Today was Ascension Day, the day to celebrate the Virgin’s rise to heaven. I knew well that it was an important day in any town of Italy, but I dare swear that in all my life I had never seen such a to-do made of the day as in Messina. On my way from my civilised home of Padua I had seen the Venetians go half mad on the Fat Tuesday of Carnevale, with their varnished faces and loose morals. I had seen the citizens of Rome return to their pagan ways as they ran around the city like demented savages at Lupercal. But I had never seen anything like the Vara. I had been given what was, apparently, a great honour; I was to help to pull the Vara itself, the strange and vast machine that would lead the procession. The machine told the story of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven, by means of a complex apparatus created in the shape of a pyramid. At the base was a flat dun tombstone where the death of Mary was depicted, and, rising up from it, seven heavens represented by circular platforms in diminishing size through which the soul of the Virgin passed during her ascension.
What do You think about Beatrice And Benedick (2015)?
