by Carlo Goldoni

An extraordinarily prolific playwright, Carlo Goldoni is considered the most significant Italian dramatist of the eighteenth century. The father of reform in Italy’s comic theater, he was born in Venice on February 25, 1707, in his grandfather’s mansion. Goldoni spent his childhood in a happy family circle governed by his mother while his father studied and practiced medicine in Rome. The boy later joined his father in Perugia, attending a Jesuit school before being sent to the School of the Dominican Father in Rimini to study philosophy and logic. Goldoni spent much of his time there reading Latin, Italian, and French plays. He went on to study law in Pavia, getting expelled but then finally earning his law degree at the University of Padua in 1731. He embarked on a legal career and began...