Excerpt from Supposes and Jocasta The justice of the term The Italian Renascence, as applied to European literature is nowhere better ex emplified than in the history of the drama. It was at Padua that Albertino Mussato, at the beginning Of the fourteenth century, took the first step towards the te vival of this form of art by the composition of an origi nal Latin tragedy, the Eterz'nis. It was on Italian stages that the dramas of the ancients were first repro duced after the long lapse of the Middle Ages. Italian writers first made the important Step of composing dramas in the vernacular on subjects taken in some cases fiom the life of their own day. Italian critics first laid down the rules of dramatic art which under the name of the Three Unities provoked so much dis cussion at a later day. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.