- SOPR. GALLERIE - FIRENZE COURTESY GABINETTO FOTOGRAFICO and the by c. thomas ault Atecedants Secular humanist drama reasserted itself in late fifteenth-century Italy in Ferrara and Rome in the same year, 1486. In Ferrara, the first performance of a classical humanist drama played in a modern language was given on 24 January 1486. The play was Plautus's Menaechmi, translated by the court academic, Baptista Guarini, and performed at court on a mansion stage. In Rome, Popmponio Leto's Academy1 gave a Latin performance of Seneca's Hippolytus on a booth stage. Figure 1.(above) La Calandria, designed by B. Peruzzi THEATRE SUMMER 2007 DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY 33