This slim, elegant volume represents the best that philology and close reading can offer. The editor and translator, Giorgia Zollino, introduces twenty-first-century readers to a rare Neo-Latin one-act play, written by the law graduate Girolamo Morlini in Naples and originally printed in 1520. Why is this text worthy of our attention? Zollino offers several important reasons in her three-part volume. To begin with, one should not ignore Naples when discussing Neo-Latin and vernacular Italian performances in Italy during the early modern period. Zollino's rich pages contextualizing Comoedia Leucadia indicate that a lively tradition existed that reacted to, incorporated, and elaborated influxes from many cultures, local and imported (xxxv–xli). In this sense, Zollino's edition complements recent works such as Alida Clementi's essays (2017–18) and Frank Fehrenbach and Joris van Gastel's volume (2020), expanding on the foundational collection A Companion to Early Modern Naples (ed. Tommaso Astarita, 2013). Moreover, the historical circumstances in which Morlini wrote this text make it a significant reflection of its times, which is where Zollino's gift for close reading comes into play forcefully.
The volume opens with a substantial introduction, which familiarizes us with Morlini, his activities, his printed texts, the historical and cultural circumstances of his life, and the text itself, including its models and its style (ix–lxxxviii). The “Nota al testo” portion (lxxviii–lxxxviii) gives us a sense of the keen eye that Zollino brings to her task of establishing a critical edition in the face of several error-ridden printings, and the learned background that emerges in the extensive “Nota di commento” (41–65), the third and final part of the volume proper. In between we have both the Latin text and the Italian translation of the play—a simple plot in which a young woman, Leucasia, distances herself from her one-time lover, Oreste, after he tries to force himself on her; another man, Protesilao, comes to protect her, arranges to marry her, and leaves to fight Oreste to avenge the attempted violence on his beloved. The extent of the plot and text (merely 403 lines) belies its allegorical import: Leucasia is Naples, which the king of France (Louis XII, Oreste) and the king of Spain (Ferdinand the Catholic, Protesilao) fought to control in the years leading up to the writing of Comoedia Leucasia.
Zollino's fine textual analysis is showcased frequently in the introduction, and her command of the Greco-Roman literary tradition is in full display in the aforementioned “Nota di commento,” where she identifies not only direct grafts and citations, but also echoes and broader cultural references. The volume also includes a short appendix (67–74) reproducing the introductions to the two reprintings of the text in 1799 and 1855, both in Paris. This appendix underscores the continuity from the past to the present, even as it indicates the attention that this so-called minor humanist author and his play attracted after his death.
If ever we need to be reminded of the reasons why philological analysis, in-depth knowledge of texts, and research into lesser-known authors are necessary, even in the era of online searches and artificial intelligence, we can point to this volume as the quintessence of the importance of human acumen and historical context in expanding our understanding of the past.
