Publisher's Synopsis
"Epizia" is a stage adaptation of Ecatommiti, volume VIII, chapter five, Giraldi's tale of an errant Governor of Innsbruck, who gets the virginal heroine to his bed with a false offer of marriage and an equally false promise to let her imprisoned brother out of gaol.;The play will be of interest to students of English literature because of Shakespeare's elaboration of the Epizia story in "Measure for Measure". The text of the novella is reproduced as an appendix. The significance of legal debates within the play and the historical circumstances that gave rise to them are discussed in the introduction, as are the other ideological implications of the play.