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The Aminta, while possessing a delicate dramatic structure of its own, yet retains not a little of the simplicity of the ecloga rappresentativa. Indeed, it is worth noting, alike on account of this quality in the poem itself as also of its literary ancestry, that, in a letter written within a year of its original production, Tiburio Almerici speaks of it by the old name of eclogue . Referring to its representation at Urbino, he writes: 'Il terzo spettacolo, che si è goduto questo carnovale, è stato un' egloga del Tasso, che fu recitata questo giovedì passato da alcuni gioveni d' Urbino nella sala, che fu fatta per la venuta delia Principessa. The princess in question was none other than Lucrezia d' Este, who had lately become the wife of Tasso's former companion Francesco Maria della Rovere, now Duke of Urbino, and who with her sister Leonora, the heroine of the Tasso legend, had, it will be remembered, stood sponsor to Beccari's play nearly twenty years before. The representation at Urbino to which Almerici alludes was not of course the first. Written in the winter of 1572-3 during the absence of Duke Alfonso, the piece was acted after his return from Rome in the summer of the latter year. Ferrara, as we have seen, had become and was long destined to remain the special home of the pastoral drama in Italy. Here on July 31, in the palace of Belvedere, built on an island in the Po, the court of the Estensi assembled to witness the production of Tasso's play . The staging, both on this and on subsequent occasions, was no doubt answerable to the nature of the piece, and added the splendour of the masque to the classic grace of the fable. Almerici remarks on the special attractions for spectators and auditors alike of what he calls 'la novit

Margaret's, Westminster, Overseers' Acc'ts in The Westminster Tobacco Box, Pt. ii , e.g., s.a. 1572-3, where we find donations from Lord Burghley, the Lord Chief Justice, the Dean of Westminster, the Earl of Derby, the Earl of Hertford, etc. Though by 37 Hen. Interest is here dubbed usury, "a vice most odyous and detestable." Examples are, Vestry Minutes of St.