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In 1525 had appeared a work by the Neapolitan Marco Antonio Epicuro de' Marsi, styled in the original edition 'dialogo di tre ciechi, and in later reprints 'tragi-commedia intitulata Cecaria . In this three blind men, one blind with love, another with jealousy, the third with gazing too intently on the sun-like beauty of his mistress, meet and determine to die together.
After passing through various plights, into which they are led by their love of the careless nymphs, they all have recourse to an oracle, whose predictions are fulfilled through a series of violent metamorphoses. This mixture of mythology and magic is wholly foreign to the spirit of the Arcadian drama, and the Mirzia cannot any more than the Cecaria be regarded as the progenitor of that form.
At least this is how I read the available evidence. Besides the Cecaria, mentioned above, Epicuro de' Marsi also left a manuscript play entitled Mirzia, which he describes as a 'favola boschereccia, being thus the first to make use of the term later adopted by Tasso.
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