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The last act is spun out to three scenes in accordance with the demand for greater regularity of dramatic construction, but gains nothing but tedium thereby. The other play to be considered connects itself in plot rather with the Pastor fido. It is the Filli di Sciro, the work of Guidubaldo Bonarelli della Rovere.
The best scholars in Europe used to assemble at the palace, where Duke Federigo made such a gathering of books 'as had not been seen for a thousand years, in the hall where Emilia and the pale Duke Guidubaldo led the pleasant debates described in the 'Cortegiano. Federigo, the most successful general in the Italian wars, had built a palace of delight in his rude Urbino, in which he hoped to set a copy of every book in the world.
There is a translation extant in a British Museum manuscript purporting to be the work of Sir George Talbot, who is said to have been a friend of Sir Edward's, into whose hands some of his papers may have come. The translation is headed: 'Fillis of Scirus, a Pastorall Written in Italian, by Count Guidubaldo de' Bonarelli, and Translated into English by S'r.
The poet's father enjoyed the protection of the Duke Guidubaldo II of Urbino, but in after days he removed to the court of the Estensi at Ferrara. It was here that the play appeared in 1607, though it is dedicated to Francesco Maria della Rovere, who had by that time succeeded his father in the duchy of Urbino.
Among the more modern writers we find those whose works we have discussed, Petrarch and his friends, Guarini and Perotti, and Valla with his enemy Poggio; among the others we notice Alexander ab Alexandro, a most learned antiquarian from Naples, of whom Erasmus once said: 'He seems to have known everybody, but nobody knows who he is. The chief treasure of the place was a Bible, illuminated in 1478 by a Florentine artist, which the Duke caused to be bound 'in gold brocade most richly adorned with silver. 'Shortly before he went to the siege of Ferrara, says his librarian, 'I compared his catalogue with those that he had procured from other places, such as the lists from the Vatican, Florence, Venice, and Pavia, down to the University of Oxford in England, and I found that all except his own were deficient or contained duplicate volumes. His son, Duke Guidubaldo, was a celebrated Greek scholar; and the eulogies of Bembo and Castiglione on his Duchess, Elizabeth Gonzaga, attest the literary distinction of her Court.
I commend this course, because it hath been used of old; notwithstanding Nicholas Vitelli in our dayes hath been known to demolish two Citadels in the town of Castello, the better to keep the State; Guidubaldo Duke of Urbin being to return into his State, out of which he was driven by Cæsar Borgia, raz'd all the Fortresses of that Countrey, and thought he should hardlyer lose that State again without them.
In 1506 Castiglione and Cesare Gonzaga, in the disguise of shepherds, recited an eclogue interspersed with songs before the court of Duke Guidubaldo at Urbino. The Duchess Elizabeth was among the spectators. The Tirsi, as it is called, begins with the simple themes of pastoral complaint, whence by swift transition it passes to a panegyric of the court and the circle of the Cortegiano.
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