FIRENZUOLA, Agnolo. I Lucidi, Comedia.

Octavo (147x92 mm.), 44 l. Printer's device on title-page and last leaf; 2 historiated initials at the beginning of the preface and of the first act. Binding: XX century dark brown morocco, gilt edges. A good copy.One of the two comedies written in contemporary Tuscan vernacular by the Florentine humanist Agnolo Firenzuola (1493-1543), mostly known for his Dialogue on the Beauty of Women and his novelistic production. The plot of this work, here published for the second time in a more attractive and accurate form, only three years after the first edition, is largely based on Plautus' Menaechmi.In Firenzuola's theatrical pièces, "the characters interact using plebeian speech rendered all the livelier by the regional dialect of Prato's countryside. Thus, the spoken language of familiar popular usage breaks into the formally contrived comedies and attains the linguistic synthesis Firenzuola had originally envisioned in the Discacciamento de le nuove lettere inutilmente aggiunte ne la lingua toscana" (S.E. Diaz, in G. Marrone (ed.), Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies, New York - London 2007).