dour of the world, Lodovico Moro."
These sonnets are of great interest, less on account of their poetic
merit than because of the fidelity with which they commemorate political
events. The invasion of the French, the conquest of Naples, the battle
of Fornovo, the peace of Vercelli, the proclamation of Lodovico as Duke
of Milan, his coronation _fetes_ at Milan and Pavia, are all carefully
recorded. Nor does the series end here; in another sonnet the poet takes
up the note of warning, and bids Lodovico beware of the new King of
France and, ceasing to dally with Fortune, prepare to defend his fair
duchy. The next time Pistoia took up his pen, it was to wail over the
duke's fall and the ruin of Italy, and to hurl curses on the head of the
false servants who had betrayed their trust and yielded up the Castello
to their master's foes. This, at least, may be said to Pistoia's
credit--he did not forget his generous patron in the days of adversity;
and when Pamfilo Sasso, the Modena bard who had basked in the sunshine
of the Moro's favour, assailed the fallen duke in his verses, Pistoia
rose up in defence of his old master, and fiercely rebuked the cowardly
poet.

"I send you," wrote Calmeta to the Marchioness of Mantua in 1502, in a
letter enclosing Pistoia's verses, "an invective against Sasso for
certain sonnets and epigrams which he printed at Bologna against our
Duke Lodovico Sforza, and which some people say that I wrote. It was
never my habit to attack others, but if I had wasted a little ink in
defending so illustrious a prince, I hardly think I should deserve much
blame."[26]

Before the coming of Beatrice there had been no theatre in Milan, but
Lodovico had done his best to encourage dramatic art. As early as 1484,
he had written to the Duke of Ferrara, asking him to lend him a
Bolognese actor, Albergati by name, who was also a skilled mechanic, to
give sacred representations during Holy Week in Milan. The presence of
Duke Ercole's daughter naturally gave a fresh impulse to the growth of
dramatic art, and after Lodovico's visit to Ferrara in 1493, a theatre
was erected in Milan. Courtiers and poets vied with each other in the
production of plays and masques at each successive Christmas or
Carnival. In 1493, Niccolo da Correggio wrote a pastoral entitled _Mopsa
e Daphne_, which was performed at court that Carnival, and which he
afterwards sent to Isabella, promising to explain its allegorical
meaning at their next mee