which was later finished under a new title: Re Torrismondo (1587). It is influenced by the tragedies of Sophocles and Seneca, and tells the story of princess Alvida of Norway, who is forcibly married off to the Goth king Torrismondo, when she is devoted to her childhood friend, king Germondo of Sweden. Dialoghi (Dialogues), written between 1578 and 1594. These 28 texts deal with issues from morality (love, virtue, nobility) to the mundane (masks, play, courtly style, beauty). Sometimes Tasso touches major themes of his time, such as religion vs. intellectual freedom; Christianity vs. Islam at Lepanto. Discorsi del poema eroico, published in 1594, is the main text for Tasso's poetics. It was probably written in the years while he was working on Gerusalemme Liberata. Mental illness The disease Tasso had is now believed to be bipolarity. Legends describe him wandering the streets of Rome half mad, convinced that he was being persecuted. After his lengthy imprisonment in Ferrara's Santa Anna lunatic asylum, he was able to resume his writing, although he never fully recovered. Influence Tasso's lyric poetry may have had some influence in late Renaissance France on Desportes and Ronsard (whom Tasso met in Paris). It almost certainly influenced a number of English Elizabethans, including Sir Philip Sidney, Abraham Fraunce and Samuel Daniel. Claudio Monteverdi composed Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda upon the text of Gerusalemme Liberata, canto XII. He also composed music over some of Tasso's Rime, particularly madrigals. Giaches de Wert and Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa put into music many texts from Tasso's Rime and Gerusalemme. The German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote a play, Torquato Tasso, in 1790, which explores the struggles of the artist. He also composed a cantata text, "Rinaldo", inspired by canto XVI of Jerusalem Delivered, later set to music by Johannes Brahms. Giacomo Leopardi wrote Dialogo di Torquato Tasso e del suo Genio familiare (Operette morali, 1824), a prose about the long stay in St. Anna. The main theme is a comparison between pain and boredom, expressed in a dialogue between Tasso and a "Genius", or ghost, said to be visiting him in his loneliness. Among the numerous operas based on Jerusalem Delivered are works by Lully, Alessandro Scarlatti, Vivaldi, Handel, Haydn, Salieri, Cherubini, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Rossini and Dvořák. An experimental modern opera on the theme, by Judith Weir, transposes the scene into contemporary Iraq. Both Edmund Spenser