Emanuela Patti is Lecturer in Italian at the University of Edinburgh. She is the author of Pasolini After Dante (2016) and Opera aperta: Italian electronic literature from the 1960s to the present (2022).

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsNotes on ContributorsIntroduction: David Rizzio: History and Myth across Arts and MediaEmanuela PattiPart I: History and Myth: Life and Death of David Rizzio as a Courtier1. David Riccio. Portrait of a SecretaryLucinda Byatt2. David Ricciolo, accorto, savio virtuoso: The Birth of the Myth in the Medici AvvisiCarlotta PaltrinieriPart II: Painting: David Rizzio’s Visual Representation across Centuries3. Building a Story: The Iconography of David RizzioAlessandra Zamperini4. Sir Walter Scott’s Victims of Progress: David Rizzio and Mary Queen of Scots in Sir William Allan’s The Murder of Rizzio (1833)Robin BailliePart III: Music and Opera: The Myth of David Rizzio5. The Blast of a Different Trumpet: David Rizzio’s Operatic AfterlifeTerence Sinclair6. The Rizzio Guitar: A Little Scotch Mist?John ReevePart IV: Literature, Cinema and Theatre: Portrayals of David Rizzio as ‘Other’7. Romantic To Contemporary Mythscapes: The Entangled Otherness of David Rizzio in Scottish LiteratureCarla Sassi8. The Queer Foreigner: Portrayals of David Rizzio in Josie Rourke’s Mary Queen of Scots (2018) and Liz Lochhead’s Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off (1989)Domenico Di RosaAppendixBibliography

This highly innovative volume offers an unprecedented view of Rizzio as a historical figure rather than a footnote in the story of Mary, Queen of Scots. It also lays bare the rich and fascinating story of his cultural afterlife, from contemporary pamphlets to an extraordinary range of media, literature, and especially music.