Five Comedies from the Italian Renaissance

At the turn of the sixteenth century, with the Italian Renaissance at its cultural high point, Italians rediscovered and reinvented an old art form–ancient Latin comedies, rewritten and updated in Italian. These plays–witty, ribald, tightly plotted, and characterized by clever reversals of gender roles and social stereotypes–quickly captured the imagination of Renaissance society. In this anthology Laura Giannetti and Guido Ruggiero have assembled and translated five of the best and most representative plays from this period. Ranging from the early sixteenth-century Comedy of Calandro–the twisting and turning plot of which keeps the audience guessing up to the last scene–to the recently rediscovered and–due to its explicit sexual content–rarely performed–Venetian Comedy, these plays present the modern reader with a fresh and lively view of Italian Renaissance society. Also included is an introduction addressing the texts, their translation, and the social and cultural world of Renaissance comedy. Contents: The Comedy of Calandro, by Bernardo Dovizi de Bibbiena; The Mandrake Root, by Niccolo Machiavelli; Master of the Horse, by Pietro Aretino; The Deceived, by the Intronati; A Venetian Comedy by Anonymous.