Beschreibung:

Plautus, Amphitryon, in Latin verse, bifolium from a fine humanist manuscript on parchment [Italy (probably Florence), mid-fifteenth century] Two conjoined leaves, with single column of 28 lines of excellent humanist script (with parts of the end of Act 1, sc.1, lines 276-306 & the opening and end of sc. 2, lines 1-24 & 192-230, as well as the opening of sc. 3, lines 1-18), one 4-line contemporary marginalia in smaller humanist script, capitals set in margin apart from main text lines (in accordance with Ancient and medieval practise of writing verse), catchwords (et me quod) at foot of verso of last leaf showing this was the outermost bifolium in the gathering, rubrics, running titles (Comedio .i. and Amphitrio) and character names in same script in red (mercurius and Iupiter in full when these open a scene, else short versions So, Am and so on set in margin and within text throughout scenes), 2 initials in alternate blue or red with ornate contrasting penwork, folds and outer corners cut away (with small affect to outer edges of uppermost 2 lines), small spots from reuse on a later binding, eighteenth- or nineteenth-century scrawl Valerius along place spine lay on later book, overall in good condition and on finely produced parchment with wide and clean margins, each leaf 294 by 215mm. A relic from a remarkably fine Renaissance copy of one of the rarest Roman literary authors to appear on the market The works of Plautus (c. 254-184 BC.; more formerly Titus Maccius Plautus) are the earliest literary works in Latin to survive in their entirety. He may have been a native of Sarsinia in Emilia-Romagna, and seems to have been long acquainted with comic theatre (the self-adopted nicknames Maccius and Plautus are those of the stock farcical character of a clowning dwarf and an Umbrian term meaning flat-footed or flat-eared). He studied the works of Menander, and much of his work owes a clear debt to Greek theatrical models. He wrote a formidable 130 plays, setting him up as one of the most prolific authors of the Ancient World, but of these only 20 now survive, with a further 31 known only from short quotations in larger works. This work, the Amphitryon, narrates the passionate jealousy of the eponymous character, who was a son of the king of Tiryns in Argolis, inspired by Jupiters seduction of his wife and the resulting birth of twin boys, one of whom was Amphitryons son and the other was Hercules. While a number of medieval manuscripts did exist of the text, few of these had much impact (it was never used as a school text, and was apparently unknown to Dante and his contemporaries). That changed with the discovery of an eleventh-century copy by Nicolas of Cusa in Cologne in 1429, and its subsequent bringing to Cardinal Orsini in Italy around the midpoint of the fifteenth century (now Vatican, lat. 3870). There it came to the notice of the great Renaissance text hunter, Poggio Bracciolini, and bears notes in his hand, but it was the copy of it made by the celebrated humanist, Niccolo Niccoli, that would raise these plays from obscurity, and it was widely copied and performed throughout the subsequent Renaissance. The translation of these plays, first in Ferrara in the late fifteenth century, began a whole new genre of vernacular comedy, with Ariostos Cassaria dependent on the plays in the Ferrarese court, as well as Jack Juggler and Shakespeares Comedy of Errors in sixteenth-century England (both dependant in part on the text here). Few have ever appeared on the market. Phillipps managed to acquire four witnesses, and these account for most of the appearances of any part of Plautus works in the trade records of the last century. Apart from these, the most recent appearances are those of the Dyson Perrins copy (Italian, perhaps Rome, late fifteenth century), which was sold in Sothebys, 1 December 1959, lot 76, and reappeared in Quaritch, cat. 891, no. 226, a year later; and the Major Abbey manuscript (Florentine, middle third of f