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Goldoni's Secrets

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2010

Extract

The volumes of the Pasquali edition of Goldoni's collected works are preceded by pieces of critical autobiography. Issued in Venice in 1761, the year before Goldoni's move to Paris, they constitute his first extended commentary upon his achievement and the life adventures in and outside of the theatre from which so much of it was derived. Not the least embarrassing of these immodest essays was that in the first volume, which displayed Goldoni's pride in his precocity as a child playwright. More was perhaps said, though, in the engraved frontispiece than in the verbal boasting.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1990

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References

1 All Goldoni citations are from Tutte le opere di Carlo Goldoni, ed. Giuseppe Ortolani, 14 vols. (Verona: Mondadori, 1935–36). Act and scene locations will conform to this edition.

2 “Frappatore” runs a gamut from busybody, meddler, to cheat. Cf. Fabrizio's list of synonyms on p. 6 (II frappatore, 3.1).

3 Cf. my comments on II servitore in Dramaturgy of the Demonic (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1984), 118–21.

4 In the popular card game contechio, Pantalone's metaphor for age, the loser is the player with the most points.

5 Tutte le opère, 2:94.

6 The line is omitted from the Zatta edition, last in Goldoni's lifetime, because this edition does not reprint the dedication.

7 secondary significance of fondo, monetary funds, carries on the mercenary matrix.

8 Among these commentaries one should single out Mangini, Nicola, “II tema della villeggiatura nel teatro goldoniano,” in Laformna di Carlo Goldoni e altri saggi goldoniani (Firenze: Le Monnier, 1965), 87135Google Scholar, and Fido, Franco, “Giacinta nel paese degli uomini,” in Da Venezia all'Europa: prospettive suWultimo Goldoni (Roma: Bulzoni, 1984), 1158Google Scholar, as well as that of Squarzina (see below).

9 See the detailed essay and bibliography by Mometto, Piergiovanni, “La vita in villa,” in Storia della culmra veneta: il settecento, ed. Arnaldi, G. e Stocchi, M. P. (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1985), 5/1, 607–29.Google Scholar

10 Tutte le opere, 7:1007–08 (cf. Ortolani's annotations, 1409–10).

11 Cf. Giacinta: “Son donna, son giovane. Mi hanno sempre lasciato fare a mio modo, ed è difficile tut'ad un tratto farmi cambiale temperamento” (I am a woman, I am young. They have always let me have my way, and it is hard to make myself change temperament all at once) (2.6).

12 Goldoni remembers the close functional relationship between villeggiatura and the Venetian ridotti: cf. Zucchetta, Emmanuele, Antichi ridotti venezianl (Roma: Fratelli Palombi, 1988), 810.Google Scholar The patrician ridotti were aped by ridotti popolani such as that “dietro POsteria Setvadego a San Marco.” It was “un casino istituito con regole, ordini, cariche, in tutto simili a quelli dei nobili, composto di camerieri, délie loro mogli ed donne di uguale condizione” (a casino instituted with rules, orders, dues, in everything similar to those of the nobility, [but] composed of waiters, their wives and other women of similar condition) (Zuchetta, 15).

13 See Stewart, Pamela D., Goldoni fra leturature e teatro (Firenze: Olschki, 1989), 6164Google Scholar, on Goldoni's uses of “artificioso” and “artificio.” Their tenor is invariably positive as applied both to plays and players.

14 The notion of riputazione as one's public image recurs throughout II ritomo as the outer side of dovere; cf. “monete mettono a repentaglio la nostra riputazione” (Vittoria, 1.3); “Questa è l'ultima mia rovina, la riputazione è perduta” (Leonardo, 1.11); “Che cosa mi ha tratenuto finora … Non altro che il mio decoro, in giusto timoré di essere criticata” (Giacinta, 2.11). (money puts our reputation at risk; this is my ultimate ruin, reputation is lost; what has restrained me until now… (is) nothing other than my honor, the just fear of being criticized).

15 Bernardo is the only new entrant in the last part of the trilogy, appearing in adjacent scenes of Il ritorno (2.5–6). Goldoni is at pains to justify this incursion: “Vedrà il Lettore che non è inutile, e comprenderà facilmente ehe un carratere odioso, corne quello di Bernardino, puó essere sofferto e anche goduto in una Scena; ma diverrebe noioso ed insupportabile, se una seconda volta si rivedesse” (the reader will see that [he] is not useless, and will comprehend easily that an odious character, such as that of Bernardino, is able to be suffered and even enjoyed in one scene; but would become boring and insupportable, if one should see him a second time) (Tutte le opere, 7: 1148). There is something disingenuous here. Bernardino is a laughing sceptic who is properly cynical about his nephew, whom he calls “il Marchesino.” He makes a mock encomium in praise of Leonardo's ability to live a life of profligacy, refusing to be drawn out into any serious consideration of the young man's dilemma. Far from odious, this clear Democritan eye on the ways of the world, and of Leonardo in particular, presents Bernardino the outsider as a relief from the anger and self-absorption of the others. His function, though, is principally to set into perspective Fulgenzio's pompous reaction when his proposals meet the impervious shield of irony: “Per me mi è venuto a noia la parte mia” (for me, my part has become boring).

16 We observe an escalation of folly: la villeggiatura has bankrupted Leonardo through his emulation of the money-pressed Filippo's extravagance.

17 Folena, Gianfranco, L'italiano in Europa: esperienze Unguistiche del settecento (Torino: Einaudi, 1983), 182Google Scholar; following quotation from 185.

18 “L'addio a Venezia,” in L'interpretazlone goldoniana critica e messinscena ed. Nino Borsellino (Roma: Officina edizioni, 1982), 174–263; 206–218 offer Squaizina's account of his 1968 production of Una délie ultime sere dl camovale.

19 “Note di regìa (‘Una delle ultime sere di carnovale' e ‘I rusteghi’),” Studi goldoniani 2 (Venzia: Casa di Goldoni, 1970), 193–214. I cite 196. The ellipses are Squaizina's.

20 The allegory surfaces into literalness when Momolo mentions “un dessegno di sior Anzoletto … ehe no gh'ha invidia a uno dei più belli de Franza”(1.11).

21 Tutte le opere, 8:207.

22 Tutte le opere, 8:207.

23 Studi goldonianil (Venezia: Casa di Goldoni, 1970), 179–88 and reprinted in Guida a Goldoni: teatro e societè net settecento (Torino: Einaudi, 1977), 89–101.

24 See notes on page 27 above.

25 See notes on page 27 above.

26 Tutte le opere, 8:211.