Authorship of the Intrichi d’amore

In a letter of June 1586 addressed to Giovan Battista Licino, on the eve of his release from Sant’Anna, Tasso mentions a “comedy” that he was to finish and dedicate to Virginia de’ Medici, wife of Cesare d’Este. It is the only reference to the comedy in all of Tasso’s work, and in n his theoretical writings he dealt only very marginally with the issues related to the comic genre. Nonetheless, a comedy entitled Intrichi d’amore was performed in 1598 at Caprarola upon the initiative of a local academy, and printed as a work by Tasso in 1604 (at Viterbo, for the Girolamo Discepolo press). Structured in five acts, with passages in Spanish and Neapolitan dialect, the comedy has a labyrinthine plot, based on unmatched love affairs, disguises and misunderstandings among a large group of characters. The distance between this work and Tasso’s other writings, particularly those produced during his last months at Sant’Anna, and the absence of any specific mention of the work in connection with his publication projects are the arguments used (by scholars such as Petrocchi and later Stoppelli) to deny Tasso’s authorship of this work. On the other hand, the congruence between some parts of the Intrichi and passages from the Aminta and the Gerusalemme, the seventeenth century print tradition and the performance at Caprarola a few years after Tasso’s death, have encouraged some scholars (Solerti and, more recently, Malato) to claim that Tasso is in fact the author of the Intrichi. The issue is open and awaits further documentary support. Meanwhile, the various positions are set out in E. Malato, Lo fedele consiglio de la ragione. Studi e ricerche di letteratura italiana, Rome, Salerno Editrice, 1989.