ABSTRACT
The standard histories of Italian Renaissance theatre outline the growing understanding of ancient Latin comedy in the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Apart from Ariosto, two other major Renaissance writers who tried their hand at the new genre were Leon Battista Alberti, who wrote his only Latin comedy, Philodoxeos fabula, in 1424, and Niccolo Machiavelli, who almost 100 years later, around 1518, both translated Terence's Andria into the Florentine vernacular and wrote probably the most successful vernacular comedy of the Italian Renaissance, La mandrgola. This chapter examines these three play-texts primarily to consider how these two major Italian writers drew on their ancient model in very different ways, and learned crucial techniques from his plays. It explores the precise recovery of Terence in Renaissance Italy; in particular an understanding of the sophistication of the young Alberti's attempt at a Terentian comedy. Machiavelli nearly 100 years later, many things have changed in the world of Italian humanism.
