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Benchè l'usanza sia Che ogni commedia Si soglia fare a Atene, Non so donde si viene Che questa non grecizza, Anzi fiorentinizza. |
[144] Commedie di Antonfrancesco Grazzini (Firenze, Lemonnier, 1859), p. 5.
[145] Op. cit. p. 109.
[146] Ibid. p. 173.
[147] I have put into an [Appendix] some further notes upon the opinions recorded by the playwrights concerning the progress of the dramatic art.
[148] My references to Italian tragedies will be made to the Teatro Italiano Antico, 10 vols., Milano, 1809.
[149] This is shown by his device of a Golden Fleece, referring to the voyage of the Argonauts. To sail the ocean of antiquity as an explorer, and to bring back the spoils of their artistic method was his ambition.
[150] Compare what Giraldi says in the dedication of his Orbecche to Duke Ercole II.: "Ancora che Aristotele ci dia il modo di comporle." In the same passage he dwells on the difficulties of producing tragedies in the absence of dramatic instinct, with an ingenuousness that moves our pity: "Quando altri si dà a scrivere in quella maniera de' Poemi, che sono stati per tanti secoli tralasciati, che appena di loro vi resta una lieve ombra." It never occurred to him that great poetry comes neither by observation nor by imitation of predecessors. The same dedication contains the monstrous critical assertion that the Latin poets, i.e. Seneca, improved upon Greek tragedy—assai più grave la fecero.
[151] This tragedy was acted at Ferrara in Giraldi's house before Ercole II., Duke of Ferrara, and a brilliant company of noble persons, in 1541. The music was composed by M. Alfonso dalla Viuola, the scenery by M. Girolamo Carpi.
[152] Giraldi, a prolific writer of plays, dramatized three other of his novels in the Arrenopia, the Altile and the Antivalomeni. He also composed a Didone and a Cleopatra.