GOLDONI, glil-dYne, CARLO (1707-93). The most celebrated Italian writer of comedy. He was born in Venice, February 25, 1707, of a good family, which lost its property in his child hood. His father, a physician, took him to Perugia, where he first entered school. He was encouraged by his father in his strong taste for the literature of classic comedy, and was given an opportunity for practice on the amateur stage. But the boy showed no aptitude for such per formances, and was sent to Pavia to study for the Church. Still less fitted, however, for being an ecclesiastic than for being an actor, he was finally expelled from college for writing scurri lous satires. He studied law, and was admitted as an advocate, getting his degree from Padua in 1732, after his father's death. But the legal profession did not prove lucrative, and he re linquished its practice to set about composing comic almanacs, which became highly popular. In this early part of his career he wrote a few tragedies, among them Belisario, and several of his minor comedies were represented, attracting public favor by their novelty as well as their merits. In 1736 he married the daughter of a notary of Genoa, and about 1740 was for a short time consul of Genoa at Venice. Financial difficulties, however, occasionally hampered him in literary work, until, having obtained an introduc tion to Prince Lobkowitz, he was intrusted with the composition of an ode in honor of Maria Theresa, and with the organization of the theat rical entertainments of the Austrian Army. Subsequently for a time he lived at Florence and Pisa. He returned to Venice in 1747 to write for a manager named Medebac, and five years later he made still more lucrative ar rangements at the Theatre of Saint Luke, where much of his best work was done. In 1761 he was invited to France, where he was soon ap pointed Italian master to the royal children, a situation which allowed him to devote himself tranquilly to his literary occupations. He began
after a time to write in French, and Le bourru bienfaisant, composed for the wedding of Louis XVI., excited the admiration even of Voltaire. On the breaking out of the Revolution Goldoni lost his pension, but after his death (February 6, 1793) it was restored to his widow. ,He left about one hundred and fifty comedies of very unequal merit, some of the most noted of which are: La donna di garbo; La bottega del caffe; La locandiera; Il giocatore: 11 veehio bizzarro; and L'adulatore. His ambition was to dispense with some of the conventional accessories of the comic stage of his time, and elevate that branch of the national drama from the buffooneries into which it had fallen. In this he succeeded. lie was a great admirer of Molitre, and the larger part of his works are inimitable representations of the events of daily life. under both their simplest and their most complex aspects.
Consult: the Memoirs of Carlo Goldoni, trans. by John Black, with an essay by Howells (Bos ton. 1877) ; Gherardini, Vita di Carlo Goldoni, prefixed to the collected comedies (Milan, 1821) ; Molmenti, Carlo Gotdoni(Venice, 1875) ; (Wand, Goldoni e Venezia, net wok) XVIII. -(Padua, 1883); Rabany, Carlo Goldoni: Le theatre et la vie en Italie au XVIIIeme siOcle (Paris, 1896) ; Copping, Alfieri and Goldoni, Their Lives and Adventures (London, 1857) ; Lettere di Carlo Goldoni, con prefazione e note di G. M. Urbani (Venice, 1880). The most complete edition of his plays is that of Venice, 1788, republished in Florence in 1827.