[162] The earliest edition I have seen is that contained in the ‘Opere’ of June 10, 1507, where the heading runs:  ’Fabula di Caephalo coposta dal Signor Nicolo da Correggia a lo Illustrissimo.  D. Hercole & da lui repsentata al suo floretissimo Populo di Ferrara nel.  M. cccc. lxxxvi. adi. xxi.  Ianuarii.’  In this edition, printed at Venice by Manfrido Bono de Monteferrato, the works are said to be ’Stampate nouamente:  & ben corrette.’  Bibliographers record no edition previous to 1510.  The date in the heading is either a misprint, or refers to the year 1486-7 according to the Venetian reckoning.  See D’Ancona, Origini del teatro, ii. p. 128-9.  Symonds (Renaissance, v. p. 120) quotes some Latin lines as from the prologue to this play.  This is an error.  He has misread D’Ancona, to whom he refers (ed. 1877), and from whom he evidently copied the quotation.  The lines actually occur in the prologue to a Latin play on the subject of the taking of Granada.

[163] Rossi, Battista Guarini ed il Pastor Fido, 1886, p. 171, note 2.

[164] I do not, of course, mean that no mythological plays were produced between the days of Correggio and those of Beccari, but that they show no signs of consistent development in a pastoral or indeed in any other direction.

[165] Il Verato secondo, 1593, p. 206.

[166] Compendio della poesia tragicomica, tratto dai duo Verati, 1602, pp. 49-50.

[167] In this and the following section I have used the texts of the exceedingly useful collection of Drammi de’ boschi in the ’Biblioteca classica economica,’ which comprises the Aminta, Pastor fido, Filli di Sciro, and Alceo.

[168] Symonds, in dealing with Tasso in the sixth volume of his Italian Renaissance, lays, to my mind very justly, considerable stress upon this quality.

[169] Quoted by Serassi, Tasso’s biographer, in his preface to the Bodoni edition of the play (Crisopoli, 1789), p. 8.

[170] See Angelo Solerti, Vita di T. Tasso, Torino, Loescher, 1895, i. p. 181, &c.  Carducci, ‘Storia dell’ Aminta,’ the third of the Saggi, 80, 1st edition.

[171] Leigh Hunt pointed out, in some interesting if rather uncritical remarks prefixed to his translation of the Aminta (London, 1820), that some at any rate of the regular choruses cannot have formed part of the original composition.  In fact the first edition (Aldus, 1581) contains those to Acts I and V only; that to Act II appeared in the second edition (Ferrara, 1581), and also in the collected Rime (Aldus, 1581); the rest were added in the Aldine quarto of 1590.

[172] Supposing always that this representation, of which Filippo Baldinucci, in his Notizie dei professori del disegno (sec. iv, dec. vii; 1688, p. 102), has left a glowing account, was a representation of the Aminta, and not, as some have maintained, of the Intrichi d’ amore, another play sometimes ascribed to Tasso.