Note 190 — Chapter III

Storia della letteratura italiana nel secolo XVI, Milano, 1880, pp. 244-7. See Rossi, p. 264. His argument is that it anticipated a revolt against the conventional nature of domestic love, reflecting better than any other dramatic work the ideas that towards the end of the cinquecento were, according to him, leading in the direction of a moral regeneration of Italian Society. It is, however, difficult to reconcile his theory with what we know of Italy in the days of the counter-reformation; while it may at the same time be doubted whether a tone of anaemic sentimentality is, in itself, preferable to one of cynical convention. It should be added that there is little regeneration of domestic love to be found in the partly pathetic and partly sordid tragedy of Guarini's own family.