sk. The
harlequins have also assumed other names: they have been sometimes
Tracagnins, Truffaldins, Gradelins, and Mezetins; but they have always
been stupid Bergamasks. Their dress is an exact representation of that
of a poor devil who has picked up pieces of stuffs of different colors
to patch his dress; his hat corresponds with his mendicity, and the
hare's tail with which it is ornamented is still common in the dress of
the peasantry of Bergamo.

I have thus, I trust, sufficiently demonstrated the origin and
employment of the four masks of the Italian comedy; it now remains for
me to mention the effects resulting from them. The mask must always be
very prejudicial to the action of the performer, either in joy or
sorrow: whether he be in love, cross, or good-humored, the same features
are always exhibited; and however he may gesticulate and vary the tone,
he can never convey by the countenance, which is the interpreter of the
heart, the different passions with which he is inwardly agitated. The
masks of the Greeks and Romans were a sort of speaking-trumpets,
invented for the purpose of conveying the sound through the vast extent
of their amphitheatres. Passion and sentiment were not in those times
carried to the pitch of delicacy now actually necessary. The actor must
in our days possess a soul; and the soul under a mask is like a fire
under ashes. These were the reasons which induced me to endeavor the
reform of the Italian theatre; and to supply the place of farces with
comedies. But the complaints became louder and louder: I was disgusted
with the two parties, and I endeavored to satisfy both; I undertook to
produce a few pieces merely sketched, without ceasing to give comedies
of character. I employed the masks in the former, and I displayed a more
noble and interesting comic humor in the others: each participated in
the species of pleasure with which they were most delighted; with time
and patience I brought about a reconciliation between them; and I had
the satisfaction at length to see myself authorized in following my own
taste, which became in a few years the most general and prevailing in
Italy. I willingly pardoned the partisans of the comedians with masks
the injuries they laid to my charge; for they were very able amateurs,
who had the merit of giving themselves an interest to sketched
comedies.

PURISTS AND PEDANTRY

From the 'Memoirs of Carlo Goldoni'

My journey to Parma, and the pension an