Four comedies by the great Venetian playwright, introduced by Helen Zimmern: A Curious Mishap, The Beneficent Bear, in which a gruff but generous uncle confronts a spendthrift nephew, The Fan, where a lost fan sets a whole village by the ears, and The Spendthrift Miser. Goldoni replaced the masks of old Italian comedy with real people of eighteenth-century life.
An accessible English introduction to the father of Italian comedy, whom Browning hailed as the King of Comedy. Download the free EPUB.