I.

Nor has he treated with much more respect, Gio. Paulo SECT. Trapolini, (e) a contemporary of Cavallerino, though he was author of three tragedies,—l' Ismenia, (f) l' Antigone,(g) and la. Thesida, (b) which had once their admirers. Trapolini wrote because he thought that "come tutte le altre cose mortali al solo uso, e commodità de gli huomini son' principalmente.create, così gli huomini stessi non à se soli son generati; and that therefore he ought, not only to endeavour at being useful in his generation, but

In life's vifit leave his name.

But he seems to have been most particularly actuated by a pious wish to warn his readers against incurring the displeasure of heaven. This is, at least, the moral of his Thesida..

CHORO..

Dal costei chiaro, e manifesto esempio.

Veder si può, che lungamente ascosi

Star non poffon gli inganni; e spettialmente,

sembra ch' ei vedesse più corretta, e nel suo principio più sana; secondo cosa adunque, e senza allontanarsene la sua tragedia ei compose." Proemio alla Merope. Ver. 1745. p. 17.

(*) Crescimbeni, in his chapter degli Ecchi, de' versi incantenati, &c. slightly mentions Trapolini as author of il Tirsi, un egloga boschereccia, but takes no notice of his tragic dramas in any other part of his aborate work.

(f) Pad. 1575. In the dedication to his Antigone, the author mentions the facility with which he composed this tragedy.

(g) Pad. per Lorenzo Pasquati, 1581. This edition is embellished with a wooden print. of the interior of a theatre, with the audience in the pit, and Mercury delivering the prologue at the front of the stage.

(b) This tragedy was first printed in Padua, per Lorenzo Pasquati, 1576; not in 1575, as Riccoboni sets forth..

Quando

SECT.
I.

Quando l'alta bontà del ciel s' offende.
Però studisi ogn' un à viver vita

Piena di fede, e al suo fattor gradita.

Trapolini, like several other dramatic writers of his own country who preceded and followed him, evokes the slumbering dead. But the powers of the Italian dramatists, seem to forsake them when they enter "the magic circle." In the manners and language of their preternatural beings there is nothing characteristic, no mysterious solemnity; they seem neither

Spirits of health, nor goblins damn'd:

They retain all their humanity about them, and are only ghosts in name. An exception, it is true, seems to occur in the play which we shall next consider; but a single exception cannot avert a general censure exacted by critical justice. If, however, Trapolini fails in giving appropriate language to his ghosts, he has certainly succeeded in describing a fury. Megæra's picture of herself is such an "inveterate likeness," that we turn from it with horror. The serpents interwoven with her hair, seem to hiss.

Trapolini has not servilely followed either Euripides or Seneca, but he has borrowed occasionally from both. The Italian drama, like the Greek tragedy, is opened by

Ve

nus; (1) and Diana appears in the last scene of both plays. But SECT.
in the manner of Phoedra's death, (k) our author departs from
Euripides; and he imitates Seneca in exhibiting the mangled
corse of Hippolitus upon the stage.

The departure of Asinari and Fuligni from the beaten my-
thological track, was imitated by a writer of uncommon
powers, who boldly plunged into the gloom of Egyptian his-
tory, in quest of a subject for the exercise of his dramatic ta-
lents. Antonio Decio da Horte, a celebrated civilian, and an
intimate friend of Tasso, weary of the jejune studies of his pro-
fession, wandered for awhile in "the primrose path of poesy."
His first poetical essay, was the tragedy of Acripanda, which

(i) After Venus, in imitation of Euripides, opens the play, the fhade of the mother of
Hippolytus appears. To this shade our author gives the name of Antiope, though Hippolyta
is the name by which this fair amazon is generally known, and under which she had been in-
troduced to his countrymen, some centuries before, in the Theseida, an epic poem by Bocca.
ccio. (4) This poem, however, is of such rare occurrence, that it might have escaped the
observation of Trapolini: it certainly eluded the researches of Fontanini, or must have been
very flightly inspected by him; for he places the quarto edition, printed at Venice, 1528,
at the head of his list of "Tragedie in verso." Della. eloq. ital. p. 137. Ven. 1727.
( k ) In Euripides, Phœdra

fasten'd by the neck obscenely dies.

1

Racine poisons her. But Seneca, Trapoline, and Mr. Smith, make her stab herself. In the
Italian drama, Ismenia relates the manner of her death:

la trovo

Sopra' I letto distesa;

E con la spada istessa

(Con cui fù minacciata) il cor traffita,

was

I.

SECT. was published at Florence, in 1592, (l) at the desire of Don Giovanni de' Medici. This extraordinary production, which raised its author to great literary eminence, demands our particular notice.

The play is opened by the ghost of Orsilia, the murdered wife of the king of Egypt, who quits the dark abyss for the purpose of instigating her son, the king of Arabia, to avenge her death. The following passage in her address to light, (m) on first perceiving its "cheering beam," will probably remind the reader of Milton's hymn to that glorious emanation of the Deity.

(1) Nella stamperia del Sermartelli. 4to. A friend of the author, who stiles himself Corifilo pastor Tiberino, appears as the editor, and dedicates the drama "all' illustrissimo, et reverentissimo mons. Fabio Orsini." Another edition was printed at Vicenza, 1617, with a dedication, of which the flattery is heightened by a whimsical disposition of the letters which compose the name of Luigi Mutoni, to whom it is inscribed.

(2) The seeming impropriety of introducing a ghost meeting the light of the sun, will strike the English reader who has been taught to think with Horatio, that at the crowing of the cock,

Whether in sea, or fire, in earth or air,

Th' extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine.

But Decio should not be hastily censured: he has, perhaps, been as true on this occasion to the popular superstitions of his time, as our Shakespeare was to those of his age and country.

But