620 linda l. carroll
vital to Venice’s retaking of the mainland state from the imperial-affiliated
upper classes who had seized control after Venetian defeats. especially
important were the peasants, who were also recruited as foot soldiers
and crews for the armadas that fought the Ottomans (as was the urban
working class) and who provided an agricultural expertise that increased
yields on the farm properties that Venetians were increasingly acquiring
on the mainland as alternative sources of income and foodstuffs to those
lost internationally.
theater was particularly affected by the wars. although the formation
of the League of Cambrai was followed immediately by a ban on all the-
atrical productions in Venice, they soon returned, as the need for enter-
tainment and for a space in which pressing issues could be addressed
reasserted itself. While Latin and vernacular versions of the plays of Plau-
tus (especially the Miles gloriosus) and terence continued to be staged,
interest in political writing and even invective increased with Venetian
defeats. Peasants and other lower-class characters entered works, a recur-
rence of their inclusion in genres such as the mariazo during the earlier
War of Chioggia, when they also had been crucial to Venetian defense.
some of the works (plays were only a small part of theatrical productions,
with sung and recited poetry forming a large component and various
kinds of tableaux and spectacles another) centered on peasants who sup-
ported Venice against the enemy, a probable form of propaganda. Others,
such as the Alfabeto dei villani [The Peasants’ Alphabet] and the mariazo,
which had continued as entertainment among students at the university
of Padua, presented reality-based episodes of peasant lives. ruzante’s Pas-
toral (c.1517), which mixes arcadian shepherds and peasants, may be one
of the few remaining exemplars of a genre of private entertainment under-
taken by patricians on country vacations. a further fruit of the turning
toward a home-based reality by Venetians now more frequently resident
in their city was a new urban genre, the bulesca. it dealt with the working
class, particularly its less savory aspects such as prostitution and violence,
and introduced the use of criminal gergo [argot]. the courtly tradition of
italian principates also attracted interest, especially the works of leading
figures such as Jacopo sannazzaro and serafino aquilano. it is certain that
some Venetians participated in the last of these genres and very likely that
they did so in all of them. the famed zibaldone [manuscript miscellany]
biblioteca nazionale Marciana ital. Xi, 66, which contains a vast number
of works collected over the first three decades of the 16th century in which
(pseudo)-rural and courtly works predominate, indicates the intensifying
Venetian interest in the cultural and political life of the peninsula and
Venice’s own role in it.