A disappointed courtier, past the prime of manhood, feeling his true vocation to be for severe studies and practical affairs, he yet devoted years of leisure to the slow elaboration of a dramatic masterpiece which is worthy to rank with the classics of Italian literature.

During this period his domestic lot was not a happy one.

He lost his wife, quarreled with his elder sons, and involved himself in a series of lawsuits.[181] Litigation seems to have been an inveterate vice of his maturity, and he bequeathed to his descendants a coil of legal troubles.

Having married one of his daughters, Anna, to Count Ercole Trotti, he had the misery of hearing in 1596 that she had fallen an innocent victim to her husband's jealousy, and that his third son, Girolamo connived at her assassination.

In the midst of these annoyances and sorrows, he maintained a grave and robust attitude, uttering none of those querulous lamentations which flowed so readily from Tasso's pen.
[Footnote 179: _Lettere_, p.