Carlo Goldoni was born in  Venice in 1707 and spent his early childhood in the house of his grandfather, a keen enthusiast for the theatre. He is a prolific dramatist who renovated the well-established Italian commedia dell’arte dramatic form by replacing its masked stock figures with more realistic characters, its loosely structured and often repetitive action with tightly constructed plots, and its predictable farce with a new spirit of gaiety and spontaneity. For these innovations Goldoni is considered the founder of Italian realistic comedy.

Son of a physician, Goldoni read comedies from his father’s library when young and ran away from school at Rimini in 1721 with a company of strolling players. Back in school at the papal college in Pavia, Goldoni read comedies by Plautus, Terence, and Aristophanes. Later he studied French in order to read Molière.

For writing a satire on the ladies of the town, Goldoni was expelled from the Ghislieri College in Pavia, and he reluctantly began law studies at the University of Pavia. Although he practiced law in Venice (1731–33) and Pisa (1744–48) and held diplomatic appointments, his real interest was the dramatic works he wrote for the Teatro San Samuele in Venice.

His best comedies are  I pettegolezzi delle donne (“Women’s Gossip”), a play in Venetian dialect; Il bugiardo (The Liar, 1922), written in commedia dell’arte style; and Il vero amico (“The True Friend”), an Italian comedy of manners.

 

From 1753 to 1762 Goldoni wrote for the Teatro San Luca (now Teatro Goldoni). There he increasingly left commedia dell’arte behind him. Important plays from this period are the Italian comedy of manners La locandiera and two fine plays in Venetian dialect, I rusteghi (performed 1760; “The Tyrants”) and Le baruffe chiozzote (performed 1762; “Quarrels at Chioggia”).

 

In 1762 Goldoni left Venice for Paris to direct the Comédie-Italienne.  

 

Goldoni retired in 1764 to teach Italian to the princesses at Versailles. In 1783 he began his celebrated Mémoires in French (1787; Eng. trans., 1814, 1926). After the French Revolution his pension was cancelled, and he died in  poverty.