The Cretan Drama: A Postscript

Extract

Just after my paper on the Cretan Plays in the last number of this Journal had gone to press, a search for sources of the Erotokritos led me to the works of Luigi Groto, sometimes called Cieco di Hadria. The version of the Romeo and Juliet story which he embodied in his Hadriana (1578–1583) was not as close as I had hoped to the plot of Cornaro's Erotokritos, but there was sufficient evidence that the Hadriana was known to the Cretan poet. It was therefore with some excitement that I learned that Groto had also written a biblical play called Isach, published in 1586 just after his death. This play seems to be excessively rare, and neither of the specialists in Italian literature whom I have had the opportunity of consulting had ever seen it. It is therefore less surprising that it should never have been mentioned in connexion with the Cretan Thysia tou Avraam. It will no longer be necessary to drag in Feo Belcari or Theodore Beza. There is not the slightest doubt that the Thysia is directly modelled on the framework of Groto's Isach.