[ITALIAN DRAMA]. DOVIZI, Bernardo (il Bibbiena).

Comedia ... intitolata Calandra.

Rimini, per Hieronymo Soncino, 25 July 1526. ff. 56, roman letter, title printed in red and black. [With:][–––––––]. Comedia chiamata Aristippia. Rome, [F.M. Calvo], August 1524.ff. 34. [2], roman letter.[With:][–––––––]. GRASSO, Nicola. Eutychia Comedia. Rome, [F.M. Calvo], 27 September 1524.ff. 41, [1], roman letter.3 works in one volume, 12mo.; bound in contemporary Italian vellum boards, worn, pieces missing from head and tail of spine; in totally unrestored condition, in a half-leather box. A Sammelband of three renaissance prose comedies including an early edition of La Calandra from the Soncino press at Rimini. This play was a theatrical landmark, first performed in 1513 (the year the author became a cardinal), published in 1521, and the most frequently reprinted (and performed) comedy of the 16th century, played in every Italian city and court.The Jewish printer Gershon Soncino was the son of the printer of the first Hebrew Bible, and spent a wandering life (presumably because of religious persecution), during the course of which he set up presses in no fewer than nine Italian towns. He printed at Rimini from 1520 to 1527 when he moved to Cesena, his last halting-place before his final departure from Italy. He died in Constantinople in 1534. Soncino was the last printer of Hebrew books in the 15th century and the first in the 16th. This is one of his very few excursions into contemporary Italian literature. He printed three plays in all, this, Ariosto’s Suppositi printed at Rimini in the same year, and Machiavelli’s Mandragola printed at Cesena in 1527. All three are of the greatest rarity. Just one, the Ariosto (Yale only), features on OCLC / RLIN.On the title to the Calandra is an old (17th century) library stamp of three mounts surmounted by palm branches and a cross with the initials PLT.Manzoni, Annali Typografici dei Soncino, no. 131.

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