ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the few known 'regular' plays composed before the genre gained a higher profile with the composition and performance of Torquato Tasso's Aminta. Early historiography of the genre also tends to see the plays principally in relation to subsequent developments, thereby either unhelpfully ignoring these early beginnings or smoothing over the false starts. Battista Guarini, the most significant theorist of pastoral drama and first apologist, provides an instance of this. A problem in analyzing the earliest examples of regular pastoral drama regards the genre's geographical origins and its frequent identification with Estense Ferrara. Performance practices in Ferrara began to alter significantly after Ariosto's death. The presence of Ludovico Ariosta dominated, though it did not entirely define, dramatic activities in Ferrara in the early decades of the sixteenth century. He was involved with theatrical activities on and off throughout his life, and is associated with many of the comic innovations in early sixteenth-century Italy.
