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Our drama began with a translation of Ariosto's 'Suppositi' and ended with Davenant's 'Just Italian. In the very dawn of tragic composition Greene versified a portion of the 'Orlando Furioso, and Marlowe devoted one of his most brilliant studies to the villanies of a Maltese Jew.
The Calandra of Dovizi, which a few years later caused such a sensation, was not yet written. It is true Ariosto had already composed his Cassaria and the Suppositi, but he had not yet won sufficient renown for him to be honored by their presentation at the wedding festivities. Moreover, the duke would have none but classic productions.
And they obeyed him, holding a most beautiful supper, with a comedy, every year over a long period of time; and thus there were performed at various times, as was related in the Life of Aristotile da San Gallo, the Calandra of M. Bernardo, Cardinal of Bibbiena, the Suppositi and the Cassaria of Ariosto, and the Clizia and Mandragola of Macchiavelli, with many others.
The study of this entire matter calls for care and judgment, for it is involved in a mass of misinformation, lack of any information and ill grounded conclusions. For example, we read in a foot-note of Rolland's excellent work that in March, 1518, the "Suppositi" of Ariosto was performed at the Vatican before Pope Leo with musical intermezzi.
The painter of the scenery of the production of Ariosto's "Suppositi," described by Pauluzo, was no less a personage than the mighty Raphael. The accounts of the writers of the latter part of the fifteenth and all of the sixteenth centuries are prolific in testimony as to the splendor of the pictorial elements in the festal entertainments of courts and pontiffs.
That there was some sort of an orchestra in the "Orfeo" is probable, though it is not wholly certain. The letter of the Envoy Pauluzo on the performance of Ariosto's "Suppositi" at the Vatican in March, 1518, has already been quoted. From this we learn that there was an orchestra containing fifes, bag-pipes, two cornets, some viols and lutes and a small organ.
Zambotto used this description of the wedding festivities in his chronicle, and it was subsequently reprinted in Lucrezia Borgia in Ferrara, etc. The Cassaria was first produced in 1508, and the Suppositi in 1509. Giuseppe Campori, Notizie per la vita di Lod. Ariosto, 2d ed. Modena, 1871, p. 67. Despatch of the Ferrarese orator, Bartolomeo Cartari, to Ercole, Venice, January 25, 1502.
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