Writing Pastoral Drama as a Woman and an Actor: Isabella Andreini’s Mirtilla

Abstract

This essay examines Italian Renaissance actress-playwright Isabella Andreini’s pastoral play La Mirtilla, exploring how Andreini uses and re-works her model, Torquato Tasso’s Aminta. Specifically, it analyzes how her acting experience enabled her to write more dramatically effective scenes around themes from Tasso’s pastoral and how she uses those scenes to convey proto-feminist messages absent in Aminta. It compares her Mirtilla to other early women-authored pastorals, noting how Andreini’s profession and reputation allowed her to address themes that other female pastoral playwrights avoided. It also explores her work in the context of the theatrical changes taking place in late-sixteenth-century Italy and identifies ways in which La Mirtilla comments on those changes.