ABSTRACT
Matteo Maria Boiardo's Timone, which he labels Comedia, was intended, as we learn from the Prologue, for the entertainment of Ercole d'Este and his court in Ferrara. The Timone can be seen as exemplifying the continuity of the culture of the 1490s in the passage between Quattrocento drama and the vernacular comedy that followed. In Boiardo's comedy Timocrates' son emerges from a debtor's prison to learn the proper use of his wealth; in William Shakespeare's tragedy Alcibiades rises superior to the ingratitude of the Athenian rulers and learns to 'use the olive with sword'. Boiardo therefore inherited a lively Lucianic culture both in respect of the Latin and vernacular translations of Lucian's works and also in the interest shown in the Lucianic dialogue form by original writers such as Alberti and Pontano. Boiardo maintains the characters and the sequence of oral exchanges of the original and Lucian's witty debate on wealth and poverty survives largely intact.
