ABSTRACT
Italian and Italians played a significant role in the elaboration of the cultural programme promoted by the young Scottish king already by the early 1580s. Ronnie Jack has identified a number of specific echoes in Philotus of the Italian literary tradition, novelle of Bandello, Cinthio, and Straparola; as well as the comedia erudita, most importantly Gl'Ingannati, transformed for Rich's purposes into a morally didactic exercise. The Italian arch was erected at Gracestreet, the area of London most heavily settled by Italians, the same location where a less elaborate arch had been erected for Elizabeth's coronation in 1559, and earlier for Mary in 1554. A long exchange between the two allows Cupido to spell out his own history at the same time that the Genio makes clear that the victim of the thwarted attack was Prince Henry and the spectacle in course the Ben jonson/Masqueof Beauty, staged in 1608.
