The Tragedia di Tisbe

or Tragedy of Thisbe is based on Ovid’s Metamorphosis and was one of Ludovico’s youthful experiments that dates back to 1493, and is lost to posterity. On the basis of Ovid’s mythological story, the two young Babylonians  Priam and  Thisbe, who secretly loved each other against the will of their families, were forced to speak to each other through a crack in an immense wall. One day they decided to elope together and decided to meet by a mulberry tree: Thisbe arrived first but, scared by a lioness, fled, loosing her veil. Priam, who arrived shortly after, seeing the lioness with Thisbe’s veil, thought the animal had eaten her and, distraught, mortally wounds himself with his sword. His blood died the fruits of the mulberry tree that, from that day on, turn from white to red. Thisbe later returned to the meeting place just in time to have Priam die in her arms. She commited suicide shortly after, torn by grief.  This tragedy marks Ariosto’s early interest for theatre at the court of Ercole I Este, in the years in which Ludovico was a close friend of  Alberto Pio da Carpi, Ercole Strozzi, and Pietro Bembo. The manuscript of Thisbe, that was still in the possession of the Ariosto heirs in the XVIII century, has since been lost. The ‘tale’ or ‘tragedy’ of Thisbe was not Ludovico’s only early attempt at playwriting, as reported by Pigna, but alas of these youthful (or puerile) experiments  we have no trace. We have absolute certainty that he did write it thanks to his brother Gabriele Ariosto who wrote in the Epicedio in morte del fratello Ludovico in vv. 221-223: ‘Nec tantum dederas haec ludis signa futurae, / Sed puer et Tysbes deducis carmen in actus, / Parvaque devincis praecoci crura cothurno’.