Abstract
This new omnibus of works by Venetian dramatic master Carlo Goldoni, cobbled together out of an essay on the playwright in English, five plays translated by three different hands, and an afterword translated from the Italian, is a curious but appealing mélange. Goldoni (1707–1793), the foremost reformer of the old commedia dell’arte tradition, whose nuanced characters and non-declamatory, natural mode of dialogue (in Goldoni’s words, “stripped of unnecessary ornament”) put him well ahead of his time, is conspicuously difficult to find in English. Indeed, Michael Hackett, Professor of Directing and Theatre History at UCLA, is quite correct in his introductory essay when he laments that Goldoni is almost entirely forgotten, especially on this side of the Atlantic. “Were it not for occasional productions in regional theatres, colleges, and universities,” Hackett remarks, “Goldoni’s plays would be almost unknown to the theatre public in the United States” (p. xix), a far cry from the treatment given other major European playwrights.