cruel nymph.  His offer to undertake his friend’s cure is met with the declaration, that of the two death were preferable.  Similar in simplicity of construction is another poem, the work of Serafino Aquilano, which deals with the corruption of the Church, and was performed at Rome during the carnival of 1490[374].  An advance in dramatization is made by an eclogue of Galeotto Del Carretto’s, written in 1492, in honour of the newly elected Alexander VI, in that one character enters upon the scene after the other has been discoursing for some time; while another, the work of Gualtiero Sanvitale, contains three speakers, of whom one enters towards the close, and is called upon to decide between the other two.  This arbiter is none other than Lodovico Sforza himself[375].  So far the eclogues have all been in Sannazzaro’s terza rima.  A wider range of metrical effect, including not only terzines both sdrucciole and piane, but also hendecasyllables with internal rime and a canzone, and at the same time a more dramatic treatment, is found in another eclogue of Aquilano’s[376].  In this Palemone sends his herdsman Silvano to inspect his flocks after a stormy night.  The herdsman meets Ircano in a melancholy mood, who when questioned endeavours to hide the nature of his grief by feigning that he has lost his flock in the storm.  At that moment, however, the real cause of his sorrow enters in the shape of a nymph, and Ircano leaves Silvano in order to follow her with prayers and supplications.  Silvano endeavours to dissuade him from his love, but meets with the usual want of success.  In the case of this piece, as also of the two preceding ones, we have no direct evidence of any representation, but all three, and especially the last, have the appearance of being composed for recitation.  Another piece, exhibiting an advance in complexity of dramatic structure, is an ’ecloga overo pasturale,’ a disputation on love by Bernardo Bellincioni[377], apparently in some way connected with Genoa, in the course of which five characters, probably representing actual personages, though we lack external evidence, forgather upon the stage.  The versification again exhibits novel features, the piece being for the most part in ottava rima with the introduction of settenari couplets.  In the former we may perhaps see the influence of the Orfeo, or possibly of the old sacre rappresentationi themselves.  In 1506 the court of Urbino witnessed the eclogue composed and recited by Baldassare Castiglione and Cesare Gonzaga[378].  It also belongs to the octave group, and is diversified with a canzonet.  Dramatically the piece is somewhat of a retrogression, but it is interesting from the characters introduced in pastoral guise.  Thus in Iola and Dameta we may see Castiglione and his fellow author; Tirsi, who gives his name to the poem, is a stranger shepherd attracted by reports of the court; while among the characters mentioned are discernible