To the next few years belong a series of ’giocose moderne e facetissime ecloghe pastorali,’ by the Venetian Andrea Calmo, composed in endecasillabi sdruccioli sciolti, and published in 1553.[400] They introduce a number of dialects, suited to various personages; Arcadian shepherds like Lucido, Silvano, and the rest; rustics with names such as Gritolo di Burano, mythological figures, and a satiro villan who speaks Dalmatian.  An advance in dramatization may perhaps be seen in the introduction of a second pair of lovers, while the writer goes even further than Beccari in the introduction of oracles (a point in which, however, he had been anticipated by the author of Mirzia), and an echo scene, a device of which Calmo’s example is certainly of an elementary character.

The most important, however, of the writers between Casalio and Beccari is the well-known Ferrarese novelist Giovanbattista Giraldi, surnamed Cintio, the author of the Ecatommiti, and of a number of tragedies on the classical model.  The first piece of his which claims our attention is a satira entitled Egle, which was privately performed at the author’s house in February, 1545, and again the following month in the presence of Duke Ercole and his brother, the Cardinal Ippolito d’ Este.[401] The play is an avowed and solitary attempt to revive the ‘satyric’ drama of the Greeks, a kind of which the Cyclops of Euripides is the only extant example.  The action is simple.  The rural demigods, fauns, satyrs, and the like, having long sought the love of the nymphs of Diana in vain, enter, at the suggestion of Egle the mistress of Silenus, upon a plan whereby they may have the careless maidens in their power.  They make a show of leaving Arcadia in high dudgeon, abandoning their families of little fauns and satyrs.  On these the unwary maids take pity, and begin forthwith to dance and play with them in the woods.  The deceitful divinities, however, have only hidden for a while, and when opportunity serves are placed by Egle where they may surprise the nymphs at sport.  They suddenly break cover, follow and seize the flying girls, and are on the point of enjoying the success of their plot when Diana intervenes, transforming her outraged followers into trees, streams, and so forth.  The metamorphosis is related by Pan himself, who returns bearing in his hand a reed, all that is left of his beloved Syrinx.  Thus the piece may be regarded as a dramatization of Sannazzaro’s Salices, expanded by the free introduction of mythological characters, and bears no connexion with the real nature of pastoral, the life-blood of which, whether in the idyls of Theocritus, the Arcadia of Sannazzaro, or the Aminta of Tasso, is primarily and essentially human.