These plays all belong to the period between the _Aminta_ and the _Pastor fido_. Tasso's and Guarini's masterpieces mark the point of furthest development attained by the pastoral drama in Italy, or indeed in Europe. With them the vitality which rendered evolution possible was spent, though the power of reproduction remained unimpaired for close on a century. Signor Rossi, in the monograph of which I have already made such free use, mentions a number of plays, whose dependence on the _Pastor fido_ is evident from their titles, though Guarini's influence is, of course, far more widely spread than such eclectic treatment reveals. The most curious, perhaps, is a play, _I figliuoli di Aminta e Silvia e di Mirtillo ed Amarilli_, by Ercole Pelliciari, dealing with the fortunes of the children of the heroes and heroines of Tasso and Guarini. We are on the way to a genealogical cycle of Arcadian drama, similar to the cycles of romance that centred round Roland and Launcelot. It would be a work of supererogation to demonstrate in detail the influence exercised by Tasso and Guarini over their Italian followers, and a task of forbidding proportions to give the bare titles of the plays that witnessed to that influence. Serassi reports that in 1614 Clementi Bartoli of Urbino possessed no less than eighty pastoral plays; while by 1700, the year of Fontanini's work on the _Aminta_, Giannantonio Moraldi is said to hsve brought together in Rome a collection of over two hundred.[203] Every device was resorted to that could lend novelty to the scenes; in Carlo Noci's _Cintia_ (1594) the heroine returns home disguised as a boy to find her lover courting another nymph; in Francesco Contarini's _Finta Fiammetta_ (1610), on the other hand, the plot turns on the courtship of Delfide by her lover Celindo in girl's attire; while in Orazio Serono's _Fida Armilla_ (1610) we have the annual human sacrifice to a monstrous serpent--all of which later became familiar themes in pastoral drama and romance. Two plays only call for closer attention, and this rather on account of a certain reputation they have gained than of any intrinsic merit. One of these, Antonio Ongaro's _Alceo_, which was printed in 1582 and is therefore earlier than the _Pastor fido_, has been happily nicknamed _Aminta bagnato_. It is a piscatorial adaptation of Tasso's play, which it follows almost scene for scene. The satyr becomes a triton with as little change of character as the nymphs and shepherds undergo in their metamorphosis to fisher girls and boys. Alceo shows less resourcefulness than his prototype in that he twice tries to commit suicide by throwing himself into the sea. 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 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. The plot of the play is highly intricate, and shows a tendency towards the introduction of an adventurous element; it turns upon the tribute of youths and maidens exacted from the island of Scyros by the king of Thrace. The figure of the satyr is replaced by a centaur who carries off one of the nymphs. Her cries attract two youths who succeed in driving off the monster, but are severely wounded in the encounter. The nymph, Celia, thereupon falls in love with both her rescuers at once, and it is only when one of them proves to be her long-lost brother that she is able to make up her mind between them[204]. This brother had been carried off as a child by the Thracians together with his betrothed Filli, and having escaped was lately returned to his native land. From a dramatic point of view the _dénoûment_ is even more preposterous than usual. The principal characters leave the stage at the end of the fourth act, under sentence of death, and do not reappear, the whole of the last act being occupied with narratives of their subsequent fortunes. A point which is possibly worth notice is the introduction of that affected talk on the technicalities of sheepcraft which adds so greatly to the already intolerable artificiality of the later pastoral drama, but which is happily absent from the work of Tasso and Guarini.