Author: PARABOSCO, Girolamo.
Title: L'hermafrodito. Comedia di M. Girolamo Parabosco. Di nuovo ricorretta e ristampata.
Description: Vinegia: appresso Gabriel Giolito de' Ferrari, 1560. 12mo. 48 ff. First two words of title enclosed within woodcut frame; woodcut printer's device on title; a different Giolito device on verso of final leaf; woodcut initials. Former owner's name in ink on free front endpaper. Occasional slight discolouration in margins of leaves A7-12. 19th-century decorated paper covers. Paper label on front cover with manuscript title. ***** In Girolamo Parabosco's comedy L'Hermafrodito (1549), there are no transgender characters nor even any instances of cross-dressing. Behind the title lies an unwieldy play that incorporates some twenty characters into what seems a hybrid of all other Renaissance comedies. During the five rather complicated acts an old man will attempt to trick and be tricked himself, a courtesan will arrange for two lovers to meet, and a double scene of agnition will permit two supposed orphans to discover their true identities ... Parabosco confines the double-sexed monster to the space of the prologue, where the creature's blended nature becomes as symbol for the text's irregular form. The personified figure of the Prologue informs the audience that the title refers to the monstrous nature of the text: this is not an original piece born of the author's labour, but instead the product of textual incest generated by the union of a brother, Il Viluppo (1547), and a sister, La Notte (1546), two comedies which Parabosco combined in 1549 to create L'Hermafrodito. - Suzanne Magnanini, Girolamo Parabosco's L'Hermafrodito: an irregular Commedia Regolare (chapter 10 in Monsters in the Italian literary imagination, edited by Keala Jewell, Wayne State University Press, 2001). Adams P238.

Keywords: Italian, drama, antiquarian


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