Biography
Giovanni Battista Guarini was born in Ferrara in 1538 and died in Venice in 1612. He studied in Padua and Pisa before working as a diplomat and secretary at the Este court in Ferrara, serving among other things as envoy to Turin and on missions to Rome, Venice and Poland. Alongside his courtly career he wrote lyric poetry and, above all, the pastoral play Il pastor fido, composed in deliberate rivalry with Torquato Tasso's Aminta and published in 1590. The work became one of the most widely printed and translated theatrical texts of the early modern period and left a lasting mark on pastoral drama and, later, opera.
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