Chapter I. Imitation: The link between past and present -- 1. The Humanists turn to the Ancients -- 2. From the Classical stage to the theater of Renaissance -- 3. The poetics of the new theater -- Chapter II. Machiavelli's Mandragola -- 1. The characters: imitation vs. source -- 2. New characters -- 3. Machiavellian morality -- Chapter III. Clizia. Form stage to stage -- 1. The sons -- 2. The fathers -- 3. The wives -- 4. A Machiavellian perspective -- Chapter IV. Cecchi's Assiuolo: An apian imitation -- 1. A contaminatio of sources -- 2. Ambrogio: An original amator senex -- 3. Oretta's immorality as a reflection of the times -- Chapter V. Groto's Emilia: Fiction meets reality -- 1. From the sources to the adaptation -- 2. The stage pretense of realism undermined -- 3. Erifila: a Venetian courtesan. -- Chapter VI. Gli duoi fratelli rivali. Della Porta adapts Bandello's prose narrative to the stage -- 1. The source's King vs. the play's Viceroy -- 2. Eufranone vs. Lionato -- 3. The women -- 4. New characters and the comic element -- Chapter VII. Orbecche: Giraldi's imitation of his own prose narrative -- 1. The plot -- 2. Orbecche and the question of womanhood -- 3. Sulmone vs. Malecche: The debate on kingly prerogatives -- 4. Machiavellian princeship anchored to religious morality -- Chapter VIII. Dolce's Marianna: From history to the stage -- 1. The historical source -- 2. Josephus' Herod vs. Dolce's Erode -- 3. Mariamme vs Marianna -- 4. Erode and the theater audience
"The theatre of the Italian Renaissance was directly inspired by the classical stage of Greece and Rome, and many have argued that the former imitated the latter without developing a new theatre tradition. In this book, Salvatore DiMaria investigates aspects of innovation that made Italian Renaissance stage a modern, original theatre in its own right. He provides important evidence for creative imitation at work by comparing sources and imitations - incuding Machiavelli's Mandragola and Clizia, Cecchi's Assiuolo, Groto's Emilia, and Dolce's Marianna - and highlighting source elements that these playwrights chose to adopt, modify, or omit entirely
DiMaria delves into how playwrights not only brought inventive new dramaturgical methods to the genre, but also incorporated significant aspects of the morals and aesthetic preferences familiar to contemporary spectators into their works. By proposing the theatre of the Italian Renaissance as a poetic window into the living realities of sixteenth-century Italy, he provides a fresh approach to reading the works of this period."--pub. desc
