Again, to the same year, 1513, belongs an eclogue in rustic speech and Bellunese dialect, by Bartolommeo Cavassico, which like the Roman show turns upon the horrors of the war which had been devastating the country since 1508.  Recollections of the ’tagliata di Cadore[388]’ blend incongruously with fauns, nymphs, bears, pelicans, and wild men of the woods, to form a whole which appears to be of a decidedly burlesque character.  The distribution, however, of these rustic eclogues never appears to have been very wide, and in later times they were chiefly confined to the representations of the famous Congrega dei Rozzi at Siena, though the activity of this society extended, it is true, far beyond the limits of its Tuscan home.  Most of these representations, at any rate in the earlier years with which we are concerned, were short realistic farces of low life composed in dialectal verse.  Some of the cleverest are by Francesco Berni, better known for his obscene capitoli and his rifacimento of Boiardo’s Orlando, and appeared between 1537 and 1567; while in later days the kind attained its highest perfection in the work of Michelangelo Buonarroti the younger, whose Tancia originally appeared in 1612[389].

It may be questioned to what extent these rustic shows influenced the development of the pastoral eclogue.  Their recognition as a dramatic form was subsequent to that of the ecloga rappresentativa, and no element traceable to their influence can be shown to exist in the dramatic pastoral as finally evolved.  On the other hand, we do undoubtedly meet with incidents and characters in the courtly shows which appear to belong to the style of the popular burlesque.  A point of contact between the two traditions may be found in the commedie maggiaiuole, a sort of May-day shows also represented by the Rozzi, but of a more idealized character than the rustic drama proper.  They may, indeed, be regarded as to some extent at least a parody of the two kinds—­the courtly and the popular pastoral—­since by combining the two each was made the foil and criticism of the other.  Nymphs and shepherds appear as in the pastoral eclogues, but their loves are interrupted by the incursion of boisterous rustics, who substitute the unchastened instincts and brute force of half-savage boors for the delicate wooing and sentimentality of their rivals.

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We return to the development of the dramatic eclogue in a work of some importance as marking an advance both in dramatic construction and versification. I due pellegrini[390], written not later than 1528, when the author, Luigi Tansillo, was a youth of sixteen or seventeen, was doubtless produced on some occasion before the court of the Orsini, at Nola, near Naples.  It was revived with great pomp ten years later at Messina, when Don Garcia de Toledo, commander of the Neapolitan fleet, entertained Antonia Cardona, daughter