How near Italy came to creating a national drama is shown by the frequent representations of public events upon the stage, quite in the spirit of Shakespeare’s historical plays. Two types may be discriminated--one adhering very closely to that of the _Rappresentazioni_, and composed in the vernacular; the latter following classical models, and in Latin. To the latter belongs the very tedious play of Carlo Verardi on the fall of Granada, performed before Cardinal Riario in 1492; but the very remarkable and unfortunately lost dramatic chronicle of the usurpations and downfall of the house of Borgia, acted before the Duke of Urbino on the recovery of his states in 1504, seems rather to have belonged to the former class. To this type also is allied the first Italian drama of genuine literary merit, the _Orfeo_ of Politian, where the dialogue is mostly in octave stanzas, as in the _Rappresentazioni_, and the object is evidently rather to delight the spectators by a rapid succession of scenes admitting of musical accompaniment than to “purge the soul by pity and terror.” Slight as this juvenile work of Politian’s is, it is the work of a poet, and written with a swing and rush which recall the lyrical parts of the _Bacchæ_ of Euripides. It indicates what the _Rappresentazioni_ might have become but for the competition of the more classical type of drama, and seems a prelude to the thoroughly national species of composition which arose in the seventeenth and prevailed in the eighteenth century, the opera. The Italian stage had thus made a respectable beginning with the drama a hundred years before any drama worthy of the name existed in England. The disappointment of such auspicious promise is justly ascribed by Symonds, in great measure, to the want of a representative public and a centre of social life. The emulation of a number of independent cities, so favourable to the development of art, prevented the development of the national feeling essential to a national drama. The political circumstances of these communities, moreover, were inimical to the existence of a popular stage. Theatrical representations remained the amusement of courts; and when the general public was allowed to participate in them, the play itself was so enveloped in show and spectacle as to appear the least part of the entertainment. It was not possible that under such circumstances the drama could deviate far from conventional models. Tragedy continued to be composed after the pattern of Seneca, an imitation of an imitation. Comedy, though also in bondage to classical precedents, could not avoid depicting contemporary manners, and hence displays far more vitality and vigour.