comedia piacevole e nuova. Nuovamente e con ogni dilige[n]tia stampata

“PIÈCE TRÈS LICENCIEUSE” (GAY)
8vo (148x97 mm). [47 of 48] leaves. Collation: A-F8. Lacking F8, a blank. Italic text, roman headers and dedication. Printer's device on title page; on the verso of the title page is the dramatis personae; preface by Filippo (II) Giunti addressed to Benedetto Busini (Florence, 30 August 1556, A2r-v); text of comedy (A3r-F7r); register, colophon and woodcut tail-piece at the end of the text on F7r; another Giunti device on the verso of the last printed leaf (F7v). Historiated initials. Later vellum, inked title along the spine, red edges. Some occasional staining and foxing, a good copy.
First edition of this the five-act prose comedy, variably attributed to Benedetto Busini or Giovan Battista Gelli.
“La Polifila (1556), a ‘new and pleasant comedy', has been attributed to Gelli, but is now assigned to Benedetto Busini […] The argument recounts the familiar story of a manservant who falls in love with his master's daughter and turns out to be the long-lost son of a respectable citizen and therefore worthy of Polifila. The prologue justly remarks that although this comedy is called new it is not new in invention but similar to others ‘that you know consist of young lovers, suspicious old men, and at the end discoveries and marriages' ” (M.T. Herrick, Italian Comedy in the Renaissance, Urbana & London, 1966, p. 124).
Edit 16, CNCE47469; G. Melzi, Dizionario di opere anonime e pseudonime, Milan, 1852, II, p. 356; L.G. Clubb, Italian Plays (1500-1700) in the Folger Library, Florence, 1968, p. 7, no. 18; M. Bregoli Russo, Renaissance Italian Theater Joseph Regenstein Library of the University of Chicago, Florence, 1984, p. 9, no. 25; W.A. Pettas, The Giunti of Florence. A Renaissance Printing and Publishing Family, New Castle DE, 2013, p. 435, no. 331; J. Gay, Bibliographie des ouvrages relatifs à l'amour, aux femmes, au marriage et des livres facétieux…, Lille, 1899 (repr. Geneva, 1990), III, cols. 807-808.