Goldoni

Goldoni, CARLO, the creator of the modern Italian comedy of character and domestic life, was born in 1707 at Venice. Although he went through a course of law studies there and at Pavia, his heart was set even from a child upon plays and play-writing. His first serious attempts were tragedies, one of which, Belisario, was successful at Venice in 1732. But he soon discovered that his forte was comedy rather than tragedy, and set himself to effect a revolution in the Italian comic stage. At that time the popular comedies in Italy were really farces, in which pantaloons and harlequins filled the principal rôles, acting with masks on their faces, and trusting very largely to the inspiration of the moment for their buffooneries and pranks. For this style of thing Goldoni determined to substitute the comedy of character according to Molière, and a hard task he set himself. Several years were now spent by him wandering from city to city of North Italy, sometimes practising his profession, but always in intimate connection with companies of actors, for whom he wrote various comedies, until in 1740 he settled in Venice. Then for twenty years he poured forth comedy after comedy. In 1761 he made an engagement for two years to write for the Italian theatre in Paris, and for that purpose moved to the French capital. On the conclusion of this engagement he was appointed teacher of Italian to the daughters of Louis XV., and remained attached to the court until the Revolution. He died 6th February 1793. Goldoni's comedies, more than 120 in number, some of the best of which are the Villeggiatura trilogy, Locandiera, Le Baruffe Chiozzotte, Zelinda e Lindoro, Ventaglio, La Bottega di Caffè, and Dama Prudente, were for the most part put together too rapidly and too roughly to be adjudged first-rate. But, though they seldom touch more than the external and superficial aspects of life and society, they are marked by considerable skill in character-sketching, by faithful representation of contemporary manners, lively dialogue, and cleverness in the invention of comic situations. Goldoni wrote Mémoires of his own life (1787), and published at Venice in 1788-89 the first collected edition of his own works in 44 vols. (3d ed. Florence, 53 vols. 1827). His correspondence has been edited by Masi (1880) and Mantovani (1884). See Lives by Molmenti (1879) and Galanti (2d ed. 1883), and Vernon Lee, Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy (1880).