622 linda l. carroll
by all.”6 the women in the audience were so shocked at what the play said
about their cuckolding of their husbands that it was replaced before open-
ing night.
despite their apparent peasant naiveté, ruzante’s plays engaged with
international literary works including thomas More’s Utopia and eras-
mus’s Praise of Folly, a feature certainly appealing to the Venetian patri-
cian merchant public that frequented northern europe, some of whom
were prominent among his supporters.7 the Calandria of bernardo dovizi
(il bibbiena) and niccolò Machiavelli’s Mandragola [The Mandrake Root]
were also staged. all of the above met the disapproval of patrician diarist
Marin sanudo (Marino sanuto), who preferred classical and conventional
literary comedy. the incidence of political writing, flavored by various
degrees of irony and criticism, increased greatly in the romanzo cavallere-
sco [chivalric romance], including Ludovico ariosto’s Orlando furioso
[Roland Gone Mad; first edition, 1521; definitive edition, 1532], not pub-
lished in Venice until 1535. Venice produced the first edition of baldassare
Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano [The Courtier] in 1528.
impetus was given to the move to tuscan by the publication of gram-
mars, including bembo’s Prose della volgar lingua [Prose in the Vernacular
Tongue; 1525], based on the archaic form used in the 14th-century works of
the three Crowns. its fixedness both comforted a public coping with great
and threatening change and provided a further advantage to printers. the
availability of a wide range of works at a relatively cheap price in a tus-
canizing vernacular in turn stimulated a broad interest in learning to read
and write and in learning the rudiments of tuscan. Printers capitalized
on it with chapbooks and manuals such as giovanni tagliente’s numer-
ous and oft-reprinted books on the alphabet. Continuing the earlier dual
tradition, the Venetian press also produced works in language more heav-
ily based on contemporary regional vernaculars. these included teofilo
Folengo’s Baldus, Francesco berni’s satirical works, novelle [short stories],
and the songs of the cantari who performed in the piazzas. their success
reflected the widespread desire to bolster individual expression against
the triumph of a narrowly defined official system of literary and linguistic
6 Marino sanuto, I Diarii, ed. rinaldo Fulin et al., 58 vols (Venice, 1879–1903; bologna,
1969–70), vol. 37, col. 560.
7 Linda L. Carroll, “ruzante’s early adaptations from More and erasmus,” Italica 66
(1989), 29–34; eadem, “Venetian attitudes toward the Young Charles: Carnival, Commerce,
and Compagnie della Calza,” in alain saint-saëns, ed., Young Charles V, 1500–1529 (new
Orleans, 2000), pp. 13–52.