with insight so perfect that
all the parts I wrote for them and fitted, so to speak, upon their
mental frames, were represented on the stage as though they issued
naturally from their hearts and tempers. This added hugely to the
attraction of the spectacle. The gift of writing for particular actors,
which does not seem to be possessed or put in use by every dramatist, is
almost indispensable while dealing with the comic troupes of Italy. The
moderate payments which are customary in our theatres prevent these
people from engaging so large a number of actors and actresses as to be
able to select the proper representatives of all the varied characters
in nature. To the accident of my possessing this gift, and the ability
with which I exercised it, must be ascribed a large part of my success.
Goldoni alone devoted himself with patience to the study of the players
who put his premeditated pieces on the boards;[27] but I defy Goldoni
and all the writers for our stage to compose, as I did, parts differing
in character, containing jokes, witticisms, drolleries, moral satire,
and discourses in soliloquy or dialogue, adapted to the native genius of
my Truffaldino, Tartaglia, Brighella, Pantaloni, and Servette, without
lapsing into languor and frigidity, and with the same result of
reiterated applause.

Other playwrights, who attempted to put written words into the mouth of
extempore actors, only made them unnatural; and obtained, as the reward
of their endeavours, the abuse and hisses of the public at the third
representation of their insipid pieces. It is possibly on this account
that they revenged themselves by assuming comic airs of grave and
serious criticism, treating our miracles of native fun and humour as
contemptible buffoons, all Italy as drunken and besotted, myself as the
bolsterer up of theatrical ineptitudes, and my prolusions in a new
dramatic style as crumbling relics of the old _Commedia dell'Arte_. So
far as the last accusation goes, everybody will allow that the Masks
which I supported as a _tour de force_ of art and for the recreation of
the public who rejoiced in them, play the least part in my scenic
compositions; my works, in fact, depend for their existence and survival
on the sound morality and manly passion, which formed their real
substratum, and which found expression on the lips of serious
actors.[28]

For the rest, the players whom I had taken under my wing looked up to me
as their tutelary genius.