PIETRO

COSSA (183o-188o)  , Italian dramatist, was born at Rome in 1830, and claimed descent from the family of Pope John XXIII., deposed by the council of Constance . He manifested an independent spirit from his youth, and was expelled from a Jesuit school on the double charge of indocility and patriotism . After fighting for the Roman republic in 1849, he emigrated to South America, but failing to establish himself returned to Italy, and lived precariously as a literary man until 1870, when his reputation was established by the unexpected success of his first acted tragedy, Nero . From this time to his death in 188o Cossa continued to produce a play a year, usually upon some classical subject . Cleopatra, Messalina, Julian, enjoyed great popularity, and his dramas on subjects derived from Italian history, Rienzi and The Borgias, were also successful . Plautus, a comedy, was preferred by the author himself, and is more original . Cossa had neither the divination which would have enabled him to reconstruct the ancient world, nor the imagination which would have enabled him to idealize it . But he was an energetic writer, never tame or languid, and at the same time able to command the attention of an audience without recourse to melodramatic artifice; while his sonorous verse, if scarcely able to support the ordeal of the closet, is sufficiently near to poetry for the purposes of the stage . His collected Teatro poetico was published in 1887 .