Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/342

324 Molière. The Menandrine element in Molière is present with him; the Aristophanic is missing. Goldoni wants the French writer's overpowering vis comica, and is happier in "catching the manners living as they rise" than in laying bare the depths of the heart. Wit, gaiety, elegance, simplicity, truth to nature, skill in dramatic construction, render him nevertheless a most delightful writer, and his fame is the more assured from his position as his country's sole eminent representative in the region of polite comedy.

The eighteenth century had thus endowed Italy with dramatic poets of European reputation, worthy to be inscribed on the same roll as Racine and Molière. All the varied dramatic activity of the Cinque Cento, Machiavelli's Mandragola and the two great pastoral dramas excepted, belonging essentially to a lower sphere, fails to counterweigh the masterpieces of Alfieri and Goldoni. Even their achievement, nevertheless, did not amount to the creation of a national drama. If tragedy and comedy can be said to have taken root at all, the latter degenerated, while the former put forth only Sparse and occasional flowers. Alfieri's best plays continue stock-pieces to this extent, that they are revived as offering the most suitable opportunities for the display of the brilliant histrionic genius which from time to time irradiates the Italian stage. A succession of gifted men—Monti, Foscolo, Manzoni, Pellico, Niccolini, Cossa—have continued the tradition, and on the whole the state of tragedy seems much the same in Italy as in England. Comedy, on the other hand, notwithstanding some encouraging signs of revival, is far from vigorous, and the melodrama which occupies the stage is devoid of literary pretensions. Under these discouraging circumstances it