ABSTRACT
A reconstruction of the relationship between the 'verbal text' and the spectacular/ non-verbal content is particularly necessary in the case of pastoral drama. Any attempt to assess fully the staging of pastoral drama, as with any sort of drama, also needs to take its reception into account, and the motives for which it was written and commissioned. During the 1560s and '70s the Ferrarese nobility ensured their exclusivity particularly by cultivating two new dramatic forms: the torneo and the pastoral drama. By contrast, there is little concrete evidence about the few earliest performances of regular pastoral drama in Ferrara during the same period. Pastoral plays performed in Ferrara before its devolution to the papacy in 1598 therefore principally relied upon ducal and aristocratic resources to provide artists and architects to design and mount the stage-sets, and supply musicians and dancers if necessary. This chapter attempts to provide further exploration of this subject, which will be touched upon to some extent.
