Historians of early opera have occasionally noted the appropriateness of Orpheus’ appearance as artistic spokesman for the new art form. Poet-singer par excellence of antiquity, whose music shook the very depths of the universe as he retrieved Eurydice from the Underworld, Orpheus surely appealed to the early opera composers and their humanist program—to recreate the moving power of an entirely sung drama by forging a new union of poetry, music, and gesture.

In the history of opera, however, primacy of place must be given to the god Apollo, for the legend of Apollo and Daphne was the subject of the first favola per musica, La Dafne, written by Ottavio Rinuccini, with music composed by Jacopo Corsi and Jacopo Peri, and first performed in 1598 at Corsi's home in Florence.

Marvell has long been recognized as a poet who enjoys play. One of the games he likes is to highlight the human habit of thinking in terms of purpose—what today would be called a teleological habit of thought. The most notable Renaissance form of this was to regard the world as made for a purpose, which as far as the human point of view was concerned, was man himself. ‘This worldly stage was purposely prepared, that God the father might secretly behold us.’ The teleological approach argued that the sun existed to shine on man, that the silkworm labored in order to provide man with silk, and so forth—an outlook shared by the ‘Suttle Nunns’ of ‘Upon Appleton House,’ who take their solipsism so far that they claim ‘These Walls restrain the World without, / … These Bars inclose that wider Den / Of those wild Creatures, called Men.’

These pages continue the inventory of Renaissance Latin Aristotle Commentaries published in Studies in the Renaissance, XXI (1974), 228-289; Renaissance Quarterly, XXVIII (1975), 689-741; XXIX (1976), 714-745; XXX (1977), 681-741; XXXI (1978), 532–603. The commentaries have been arranged alphabetically according to the author's family name, with a brief biobibliographical note and indication of the manuscripts and printed editions.