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VENUS AND ADONIS
few years later three well-known figures in the history of Italian literature developed almost simultaneously the theme in original Italian verse. All wrote in the same eight-lined stanza under Greek and Latin influences, which were mingled in different proportions, but they arranged the common material according to their individual fancy.
Dolce.
Lodovico Dolce, who translated Ovid’s *Metamorphoses* and Euripides’ tragedies into Italian, besides writing many original plays and poems of classical temper, published in 1545 his *La Favola d’Adone* (‘The story of Adonis’) in eighty-four eight-lined stanzas. Dolce followed Ovid slavishly, even setting on Venus’ lips the interpolated tale of Hippomenes’ suit of the swift-running Atalanta. But he seems to essay some originality by making Jove contrive Adonis’ death at the entreaty of Juno, who is jealous of Venus and seeks to injure her.¹
Tarchagnota.
The second Italian poem, *L’Adone*, was in seventy-four eight-lined stanzas, and was by an Italian of Greek origin, Metello Giovanni Tarchagnota. His work was published at Venice in 1550. Tarchagnota avoids Dolce’s digressions, and is his superior in passionate and picturesque expression.² He felt more nearly the spontaneous charm of the Sicilian poetry.
Parabosco.
Within less than a decade a versatile friend of Dolce, Girolamo Parabosco, an organist at St. Mark’s, Venice, who made a reputation as writer of madrigals as well as of novels and poems, tried his hand on the theme in a poem of
¹ Dolce’s poem was appended to the first issue of his play called *Il Capitane*, which appeared at Venice, 1545. The British Museum has no earlier edition than that of 1547.
² Of the first edition, which is extremely rare, there is a copy in the Grenville Collection at the British Museum. The copy in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Rome was reprinted at Naples in 1898, edited by Angelo Borzelli. Tarchagnota, who died at Ancona in 1566, was a Greek and Latin scholar and an industrious compiler in prose, chiefly from Greek and Latin. His poem *L’Adone* seems his role surviving experiment in verse.
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