_Stella_ is the same story slightly altered, with a somewhat different cast of characters and an evil-hearted step-mother in the place of the malignant queen.[452] If we compare both fables with Grimm's version of the "Handless Maiden," the superiority of the Northern conception cannot fail to strike us. The Italian _novella_, though written for the people, exhibits the external pomp and grandeur of royalty. All its motives are drawn from the clash of human passions. Yet these are hidden beneath a superincumbent mass of trivialities. The German tale has a background of spiritual mystery--good and evil powers striving for the possession of a blameless soul. When the husband, who has been deceived by feminine malice, takes his long journey without food as a penitent to find his injured wife, how far deeper is the pathos and the poetry of the situation than the Italian apparatus of couriers with letter-bags, chancellors, tournaments, and royal progresses undertaken with a vast parade, can compass! The Northern fancy, stimulated by the simple beauty of the situation, confines itself to the passionate experience of the heart and soul. The Florentine playwright adheres to the material facts of life, and takes a childish pleasure in passing the splendors of kings and princes in review. By this method he vulgarizes the legend he handles. Beneath his touch it ceases to be holy ground. The enchantment of the myth has evanesced.
_Rosana_ is simply the story of _Floire et Blanchefleur_, which Boccaccio had already worked into his _Filocopo_.[453] Austero, King of Rome, goes with his wife on pilgrimage to Holy Land. He falls into the hands of the King of Cesaria, and is slain with all his folk, except the queen. She is taken captive to Cesaria, where she gives birth to Rosana on the same day that Ulimeno is born to her master. When Ulimeno grows up, he loves the daughter of his father's slave. His parents seek to cure this passion by sending him to France, and at the same time sell Rosana to some merchants, who convey her to the Sultan's harem. Ulimeno returns to Cesaria in deep distress, and vows that he will never rest till he has regained his love. After a proper number of adventures, he finds Rosana in the seraglio, where notwithstanding the Sultan's admiration of her beauty, she has preserved her virginity. They are married, and Ulimeno is converted, with his realm, to Christianity. The prettiest parts of this play are the scenes in the seraglio, where Rosana refuses comfort from the Sultan's women, and the contrivances devised by Ulimeno to get speech with her. Except that Rosana and her parents are Christian and that the saints protect her, there is nothing to justify the title of _Sacra Rappresentazione_. It is a love-romance, like Shakspere's _Pericles_.
