Reviewed by:

• Making a Play for God: The Sacre Rappresentzioni of Renaissance Florence by Nerida Newbigin
• Pamela M. King (bio)

Making a Play for God is Nerida Newbigin's life work, gathering together and updating forty years of specialist research and publication on the medieval and early modern religious theatre of Florence. Unsurprisingly, the study is an exhaustive feat of scholarship, but it is also one in which accessibility to an anglophone audience has been scrupulously achieved.

The study covers rappresentazione sacre, the generic term for religious plays, including the corpus of sacra rappresentazione, which are specifically Florentine religious plays in octaves introduced and closed by an angel, and also includes those productions described by the term festa, which may refer to a play but equally to a feast day with celebratory and mimetic elements. The owning confraternities do not use the terminology consistently, so the policy in the study is to be inclusive. That inclusivity also covers the nature of surviving evidence, which encompasses texts in manuscript and print as well as those mentioned in name only in financial and other ephemeral accounts.

The Introduction opens:

The sacre representazioni of Renaissance Florence were not a single and unchanging phenomenon. Both ephemeral, since they existed only in the moment of their performance, and increasingly permanent, as they were copied for posterity, and printed first for an elite market and then to feed an insatiable appetite for devotional entertainment, they existed in a variety of ways and in various environments.

The total corpus consists of over 130 texts, whose status either as performance scripts or literary records after the event is unknown, as in the majority of cases is their authorship. The organization of the study, laid out synoptically in the Introduction, is therefore an invaluable act of hand-holding by a commensurate expert guide.

The study proper commences with a chapter on the manuscript evidence of the sacre rappresentazioni. The reader is offered a corrective to the received understanding of this signature genre of Florentine early drama formerly based on printed anthologies. The manuscripts give a very different sense of the scope and scale of a rich corpus which reached its peak in the third quarter of the fifteenth century. Manuscript miscellanies were created for various purposes, allowing the plays to survive, but showing few signs of direct contact with performance. It is [End Page 428] also clear that much has been lost, so there is judicious avoidance of speculation about the evolution of form, but an informative discussion of sources. These are identified as being, unsurprisingly, the volgarizzamento, or vernacular interpretations of the Bible and the Legenda Aurea. There is little evidence of authorship apart from Feo Balcari, who systematically oversaw the copying of his works, and an oblique reference to the Pulci family. Here also is one of those passing insights into the rather underplayed distinctiveness of Florentine society in the period, as the relationship with the tradition of ottava rima improvisation is explored. It seems that everyone who was anyone in the Florence of the period was proficient in the tradition. The contents of the various manuscripts discussed cannot be detailed here, but they include plays of the Beheading of John the Baptist, Abraham, a Nativity, an Annunciation including a dispute of virgins, a Raising of Lazarus, one of the miracles of the Virgin, a Judgment of Solomon, a Purification, various cantares, a play of Dives and Pauper, of St Julian, of the martyrdom of St James the Great, and of Ss Peter and Paul.

Chapter Two explores 'Plays in Churches'. Again the author warns that scholarship has been slow to correct errors sown in the nineteenth century. The three most famous rappresentazioni were staged by the adult laudesi confraternities, performed in the conventual churches of the Oltrarno from the late fourteenth to mid sixteenth centuries and treated the subjects of the Annunciation, Ascension, and Pentecost. They involved the erection of large mechanical devices built into the church fabric. We are indebted to Giorgio Vasari...

审核人：

• 为上帝表演：内里达·纽比金(Nerida Newbigin)创作的佛罗伦萨文艺复兴时期的 Sacre Rappresentzioni
• 帕梅拉·M·金（生物）

为上帝表演是内里达·纽比金 (Nerida Newbigin) 毕生的工作，汇集并更新了 40 年来对佛罗伦萨中世纪和早期现代宗教戏剧的专业研究和出版。不出所料，这项研究是一项详尽的学术壮举，但它也是一项小心翼翼地接触到英语观众的研究。

该研究涵盖rapprestazione sacre ，宗教戏剧的通用术语，包括sacra rapprestazione的语料库，这是佛罗伦萨八度音阶的宗教戏剧，由天使介绍和结束，还包括用术语festa描述的那些作品，可以参考一场戏剧，但同样是一个具有庆祝和模仿元素的节日。拥有的兄弟会不会始终如一地使用术语，因此研究中的政策是包容性的。这种包容性还涵盖了幸存证据的性质，其中包括手稿和印刷品中的文本，以及那些仅在财务和其他临时账户中有名无实提及的文本。

简介打开：

文艺复兴时期佛罗伦萨的神圣代表并不是单一不变的现象。既是短暂的，因为它们只存在于表演的那一刻，又是越来越永久的，因为它们被复制供后代使用，首先是为精英市场印刷，然后是为了满足对虔诚娱乐的永不满足的胃口，它们以多种方式存在以及在各种环境中。

整个语料库由 130 多篇文本组成，其作为表演脚本或事件后文学记录的状态未知，因为在大多数情况下是它们的作者身份。因此，研究的组织，在引言中进行了概括性的安排，因此是相称的专家指导的宝贵行为。

本研究以关于 sacre rappresentazioni的手稿证据的一章开始。读者可以纠正对这种以前基于印刷选集的佛罗伦萨早期戏剧标志性流派的理解。这些手稿对 15 世纪第三季度达到顶峰的丰富语料库的范围和规模给出了截然不同的认识。手稿杂项出于各种目的而创作，使戏剧得以流传，但几乎没有与表演直接接触的迹象。[End Page 428]同样清楚的是，很多东西已经丢失，因此明智地避免了对形式演变的猜测，而是对来源进行了有益的讨论。毫不奇怪，这些被确定为volgarizzamento，或圣经和Legenda Aurea的白话解释。除了 Feo Balcari 系统地监督他的作品的复制以及对 Pulci 家族的倾斜参考之外，几乎没有作者身份的证据。这也是对这一时期佛罗伦萨社会相当被低估的独特性的一种传递洞察力，作为与ottava rima传统的关系探索即兴创作。在那个时期的佛罗伦萨，似乎每个人都精通这一传统。所讨论的各种手稿的内容不能在这里详细说明，但它们包括施洗约翰的斩首戏剧、亚伯拉罕、耶稣诞生、天使报喜（包括处女之争）、拉撒路复活、处女的奇迹之一、所罗门的审判，净化，各种康塔尔，潜水和穷人的戏剧，圣朱利安，圣詹姆斯大帝的殉道，以及圣彼得和保罗的殉道。

第二章探讨“教堂中的戏剧”。作者再次警告说，学术界在纠正 19 世纪播下的错误方面进展缓慢。三个最著名的rappresentazioni由成年laudesi兄弟会上演，从 14 世纪末到 16 世纪中叶在奥尔特拉诺的修道院教堂演出，讲述了天使报喜、升天和五旬节的主题。他们涉及在教堂结构中安装大型机械设备。我们感谢乔治·瓦萨里 (Giorgio Vasari)...