"Margherita Costa’s Li Buffoni, depreciated, misattributed or just simply forgotten through the centuries, has finally found some love. In the sensitive hands of Sara Díaz and Jessica Goethals, who cheerfully whip the complicated language of this commedia ridicolosa into shape while remaining attentive to the irreverent, rambunctious vocabulary of the text, we find another valuable voice to add to the ever-growing roster of early modern women writers from Italy. A poet, dramatist, historian, singer, librettist, 'widow and poor virtuosa with two daughters,' Costa produced fourteen works in which she managed to say something important through laughter about what court life was like for underlings of either sex, and what kind of Baroque poetics allow women to find their voice."
 

Valeria Finucci, Duke University