La Biagia da Decomano. Una commedia fiorentina in versi del primo Cinquecento

In 1996 Brian Richardson published in the journal Italian Studies an excellent study on Biagia da Decomano, a rustic comedy in rhyme (mostly octaves) anonymously printed by Bartolomeo Castelli, active 1519-1525. Professor Richardson worked on the only known exemplar of the earliest print, that of the British Library. Having found a second exemplar in Washington at the Folger Shakespeare Library, which cannot enhance the value of the find being engaged in Shakespeare's centenary, I thought to do something useful not only by giving news about it, but also by publishing the text, which is interesting for the language, a rustic Florentine very connoted, for the literary ascendants that recall the rustic literature of the Laurentian but also the Paduan mariazi, and for the historical-literary implications, being the earliest dramatic text of this not negligible literary vein that, playing with the same names and similar characters, knew a good fortune sixteenth century especially in Florence and Siena. The edition of the Biagia is accompanied by the variants of the following prints of the short drama (republished without major changes in 1541, 1557, two times in 1576, and then in a censored edition of 1584), a comprehensive glossary and a synthetic commentary.