Note 198 — Chapter XI
Reading edition
The Clizia furnished Dolce with the motive of his Ragazzo ("Il Ragazzo, comedia di M. Lodovico Dolce. Per Curtio de Navò e fratelli al Leone, MDXLI."). An old man and his son love the same girl. A parasite promises to get the girl for the old man, but substitutes a page dressed up like a woman, while the son sleeps with the real girl. Readers of Ben Jonson will be reminded of Epicœne. But in Dolce's Ragazzo the situation is made to suggest impurity and lacks rare Ben's gigantic humor.