ABSTRACT
The rejection of the dirty play that Manenti had staged was accompanied by the government's continued rejection of Manenti as lottery organizer. Manenti describes not one staging of the play but two. The first was executed so well that a rival performance of Plautus's Maenechmi by some gentlemen was considered a dead thing in comparison. Two days after the Maenechmi performance, Cherea contributed one of the three comedies to the February 7 entertainment at Ca' Trevisan on the Giudecca sponsored by the patriarch of Aquileia, Giovanni Grimani. Another was by Ruzante, his last recorded performance in Venice. In a letter of September 6, 1525 to Niccolo Machiavelli, Filippo Nerli refers to Machiavelli's winning several thousand ducats in a lottery while in Venice on a mission to promote Florentine wool. The second performance also went so well that all involved were praised, from the author to Manenti himself, who had served as prompter.
