642 linda l. carroll
dowries after their husband’s death. the theme’s appeal was presumably
enhanced by the increase of women in the audience resulting from the
weakening of the traditional limitation of their theatrical attendance to
convent productions. goldoni was so incensed by Chiari’s close imitation
that he appealed to the state inquisitors, who closed down both plays.
at the end of that season, after goldoni’s stilted and conventional Erede
fortunata [The Fortunate Heiress] had flopped, he vowed to create double
the number of plays in the following one.
Goldoni’s Reform Takes Shape
the 16 comedies of the 1750–51 season, while not all noteworthy, included
the Bottega del caffé [The Coffee Shop] and Pamela (inspired by the samuel
richardson work and the first work to be staged without masks). in 1750
goldoni also undertook the publication of his works, prefaced by his
explication of his reform. until 1753 he remained at the sant’angelo,
whose relatively small scale promoted an air of intimacy. While there he
fully developed his reform on the principles of variation, expressiveness,
and a moral template based on real life.44 One of his last works for
the sant’angelo was La locandiera [The Mistress of the Inn]. its young
protagonist, heir to an inn and free of senior male relatives with authority
over her life, succeeds in making three noblemen fall in love with her.
When their rivalry turns threatening, she bases her choice of husband
on retaining maximum freedom, the successful candidate an employee
of hers also recommended by her late father. in 1753, goldoni became
embroiled in a dispute with Medebach over the royalties of the published
plays, to which goldoni asserted his rights as the author of texts different
from those put on the stage. an offer of more money from the Vendramin
and the prestige of their theater took goldoni to the san Luca, where he
would remain until 1762.
in an attempt to retain its public, the sant’angelo immediately hired
Chiari, who incorporated into the realism and localism borrowed from
goldoni an array of other features appealing to conservative tastes among
Venetian theatergoers. these included the kind of exoticism, fantasy, and
high drama lingering from the 17th-century novel and melodrama and
continued in tragedy, as well as the structures and language of Latin mod-
els and the aristotelian unities. such literary values accompanied social
44 Pullini, “il teatro fra polemica e costume,” pp. 304–06.