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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.
Its chief interest for us, however, lies in the episode of the hero employing a gang of satyrs to carry off his beloved during a solemn dance in honour of Venus. This looks like a reminiscence of Giraldi Cintio's Egle, and through it of the old satyric drama . These plays all belong to the period between the Aminta and the Pastor fido.
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.
Similar in plot to this last is a fragmentary pastoral of Giraldi Cintio's published from manuscript by Signor Carducci. Another curious but isolated experiment is Cintio's Egle, in intent a revival of the 'satyric' drama of the Greeks, in substance a dramatization of the motive of Sannazzaro's Salices.
The Arcadian drama was a creation of the literary and courtly circles of Ferrara, and so far as Italy is concerned the precursors of the Aminta are to be sought in Beccari's Sacrifizio and Giraldi Cintio's Egle alone, with a connecting link as it were supplied by the pastoral fragment of the latter author, first printed as an appendix to the essay in question.
Cintio had taken it for the subject of a romance. Whetstone had made out of Cintio's narrative the rude play of Promos and Cassandra; and Shakspeare had borrowed from Whetstone the plot of the noble tragicomedy of Measure for Measure. As Kirke was not the first so he was not the last, to whom this excess of wickedness was popularly imputed.
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