Battista Guarini, having studied, perhaps at Padua,…
1585 CE
Battista Guarini, having studied, perhaps at Padua, before he was twenty had became professor of rhetoric in Ferrara where in 1567 he had entered the service of Alfonso II, duke of Ferrara as courtier and diplomat.
He had become the friend of Torquato Tasso, who was also in the Duke's service, and, in 1579, had replaced Tasso as court poet when he was imprisoned by the Duke for erratic behavior caused by mental disturbance.
Guarini, finding the position uncongenial, had retired in 1582 to his ancestral farm, the Villa Guarini, where he writes Il pastor fido (“The Faithful Shepherd”), thus establishing a form of a new literary genre, the pastoral drama.
Guarini reenters public service in Ferrara in 1585, but his reconciliation with the court is short-lived.