The Pastor fido (first published in 1590) is a pastoral drama composed not without reminiscences of Tasso’s Aminta. The scene is laid in Arcadia, where Guarini supposes it to have been the custom to sacrifice a maiden yearly to Diana. But an oracle has declared that when two scions of divine lineage are united in marriage, and a faithful shepherd has atoned for the ancient error of a faithless woman, this inhuman rite shall cease. The plot turns upon the unexpected fulfilment of this prophecy, contrary to all the schemes which had been devised for bringing it to accomplishment, and in despite of apparent improbabilities of divers kinds. It is extremely elaborate, and, regarded as a piece of cunning mechanism, leaves nothing to be desired. Each motive has been carefully prepared, each situation amply developed. Yet, considered as a play, the Pastor fido disappoints a reader trained in the school of Sophocles or Shakespeare. The action itself seems to take place off the stage, and only the results of action, stationary tableaux representing the movement of the drama, are put before us in the scenes. The art is lyrical, not merely in form but in spirit, and in adaptation to the requirements of music which demands stationary expressions of emotion for development. The characters have been well considered, and are exhibited with great truth and vividness; the cold and eager hunter Silvio contrasting with the tender and romantic Mirtillo, and Corisca’s meretricious arts enhancing the pure affection of Amarilli. Dorinda presents another type of love so impulsive that it prevails over a maiden’s sense of shame, while the courtier Carino brings the corruption of towns into comparison with the innocence of the country. In Carino the poet painted his own experience, and here his satire upon the court of Ferrara is none the less biting because it is gravely measured. In Corisca he delineated a woman vitiated by the same town life, and a very hideous portrait has he drawn. Though a satirical element was thus introduced into the Pastor fido in order to relieve its ideal picture of Arcadia, the whole play is but a study of contemporary feeling in Italian society. There is no true rusticity whatever in the drama. This correspondence with the spirit of the age secured its success during Guarini’s lifetime; this made it so dangerously seductive that Cardinal Bellarmine told the poet he had done more harm to Christendom by his blandishments than Luther by his heresy. Without anywhere transgressing the limits of decorum, the Pastor fido is steeped in sensuousness; and the immodesty of its pictures is enhanced by rhetorical concealments more provocative than nudity. Moreover, the love described is effeminate and wanton, felt less as passion than as lust enveloped in a veil of sentiment. We divine the coming age of cicisbei and castrati. Of Guarini’s style it would be difficult to speak in terms of too high praise. The thought and experience of a lifetime have been condensed in these five acts, and have found expression in language brilliant, classical, chiselled to perfection. Here and there the taste of the 17th century makes itself felt in frigid conceits and forced antitheses; nor does Guarini abstain from sententious maxims which reveal the moralist rather than the poet. Yet these are but minor blemishes in a masterpiece of diction, glittering and faultless like a polished bas-relief of hard Corinthian bronze. That a single pastoral should occupy so prominent a place in the history of literature seems astonishing, until we reflect that Italy, upon the close of the 16th century, expressed itself in the Pastor fido, and that the influence of this drama was felt through all the art of Europe till the epoch of the Revolution. It is not a mere play. The sensual refinement proper to an age of social decadence found in it the most exact embodiment, and made it the code of gallantry for the next two centuries.
The best edition of the Pastor fido is the 20th, published at Venice (Ciotti) in 1602. The most convenient is that of Barbéra (Florence, 1866). For Guarini’s miscellaneous Rime, the Ferrara edition, in 4 vols., 1737, may be consulted. His polemical writings, Verato primo and secondo, and his prose comedy called Idropica, were published at Venice, Florence and Rome, between 1588 and 1614. (J. A. S.)
GUARINO, also known as Varinus, and surnamed from his birthplace Favorinus, Phavorinus or Camers (c. 1450–1537), Italian lexicographer and scholar, was born at Favera near Camerino, studied Greek and Latin at Florence under Politian, and afterwards became for a time the pupil of Lascaris. Having entered the Benedictine order, he now gave himself with great zeal to Greek lexicography; and in 1496 published his Thesaurus cornucopiae et horti Adonidis, a collection of thirty-four grammatical tracts in Greek. He for some time acted as tutor to Giovanni dei Medici (afterwards Leo X.), and also held the appointment of keeper of the Medicean library at Florence. In 1514 Leo appointed him bishop of Nocera. In 1517 he published a translation of the Apophthegmata of Joannes Stobaeus, and in 1523 appeared his Etymologicum magnum, sive thesaurus universae linguae Graecae ex multis variisque autoribus collectus, a compilation which has been frequently reprinted, and which has laid subsequent scholars under great though not always acknowledged obligations.
GUARINO [GUARINUS] DA VERONA (1370–1460), one of the Italian restorers of classical learning, was born in 1370 at Verona, and studied Greek at Constantinople, where for five years he was the pupil of Manuel Chrysoloras. When he set out on his return to Italy he was the happy possessor of two cases of precious Greek MSS. which he had been at great pains to collect; it is said that the loss of one of these by shipwreck caused him such distress that his hair turned grey in a single night. He supported himself as a teacher of Greek, first at Verona and afterwards in Venice and Florence; in 1436 he became, through the patronage of Lionel, marquis of Este, professor of Greek at Ferrara; and in 1438 and following years he acted as interpreter for the Greeks at the councils of Ferrara and Florence. He died at Ferrara on the 14th of December 1460.
His principal works are translations of Strabo and of some of the Lives of Plutarch, a compendium of the Greek grammar of Chrysoloras, and a series of commentaries on Persius, Juvenal, Martial and on some of the writings of Aristotle and Cicero. See Rosmini, Vita e disciplina di Guarino (1805–1806); Sabbadini, Guarino Veronese (1885); Sandys, Hist. Class. Schol. ii. (1908).
GUARNIERI, or Guarnerius, a celebrated family of violin-makers of Cremona. The first was Andreas (c. 1626–1698), who worked with Antonio Stradivari in the workshop of Nicolo Amati (son of Geronimo). Violins of a model original to him are dated from the sign of “St Theresa” in Cremona. His son Joseph (1666–c. 1739) made instruments at first like his father’s, but later in a style of his own with a narrow waist; his son, Peter of Venice (b. 1695), was also a fine maker. Another son of Andreas, Peter (Pietro Giovanni), commonly known as “Peter of Cremona” (b. 1655), moved from Cremona and settled at Mantua, where he too worked “sub signo Sanctae Teresae.” Peter’s violins again showed considerable variations from those of the other Guarnieri. Hart, in his work on the violin, says, “There is increased breadth between the sound-holes; the sound-hole is rounder and more perpendicular; the middle bouts are more contracted, and the model is more raised.”
The greatest of all the Guarnieri, however, was a nephew of Andreas, Joseph del Gesù (1687–1745), whose title originates in the I.H.S. inscribed on his tickets. His master was Gaspar di Salo. His conception follows that of the early Brescian makers in the boldness of outline and the massive construction which aim at the production of tone rather than visual perfection of form. The great variety of his work in size, model, &c., represents his various experiments in the direction of discovering this tone. A stain or sap-mark, parallel with the finger-board on both sides, appears on the bellies of most of his instruments. Since the middle of the 18th century a great many spurious instruments ascribed to this master have poured over Europe. It was not until Paganini played on a “Joseph” that the taste of amateurs turned from the sweetness of the Amati and the Stradivarius violins in favour of the robuster tone of the Joseph Guarnerius. See Violin.
GUASTALLA, a town and episcopal see of Emilia, Italy, in the province of Reggio, from which it is 18 m. N. by road, on the S. bank of the Po, 79 ft. above sea-level. It is also connected by rail with Parma and Mantua (via Suzzara). Pop.
