Tasso arrived back in Ferrara in February 1579, when the court was in the midst of preparations for the marriage between Alfonso II and Margherita Gonzaga. Although residing at the home of Cardinal Luigi d’Este, Tasso felt neglected and badly treated: the bad feeling and distrust that had accumulated over the years eventually exploded, and he publicly criticized those he now considered his enemies, offending the Duke himself (see A. Solerti, Vita di Torquato Tasso, 3 vols, Turin-Rome, Loescher, 1895, vol. II, 142-43). He was arrested and locked up (considered “furioso”) at the Sant’Anna Hospital, in a cell not far from the ducal castle. It was March 1579, and the poet had just turned thirty-five. A few days later he wrote the following lines to Scipione Gonzaga:

I am treated as a rebel against the Prince whom I chose as my Lord, as a slanderer of my friends and acquaintances, and as unjust towards my self…, and unwelcome not only in Naples or Ferrara, but throughout the world […] bereft of all friendship, conversation, dealings, knowledge of all things, all activities, all comforts, rejected by all the graces, and at all times and everwhere derided and disdained.

come ribello contra il principe mio signore per elezione, come ingiurioso contra gli amici e conoscenti, e come ingiusto contra me stesso ... sono trattato, e sono scacciato da la cittadinanza, non di Napoli o di Ferrara, ma del mondo tutto [...] privo di tutte l’amicizie, di tutte le conversazioni, di tutti i commerci, de la cognizion di tutte le cose, di tutti i trattenimenti, di tutti i conforti, rigettato da tutte le grazie, e in ogni tempo e in ogni luogo egualmente schernito e abbominato (T. Tasso, Le lettere, edited by C. Guasti, 5 volumes, Florence, Le Monnier, 1852-55, vol. II, 9).