In this general movement Latin comedy had quickly followed suit, and, as just indicated, it is almost impossible, when we reach the height of the Italian Renaissance under the Medici at Florence and at Rome in particular, to review the progress of either species apart from that of the other. If we possessed the lost _Philologia_ of Petrarch, of which, as of a juvenile work, he declared himself ashamed, this would be the earliest of extant humanistic comedies. As it is, this position is held by _Paulus_, a Latin comedy of life on the classic model, by the orthodox P. P. Vergerio (1370-1444); which was followed by many others.[16]
Early in the 16th century, tragedy began to be written in the native tongue; but it retained from the first, and never wholly lost, the impress of its origin. Whatever the source of its subjects--which, though mostly of classical origin, were occasionally derived from native romance, or even due to invention--they were all treated with a predilection for the horrible, inspired by the example of Seneca, though no doubt encouraged by a perennial national taste. The chorus, stationary on the stage as in old Roman tragedy, was not reduced to a merely occasional appearance between the acts till the beginning of the 17th century, or ousted altogether from the tragic drama till the earlier half of the 18th. Thus the changes undergone by Italian tragedy were for a long series of generations chiefly confined to the form of versification and the choice of themes; nor was it, at all events till the last century of the course which it has hitherto run, more than the aftergrowth of an aftergrowth. The honour of having been the earliest tragedy in Italian seems to belong to A. da Pistoia's _Pamfila_ (1499), of which the subject was taken from Boccaccio, introduced by the ghost of Seneca, and marred in the taking. Carretto's _Sofonisba_, which hardly rises above the art of a chronicle history, though provided with a chorus, followed in 1502. But the play usually associated with the beginning of Italian tragedy--that with which "th' Italian scene first learned to glow"--was another _Sofonisba_, acted before Leo X. in 1515, and written in blank hendecasyllables instead of the _ottava_ and _terza rima_ of the earlier tragedians (retaining, however, the lyric measures of the chorus), by G. G. Trissino, who was employed as nuncio by that pope. Other tragedies of the former half of the 16th century, largely inspired by Trissino's example, were the _Rosmunda_ of Rucellai, a nephew of Lorenzo the Magnificent (1516); Martelli's _Tullia_, Alamanni's _Antigone_ (1532); the _Canace_ of Sperone Speroni, the envious _Mopsus_ of Tasso, who, like Guarini, took Sperone's elaborate style for his model; the _Orazia_, the earliest dramatic treatment of this famous subject by the notorious Aretino (1549); and the nine tragedies of G. B. Giraldi (Cinthio) of Ferrara, among which _L'Orbecche_ (1541) is accounted the best and the bloodiest. Cinthio, the author of those _Hecatommithi_ to which Shakespeare was indebted for so many of his subjects, was (supposing him to have invented these) the first Italian who was the author of the fables of his own dramas; he introduced some novelties into dramatic construction, separating the prologue and probably also the epilogue from the action, and has by some been regarded as the inventor of the pastoral drama. But his style was arid. In the latter half of the 16th century may be mentioned the _Didone_ and the _Marianna_ of L. Dolce, the translator of Euripides and Seneca (1565); A. Leonico's _Il Soldato_ (1550); the _Adriana_ (acted before 1561 or 1586) of L. Groto, which treats the story of _Romeo and Juliet_; Tasso's _Torrismondo_ (1587); the _Tancredi_ of Asinari (1588); and the _Merope_ of Torelli (1593), the last who employed the stationary chorus (_coro fisso_) on the Italian stage. Leonico's _Soldato_ is noticeable as supposed to have given rise to the _tragedia cittadina_, or domestic tragedy, of which there are few examples in the Italian drama, and De Velo's _Tamar_ (1586) as written in prose. Subjects of modern historical interest were in this period treated only in isolated instances.[17]