Le Opere Italiane di Giordano Bruno (1888) - Page 17

1 In the next-to-last scene of the fifth act, it is proposed to him that he make a choice of one of three things to avoid going to prison: either to pay a "good tip" original: "bona strena"; a bribe or gratuity often expected by officials to the constables and the captain, or to receive ten blows to the palms, or fifty lashes with his breeches down. He would have accepted any other 5 thing rather than go to prison in that manner. Therefore, of the three, he chooses the ten blows to the palms; but when he was at the third, he said, "I would rather have fifty lashes on the buttocks." Of which, having received many, and the count being confused now for one reason, now for another: it 10 happened that he received both the blows to the palms and the lashes, and he paid however many coins original: "scudi" he had left in his pouch; and he left his cloak there, which was not even his own. And all this being done, dressed like Don Paulino, in the last scene he gives and delivers the Applause original: "Plaudite"; the traditional closing request for the audience to clap at the end of a Roman comedy.

[18] | Anti-prologue.

Yes, sir. Well considered. Well noted. Well ordered.
Perhaps I did not prophesy that this comedy would not be performed 15 tonight? That hussy who is appointed to represent Vittoria and Carubina has I-know-not-what "sickness of the mother" original: "mal di madre"; a contemporary term for hysteria or uterine distress. He who is to represent Bonifacio is so drunk that he has seen neither heaven nor earth from midday until now; and as if he had nothing to do, he does not want to get 20 out of bed. He says, "Leave me, leave me, for in three and a half days and seven evenings, with four or two oarsmen, I shall be among the butterflies and bats. Let it be; row, row, let it be." To me was committed the prologue, and I swear to you it is so intricate and bedeviled that I have sweated over it for four days and nights; and all the trumpets and 25 [19] drums of those harlot Muses of Helicon The mountain home of the Muses in Greek mythology are not enough to stick| a single straw of it into my memory. Now go, do the prologue! Be the boat for this discarded, shattered, broken, poorly-tarred great old hulk of a ship; which looks as if it had been pulled by force from the deep abyss with hooks, grapples, and harpoons. Water enters it from many sides, it is not caulked at all; 30 and it wants to go out, and it wants to reach the high seas? To leave this safe port of the Mantracchio? Mantracchio; a busy inner harbor in Naples To depart from the Mole of Silence? If you knew the author, you would say he has a bewildered face. It seems he is always contemplating the pains of hell. He looks as if he has been under the press like felt caps. A man who laughs only to do as others 35 do. For the most part, you will see him annoyed, stubborn, and bizarre; he is satisfied with nothing, as cranky as an eighty-year-old man, as flighty as a dog that has been beaten a thousand times, fed on onions. By the [20] blood—I won't say whose—he and all these other philosophers...