ied in the fulness of his
fame February 2, 1594, when Shakespeare was thirty years old, and was,
it seems, just getting into print for the first time.

The man whom all posterity knows by the name of his birthplace, as
Palestrina, was the greatest composer the Catholic Church ever had. He
was a younger contemporary of Willaert's, but was born an Italian. And
all his glory belongs to Italy. Of his youth nothing is known. He first
appears as the organist and director at the chief church in Palestrina
from 1544 to 1551.

Of his early love-making nothing is known; it is only certain that he
married young, and it would seem very happily. Yet this marriage brought
him the greatest shock of his life. His wife's name was Lucrezia, "his
equal and an honest damsel" (_donzella onesta e sua para_), according to
the biographer Baini, who adds:

"With her, Giovanni divided the pleasure of seeing himself elected the
first Maestro of the Vatican; with her he suffered the most strait
penuries of his life; with her he sustained the most cruel afflictions
of his spirit, and with her also he ate the hard crust of sorrow: yet
with her again he rested in the sunlight that beamed from time to time
to his glory and to his gain. And so they passed together, these two
faithful consorts, nearly thirty years."

Lucrezia bore him four children, all sons, Angelo, Ridolfo, Silla, and
Igino. The first three died in early manhood, after showing themselves
in some sort heirs of their father's genius: in the second book of his
motets Palestrina has included some of their compositions. The last son,
Igino, outlived his parents and his own welfare; he was "_un' anima
disarmonica"_ After his father's death he attempted to complete and
market an unfinished and rejected composition of his father's, but he
was legally restrained. He lost some of his father's unpublished works,
while certain noddings of genius, better lost, and refused even by the
Pope, Palestrina dedicated them to, still remain, with a dedication to
yet another Pope, put on them by the scapegrace Igino.

A certain writer Pitoni, by a bit of careless reading, multiplied
Palestrina's wives by two, and divided his sons by the same number,
claiming that Lucrezia, the first wife of Palestrina, was the mother of
Angelo, that after her death he married one Doralice, and that she was
the mother of Igino. But Baini exposes Pitoni's carelessness, proves the
existence of Ridolfo and Silla by the inc