The pomp and circumstance of the gorgeous spectacles which we examined in the preceding chapter were cherished by the traditions of the Italian court stage and were not obliterated even in the new species of lyric comedy. But there was far less to dazzle the eye in the comic performances, and even in this they offered a certain novelty to the consideration of Italian audiences. The court spectacles, to be sure, did not go out of existence. We meet them in all their brilliancy in the early years of the seventeenth century, and at the same time we find them copied in a somewhat modified form in the spectacular productions of the young Italian opera houses. On the other hand, when the Florentine coterie created dramatic recitative, it was to use it in a drama wholly serious and poetic in purpose. It was not till some years later that recitative acquired sufficient flexibility to fit itself into the plan of the rapidly growing opera buffa. Yet even in this lyric species we discern something of the large influence of the humorous madrigal play, for in time the comic opera and the ballet spectacle both found homes after public opera houses had been thrown open to an eager public. Physical realism, the humors of the streets and satiric assaults upon the life of the courts made excellent materials for the entertainment of the Italian mind, especially at such a time as the close of the sixteenth century, when the country had reached the completion of that state described by Symonds: "The intellectual and social life of the Italians, though much reduced in vigor, was therefore still, as formerly, concentrated in cities marked by distinct local qualities and boastful of their ancient glories. The courts of Ferrara and Urbino continued to form centers for literary and artistic coteries. Venice remained the stronghold of mental unrestraint and moral license, where thinkers uttered their thoughts with tolerable freedom and libertines indulged their tastes unhindered. Rome early assumed novel airs of piety, and external conformity to austere patterns became the fashion here. Yet the Papal capital did not wholly cease to be the resort of students and artists. The universities maintained themselves in a respectable position--far different, indeed, from that which they had held in the last century, yet not ignoble. Much was being learned on many lines of study divergent from those prescribed by earlier humanists. Padua, in particular, distinguished itself for medical researches. This was the flourishing time, moreover, of Academies in which, notwithstanding nonsense talked and foolish tastes indulged, some solid work was done for literature and science. The names of the Cimento, Delia Crusca and Palazzo Vernio at Florence remind us of not unimportant labors in physics, in the analysis of language, and in the formation of a new dramatic style of music. At the same time the resurgence of popular literature and