improvisation, which he
afterwards attacked and repudiated, he had begun by putting into written
dialogue certain motives neglected by that kind of drama. Then seeing
that this first manner began to pall, he dropped his so-called Reform of
the Stage, and assailed the public with his _Pamelas_ and other
romances. When this novelty in its turn ceased to draw, he bethought
himself of those Venetian farces, which were indeed the best and
longest-lived of his dramatic hashes. In time they suffered the fate of
their predecessors, because such vulgar scenes from life could not fail
to be monotonous. Accordingly, he tried another novelty, tickling the
ears of his audience with rhymed Martellian verses and semi-tragic
pieces, stuffed out with absurdities, improprieties, and the
licentiousness of Oriental manners. These _Spose Persiane_, brutal
_Ircane_, dirty _Eunuchi_, and unspeakable _Curcume_, by the mere fact
of their bad morality, monstrosity, and improbability, raised Goldoni's
fame among a crowd of fools and fanatics, who learned his long-winded
Martellian lines by heart, and went about the alleys of the town
reciting them aloud, to the annoyance of people who knew what good
poetry really is.

I maintained and proved that he had rashly essayed tragedy of the
sublime style, but had prudently fallen back on such plebeian
representations as the _Pettegolezzi delle Donne_, the _Femmine gelose
della Signora Lucrezia_, the _Putta Onorata_, the _Bona Muger_, the
_Rusteghi_, the _Todero Brontolone_. The arguments of comedies like
these were well adapted to his talent. He displayed in them a really
extraordinary ability for interweaving dialogues in the Venetian
dialect, taken down by him with pencil and notebook in the houses of the
common people, taverns, gaming hells, _traghetti_, coffee-houses, places
of ill-fame, and the most obscure alleys of our city. Audiences were
delighted by the realism of these plays, a realism which had never
before been so brilliantly illustrated, illuminated, and adorned, as it
now was by the ability of actors who faithfully responded to the spirit
of this new and popular type of farce.

I maintained and proved that he had frequently charged the noble persons
of his plays with fraud, absurdity, and baseness, reserving serious and
heroic virtues for personages of the lower class, in order to curry
favour with the multitude, who are always too disposed to envy and
malign the great. I also showed tha