ABSTRACT
The subject of this essay is the civic use of performance in Florence in the republican period, especially of farse and moral comedies composed by heralds and other public entertainers. This is the period that began with the execution of Girolamo Savonarola in May 1498 and continued with the years during which Piero Soderini was gonfaloniere for life (1502-12, which also saw the high point of the political career of Machiavelli) and with the return of the Medici in 1512, until the end of the second republic in 1530, which was followed by the establishment of the duchy in 1532. Among the works considered are the anonymous Comedia di opinione fra gli dei, Farsa dell’uomo che si vuol quietare e vivere senza pensieri, Conmedia di adulatione, Farsa in qua dannati sunt iuvenes, or the compositions of the heralds of the republic such as the Commedia della Ingratitudine by Giovanbattista di Cristofano dell’Ottonaio, and the Comedia di Fortuna by Jacopo del Polta, known as il Bientina, to mention only a few.1
