Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III BIRTHPLACE OF THE SECULAR DRAMA T N the midst of more imposing chron- - icles bearing upon the growth of Italy the student of her history is likely to lose sight of the little Marquisate of Mantua. Yet its story is profoundly interesting and in its relations to the development of the lyric drama filled with significance. That it should have come to occupy such a high position among the cultivated centers of the Renaissance seems singularly appropriate since Virgil, the Italian literary deity of the period, was born at Pietole, now a suburb of Mantua. The marquisate owed its elevation to the character of the great lords of the house of Gonzaga, who ruled it from 1328 to 1708. Inthe former year the head of the house ousted from the government the Buonacolsis, who had been masters since 1247. In 1432 the Gonzagas were invested with the hereditary title of Marquis and in 1530 Charles V raised the head of the house to the rank of Duke. When the last duke died without issue in 1708 Austria gained possession of the little realm. Entangled in the ceaseless turmoil of wars between Milan and the forces allied against her, Mantua under the rule of the Gonzagas maintained her intellectual energy and played bravely her part in the revival of classic learning. Her court became a center of scholarship from which radiated a beneficent influence through much of northern Italy. The lords of Gonzaga fought and plotted, ate and drank, and plunged into the riotous dissipation and free play of passions which characterized the Renaissance period, but like other distinguished Italians they steeped themselves inlearning and were the proud patrons of artists, authors, teachers, composers. The eminence of the house in scholarship doubtless dated from the reign of the Mar- chese Gian Fra...