Carlo Goldoni

Carlo Goldoni (1707-1793), Italian playwright, considered the founder of modern Italian comedy. He was born in Venice. At the age of 14 he joined a group of travelling players, and during the next ten years he acquired an education, including a degree in law from the University of Padua. In 1731 he returned to Venice and began practising law and writing plays. The first of these were tragedies, at that time the only form for dramatic composition regarded seriously.

Although his tragedies met with some success, he was dissatisfied with this medium. He conceived the idea of reforming the Italian stage by eliminating the masques and buffooneries with which it abounded and by writing comedies in the manner of the 17th-century French dramatist Molière, but based on Italian characters and life. Between 1738 and 1763 Goldoni wrote about 150 comedies, including The Mistress of the Inn (1753; trans. 1856) and The Fan (1763; trans. 1911).

In 1761 Goldoni left Venice to manage the Italian theatre in Paris. In 1770 he composed a comedy in French, The Beneficent Bear (trans. 1849), for the wedding of the future king Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. In retirement at Versailles he wrote his Memoirs (1787; trans. 1877). A royal pension granted in 1787 was revoked during the French Revolution, and Goldoni died in poverty.