The Italian Renaissance writer Ludovico Ariosto is most famous for his verse epic Orlando Furioso. However, he also wrote plays, including the highly influential comedy I Suppositi, notable for a 1566 English translation by George Gascoygne called Supposes.
Both plays are also examples of commedia erudita, the learned comedy of scholars, which differed from commedia dell'arte, which was produced by professionals. Commedia erudita looked to classical Roman drama for inspiration. I Suppositi borrows in part from Terence's comedy The Eunuch and even more from Plautus's play The Captives.
In the first act, we learn that the young scholar Erostrata has switched places with his servant Dulippo. (Gascoygne spells the names Erostrato and Dulypo.) This is similar to the way Philocrates switches places with his slave Tyndarus in The Captives, but in Ariosto's play the motive is different. The false Dulippo (really Erostrata) uses his servant disguise to sleep with the beautiful Polinesta (Polynesta in Gascoygne's spelling).
Polinesta's father Damon, who is similar to the parsimonious Pantalone in commedia dell'arte, wants to marry her off without having to pay a dowery. That's why he favors a match with the old doctor of law Cleandro (Cleander as Gascoygne has it). Cleandro is like the Dottore figure in commedia dell'arte, and similarly has some long, rambling monologues. In the first act, he says (in Gascoygne's translation):
It becometh not a man to praise him selfe; but, indeede, I may say, and say truely, that my knowledge hath stoode me in better steade at a pinche than coulde all the goodes in the worlde. I came out of Otranto when the Turkes wonne it, and first I came to Padua, after hither, where by reading, counseling, and pleading, within twentie years I have gathered and gayned as good as ten thousande ducats.
That incident in Otranto, which the Ottoman Turks seized in 1480, putting much of the population to the sword and enslaving the rest, will become important later. First, however, we get a plot where the false Erostrata convinces a gentleman traveling from Sienna to pretend to be his father. Things get complicated when the real Erostrata's father arrives from Sicily. If this sounds a lot like the subplot in William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, now you know where the Bard picked up some of his ideas.
Of course, Ariosto was borrowing from others as well. The parasite character in I Suppositi, Pasifilo (or Pasyphilo according to Gascoygne), is based of Ergasilus from The Captives. Like Ergasilus, Pasifilo is always on the lookout for a free meal. When told he should supervise what is prepared for supper, he replies:
By the masse, if you should have studied this sevennight you could not have appointed me an office to please me better! You shall see what dishes I will devise.
Ariosto's borrowings from The Captives goes far beyond just the parasite character. We learn that Cleandro's son was sold as a slave to Erostrata's father, just as Hegio's son was stolen and sold as a slave in Plautus's play. In the end, Erostrato married Polinesta (without Damon having to pay a dowery) and Cleandro is content having recovered a son and heir. All ends happily.
Ariosto went on to compose other comedies, including Il Negromante (The Necromancer) and La Lena (Lena). He left another play, I Studenti (The Students) unfinished at his death, though it was completed by his brother Gabriele. It is I Suppositi, however, that has had the most influence of his comedies, at least in the English-speaking world.
