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The same simplicity of construction, a simplicity in nature rather narrative than dramatic, characterizes Niccolò da Correggio's Cefalo.
Offended at finding her advances repulsed, the goddess hints that the wife to whom Cefalo is so careful of his faith is, for her part, more free of her favours; and upon Cefalo indignantly refusing credence to the slander, suggests that he should himself in disguise make trial of her fidelity. This the unfortunate youth resolves to do.
In the second act Procri, having recovered from her fright, is bent on avenging herself for the deceit practised by Cefalo, upon whose supposed love for Aurora she throws the blame in the matter. She seeks the grove of Diana, where she is enrolled among the followers of the goddess. Cefalo, who has followed her flight, rejoins her in the wood, and there renews his prayers.
This was followed, a year later, by a performance of Cefalo, one of the oldest of Italian dramas, a pastoral play composed by Niccolo da Correggio, chiefly taken from Ovid's "Metamorphoses," and which is said to have suggested the subjects of Correggio's famous frescoes in the Abbess of San Paolo's parlour at Parma.
On the other hand, the lesser art of the stage has been mastered with some success, and there is an adaptation of language to action which at least argues that the author had a vivid picture of the staging of his play in his mind when he wrote. The moment Procri has consented to barter her honour, Cefalo discovers himself, and the unhappy girl flies in terror.
On Cefalo's return he is met with bitter reproaches, and the act ends with a chorus of fauns and satyrs. The fourth contains the catastrophe. Procri hides in the wood in hope of surprising her husband with his paramour. Cefalo enters ready for the chase, and, seeing what he takes to be a wild beast among bushes, throws the fatal spear, which pierces Procri's breast.
The extent to which either the Orfeo or Cefalo can be regarded as pastoral will now be clear, and it must be confessed that they do not carry us very far.
In 1493 he sent an allegorical eclogue to Isabella Gonzaga at Mantua, which may possibly have been represented, though we have no note of the fact, and the poem itself has perished . He died in 1508. After a prologue which resembles that of the Orfeo in giving an argument of the whole piece, the first act opens with a scene in which Aurora seeks the love of Cefalo.
In the next we find her reconciled to Cefalo, to whom she gives the wind-swift dog and the unerring spear which she had received as a nymph of Diana. Cefalo at once sets the hound upon the traces of a boar, and goes off in pursuit, while his wife returns home. He shortly reappears, having lost boar and hound alike, and, tired with the chase, falls asleep.
The same scenic arrangement may well have been used in the Orfeo, the lower stage representing Hades ; while Niccolò da Correggio's Cefalo was evidently acted on a polyscenic stage, the actors passing in view of the audience from one part to another . At a yet earlier period Italian writers in the learned tongue had taken as the subjects of their plays stories from classical legend and myth, and among these we find not only recognized tragedy themes such as the rape of Polyxena dramatized by Lionardo Bruni, but tales such as that of Progne put on the stage by Gregorio Corrado, both of which preceded by many years the work of Politian and Correggio.
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