Five Comedies

by Carlo Goldoni, Brittany Asaro (Primary Contributor), Cesare De Michelis (Primary Contributor)

One of the first and most important Italian playwrights to move away from the commedia dell'arte tradition of improvisation, Carlo Goldoni (1707-1793) wrote more naturalistic "comedies of character" that featured the dialect and situations of everyday life in Venice. Five Comedies collects a selection of Goldoni's finest plays, annotated and translated into The New House , The Coffee House , and "The Holiday Trilogy" ( Off to the Country , Adventures in the Country , and Back from the Country ). Editor Michael Hackett provides an introduction to Goldoni and his performance tradition for directors, actors, and designers, revealing the masterful construction of Goldoni's plays, while an afterword by Cesare de Michelis carefully reconstructs the playwright's life and times.

432 pages, Hardcover

Published March 24, 2016

About the author

Carlo Osvaldo Goldoni was an Italian playwright and librettist from the Republic of Venice. His works include some of Italy's most famous and best-loved plays. Audiences have admired the plays of Goldoni for their ingenious mix of wit and honesty. His plays offered his contemporaries images of themselves, often dramatizing the lives, values, and conflicts of the emerging middle classes. Though he wrote in French and Italian, his plays make rich use of the Venetian language, regional vernacular, and colloquialisms. Goldoni also wrote under the pen name and title "Polisseno Fegeio, Pastor Arcade," which he claimed in his memoirs the "Arcadians of Rome" bestowed on him.