Note 48 — Chapter VI · DRAMA

“Politian was in 1471, at the request of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga, despatched to Mantua by Lorenzo de’ Medici to prepare an entertainment for the reception of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza. The Orfeo, a lyric pastoral in dramatic form, prophetic of so much that was later to come, was the contribution of the brilliant humanist and poet to the Duke’s entertainment. It stands close to the fountainhead of European secular drama.” H. M. Ayres, preface to his translation of the Orfeo in Romanic Review, XX (January, 1929), 1.