Throughout the early part of his great career, poet Giovanni Guarini enviously worked in the shadow of Torquato Tasso. For all his gifts, he found himself unable to achieve a position comparable to that of Tasso until the latter was confined for his insanity in 1579. Guarini's work helped create the vogue for the pastoral that continued in Europe for almost 200 years. Despite the career-slowing presence of Tasso, Guarini had it made from the start, born into a prominent family of humanist scholars and literati. His early education was probably conducted at home. He studied briefly in Padua, and succeeded his uncle into a professorship (in poetics and rhetoric) at Ferrara when he was only 19. Sometime around 1560, he wed Taddea Bendidio. He left the academic life in 1567 to begin service as a diplomat in the d'Este court at Ferrara. Much of his time thereafter was occupied with traveling; he went to Turin, Rome, Venice, and Poland, twice. In 1569, settings of his pieces first appear; he went on to have his works set by more than 125 composers, including Wert, Marenzio, and Monteverdi. But his efforts were still overshadowed by Tasso's. In 1579, when Tasso was confined, Guarini seized the opportunity to take his place. In 1580, he began Il pastor fido, the five-act, 39-scene pastoral drama he hoped would surpass Tasso's famous play Aminta. Although Il pastor fido eventually went on to great success, its beginnings were slow. He'd finished the work by 1584 and circulated it among literary circles for feedback. One of the first audible responses was an attack made by Giasone Denores in 1587. This only spurred the ambitious (and touchy) Guarini to write a polemic defense of the "tragicomic" genre called Il verato primo. It appeared in 1588 and another, Il verato secondo, followed a year later. Self-vindicated, Guarini finally published Il pastor fido in 1590 and its fate was immediately clear: By 1602, it had gone through 20 editions in Italy alone. In 1602, it also appeared in an annotated, 200-page, definitive edition. Il pastor fido was probably staged in 1595 at Ferrara for the first time, before going on to be performed all over the peninsula. Aminta was squashed. Throughout his rise, Guarini's ugly, ambitious character made his life unnecessarily difficult. His relations with Duke Alfonso II were so strained by 1588 that he had to leave Ferrara. Alfonso's meddling ensured that he didn't find another patron until, forgiven, he was at last allowed to return to Ferrara in 1595. But Alfonso died in 1597, landing Guarini on the road again. He rarely stayed anywhere longer than two years after this. 1598 also marks a tragedy in an already ill-fated family life. Among the eight children borne to his marriage, the only one with whom he wasn't in constant, deep conflict, died. His daughter Anna, a celebrated singer, was brutally murdered by a jealous husband under accusations of adultery. Mired in squabbles of all kinds, legal and filial, Guarini's gloomy final years were spent traveling back and forth from Rome.