Goldoni, Carlo

Goldoni, Carlo (1709–93), Italian dramatist, destined for the law, but drawn to the theatre by his desire to reform the now moribund commedia dell'arte by replacing the old-style improvisation on an outline plot with fully written comedies of character. In this he was to be bitterly opposed not only by some of the actors but by his contemporary fellow-dramatist Carlo Gozzi, who had his own plans for reform. Goldoni began slowly, writing out one part fully in his Momolò Cortesan (1738). It was followed by what was to become one of his most popular works, Il servitore di due padrone (The Servant of Two Masters, 1743). For its first production he left some of the scenes to be improvised by Truffaldino, the ‘servant’ of the title, but wrote them out in full when the play was published in 1755. It was a great success, and was followed by La vedova scaltra (The Wily Widow, 1748), La buona moglie (The Good Wife) and Il cavaliere e la dama (The Knight and the Lady, both 1749), and II teatro comico (1750), his manifesto for the reform of the stage; all of these four plays were staged at the Teatro Sant' Angelo in Venice. Goldoni was now at the height of his success, as was evinced by the popularity of Il bugiardo (The Liar) and La bottega del caffè (The Coffee House, both 1750), and particularly of what is usually regarded as his masterpiece, La locandiera (The Landlady, 1751), a picture of feminine coquetry which delighted audiences all over Europe and later America, more especially when Mirandolina, the landlady of the title, was played by Eleonora Duse. With his next play Goldoni left the Teatro Sant'Angelo for the Teatro San Luca, which was too big for his intimate comedies, and where he had to contend with the hostility not only of Gozzi but of a mediocre playwright, Pietro Chiari. Between them they drove Goldoni to Paris, where from 1761 he wrote plays in both Italian and French for the Comédie-Italienne, which were not as successful as he had hoped. Caught up in the turmoil of the French Revolution, he died in poverty. By employing the masks of the old commedia dell'arte in a realistic manner, he paved the way for the later drame bourgeois of Diderot, and much of his work survives not only on the Italian stage but in the international repertory.