Pro onestis et castissimis moribus. La commedia Isis di Francesco Ariosto

Francesco Peregrino Ariosto (1415-1484) wrote a comedy, the Isis, represented during the carnival celebrations of 1444 at the court of Ferrara, in the presence of Leonello d’Este and a lot of people. The Isis is transmitted by three manuscripts: Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, 960; Modena, Biblioteca Estense, lat. 1096 = alfa.Q.7.32; Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Lat. 8229. The Isis is a humanistic comedy sui generis: it’s a dialogue in elegiac couplets, or rather the juxtaposition of two monologues, between the young Carinus and the maiden Isis. The text describes the history of a conversion: Isis, once a lover of festivals and songs, decided to devote herself to prayer, after listening a preacher. The model is not the classic comedy of Plautus and Terence, imitated only in the prologue, or the medieval Latin elegiac comedy, but the production of Ovid’s exile.