ABSTRACT

Vincenzo Gonzaga, the Duke of Mantua, recommended a company of this name to the rectors of Brescia in 1590, and they responded that such a licence was not in their gift but would have to come from Venice. There is no other record of a company of that name until they spent three months in Genoa in 1597 and were two years later at Mantua for carnival. They intended to leave for Ferrara after Easter, but were pre-empted by the Confidenti and went to Bologna instead. In March 1600, they left from Mantua for France, in response to a personal invitation to Tristano Martinelli from Henri IV, ending ‘Priant Dieu, Arlequin, qu’il vous ait en sa sainte garde. De Paris le 21 décembre 1599. Henri.’ (It was quite unprecedented at that time for a crowned monarch to write personally to an actor.) They also had a warm recommendation from Gonzaga to the Duke of Aiguillon and Nevers. They travelled by way of Bologna, Milan and Savoy, preceded by Drusiano Martinelli to Lyon. When the King arrived there in July, the company were still in Turin, retained by Charles Emmanuel of Savoy, but Drusiano managed to fetch them by early August. Wars then broke out with Savoy, preventing Henri from enjoying their performance until autumn and delaying his

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curiously, fifty-nine blank pages and dedicated to:

the magnanimous gentleman, Henri de Bourbon, first bourgeois of Paris, chief of all gentlemen of Lyon . . . admiral of the sea of Marseille, master of one-half of the bridge at Avignon and good friend of the master of the other half, . . . secret secretary of the most secret cabinet of Madame Maria di Medici, high treasurer of the Italian actors.55