chiefly in Chiozza, a ruder and humbler miniature of the island city
some twenty-five miles away. Though an incurable wanderer,--indeed, so
filled with the true Bohemian's feverish love for change that he never
could endure even success anywhere for many summers,--he yet gave more
of his best years, and a heartier loyalty, to Venice than to any other
home. He knew best, and delineated best, the ordinary life of the
lagoons. Mr. Howells, himself by long residence and love a
half-Venetian, declares that the comedies in the local dialect are
invariably the best, and next best the Italian plays whose scenes are at
least laid in Venice. Perhaps the critic is here himself unduly swayed
by his affections. Goldoni knew well nearly all Italian lands. He had
even, for a series of years, a career as an advocate in Pisa. "My comic
genius was not extinguished, but suppressed," he explains. He did not
even then give up play-writing, and a traveling theatre manager easily
beguiled him back to Venice. This was in 1747, and this same manager,
Medebac, setting up a new theatre in Venice, absorbed Goldoni's energies
for several years. It was in 1750 that he successfully carried out a
rash vow to produce sixteen new comedies in a single year! Among these
are a goodly number of his best, including 'The Coffee-House,' from
which a few scenes are given below.
Though he passed over into the service of a different theatre, traveled
constantly with his actors, accepted invitations to Parma, Rome, etc.,
to oversee the performance of his plays, yet he never gave up his home
in Venice altogether, until summoned to Paris in 1761. These fourteen
years, moreover, form the happiest period of his life. His income from
the theatres, from published editions of his comedies, and from his
inherited property, would have made him wealthy, but for his extravagant
and careless mode of life.
Despite one notable success in French with the comedy 'The Surly
Benefactor' (1771), Goldoni's life in France was relatively unprofitable
and ignoble. He became Italian teacher of various royal princesses, with
the utmost uncertainty and delay as to his salaries or pensions. Yet he
could never break the fascination of Paris. The art of the French actors
was a never-failing delight to him. There, at the age of eighty, in
French, he wrote and published his 'Memoirs.' The Revolution swept away
his negligent patrons. In poverty and utter neglect he died at last,
just as the republicans were ready to restore his royal pension.
Goldoni was the child of Italy and of the eighteenth century. He had no
serious quarrel with his environment. He was not greatly superior, in
actual character or aspirations, to his associates. His affection for
his devoted wife did not save him from many a wandering passion. The
promising prima donnas, in particular, found in him an all too devoted
instructor and protector. The gaming-table and the lottery are
apparently irresistible to any true Italian, and Goldoni knew by heart
the passions which he ridicules or condemns, though without bitterness,
upon his stage. His oft-repeated claim to have reformed the Italian
theatre meant chiefly this: that between the lyrical drama of Metastasio
on the one hand, and the popular masque with stock characters on the
other,--and while contributing to both these forms of art,--he did
firmly establish the comedy of plot and dialogue, carefully learned and
rehearsed, in which the players must speak the speech as it is
pronounced to them by the poet.
Goldoni himself acknowledges, perhaps not too sincerely, in his Parisian
memoirs, the superiority, the mastership, of Moliere. In truth, the
great Frenchman stands, with Aristophanes and Shakespeare, upon a lonely
height quite unapproached by lesser devotees of Thalia. We must not seek
in Goldoni a prober of the human heart, not even a fearless satirist of
social conditions. In his rollicking good-humor and content with the
world as he finds it, Goldoni is much like Plautus. He is moreover under
a censorship hardly less severe. He dares not, for instance, introduce
upon his stage any really offensive type of Venetian nobleman. As for
religious dictation, the convent must not even be mentioned, though the
_aunt_ with whom the young lady is visiting sometimes becomes as
transparent an idiom as the "uncle" of a spendthrift cockney! The
audience, moreover, demand only diversion, not serious instruction (as
Goethe complains, even of his grave Germans, in the 'Prolog im
Theater'). It is remarkable, under all these conditions, how healthy,
how kindly, how proper, most of Goldoni's work is. Doubtless, like
Goldsmith, he could preach the more gracefully, persuasively, and
unobservedly, because he never attempted to escape from the very vices
or indulgences that he satirizes. But even the most determined seeker
for the moral element in art will find little indeed thereof in
Goldoni's merry comedies. Incredible as it seems to us Puritans, he
really made it his mission to amuse. Thoroughly in love with the rather
ignoble, trivial life of his day, he holds the dramatic mirror up to it
with lifelong optimism and enjoyment. His wit is not keen, his poetic
imagination is slight indeed. Aside from the true dramatist's skill in
construction, in plot, his power lies chiefly in the rapid, clear, firm
outlines of his character-drawing. These characters are for the most
part just about such men and women, such creatures of impulse and whim,
such genial mingling of naughtiness and good intentions, as we see about
us. He never delineates a saint or a hero; hardly a monster of
wickedness. He had never known either, and would not have been
interested if he had. The charm of Goldoni is felt chiefly in Venice, or
at least in Italy, while listening to his comedy and watching the
enjoyment mirrored in the faces of his own audience. It evaporates in
translation, and his plays are meant only to be heard, not read. To Mr.
Howells's own affectionate testimony we may add his happy citation from
Goethe, who is writing from Venice in 1786:
"Yesterday, at the theatre of St. Luke, was performed 'Le
Baruffe-Chiozotte,' which I should interpret 'The Frays and
Feuds of Chiozza.' The _dramatis personae_ are principally
seafaring people, inhabitants of Chiozza, with their wives,
sisters, and daughters. The usual noisy demonstrations of
such sort of people in their good or ill luck,--their
dealings one with another, their vehemence but goodness of
heart, commonplace remarks and unaffected manners, their
naive wit and humor,--all this was excellently imitated. The
piece moreover is Goldoni's, and as I had been only the day
before in the place itself, and as the tones and manners of
the sailors and people of the seaport still echoed in my ears
and floated before my eyes, it delighted me very much; and
although I did not understand a single allusion, I was
nevertheless, on the whole, able to follow it pretty well....
I never witnessed anything like the noisy delight the people
evinced at seeing themselves and their mates represented with
such truth of nature. It was one continued laugh and
tumultuous shout of exultation from beginning to end....
Great praise is due to the author, who out of nothing has
here created the most amusing _divertissement_. However, he
never could have done it with any other people than his own
merry and light-hearted countrymen."
Of Goldoni's one hundred and sixty comedies, only a scanty handful have
been tolerably translated in English. As accessible and agreeable an
introduction as any, perhaps, is the version of four notable plays by
Miss Helen Zimmern in the series 'Masterpieces of Foreign Authors.' The
'Memoirs' have been fairly rendered by John Black, and this version,
considerably abridged, was served up by Mr. Howells in 1877 among his
series of 'Choice Autobiographies.' Mr. Howells's introductory essay
appeared also in the Atlantic Monthly. It has been drawn upon somewhat
in the present sketch.
[Signature: William Cranston Lawton]
FIRST LOVE AND PARTING
From the 'Memoirs of Carlo Goldoni'
I was intrusted some time afterwards with another commission, of a much
more agreeable and amusing nature. This was to carry through an
investigation, ten leagues from the town, into the circumstances of a
dispute where firearms had been made use of and dangerous wounds
received. As the country where this happened was flat, and the road lay
through charming estates and country-houses, I engaged several of my
friends to follow me; we were in all twelve, six males and six females,
and four domestics. We all rode on horseback, and we employed twelve
days in this delicious expedition....
In this party there were two sisters, one married and the other single.
The latter was very much to my liking, and I may say I made the party
for her alone. She was as prudent and modest as her sister was
headstrong and foolish; the singularity of our journey afforded us an
opportunity of coming to an explanation, and we became lovers.
My investigation was concluded in two hours; we selected another road
for our return, to vary our pleasure.... The six gentlemen of our party
proposed another species of entertainment. In the palace of the governor
there was a theatre, which they wished to put to some use; and they did
me the honor to tell me that they had conceived the project on my
account, and they left me the power of choosing the pieces and
distributing the characters. I thanked them, and accepted the
proposition; and with the approbation of his Excellency and my
chancellor, I put myself at the head of this new entertainment. I could
have wished something comic, but I was not fond of buffoonery, and there
were no good comedies; I therefore gave the preference to tragedy. As
the operas of Metastasio were then represented everywhere, even without
music, I put the airs into recitative; I endeavored as well as I could
to approximate the style of that charming author; and I made choice of
'Didone' and 'Siroe' for our representation. I distributed the parts
according to the characters of my actors, whom I knew, and I reserved
the worst for myself. In this I acted wisely, for I was completely
unsuited for tragedy. Fortunately, I had composed two small pieces in
which I played two parts of character, and redeemed my reputation.
The first of these pieces was 'The Good Father,' and the second 'La
Cantatrice.' Both were approved of, and my acting was considered
passable for an amateur. I saw the last of these pieces some time
afterwards at Venice, where a young advocate thought proper to give it
out as his own work, and to receive compliments on the subject; but
having been imprudent enough to publish it with his name, he experienced
the mortification of seeing his plagiarism unmasked.
I did what I could to engage my beautiful Angelica to accept a part in
our tragedies, but it was impossible; she was timid, and had she even
been willing, her parents would not have given their permission. She
visited us; but this pleasure cost her tears, for she was jealous, and
suffered much from seeing me on such a familiar footing with my fair
companions. The poor little girl loved me with tenderness and sincerity,
and I loved her also with my whole soul; I may say she was the first
person whom I ever loved. She aspired to become my wife, which she would
have been if certain singular reflections, that however were well
founded, had not turned me from the design. Her elder sister had been
remarkably beautiful, and after her first child she became ugly. The
youngest had the same skin and the same features; she was one of those
delicate beauties whom the air injures, and whom the smallest fatigue or
pain discomposes: of all of which I saw a convincing proof. The fatigue
of our journey produced a visible change upon her: I was young, and if
my wife were in a short time to have lost her bloom, I foresaw what
would have been my despair. This was reasoning curiously for a lover;
but whether from virtue, weakness, or inconstancy, I quitted Feltre
without marrying her.
THE ORIGIN OF "MASKS" IN THE ITALIAN COMEDY
From the 'Memoirs of Carlo Goldoni'
The amateurs of the old comedy, on seeing the rapid progress of the new,
declared everywhere that it was unworthy of an Italian to give a blow to
a species of comedy in which Italy had attained great distinction, and
which no other nation had ever yet been able to imitate. But what made
the greatest impression on the discontented was the suppression of
masks, which my system appeared to threaten. It was said that these
personages had for two centuries been the amusement of Italy, and that
it ought not to be deprived of a species of comic diversion which it had
created and so well supported.
Before venturing to give any opinion on this subject, I imagine the
reader will have no objection to listen for a few minutes to a short
account of the origin, employment, and effects of these four masks.
Comedy, which in all ages has been the favorite entertainment of
polished nations, shared the fate of the arts and sciences, and was
buried under the ruins of the Empire during the decay of letters. The
germ of comedy, however, was never altogether extinguished in the
fertile bosom of Italy. Those who first endeavored to bring about its
revival, not finding in an ignorant age writers of sufficient skill, had
the boldness to draw out plans, to distribute them into acts and scenes,
and to utter extempore the subjects, thoughts, and witticisms which they
had concerted among themselves. Those who could read (and neither the
great nor the rich were of the number) found that in the comedies of
Plautus and Terence there were always duped fathers, debauched sons,
enamored girls, knavish servants, and mercenary maids; and, running over
the different districts of Italy, they took the fathers from Venice and
Bologna, the servants from Bergamo, and the lovers and waiting-maids
from the dominions of Rome and Tuscany. Written proofs are not to be
expected of what took place in a time when writing was not in use; but I
prove my assertion in this way: Pantaloon has always been a Venetian,
the Doctor a Bolognese, and Brighella and Harlequin Bergamasks; and from
these places, therefore, the comic personages called the four masks of
the Italian comedy were taken by the players. What I say on this subject
is not altogether the creature of my imagination; I possess a manuscript
of the fifteenth century, in very good preservation and bound in
parchment, containing a hundred and twenty subjects or sketches of
Italian pieces, called comedies of art, and of which the basis of the
comic humor is always Pantaloon, a Venetian merchant; the Doctor, a
Bolognese jurisconsult; and Brighella and Harlequin, Bergamask
valets,--the first clever and sprightly, and the other a mere dolt.
Their antiquity and their long existence indicate their origin.
With respect to their employment, Pantaloon and the Doctor, called by
the Italians the two old men, represent the part of fathers, and the
other parts where cloaks are worn. The first is a merchant, because
Venice in its ancient times was the richest and most extensively
commercial country of Italy. He has always preserved the ancient
Venetian costume; the black dress and the woolen bonnet are still worn
in Venice; and the red under-waistcoat and breeches, cut out like
drawers, with red stockings and slippers, are a most exact
representation of the equipment of the first inhabitants of the Adriatic
marshes. The beard, which was considered as an ornament in those remote
ages, has been caricatured and rendered ridiculous in subsequent
periods.
The second old man, called the Doctor, was taken from among the lawyers,
for the sake of opposing a learned man to a merchant; and Bologna was
selected because in that city there existed a university, which,
notwithstanding the ignorance of the times, still preserved the offices
and emoluments of the professors. In the dress of the Doctor we observe
the ancient costume of the university and bar of Bologna, which is
nearly the same at this day; and the idea of the singular mask which
covers his face and nose was taken from a wine stain which disfigured
the countenance of a jurisconsult in those times. This is a tradition
still existing among the amateurs of the comedy of art.
Brighella and Harlequin, called in Italy the two Zani, were taken from
Bergamo; because, the former being a very sharp fellow and the other a
stupid clown, these two extremes are only to be found among the lower
orders of that part of the country. Brighella represents an intriguing,
deceitful, and knavish valet. His dress is a species of livery; his
swarthy mask is a caricature of the color of the inhabitants of those
high mountains, tanned by the heat of the sun. Some comedians, in this
character, have taken the name of Fenocchio, Fiqueto, and Scapin; but
they have always represented the same valet and the same Bergamask. The
harlequins have also assumed other names: they have been sometimes
Tracagnins, Truffaldins, Gradelins, and Mezetins; but they have always
been stupid Bergamasks. Their dress is an exact representation of that
of a poor devil who has picked up pieces of stuffs of different colors
to patch his dress; his hat corresponds with his mendicity, and the
hare's tail with which it is ornamented is still common in the dress of
the peasantry of Bergamo.
I have thus, I trust, sufficiently demonstrated the origin and
employment of the four masks of the Italian comedy; it now remains for
me to mention the effects resulting from them. The mask must always be
very prejudicial to the action of the performer, either in joy or
sorrow: whether he be in love, cross, or good-humored, the same features
are always exhibited; and however he may gesticulate and vary the tone,
he can never convey by the countenance, which is the interpreter of the
heart, the different passions with which he is inwardly agitated. The
masks of the Greeks and Romans were a sort of speaking-trumpets,
invented for the purpose of conveying the sound through the vast extent
of their amphitheatres. Passion and sentiment were not in those times
carried to the pitch of delicacy now actually necessary. The actor must
in our days possess a soul; and the soul under a mask is like a fire
under ashes. These were the reasons which induced me to endeavor the
reform of the Italian theatre; and to supply the place of farces with
comedies. But the complaints became louder and louder: I was disgusted
with the two parties, and I endeavored to satisfy both; I undertook to
produce a few pieces merely sketched, without ceasing to give comedies
of character. I employed the masks in the former, and I displayed a more
noble and interesting comic humor in the others: each participated in
the species of pleasure with which they were most delighted; with time
and patience I brought about a reconciliation between them; and I had
the satisfaction at length to see myself authorized in following my own
taste, which became in a few years the most general and prevailing in
Italy. I willingly pardoned the partisans of the comedians with masks
the injuries they laid to my charge; for they were very able amateurs,
who had the merit of giving themselves an interest to sketched
comedies.
PURISTS AND PEDANTRY
From the 'Memoirs of Carlo Goldoni'
My journey to Parma, and the pension and diploma conferred on me,
excited the envy and rage of my adversaries. They had reported at Venice
during my absence that I was dead; and there was a monk who had even the
temerity to say he had been at my funeral. On arriving home safe and
sound, the evil-disposed began to display their irritation at my good
fortune. It was not the authors, my antagonists, who tormented me, but
the partisans of the different theatres of Venice.
I was defended by literary men, who entertained a favorable opinion of
me; and this gave rise to a warfare in which I was very innocently the
victim of the irritation which had been excited. My system has always
been never to mention the names of my adversaries: but I cannot avoid
expressing the honor which I feel in proclaiming those of my advocates.
Father Roberti, a Jesuit, at present the Abbe Roberti, one of the most
illustrious poets of the suppressed society, published a poem in blank
verse, entitled 'Comedy'; and by dwelling on the reformation effected by
me, and analyzing several scenes in my pieces, he encouraged his
countrymen and mine to follow the example and the system of the Venetian
author. Count Verri, a Milanese, followed the Abbe Roberti.... Other
patricians of Venice wrote in my favor, on account of the disputes which
were every day growing warmer and warmer.... Every day witnessed some
new composition for or against me; but I had this advantage,--that those
who interested themselves for me, from their manners, their talents, and
their reputation, were among the most prudent and distinguished men in
Italy.
One of the articles for which I was most keenly attacked was a violation
of the purity of the language. I was a Venetian, and I had had the
disadvantage of sucking in with my mother's milk the use of a very
agreeable and seductive patois, which however was not Tuscan. I learned
by principle, and cultivated by reading, the language of the good
Italian authors; but first impressions will return at times,
notwithstanding every attention used in avoiding them. I had undertaken
a journey into Tuscany, where I remained for four years, with the view
of becoming familiar with the language; and I printed the first edition
of my works at Florence, under the eyes and the criticism of the
learned of that place, that I might purify them from errors of language.
All my precautions were insufficient to satisfy the rigorists: I always
failed in one thing or other; and I was perpetually reproached with the
original sin of Venetianism.
Amidst all this tedious trifling, I recollected one day that Tasso had
been worried his whole lifetime by the Academicians della Crusca, who
maintained that his 'Jerusalem Delivered' had not passed through the
sieve which is the emblem of their society. I was then in my closet, and
I turned my eyes towards the twelve quarto volumes of the works of that
author, and exclaimed, "Oh heavens! must no one write in the Italian
language who has not been born in Tuscany?" I turned up mechanically the
five volumes of the Dictionary della Crusca, where I found more than six
hundred words, and a number of expressions, approved of by the academy
and rejected by the world; I ran over several ancient authors considered
as classical, whom it would be impossible to imitate in the present day
without censure; and I came to this conclusion--that we must write in
good Italian, but write at the same time so as to be understood in every
corner of Italy. Tasso was therefore wrong in reforming his poem to
please the Academicians della Crusca: his 'Jerusalem Delivered' is read
by everybody, while nobody thinks of reading his 'Jerusalem Conquered.'
A POET'S OLD AGE
From the 'Memoirs of Carlo Goldoni'
I return to my regimen,--you will say here also, perhaps, that I ought
to omit it: you are in the right; but all this is in my head, and I must
be delivered of it by degrees; I cannot spare you a single comma. After
dinner I am not fond of either working or walking. Sometimes I go to the
theatre, but I am most generally in parties till nine o'clock in the
evening. I always return before ten o'clock. I take two or three small
cakes with a glass of wine and water, and this is the whole of my
supper. I converse with my wife till midnight; I very soon fall asleep,
and pass the night tranquilly.
It sometimes happens to me, as well as every other person, to have my
head occupied with something capable of retarding my sleep. In this
case I have a certain remedy to lull myself asleep, and it is this: I
had long projected a vocabulary of the Venetian dialect, and I had even
communicated my intention to the public, who are still in expectation of
it. While laboring at this tedious and disgusting work, I soon
discovered that it threw me asleep. I laid it therefore aside, and I
profited by its narcotic faculty. Whenever I feel my mind agitated by
any moral cause, I take at random some word of my national language and
translate it into Tuscan and French. In the same manner I pass in review
all the words which follow in the alphabetical order, and I am sure to
fall asleep at the third or fourth version. My recipe has never once
failed me. It is not difficult to demonstrate the cause and effect of
this phenomenon. A painful idea requires to be replaced by an opposite
or indifferent idea; and the agitation of the mind once calmed, the
senses become tranquil and are deadened by sleep.