Curzio Gonzaga’s Gli Inganni: ‘Queen of Comedies’ and a Source for Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night
Tuesday 16 April, 5.30pm
A105, Newman Building
University College Dublin
A talk by:
(opens in a new window)Professor Ita Mac Carthy (Durham University)
Curzio Gonzaga’s play,Gli inganni(1592),is a fully-fledged member of the ‘Ingannati franchise’ of works that preceded and quite likely influenced the writing of Shakespeare’sTwelfth Night(c. 1602). Printed in Venice asGli inganni / Comedia dell’Illustrissimo Signor Curtio Gonzaga, it found its way to Elizabethan England via various routes, including volumes of hand-picked and bound Italian comedies. Yet the much-neglected play is worthy of study in its own right as well. Written by a noble and influential diplomat who frequented the highest aristocratic circles of sixteenth-century Italy, it makes its own the classicdramatis personaeof star-crossed, cross-dressed lovers; old men as gullible as they are lustful; ridiculous pedants; wily courtesans and coarse but clever servants and maids. Adding new emphasis to the literariness (as opposed to the performativity) of thecommedia erudita, it heralds a new departure in late 16th-century Italian theatre. This paper explores howGli Inganniinnovates while it imitates its predecessors, developing a novel form ofcommediafor the Mantovan court.