[In the following essay, Kennard maintains that the plays of Carlo Goldoni represent the apex of the commedia dell'arte and were marked by wit and a concern for reform. By contrast, Kennard paints Goldoni's rival, Carlo Gozzi, as a jealous reactionary who loved the pure commedia dell'arte yet despised the common people who performed and watched the popular comedy.]

In the Piazzetta dei Mercanti in Venice, halfway between the Rialto and the Merceria, close to the Riva where the daily market was held, not far from the Piazza San Marco and the bookshop where his friends and partisans met and but a few steps farther from the Teatro di San Luca, now Teatro Goldoni, is a statue of Goldoni slightly stooped as if listening to the merchants and the shopkeepers discussing the day's business or engaging in wordy warfare or banter, while pigeons coo and flap their wings. If Goldoni could step down from his pedestal he would find himself at home in this twentieth century, and his comedies still being performed in the Venetian theatres. Goldoni belongs to these people. Like his own immortal Pantalone he was the synthesis of past centuries and the forerunner of a new age.

This is the Goldoni who proposed to purge of its nastiness while adding to its wit that degenerate theatre of which, in the preface to his theatrical works, he writes: “The comic theatre of Italy for more than a century past had so deteriorated that it became a disgusting object for general abhorrence. You saw nothing on public stages but indecent harlequinades, dirty and scandalous intrigue, foul jests, immodest loves.” In attempting this reform, Goldoni followed the precepts of his time, was in harmony with the moral standard of his environment, and did not attempt the impossible. His plays are the pride of the Commedia dell'Arte and have become immortal.

Goldoni's plays glimpse every aspect of life, catch the spirit of every social rank, show his love for the homely classes and his condemnation of the Venetian aristocracy; though diverting episodes and amusing dialogue obscure sometimes the courage of these attacks. The misfortunes of the humble are not exaggerated, but he asks for fair play. Whether dissipated husband, cavaliere servente, timid lover, spendthrift or gambler, most of his aristocrats are poltroons. The nobleman is flattered by his wife's conquests, pleased to get rid of her; but Pantalone, mouthpiece of the common people, abhors such practices.

Goldoni's middle class are more chaste; wives are more loyal, husbands more faithful. Goldoni's women are less wicked than his men. Those modest, industrious young girls, dainty Lucietta, Felicietta, who come and go so trim and gay—playing their pretty pranks, pleading for their lovers or plotting to captivate some grumbling old uncle—are truly Goldonian. The wife, the mother are shown bravely protecting their family from ruin. When Goldoni's women are bad their wickedness is an effect and not a cause. The coquettish wife is the unhappy partner of a dissolute husband; the peevish house drudge is embittered by long bullying. The woman contrives and plots because her natural life has been suppressed.

This thesis of the reform of society through the family and by female influence was advanced in Venice, where public opinion and the standard of morality was most unfair towards women. Goldoni's little world praised feminine charms, worshipped beauty with bows and compliments. But that the one half of mankind was the equal of the other was too absurd for discussion. Goldoni's rôle of the servetta is also significant. Goldoni's plays were crowded with healthy suggestions about the reform and the great influence of the family. He rehabilitated the most discredited trades and professions. He loved and understood the feeling and rights of the gondoliers. Goldoni defended the actors. He praised those who tried to live right, he castigated the individual but pleaded for the class.

Goldoni's inspiration, intuition and sincerity in depicting those humble people of the calli, traghetti and piazzetti, and in distinguishing their qualities from the aristocratic hand-kissing Lelios and Florindos, and his use of their vernacular, are unsurpassed. His L'Impresario della Smirne gives a pretty picture of theatrical customs. Admirable is his portrait of the physician who healed the spirit as well as the body. Lawyers he respected and admired. His Avvocato Veneziano is a hymn to the noblest calling. Most of his merchants are honest. Shopkeepers, tradespeople, even the humble facchino di piazza, pawnbrokers and money lenders find in him a defender. His scenes are few, vivacious, swift; but they are sufficient. The characters develop as the play progresses. We see frivolous girls in search of husbands, extravagant wives, infatuated husbands, adventurers, parasites, ignorant doctors.

Goldoni, most noted author of the Commedia dell'Arte, is a true Venetian. It is the intense sunshine and deep shadow, the brio and amor and cortesia of Venice which make the atmosphere of his plays. Vividly he describes his world. A marvellous observer, he is unable to generalize. He respects religious appearances. He does not invent his types but completes them through many plays. His female characters are many and varied; some of them are unsurpassed. He hates militarism and loathes war. In his social plan, the family is the nucleus of society.

In the long gallery of Goldoni's types, “Le Cortesan” is absolutely his own. What is a “cortesan”? In his Memoirs Goldoni says:

It is not possible to express the word “cortesan” by a French adjective. The term “cortesan” is derived from courtesy or courteous. The real Venetian “cortesan” is honest, obliging, useful, generous without profusion, gay but not foolish; he loves the ladies without compromising them. He enjoys pleasure but does not ruin himself in order to obtain it. He lives a quiet life but refuses to be swindled. He is affable and is a devoted friend.¹

Momolo thus expresses himself:

Money! Having it is not important, but knowing how to spend it. A good cortesan gives the same value to his silver as to his gold. He guards against stinginess, but will not be swindled. He can be generous and when necessary can draw the purse-strings tight. He is true with his friends, but with swindlers he meets trickery with trickery. The world is full of cheating, deception is fashionable; but I laugh at them for I always have a card for every play.

Momolo is placed in that most difficult position when a woman, a young girl, makes advances to him. Eleonora knows the value of the love she has given to Momolo; and it is just because she is so deliciously pure that she tells him of her love, and proves it in a manner which will ruin her if she fails to win him. Of course, in the last act, Momolo accepts the marriage-chain and perhaps becomes a good husband. To complete the figure of Momolo we have the scene where, sword in hand, Momolo faces two assassins paid to assault him and persuades them to beat up their paymaster. It is a scene of repertoire, one such as the actors of Commedia dell'Arte have in their zibaldoni; but it is played with brio, gaiety and such good nature and irony that it would give pleasure today. The scene between Momolo and Ludro the usurer is delightful. Momolo's debt increases though he has made many partial payments. A rascally go-between demands an enormous percentage; spoiled merchandise is offered him in place of cash; all the other means familiar to usurers are described; but indignant Momolo gives the usurer his lesson.

How charming, how artificial, how piquant and naïve is the eighteenth century theatre type of soubrette; elaborated after ancient comedy traditions and long presented in comic opera and vaudeville. How gay her laughter, how keen her repartee, how knowing her smile, how sincerity is disguised by artifice! With her little cap balanced on black curly hair, little lace apron and bodice freely open at the neck, when her little slippers and lace stockings advance on the stage one realizes that in Colombina alluring youth, good sense, satire without bitterness, mischief without perversion, skill without trickery, kindliness without vice have entered upon the scene, to encourage bashful lovers, make fun of graybeards, sustain the rights of love and of youth against intriguing old age and selfishness. That darting repartee will pass over the heads of the dotards in the play but will reach the audience. Loose talk, insinuations, will be exchanged but no actual grossness. Colombina is never wanton.

She has disappeared, this pert soubrette to whom one says everything, who understands everything and to whom everything is permitted. She has disappeared, this natty, lissome, pretty soubrette. She who could skim the brink of the abyss yet escape improprieties; could weave intrigue yet protect lovers; arrange the rendezvous but prevent the finale appassionato—she has disappeared as all artistic creations disappear with the changing humour of the public. In the Commedia dell'Arte she was always represented by the youngest and prettiest actress. Born in the mud of ancient cesspools, elevated by the pomp of improvised comedy, she illumined the comedy of masks. Each author transformed this supple figurine according to his own ideas. Goldoni found his soubrette already fashioned by the Commedia dell'Arte, but chiefly he found her among the comedians who were his first masters.

In his earlier pieces she was Colombina, the scandal-bearer, sower of discords. Aided by the collaboration of Mme. Baccherini, Goldoni soon evokes a quite different soubrette. In the Donna di Garbo, a comedy of transformations, the actress shows the whole range of her talents. A mere change of costume or headdress no longer suffices. In order to conquer an entire family there must be a metamorphosis of attitude, almost of character. Playing with the gambler, wise with the learned, attentive to the old grumbler, coquetting with some, austere with others, the “sly dog,” the woman di garbo becomes at the end a sentimentalist. Goldoni never attempted to duplicate this rôle. In his other plays he placed Colombina among the subordinate characters. Realizing that the proverb “Like master like man” is doubly true in regard to women, he made his Colombina to fit rôles consistent with those of her mistress.

In La Serva amorosa he calls her Corralina and gives her a Goldonian and Venetian physiognomy. This adjective amorosa does not correspond with the French word amoureuse. It is not a question of love but of tenderness, of devotion, of active kindness and a chivalric impulse. Goldoni, connoisseur and interpreter of feminine souls, knew how to divine that heroism, abnegation, patience and fidelity which was hidden behind trifling manners or deliberate coldness, especially where the woman wished to save her little too sensitive heart, her little too punctilious amour propre. Corralina does not wear her heart upon her sleeve. She has reticences even from herself. Under her white purity of devotion there glows a little flame which, unless repressed, may flare into a conflagration. And it is this something understood, a martyr's aureole, which adds poignant charm to her person. Here are two Venetian bourgeois families, that of Pantalone, father of charming Rosaura, and that of Ottavio, father of Florindo. Ottavio is now the husband and slave of Beatrice his second wife, and is stepfather of Lelio. Florindo is maltreated by his stepmother, driven from home by old Ottavio; and but for Corralina he would have starved. It is Corralina who brings about his marriage with Rosaura, the recognition of his rights as the heir, and the banishment of the second wife and stepson. This dénouement complies with theatrical tradition.

Notice the difference between Goldoni's Corralina and Molière's and Marivaux's most famous soubrettes. How natural her introduction! She knits a pair of stockings. The yarn came from her dead mistress. “Ah, but those were the happy days. Patience! I have undertaken to help poor Mr. Florindo and I will never go back until I have finished that which I have promised to do. Poor Mr. Florindo! I love him as if he were my brother. My mother nursed him. We have both drawn milk from the same breast. We have grown up together and besides I have a very tender heart. When I have become attached to anyone, I would let myself be cut in pieces for them.” Florindo enters the house weeping. He is penniless. Corralina gives him kind words and vague promises. She is only loaning him the money. “Yes, yes, I don't intend to give you a single thing. I am keeping count of everything. I will demand payment to the very last penny.” Rosaura buys the stockings and listens to Corralina's gossip about Florindo's passion. Florindo is the pearl of young men. He never scolds, hasn't a vice, doesn't gamble nor run around with wild young men or girls, nor does he drink. Corralina also hints at the great expectations of this the only son of a rich father. She does not tell the whole truth but overflows with fantastic explanations. “Florindo has left home because he wishes to marry; he stays in this neighbourhood because he loves these windows, and very well you know why. In love with me? Don't be so foolish. He is a very serious young man and madly in love with you.”

Having thus started the affair and drawn from Rosaura a half-confession, Corralina returns home and finds Florindo in despair. Madame Beatrice has ordered the notary to make Ottavio's will, entirely in favour of his stepson Lelio and of herself. Corralina says, “We will begin by having a good lunch; then I will talk with the notary.” Pantalone enters; ensues a combat between two finished duelists. Two absolutely Venetian types are facing each other, and it is a treat to witness the rapier thrust. “Never enter my house,” Pantalone orders. “I am tired of quarrels on account of Florindo; I am through with him and his family.” Corralina blackguards him, pretends she has been personally insulted, appeals to his vanity. A fine man! With wealth and high position to tamely allow the insults of Madame Beatrice and of Ottavio to pass unpunished! Why, he should help Florindo! And what a splendid thing would be a marriage between Florindo and his daughter Rosaura! Florindo possesses every desirable quality himself. Very soon he will return to his family and take his own rank and he will make a brilliant marriage; probably to some little simpleton, one of the many coquettes hanging around, eager to catch such a desirable husband as Florindo will be.

Rosaura visits Corralina, Florindo being hidden in the next room. Corralina again discusses the virtues and the brilliant prospects of Florindo and promises that some day Rosaura shall come to her house to talk with Florindo since there is no other way to arrive at an understanding. “But if anyone should find out?” “No one will find out.” “How shall I know when to come?” “Leave that all to me; only promise that you will come when I tell you to.” The promise is made. Rosaura calls in Florindo and the classic Commedia dell'Arte scene is played between timid lovers and encouraging soubrette. Then before the powder explodes she intervenes. How many such representations are to be found in the canevas of the Commedia dell'Arte and in the zibaldoni of the actors! The making of Ottavio's will is amusing. Corralina accompanies the notary, and when Beatrice goes out with him she persuades Ottavio to realize his duty to his own son and to drive Beatrice and his stepson from the house. Corralina is Goldoni's most perfect soubrette. His others are pathetic and tearful or deceitful and tricky; what they gain in realism, they lose in charm.

Precursor of the moralists and psychologists of the following century, Goldoni discovers in the soul of Valentina, the housekeeper, the profound and ancient causes which explain the violent reaction against established order. Who before Goldoni searched for a soul in revolt lodged in the body of a soubrette? In what play before Goldoni's is there found such contrast between vice and greatness of soul as in this housekeeper who manages everything and is herself dominated by a rapacious sister, and by a lover of the lowest type? Other Commedia dell'Arte sketches present a woman trying to win an old man's affection that she may rob him for the benefit of her lover. But Goldoni shows a woman dominated by a blind passion which overwhelms all prudence, a madness which disregards all moral law. Her lover is unworthy but she loves him; her sister Felicita is a procuress yet she loves her; and she knows and judges herself for what she is. She is wicked because life has made her wicked; because “the hatred which I have breathed in has rendered me hateful, because in escaping vengeance I have undertaken to avenge myself.” Utterly spoiled by the indulgent master, she has herself been conquered by love. Valentina is a milestone along the pathway of society's development; the servant who has become a thinking individual; a personality apart from other personalities in the vast sea of human passion.

Goldoni's personages are not to be found in the medley of Piazza San Marco; they have their own popular resorts, in some secluded bottega where they indulge in the sumptuous feast of a cup of coffee and a few crackers made of insipid flour paste.

In Le Massere Goldoni sketches an entire group of little maidservants. La Massera is a maid of all work. She has recently come from the country and has not lost the bright cheeks, the freshness of those gentle valleys. It is the maidservant of modest Venetian families, whose mistress has no secrets from her; or whose elderly master is sentimental and who to his fatherly affection for her adds a different kind of love; “but nothing, you understand, in the slightest degree improper.” In the early morning these maids are on their doorsteps or their balconies, gossiping, calling or disputing for the favour of the handsome young fellow who visits the fountain, and offers to take them all to the coffee house. It is the last day of the Venetian Carnival and these gay young girls and even Donna Rosega, from whom age has not taken the lust of youth, have wandered freely with their beaux. What a day! What escapades because of their masks! What a whirlpool of little plots, unexpected meetings, of gaiety! What peals of laughter; bright sparkles as from a skyrocket!

How amusing the dialogue between old graybeards Biasio and Zulian—each recounting the charms of devoted servants, tender, attractive, affectionate, patient. “One who knows how to put her hand to everything,” says Biasio, “and don't imagine for a minute that she is old. She is young and pretty—at least I find her so. What more could you want?” Zulian praises his own maid. “Agnes tells me that I look like a man not forty years old, and she ought to know.” The other tells how she sees that he is properly shaved and assures him that he has cheeks like a rose and is as active as a young boy. One can guess what Goldoni would accomplish in bringing together these masked graybeards and servants. Jewels indeed are these pictures, yet are they rarely played. For where are the actresses to depict this type of soubrette? Such cleverness and gaiety! The world is too old, too sad for her.

The Mirandolina type of soubrette is no longer exactly a servant. She is the locandiera; she presides over a little establishment which admits only well known guests, where service becomes hospitality and where orders are requests for favours. It is a little middle-class boarding house with a mingling of bachelors' rooms. The Chevalier Ripafratta, the Marquis of Forlinpopoli, the Count of Alba Fiorita are permanently established here. Two of them already love her. The Marquis of Forlinpopoli, a finished type of the ruined and vain barnabotti, offers her a title of nobility and the half of his poverty. “The most excellent seignor Marquis wants to marry me. Ah, well, there is just one little difficulty,” says Mirandolina. “I will have nothing to do with him; I like the roast but not the smoke. If I had accepted all those who wished to marry me I would have had many husbands. All those who come here make love to me, and they all end by asking me to marry them. It is not the same with the Chevalier Ripafratta. He makes himself out a countryman and acts like a bear; he is the first stranger who has come here who has not shown any pleasure in talking to me. He hates women! He can't bother to even look at them! Ah, the poor little fool! He will soon find one who knows how to teach him what is what!” Goldoni's Mirandolina shows exquisite delicacy; one word more or less, one gesture a little more bold and she would have glided into triviality or impudence. Experience has made her independent; pride keeps her from being too humble; but she is never a prude.

Pantalone is Goldoni's mouthpiece; he is also the central figure of the Goldonian comedy—the chief Venetian mask and best representative of the Venetian middle class. Goldoni found the character already fixed in the popular comedy. It was the mask the least masked. His tall figure, pointed beard, dark clothes, big cloak; his slippers, most appropriate for the few steps separating Rialto from Piazza; his supple gestures, measured tones, politeness, affable manner, long discourses, rough scoldings and facile gentlenesses; his cleverness in unravelling complicated affairs and his ability to make the best of good opportunities; his amiability to strangers; his complaisance toward his superiors—all this was as familiar in the city as in the theatre. Stationed in the piazzette, seated before the tables of the café Florian or grouped on the Rialto bridge, or in the evening filling the halls of the Ridotto, there were plenty of real Pantaloni such as one would see on the stage of the Commedia dell'Arte.

In the past he has been called “Magnifique,” has been more cheerful. If he has aged and become more serious because of greater difficulties and smaller profits, it is because the magnificent Venice of earlier days has now become shut in and her commerce has dwindled. Life has become more complicated and it is necessary to be more industrious and clever. He becomes authoritative and dictates the law, he supplants the patrician, he becomes banker, lawyer, professor and even minister-of-state, replacing the formerly venerated patrician. Pantalone is prudent but not cowardly. He no longer fights duels, but he faces an insolent and will threaten those who affront him. In La Putta Onorata he says to Ottavio, “Monsieur the Marquis, go and give your orders in your marquisat.” In later plays Goldoni's Pantalone becomes more clever and less aggressive; he has had more experience. The evolution of this character through Goldoni's plays and in situations always slightly different portrays Goldoni's finest art. In Goldoni's comedies the moral flows with perfect naturalness and spontaneity, and if there is not always a triumph of virtue there is always a logical triumph; that logic which regulates so many things and which explains so many others.

Carlo Gozzi was Goldoni's jealous rival. His La Tartana degli influssi is malicious. Even before Goldoni had started for Paris, Gozzi had won the applause of fickle Venice by presenting a fantastic drama constructed upon the lines of the old Commedia dell'Arte. On the evening of January 25, 1761, Antonio Sacchi's company with enormous success performed Gozzi's play L'Amore delle tre melarance. Once upon a time the King of Coppe's son Tartaglia was dying of ennui and consumption; his only cure was to laugh. A little old woman Fata Morgana appears and Truffaldino tips her over in a most humiliating manner. The Prince laughs loudly and is cured. In revenge Fata Morgana secretly inspires him to conquer “The Three Oranges.” The Prince and Truffaldino undertake this strange adventure wherein alternate the phantasmagoria of the Spanish theatre and the heroics of chivalric romance. Venetian audiences were pleased that these masks which had come from the antique Roman mimes, had lived across the darkest ages, had impersonated Italian regions and races and had amused so many generations should continue to live on the Italian stage.

Gozzi writes:

I presented L'Amore delle tre melarance to Sacchi's company of comic players and the extravaganza was produced in the theatre of San Samuele at Venice during the Carnival of 1761. Its novelty seasoned with trenchant parodies of Chiari's and Goldoni's plays created such a sudden and noisy revolution of taste that these poets saw in it the sentence of their doom. Who could have imagined that this twinkling spark of a child's fable should have outshone the universally applauded illumination of two famous talents, condemning them to obscurity; while my own dramatized fairy-tales enthralled the public for many years?

In 1762, after having given L'Amore delle tre melarance, Il Corvo (The Raven), Il Re Cervo (King Stag) and Turandot, Sacchi's company removed to the larger theatre of San Angelo.

In his Fiabe Gozzi employed the four chief masks and the Servetta Smeraldina. Because of Sacchi's talent Truffaldino's rôle was left to improvisation. Gozzi wrote out the dialogue of the other masks when he thought them sufficiently important. Stammering Tartaglia of the Three Oranges is still the Neapolitan glutton and knave. The Tartaglia of the Little Green Bird is the carnal careless boon-companion. Most of the Fiabe subordinate the masks, but sometimes they are important. A book of Neapolitan fairy-tales, Il Pentamerone del Cavalier Giovan Battista Basile, ovvero lo Cunto de li Cunti, largely inspired Gozzi's Fiabe. The novelty of Gozzi's plays secured audiences but failed to interest Italian readers; but to German and English critics Gozzi is the harbinger of Romanticism. His fantasy is the product of his surfeited memory. His plays were vulgar caricatures but they contained valuable motives.

The Little Green Bird is Gozzi's best play. Ninetta had given birth to twins, Renzo and Barbarina. The wicked old Queen-mother, pretending that these are only two spaniel puppies, ordered Pantalone to drown them and imprison her daughter-in-law Ninetta in a dungeon. The twins were not killed but were brought up by the peasants Smeraldina and her husband Truffaldino. Truffaldino has lately turned the children out of his pork shop and they wander in search of a home.

These children have been reading philosophy and they prattle philosophical maxims with as little comprehension as did Gozzi's Venetians. Renzo declares that the death of their parents has destroyed the normal human longing for family ties. Barbarina confesses that she is courted by a pretty little green bird. To the dungeon where Ninetta is buried alive the little green bird brings a bottle and a basket of food. To the audience he tells his own little story and the longer tale of Ninetta's woes. How Renzo and Barbarina are wandering on a desert shore, seeking distraction from their misery by talking of future good times. A speaking statue of Cadmon joins in the conversation, presenting Gozzi's own philosophical viewpoint. In the last act, everything comes right. Tartaglia is transformed into a frog, Brighella into an ass. King Tartaglia learns that Barbarina, being his daughter, cannot be his wife. His Ninetta is restored to him after her long captivity under the sewer. The little green bird becomes a royal Prince and marries Barbarina.

Turandot, written in verse and prose, has been widely praised. Its merit lies in the evolution of Turandot's character. When Calaf has won the prize Turandot cries out that she hates him and will die rather than marry him. Chivalrous Calaf answers that he will give the Princess another chance. If she solves his riddle his life will be forfeited. The riddle is to guess his own name. Adelma loves Calaf and, to prevent the marriage, discovers the name and tells it to Turandot. Calaf having lost lifts his dagger to pay the penalty. Turandot's love conquers her pride. She entreats Calaf to take her for his wife and obedient slave.

In none of his plays did Gozzi produce a true work of art. An ultraconservative devoted to the old aristocracy of which he was a part, all foreign ideas distressed and distorted his mental balance. Harbinger of Romanticism, reviver of the Commedia dell'Arte, he personified and agonized in the crumbling of the old aristocratic Venetian order.

I lay my pen aside just at the moment when I should have had to describe that vast inundation called the French Revolution, which swept over Europe, upsetting kingdoms and drowning the landmarks of immemorial history. This awful typhoon caught Venice in its gyration, affording a splendidly hideous field for philosophical reflection. The ululations of the dreamers yelling out Liberty, Equality, Fraternity deafened our ears. I always dreaded and predicted a cataclysm as the natural consequence of those pernicious doctrines. Yet my Cassandra warnings were doomed to remain as useless as these Memoirs will certainly be.

It was not by accident that Goldoni and Gozzi appeared at the same time among a people who had not yet given full measure to their genius in drama, comedy or tragedy. Under a diversity of temperament and of literary accomplishment, Goldoni and Gozzi have certain traits in common. Each of them is utterly Venetian. The sum of their personalities and of their writings presents a remarkable picture of Venice at the close of the eighteenth century. Gozzi's rabid jealousy of Goldoni and the enormous excitement which their controversy produced in Venice seem almost incredible. It is improbable that it could have occurred in any other city or in any other time. Hatred of Goldoni is Gozzi's master passion; it is the inspiration of Gozzi's plays. It was more than a hatred of personality. Gozzi loved all that Goldoni wished to destroy; he despised the common people whom Goldoni loved.

In his Memoirs Gozzi writes:

We did not shun the theatres. We were not so unjust as to refuse his share of merit as a playwright to Goldoni. We did not confound him with Chiari to whom we conceded little. Yet everywhere tables, writing desks, booksellers' stalls, schools, colleges and convents were filled with the trivialities and absurdities of both quill-drivers; and everything these scribblers sent to press was valued as a mirror of reform in literature, a model of right thinking and good writing. I recognized in Goldoni an abundance of comic motives, truth and naturalness. Yet I detected a poverty and meanness of intrigue; nature copied from the fact, not imitated; virtues and vices ill-adjusted, vice too frequently triumphant; plebeian phrases of low double meaning, particularly in his Venetian plays; surcharged characters; scraps and tags of erudition stolen Heaven knows where and clumsily brought in to impose upon the crowd of ignoramuses. Finally, as a writer of Italian, except in the Venetian dialect, of which he showed himself a master, he seemed to me among the dullest, basest and least correct authors who have used our idiom.

In spite of all the praises showered upon Goldoni, paid for or gratis, by journalists, preface-writers, romancers, apologists, Voltaires, with the single exception of his Bourru Bienfaisant he never produced a perfect dramatic piece. At the same time he never produced one without some excellent comic trait. In my eyes always he had the appearance of a man born with innate sense of how sterling comedies should be composed. He displayed an extraordinary ability for interweaving dialogues in the Venetian dialect taken down verbatim in the houses of the common people, taverns, gaming halls, traghetti, coffee-houses, places of ill-fame and the most obscure alleys of our city.

Audiences delighted in the realism of these plays. Never before had realism been so brilliantly illustrated, illuminated and adorned as it now was by the ability of actors who faithfully responded to the spirit of this new and popular type of farce. I maintained and proved that he had frequently charged the noble persons of his plays with fraud, absurdity and baseness, reserving serious and heroic virtues for personages of the lower class. I also showed that his “Putta Onorata” was not honest, that he had incited to vice while praising virtue. With regard to this point the four-mouthed Comic Theatre kept protesting that it wished to drive the time-honoured masks of improvised comedy off the stage, accusing them of imposture, immodesty and bad example for the public. I, on the other hand, clearly proved that Goldoni's plays were a hundred times more lascivious, more indecent, and more injurious to morals.

Gozzi also hated Pietro Chiari the Brescian, who had lived many years among the Jesuits and was titular poet of Francesco III of Modena. He was an elegant and worldly abbé, author of academic dissertations and of philosophic and scientific letters. The extravagant spectacular plots of his plays were heightened by abundant plagiarisms. His comedies were performed by the Sacchi and the Medebac companies. “A hot brain,” Carlo Gozzi calls him in the Memorie Inutili, “disorderly, audacious and pedantic. When he writes for the theatre he has an astrologer's obscurity of plot, seven-league boots, … some good theatrical surprise, some stupidly happy description, … the most inflated and bombastic writer who has adorned our century.”

The quarrel with Goldoni and Chiari, the alliance with Sacchi, the composition of the Fiabe and twenty-three plays on Spanish subjects, the liaison with Teodora Ricci, the episode of Gratarol, and the Memorie Inutili sum up Gozzi's life. The Republic of San Marco fell. Aristocratic Gozzi bowed to the French Revolution. His old age was passed in comparative solitude. When the old Commedia dell'Arte and the old actors died Gozzi's Fiabe were relegated to the marionette stage, where some of their scenari are still performed. Italy has elected to ignore Gozzi and to deify Goldoni.

The Commedia dell'Arte was the special glory of Italian dramatic genius. Gozzi wrote: “I reckon improvised comedy among the particular distinctions of our nation. I look upon it as quite a different species from the written and premeditated drama. The able comedians who sustain the masks are far more praiseworthy than those improvisatory poets who excite astonishment in crowds of gaping listeners.” Yet panegyrist Gozzi thus ululates against the “able comedians” of the improvised comedy:

Among all the people to be studied by a philosophical observer none are so difficult to really know as actors and actresses. Educated in deception from the cradle they are such adepts in masking falsehood with an air of candour that it is most difficult to know their true heart and character. The chief idol of all actors is their venal interest. Expressions of politeness, acknowledgments of obligation, terms of praise, courteous welcome are parts of a fixed system of deception which actors consider necessary in the worship of this idol. Barefaced boldness is the chief stock in trade, the very bone and marrow of these artists. There is no sort of impropriety, pretence, injustice, swindling, tyranny which they do not gladly employ.

Let no man suppose that it is possible to converse with actresses without making love. You must make it or pretend to make it. This is the only way to guide them to their own advantage. Love moulds and kneads them in flesh, bones and marrow. Love is their guiding star from the age of five or six. In this respect, I soon discovered that the austerity of Sacchi's company was a barren formula. How many actresses lay siege deliberately and in cold blood to their lovers, despoil them of their property and suck them dry! They worship wickedness and abhor good living. Though they cloak their baseness with the veil of verbal decency, and preserve external decorum, in their souls they trample on shame and sing this verse:

“Colla vergogna io gia mi sono avvezza.”
(With infamy I long have been at home.)

In what concerned myself I looked upon their love-intrigues as duels of wit and comic passages which furnished me amusement. They would have done anything to gain my heart. Meanwhile, their attentions, protests, fits of rage, jealousies and tears on my account had all the scenic illusion of an overwhelming passion. Self-love is so ingrained in human frailty that men always fancy themselves preferred by the woman on whose very faults they put an indulgent interpretation. This was my case with the Ricci.

Gozzi's pride restrains his giving a true revelation of his love for Teodora Ricci. It was probably the only real romance in his long, lonely and arid life. In a play by Renato Simoni, Gozzi is shown already tormented by his sour temper, jealous disposition and falling a facile prey to the intrigues of Sacchi and of his pupil Teodora Ricci. Ricci is a typical Venetian actress, puerile and fickle rather than wicked, who manages to love Sacchi, Gozzi and Gratarol at the same time. In the last act of Simoni's play Gozzi is a lonely old man. His elderly housekeeper and old-fashioned servants make a comfortless home for the man who has outlived his fame. Sacchi comes in to say good-bye and their meeting is pathetic. Gozzi sits surrounded by his servants and Sacchi, straightening his stooping form, commences one of his traditional scenes. His jokes fall flat, his lazzi stir not even a smile. When the worn-out actor throws down his cap, his sobs of despair are echoed by his aged and forlorn patron. They fall into each other's arms, and Gozzi's parting word is a name which now trembles on his lips: “Teodora?”

Note

1. This ideal of the Venetian “cortesan”—from whence did it come? And why, before Goldoni, had the Italian comedy ignored it? Did Goldoni remember that the poets of the dolce stil novo also had considered that amor e cortesia were identical; that they had defined the laws of love and the code of courtesy and had taught that honour should regulate pleasure and pleasure should be disciplined? Always it had avowed that the art of living is the art of being happy, of amusing and finding amusement, of being satisfied with oneself. The “cortesan” should possess pleasing and showy accomplishments; should sing, recite, improvise, play some musical instrument, give a serenade and pay his social obligation with something besides money. To be rich was not indispensable but to make a fine show and at least appear magnificent and generous was important. Money might be borrowed or gained by gambling—its source was not important; but it must flow freely between the fingers, dance gaily on the green cloth or slip into the palm of some pretty woman. Neither beauty nor youth was absolutely requisite, but gaiety and boldness joined to a lissome body and a supple wit was essential to the “cortesan.”