The class of productions known as mythological plays, which powerfully influenced the character of the pastoral drama, sprang from the union of classical tradition with the machinery of native religious representations, in Poliziano’s Favola d’ Orfeo.  This was the first non-religious play in the vernacular, and its dependence on the earlier religious drama is striking.  Indeed, the blending of medieval and classical forms and conventions may be traced throughout the early secular drama of Italy.  Boiardo’s Timone, a play written at some unknown date previous to 1494, preserves, in spite of its classical models, much of the allegorical character of the morality, and was undoubtedly acted on a stage comprising two levels, the upper representing heaven in which Jove sat enthroned on the seat of Adonai.  The same scenic arrangement may well have been used in the Orfeo, the lower stage representing Hades[153]; while Niccolo da Correggio’s Cefalo was evidently acted on a polyscenic stage, the actors passing in view of the audience from one part to another[154].  At a yet earlier period Italian writers in the learned tongue had taken as the subjects of their plays stories from classical legend and myth, and among these we find not only recognized tragedy themes such as the rape of Polyxena dramatized by Lionardo Bruni, but tales such as that of Progne put on the stage by Gregorio Corrado, both of which preceded by many years the work of Politian and Correggio.

The earliest secular play in Italian is, then, nothing but a sacra rappresentazione on a pagan theme, a fact which was probably clearly recognized when, in the early editions from 1494 onwards, the piece was described as the ‘festa di Orpheo[155].’  It was written in 1471, when Poliziano was about seventeen, and we learn from the author’s epistle prefixed to the printed edition that it was composed in the short space of two days for representation before Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga at Mantua.  From the same epistle we learn that the author desired, or at least assumed the attitude of desiring, that his composition should share the fate of the ill-fashioned Lacedaemonian children; ’Cognoscendo questa mia figliuola essere di qualita da fare piu tosto al suo padre vergogna che onore; e piu tosto atta a dargli malinconia che allegrezza.’  The favola as originally put forth continued to be reprinted without alteration, till 1776, when Ireneo Affo published the Orphei Tragoedia from a collation of two manuscripts.  This differs in various respects from the printed version, among others in being divided, short as it is, into five acts, headed respectively ‘Pastorale,’ ‘Ninfale,’ ‘Eroico,’ ‘Negromantico,’ and ‘Baccanale.’  It is now known to represent a revision of the piece made, probably by Antonio Tebaldeo, for representation at Ferrara, and in it much of the popular and topical element has been eliminated.  The action of the piece is based in a general manner upon the story given by Ovid in the tenth book of the Metamorphoses.