The Ferrara entertainment of 1486 also helped initiate a new theatrical wave in the Renaissance. How and why this comedy, among the twelve-or twenty in all-acquired such widespread favor during the sixteenth century has not as yet formed the subject of comparative inquiry. Few would have read the play, much less witnessed it, at school.
The "new" plays did not become widely available until the first printed edition of the comedies in 1472, though manuscript copies had circulated. (4) Certainly one reason for choosing Menaechmi for this occasion-both celebrating the Este-Gonzaga union and inaugurating a theatrical venture-would have been its relative unfamiliarity, being part of the manuscript discovery by Nicholas of Cusa, about 1428, of twelve hitherto unknown comedies by Plautus. In 1493 he took three productions to the Sforza court in Lomhardy, an event which, as Thomas Tuohy observes, "suggests the preeminence of the d'Este theatre at that date." (3) We may find it difficult to believe that some ten thousand spectators saw Ferrara's first Menaechmi performance. In all, between 14 Ercole had an active role in presenting at least fourteen different plays by Plautus and Terence. Ercole d'Este's Ferrara, in fact, took a lead in the staging of Roman comedy. (2) Enthusiasm sparked another performance of this play at the festivities for the marriage of young Alfonso d'Este and Anna Sforza, daughter of the duke of Milan, as one of three plays on successive February nights of 1491. (1) A contemporary chronicler, describing the play as "beletissima e piacevole" reports that the production showed the traveling Menaechmus arriving in a galley with a sail, while the resident brother's city was realistically represented and painted in the background. The first publicly performed play in Ferrara, this lively comedy of twins and mistaken identity appears, more significantly, to have been the first classical comedy so presented in vernacular translation. Thousands witnessed, with fireworks and other holiday events, the staging of Plautus's Menaechmi. Consider, for example, that watershed in the history of European theater occurring at Ferrara on 25 January 1486, with Duke Ercole I's carnival entertainments honoring Francesco Gonzaga, betrothed to Isabella d'Este. If The Comedy of Errors remains, for English speakers, the supreme instance of the Menaechmi contribution to drama, that play deserves to be seen as part of a larger picture of European, including English, comedy.