Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/369

Rh in general following the line indicated by Giambattista Della Porta (1553-1613), and freshening the interest of the hackneyed scheme with incidents borrowed from the novelle; pastoral plays in endless profusion, the source of all of which is the Aminta and the Pastor Fido. Despite its classical form, sacred tragedy in Italy was, as regards theme and spirit, directly descended from the Sacre Rappresentazioni of the fifteenth century, and the older allegorical characters and irregular structure reappear in some plays which are interesting also inasmuch as they reveal the influence of opera upon tragedy. These are the Adamo (1613) and the Maddalena (1617) of Giambattista Andreini (1578-c.1650), leader, after his father, of the famous company of comedians, the Gelosi, and author of some religious poems and literary comedies. The Adamo, with its strange blend of morality, tragedy, and opera, has been claimed by Voltaire and subsequent critics as the source of Paradise Lost, on the ground especially of the element of allegory which appears in Milton's first sketches of a drama. The closest resemblance to Paradise Lost is, perhaps, in the seventh scene of the fourth act, where Death and Despair circle round in a large hospital which contains all human diseases. This may be the original of Milton's "Lazar-house," where "Over them triumphant Death his dart                Shook, but delayed to strike." If tragedy and pastoral found a serious rival in opera, literary comedy suffered the same fate at the hand of the popular comedy of improvisation (the