Towards an Italian Theater: Rucellai's Oreste

Abstract

It is generally acknowledged that tragedy made its way into Western culture through Italian Renaissance playwrights wishing to revive classical drama. To be sure, interest in the concept and function of tragedy was very much alive throughout the Middle Ages, as evinced in the writings of scholars such as Donatus, Isidore of Seville, St. Remigius, and Dante. However, ancient dramatic texts were known mainly in excerpts from various collections or in anecdotal form. Numerous Greek plays were available in the St. Mark library in Venice, but many of those works were translated primarily into Latin.1 The first collection of Seneca's tragedies appeared in the early fourteenth century and their discovery inspired several imitations by humanist authors eager to recover the genre. Typically, most imitators followed the Roman preference for dramatic reading over stage representation. By the early sixteenth century, however, as playwrights began to translate and imitate newly discovered plays, the revival shows a tendency also for performance. Interest was further spurred by the diffusion of Aristotle's Poetics which provided basic guidance and formal authority to writers willing to try their dramaturgical skills. But Aristotelian precepts, though of fundamental importance, were open to a wide range of interpretations and did not constitute, therefore, undisputed canons of dramatic theater. Playwrights were thus left with plenty of freedom in the composition of their works.