On May 5th 1508 on the occasion of the Carnival, was staged at the Ducal Palace in Ferrara La Cassaria by Ludovico Ariosto. Using the technique of the "contaminatio", that means using classical Latin characters and situations in a new plot, the author created the first comedy in vulgar of the modern world. The painter Pellegrino da Udine created a scene that became a prototype, both for the quality of the perspective research and for the representation of the Greek town Metellino where the comedy takes place, “so much that the public could not have enough to watch it”.
La Cassaria is a grandiose contamination of Plautus and Terence elements, from the characters - rich and stingy fathers, sons fidgety for love, avid and cunning servants, pimps and prostitutes - going on then with the plot that tells of a precious box, from which the title of the comedy, stolen by young Erofilo’s father, a merchant instigated by the servant Volpino, with the purpose to pawn it to the procurer Lucrano to ransom the slave he loves.
Written and staged in prose on this first occasion, the comedy was translated by the author into dactylic verses at the end of 1528 and in such version it was represented on February 19th 1531. Girolamo da Sestola wrote about this staging that “this Cassaria is not the way it was: it is longer and almost completely made again, so now it lasts 4 hours”.
The Scene II of Act Four is centred on a dialogue among Volpino and Crisobolo, Erofilo’s father. Ariosto makes to pronounce to the old father a satire against the immorality of the time waster government officials who dedicated themselves to the game rather than to take care of the public need. Among the list of these amusements at the verse 1918 is quoted the game of tarot (The used verses edition is the one of 1536 printed in Venice by Marchio Sessa).
Volpino: Che vuoi far?
Crisobolo: Che testimoni.
Mi sian qua dentro, ove entrar mi delibero, 1905
Senza aspettar Bargello, e sopraggiungere
Improviso al ruffiano e ritrovandoci
La cassa (senza altrui mezzo) pigliarmela:
Ch’ovunque io trovo la mia roba, è lecito
Ch’io me la pigli. S’a quest’ora andassimo, 1910
Al Capitano so che, vi anderessimo
Indarno: o che ci farebbe rispondere
Che volesse cenare; o ci direbbono
Che per occupazioni d’importanzia
Si fosse ritirato: io so benissimo 1915
L’usanze di costor, che ci governano;
Che quando in ozio son soli, o che perdono,
Il tempo a scacchi o sia a tarocco, o a tavole¹
O le più volte a flusso² e a sanzo³, mostrano,
Allora, d’esser più occupati: pongono 1920
All’uscio un servitor per intromettere
Li giocatori e li ruffiani e spingere
Gli onesti cittadini indietro e gli uomini
Virtuosi.
V0lpino: Se gli facessi intendere,
Che tu gli avessi a dir cose che importano, 1925
Non crederei che ti negasse audienza.
Notes
1 tavole = back-gammon; 2 flusso = type of primero; 3 sanzo = game with the dice
Volpino: What do you want to do?
Crisobolo: I want him to testify.
Here inside, where I enter, freely, 1905
Without waiting for Bargello, and to arrive
Suddenly on to the pimp and find
The box again (without other people's help) and take it:
For everywhere I find my stuff, it is permissible
For me to take it. If we would go at this time 1910
To the Captain I know that we would go
In vain: or he will make answer
That he is going to eat; or someone would say that
He is really busy
And he is on his own: I know well 1915
The habits of the ones who govern us;
When they laze around, or loose
Time playing chess or with tarots, or back gammon
Or often primero and dice, they show
Then to be busy: they put 1920
A servant on the door to let
The players and pimps in
And push honest citizens and virtuous men away.
Volpino: If I’d let him understand,
That what you have to tell him important things 1925
I would not believe that he would deny an interview.
In the first version of the work in prose of 1508 Ariosto didn’t show the single games, limiting himself to the expression “cards and dice” as reported below:
Volpino: Che ne vuoi fare?
Crisobolo: Vo intrare improviso in casa del ruffiano! Non poss’io, avendo uno o dua testimonii degni di fede apresso, tôr la roba mia dovunque io la ritrovi?. Se per parlare al Bassà andassimo ora, seria l’andata vana: o che trovassimo che cenar vorrebbe, o che giocherebbe o a carte o a dadi, o che stanco, da le facende del giorno, si vorria stare in ozio. Non so io l’usanza di questi che ci reggono, che quando più soli sono e stannosi a grattar la pancia, vogliono demostrare aver più occupazione? Fanno stare un servo alla porta, e che li giocatori, li ruffiani, li cinedi¹ introduca, e dia alli onesti cittadini e virtuosi uomini repulsa.
Volpino: Se li facesse intendere de ch’importanza fusse il tuo bisogno, non ti negherebbe audienza.
1 cinedi = Boys who prostitute themselves. Here its worth is "Big trollops".
Volpino: What do you want to do of it?
Crisobolo: I want to enter unexpectedly in the house of the pimp! Cannot I, having with me one or two witnesses worthy of faith, take my stuff wherever I do find it? If we would go and talk to Bassà now, it would be in vain: he would be eating, or playing cards and dice, or he would be tired of the daily work, and would like to rest. Don’t I know the habits of the governors, who, when they are alone, they laze around, and want to show they are very busy? They make a servant stay on the door, to let players, pimps and prostitutes in, and push honest citizens and virtuous men away.
Volpino: If you would let him understand how important your need is he would not deny you an interview).
Since, apart tarots, the games mentioned in the verses editing in 1528, that are "tavole (back-gammon), flusso (type of primero) and sanzo (game with the dice)", were already known for time before this date, the fact that the author has not quoted them in the prose version of 1508 if not under the description generalized of “cards or dice” it does not mean that the writer didn’t know about them, but he didn't probably insert them because of literary construction motives.
The term tarot in reference to the game was already in use in 1508 when the Ariosto wrote its version in prose. It looks as Tarochi in a register of accounts of the Este court for the second half of 1505, in a note dated June 30. Then reappears a second time in the same register on December 29.
Ross Caldwell has even made to notice that the term tarochus, even if not referred to the card game, it was already in use in the XV century, as he individualized in the Maccheronea (dedicated to Gaspare Visconti, † 1499), by the poet Bassano Mantovano, in which the term is used with the meaning of “idiot, stupid”.
Erat mecum mea socrus unde putana
Quod foret una sibi pensebat ille tarochus
Et cito ni solvam mihi menazare comenzat
(My mother in law was with me, and this idiot thought to take money from her, so he started threaten me)
Personally I believe that the term tarot, in reference to the game, was already present in the second half of the XV century. The modern historiography tends to date back the birth of a term to at least ten, fifteen years before it is found for mentioned the first time. When Garzoni in his La Piazza Universale writes that the game of tarots was “A new invention” referring to an affirmation of the Volterrano (Raffaele Maffei, 1451-1522), even if in the Commentari of this author there is not this passage as have different historians affirmed, this doesn't mean that Garzoni has invented it, since he doesn't report expressly the indication to have read it in that work that and then it deals with antiquity. Also the quotation from Lacroix to have read such passage in the Commentari (Cartes à jouer, vol. II of the work “Le moyen âge et la renaissance”, Paris, 1849) it is to take with the due precautions, since it didn't report bibliographical references. Therefore the quotation could be in other works by Maffei.
Anyway La Cassaria, in its adaptation in verses (1528), results important as one of the first known documents to nowadays in which appears the term “tarot” in reference to the game. |