Chapter 6: Dante’s Theater, Dante’s Music

This chapter is divided in four sections, the first part, I. Dante’s Theater, beginning with Pietro Alighieri explaining that his father bases the Commedia on Terence’s Comedies and the Roman theater in the round, likewise the “Letter to Can Grande” making this observation; its second section more directly on Terence, including an explanation concerning the Greek logographers and their relation to Greco-Roman drama; its third on liturgical drama based in turn on Terence whom the oblates read in order to learn their conversational Latin, all the while noting that Terence was the freed slave from Africa of the Scipios and their Somnium Scipionis that Cicero penned. The second part is on II. Dante’s Music, particularly discussing the findings for the performance of the Music of the Commedia, that Dante composed seven motets which combine profane vernacular and sacred Latin, reconciling these with St Bernard’s lauda, “Vergina Madre”.