools” section.
24. In 1558 he obtained permission to open a printing house in
Ancona, but then he left the city, probably because of the injunction
issued by the Church that all clergy should return to their convent.
Emilia Romagna and the Marche were in fact part of the State of the
Church. Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani
(Roma: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 1960), vol. 41 (1992),
158–67.
25. Cesare Segre, “Il
problema delle redazioni plurime,” in La filologia
testuale e le scienze umane, Convegno internazionale organizzato in
collaborazione con l'Associazione Internazionale per gli Studi di Lingua e
Letteratura Italiana (Roma, 19–22 aprile 1993) (Roma: Accademia Nazionale
dei Lincei, 1994), 175–87.
26. E. Pierazzo, “Digital
Documentary Editions and the Others,” Scholarly
Editing 35 (2014),
http://www.scholarlyediting.org/2014/essays/essay.pierazzo.html.
27. See A. Stussi, Introduzione Agli Studi di Filologia Italiana (Bologna: Il Mulino
1995), 150–54 (chap. 4, §§2.2–2.3).
28.
A late medieval Ars Punctandi that has been
attributed to Coluccio Salutati and Petrarch, among others,
describes it as follows: “punctus planus et super
ipsum punctus longus ad modum cornu.” Rosario Coluccia,
“Teorie e Practiche Interpuntive nei Volgari d’Italia,” in Storia della Punteggiatura in Europa, ed.
Bice Mortara Garavelli (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2008), 65–98; 96.
29.
Brian Richardson, “Dalla metà del Quattrocento alla metà del
Cinquecento,” in Mortara Garavelli, Storia, 113.
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