L'Ebreo/The Jew
What is L’Ebreo (The Jew)?
Or rather, how many things is it—all at once?
This is a question I asked myself time and again, while writing the (as yet unpublished) book, Carnival Blood.
First and foremost, L'Ebreo is a concrete object...a physical artifact...fashioned of ink on paper:
“Michelangelo the Younger’s L’Ebreo—the intriguing Carnival comedy on which I focus—exists in a single autograph version in the Archive of the Casa Buonarroti in Florence: AB 81 ff.1-116 (Archivio Buonarroti, volume 81, folios 1 through 116). This is followed by another 20 sheets of miscellaneous working papers related—at least in part—to Michelangelo's L’Ebreo project.”
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The manuscript of L’Ebreo reveals a fraught work-in-progress, frantically revised and often barely legible:
“Rough draft” didn’t even begin to describe it! A wriggling mass of scratch-outs and rewrites, marginal notes and pasted-on scribbles. More than a hundred pages—two hundred sides, front and back—of an unruly work-in-progress. Obscured by the slow burn of acid ink and layer upon layer of decaying restoration. Words jumped out from the scrawled pages…”
L’Ebreo is an extraordinary historical document. It brings us face-to-face with Florence’s past—particularly its Jewish past:
“When we open a volume of Michelangelo the Younger’s writings, we plunge headlong into the author’s life and times. One allusion leads to another, taking us through the bustling streets of late Renaissance Florence, the gilded salons of the Medici palaces, the shadowy precincts of the Casa Buonarroti and even the narrow byways of the local Ghetto. Scarcely 500 Jews lived in the Tuscan capital in Michelangelo the Younger’s day, among 60,000 Christians. Still, they were an inevitable feature of local life.”
L’Ebreo is a comic treasure and non-stop fun, in the high-energy mode of the Commedia dell'Arte:
“Buonarroti conceived his Jewish play as a rollicking entertainment in the commedia dell’arte style, packed with absurd conflicts, explosive satire and slap-stick humor. The laughs come thick and fast, although his best jokes are still rough around the edges. He left the storyline full of holes, but his scenes are strong and engaging.”
My mission is to bring this extraordinary work back to life—as both a compelling modern entertainment and a key to the past.
