writers is reasonable enough, considering the critical atmosphere in which the pastoral developed, and the heated controversy which soon centred round the accomplished form; and it serves at the same time to explain the liabilities of writers before Tasso to run metaphorically into blind alleys.  The conscious endeavour after a stable and adequate form appears to me a determining factor in the work of Casalio, Cintio, and finally Beccari.

Of the Sacrifizio of Agostino Beccari[404] have already spoken at some length in the text (p. 174).  From the account there given it will be seen that the plot, though from its threefold character it attains a certain degree of complexity, is in reality little more than the scenic combination of three distinct stories, each of which might well have formed the subject of an eclogue, and the whole play is thus closely connected with the dramatic simplicity of its origin.[405] The verse, which is blank, interspersed with lyrical passages, shows, like Cintio’s, the influence of the regular drama.  For the satyr we need seek no individual source; he was already as much a recognized character of the Italian pastoral as the Vice was of the English interlude.  The magical element is doubtless ultimately traceable to a romantic source; it is one which almost entirely drops out of the later pastoral drama, in which the more distinctively classical oracle gradually won for itself a place.  Finally, I may remark that Beccari’s claim to be considered the originator of the pastoral drama was made in spite of his being perfectly well acquainted with Cintio’s Egle, as a passage in the first scene of Act III testifies.  There is, indeed, no reason to suppose that any writer before Carducci ever considered Cintio’s play as belonging to the realm of pastoral.

Beccari’s immediate successors were of no great interest in themselves, and contributed little to the development of the form.  In 1556 appeared a ‘comedia pastorale,’ by the Piedmontese Bartolommeo Braida, a hybrid composition in octave rime, written possibly for representation at the court of Claudio of Savoy, governor of Provence and Marseilles, to whose wife it is dedicated.[406] This piece resembles Poliziano’s play, not only in metrical structure, but in having a prologue spoken by Mercury, while by its general character it connects itself with such old-fashioned productions as Cavassico’s Bellunese eclogue of 1513, and the representation reported from Bologna by Dulfo in 1496.  On the other hand, the introduction of three pairs of lovers, and the incident of the nymph being bound to a tree, suggest that Braida may at least have heard of the Ferrarese Sacrifizio.  The whole is a strange medley of various and incongruous elements—­mythological in Mercury and Somnus; pastoral in the shepherds, Tindaro, Ruffo, Alpardo, and their loves; rustic in the clown Basso, who speaks Piedmontese in shorter measure; satirical in the wanton hermit; allegorical in the figure of Disdain; romantic in the wild man of the woods and the magic herb.  Thus on the whole Braida’s work represents a decided retrogression in the development of pastoral; or perhaps it may be more accurate to say that it renects the tradition of an outlying district in which that development had been retarded.