While Aristeo is following Euridice, Orfeo enters upon the scene with a Latin ode in Sapphic metre in honour of Cardinal Gonzaga.  A note informs us that this was originally sung by ’Messer Braccio Ugolino, attore di detta persona d’ Orfeo.’  In place of this ode the revised text contains a long ‘Coro delle Driadi,’ with two speeches in terza rima by the choragus, announcing and lamenting the death of Euridice, who as she fled from Aristeo has been stung in the foot by a serpent.  After this the news of her death is reported to Orfeo—­by a shepherd in the original, by a dryad in the revised version.  That the substitution of the chorus for the Sapphic ode is an improvement from the poetic point of view will hardly be denied, yet this improvement has been attained at the cost of some dramatic sacrifice.  In the original Orfeo is introduced naturally enough in his character of supreme poet and musician to do honour to the occasion, and it is only after he has been on the stage some time that the news of Euridice’s death is brought.  In the revision he is merely introduced for the purpose of being informed of his wife’s death—­he has hardly been so much as mentioned before.  He thus loses the slight opportunity previously afforded him of presenting a dramatic individuality apart from the very essence of his tragedy.

The announcement to Orfeo of Euridice’s death begins the third act of the revised text, which is amplified at this point by the introduction of a satyr Mnesillo, who acts as chorus to Orfeo’s lament.  The character of a friendly satyr is interesting in view of the role commonly assigned to his species in pastoral.

After this we have in the original the direction ’Orfeo cantando giugne all’ Inferno,’ while in the revision there is again a new act, the fourth.  Symonds pointed out that the merits of the piece are less dramatic than lyrical, and that fortunately the central scene was one in which the situation was capable of lyrical expression.  The pleading of Orfeo before the gates of Hades and at the throne of Pluto forms the lyrical kernel of the play, and gives it its poetic value.  The bard appears before the iron-bound portals of the nether world, and the pains of hell surcease.  ‘Who is he?’ asks Pluto—­

    Chi e costui che con si dolce nota
      Muove l’ abisso, e con l’ ornata cetra? 
      Io veggo ferma d’ Ission la rota,... 
      Ne piu P acqua di Tantalo s’ arretra;
      E veggo Cerber con tre bocche intente,
      E le furie acquietar il suo lamento.

At length he stands before Pluto’s throne, the seat of the God of the sacre rappresentazioni, the rugged rock-seat surrounded by the monstrous demons of Signorelli’s tondo[157].  Here in presence of the grim ravisher and of his pale consort, in whom the passionate pleading of the Thracian bard stirs long-forgotten memories of spring and of the plains of Enna, Orfeo’s song receives adequate expression.  It is closely imitated from the corresponding passage in Ovid, but the lyrical perfection and passionate crescendo of the stanzas are Poliziano’s own.  Addressing Pluto, Orfeo discovers the object of his quest: