Note 6 — XVIII CARLO GOZZI AND CARLO GOLDONI

On this score Gozzi is absolutely mistaken, so far at least as Ruzzante is concerned, whom evidently he had never read. Ruzzante’s pieces, as we have said, are never licentious, and virtuous women attended their performance. “Ad audiendas eas hominum tam mulierum concursus,” says B. Scardeon. This is further proved by the prologues which Beolco himself recited, and in which he frequently addressed himself to the good and beautiful ladies of the audience, sometimes rebuking them upon the exaggerated fashions of their toilettes, sometimes speaking to them of faithful love and of conjugal love in the most naïve, and at the same time the most idealistic manner. In the Gelosia, of Lasca (1581), there is a prologue addressed entirely to ladies, as is also the case with Il Granchio, of Salviati (1566) and several other comedies of the sixteenth century.