Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/326

308 the old conventional types, and that a portion of the action was highly farcical. These characteristics were nevertheless combined with a regular plot capable of exciting deep interest. The fiabe originated in a literary quarrel. Goldoni, the restorer of true comedy to Italy, had denounced the buffooneries of the old commedia dell' arte, and Gozzi, who had himself cultivated that form, and whose partiality for it was enhanced by a misunderstanding with Goldoni, determined to show its capabilities, and at the same time to ridicule his dramatic rivals, Goldoni and the Abate Chiari. To this end he hit upon the extremely happy idea of dramatising the fairy tales in Basile's Pentamerone, thus creating a form represented in English literature by the admirable burlesques of Planche, but with even more resemblance to an ancient form of which no complete example remains, the mythological parodies of the Attic Middle Comedy, which combined ridicule of the tragic poets with a regular plot derived from ancient tradition.

In the scenario of his Three Oranges, a play not preserved in its entirety, Gozzi has explained how he burlesqued his rivals, as, for instance, when the long journeys which Chiari's personages are supposed to perform within the compass of a single action are ridiculed by Tartaglia and Truffaldino being propelled two thousand leagues by the devil with a pair of bellows. ("They sprawled on the grass at the sudden cessation of the favouring gale.") The success of the Three Oranges was immense, and contributed to drive Goldoni from Venice. It was followed by a rapid succession of similar pieces, tending, however, to assume more of a literary character, and become more and more remote from the original type of the Comedy of Masks. This, if diminishing their value as