Traditional
commedia dell'arte used stock characters performing improvised actions and dialogue. However, during the eighteenth century, this improvisational form became increasingly codified with written scripts that were based on traditional characters and scenarios.
The
commedia style influenced the drama of many countries. In France, where the
Comédie Italienne was one of two state-sanctioned theatres in Paris, the French author Pierre Carlet de Marivaux wrote a series of plays using
commedia characters, but with written scripts rather than bare-bones scenarios. Though Marivaux had begun his career writing works for the more respectable
Comédie Française, he is best remembered for the
commedia-inspired works he wrote for its smaller rival.
Marivaux's most famous play,
The Game of Love and Chance, uses multiple stock characters from
commedia, including the servant character Arlecchino who appears as "Arlequin" in the play. However, Marivaux introduces a level of emotional complexity to his characters that was rarely seen in
commedia performances of the past. The same is true of his later play
The Triumph of Love, first performed in 1732. Though critics attacked the play and it closed after only six performances,
Triumph of Love is now considered a classic. Marivaux's later plays became increasingly bitter. His 1744 comedy
The Dispute depicts a cruel scientific experiment in which aristocrats have orphaned boys and girls placed in an Eden-like setting to see if men or women are less likely to be faithful in a state of nature. Neither gender comes off particularly well in the play.
While Marivaux was clashing with critics in Paris, Carlo Goldoni was writing
commedia-inspired scripts in
Italy. He actually began writing tragedies and operas, but at the request of the actor Antonio Sacchi he wrote the comedy
The Servant of Two Masters. Though the play originally had sections that allowed for improvisation, Goldoni revised the play in 1753 to codify the action in a complete script. The play uses stock
commedia characters, such as the old miser Pantalone and the quarrelsome innkeeper Brighella, but gives them set dialogue, eliminating much of the need for (and fun of) improvisation. Goldoni's success in Italy drew the attention of people in other countries, and in 1762 he settled in Paris, then considered the center of the theatrical world.
Goldoni took charge of the
Comédie Italienne, but while audiences wanted the old tricks of traditional
commedia, he wanted to move forward to a new, more realistic form of comedy. In 1763, he wrote the first version of his play
The Fan, a comedy in which multiple lovers quarrel over a misunderstanding involving one of the simplest of objects, the titular fan. The self-consciously ridiculous play failed to make an impression in Paris, so Goldoni translated it into Italian and premiered the new version in Venice in 1765, where it was a hit. The play contains an attractive widow named Geltruda, who is a theatrical descendant of the many vivacious young widows played by Isabella Andreini in
commedia plays during the Renaissance. Similarly, the play's apothecary, Timoteo, has elements of the learned yet foolish Dottore character from
commedia.
The playwright that Goldoni most often quarreled with was Carlo Gozzi, another Italian writer, but one who wished to preserve rather than reform the conventions of
commedia. Gozzi's 1761 play
The Love of Three Oranges satirized Goldoni and other reformist writers, and Gozzi gave the play (along with other scripts) outright to Sacchi's struggling company of
commedia performers to keep them going. Many of Gozzi's plays, including
The Stag King, are based on fairy tales. His 1762 play
Turandot was later turned into an opera, and in 1765 Gozzi wrote a sequel to
The Love of Three Oranges called
The Green Bird. Though Gozzi used
commedia techniques, he also utilized Asian characters and settings to lend an element of exoticism to his plays. Thus, even in preserving
commedia, he aided in its gradual evolution.
