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It was not the first attempt at bringing the pastoral upon the boards, since Poliziano's Orfeo with its purely bucolic opening had been performed as early as 1471; but Castiglione's ecloga rappresentativa was the first of any note to depend purely on the pastoral form and to introduce on the stage the convention of the allegorical pastoral.

'FAUSTUS "Tu quoque, ut hîc video, non es ignarus amorum." 'FORTUNATUS "Id commune malum; semel insanivimus omnes." Baptistae Mantuani Carmelitae Adolescentia, seu Bucolica. Ecloga I, published in 1498. See ante, i. 368. See ante, i. 396.

They are commonly of an allegorical nature, containing allusions to real persons, and are for the most part composed in terza rima, diversified in the more complex examples by the introduction of octaves and lyrical measures . Of this primitive form is a poem by the Genoese Baldassare Taccone, bearing the superscription 'Ecloga pastorale rapresentata nel Convivio dell' III. Sig'r. Io.

But on this anxious morning, he rode beside the Ladies of Croye without any of his usual attempts to amuse them, and they could not help observing his silence as something remarkable. "Our young companion has seen a wolf," said the Lady Hameline, alluding to an ancient superstition, "and he has lost his tongue in consequence." Virgilii ix. Ecloga.

The 'Ecloga Theoduli' alluded to by Chaucer in the House of Fame appears to be the work of an Athenian writer, and is ascribed to various dates ranging from the fifth to the eighth centuries. While preserving as its main characteristic a close subservience to its Vergilian model, the eclogue participated in the general rise of allegory which marked the later middle ages.

It may be questioned to what extent these rustic shows influenced the development of the pastoral eclogue. Their recognition as a dramatic form was subsequent to that of the ecloga rappresentativa, and no element traceable to their influence can be shown to exist in the dramatic pastoral as finally evolved.

The following year the poet of the Hecatompathia, Thomas Watson, a pastoralist of note according to the critics of his own age, but whose work in this line is chiefly Latin, published his 'Ecloga in Obitum Honoratissimi Viri, Domini Francisci Walsinghami, Equitis aurati, Divae Elizabethae a secretis, & sanctioribus consiliis, entitled Meliboeus, and also in the same year a translation of the piece into English.

With regard to this theory it may be sufficient to observe that, at the time Encina wrote, the ecloga rappresentativa, or dramatic eclogue, was already familiar in the Italian courts, and that, so far from his writings being the source of any pastoral tradition even in his own country, what subsequent dramatic work of the kind is to be found in Spain merely represents a further borrowing from Italy.

Of the tenth century we possess an allegorical religious lament entitled 'Ecloga duarum sanctimonialium. About 1160 a Benedictine monk named Metellus composed twelve poems under the title of Bucolica Quirinalium, in honour of St. Quirinus and in obvious imitation of Vergil.

A composition of some importance, dating from a period about two years later than Tansillo's piece, is an 'ecloga pastorale' by the 'mestissimo giovane' Luca di Lorenzo of Siena. Two nymphs, by name Euridice and Diversa, respectively seek and shun the delights of love.