morality of the Italian comic stage, he drew his characters from real
life, whether of his native city (Venice)[34] or of society at large,
and sought to enforce virtuous and pathetic sentiments without
neglecting the essential objects of his art. Happy and various in his
choice of themes, and dipping deep into a popular life with which he had
a genuine sympathy, he produced, besides comedies of general human
character,[35] plays on subjects drawn from literary biography[36] or
from fiction.[37] Goldoni, whose style was considered defective by the
purists whom Italy has at no time lacked, met with a severe critic and a
temporarily successful rival in Count C. Gozzi (1722-1806), who sought
to rescue the comic drama from its association with the actual life of
the middle classes, and to infuse a new spirit into the figures of the
old masked comedy by the invention of a new species. His themes were
taken from Neapolitan[38] and Oriental[39] fairy tales, to which he
accommodated some of the standing figures upon which Goldoni had made
war. This attempt at mingling fancy and humour--occasionally of a
directly satirical turn[40]--was in harmony with the tendencies of the
modern romantic school; and Gozzi's efforts, which though successful
found hardly any imitators in Italy, have a family resemblance to those
of Tieck and of some more recent writers whose art wings its flight,
through the windows, "over the hills and far away."

Comedians after Goldoni.

During the latter part of the 18th and the early years of the 19th
century comedy continued to follow the course marked out by its
acknowledged master Goldoni, under the influence of the sentimental
drama of France and other countries. Abati Andrea Villi, the marquis
Albergati Capacelli, Antonio Simone Sografi (1760-1825), Federici, and
Pietro Napoli Signorelli (1731-1815), the historian of the drama, are
mentioned among the writers of this school; to the 19th century belong
Count Giraud, Marchisio (who took his subjects especially from
commercial life), and Nota, a fertile writer, among whose plays are
three treating the lives of poets. Of still more recent date are L. B.
Bon and A. Brofferio. At the same time, the comedy of dialect to which
the example of Goldoni had given sanction in Venice, flourished there as
well as in the mutually remote spheres of Piedmont and Naples. Quite
modern developments must remain unnoticed here; but the fact cannot be
ignored that they s