they have virtually perished. No literary relic of their palmy days seems to exist except the scenarios or skeleton plans of some of them, mere outlines to be filled up by the performers. Modern readers will hardly obtain a better idea of their spirit than from Vernon Lee's inimitable Prince of the Hundred Soups, a fantastic tale laid in the seventeenth century, the culminating period of these dramatic impromptus, towards the close of which they began to yield to the musical drama. Their capability of real dramatic excellence is revealed by two more recent developments—the improved Pulcinella farces of Francesco Gerlone, a Neapolitan tailor, who, in the later half of the eighteenth century, "lifted," says Scherillo, "Pulcinella from the crowd of masks, and made him the monarch of the popular theatre"; and the fairy dramas of Carlo Gozzi, a Venetian of the same period. Both usually wrote their plays out, or at least left comparatively little to the invention of the actors; but Cerlone composed entirely in the spirit of the commedia dell' arte. His Pulcinella is commonly a butt, designed to keep the audience throughout in a roar of laughter by his ridiculous adventures, an object most fully attained. Gozzi's pieces are of higher literary quality, and demand a more particular notice.
Carlo Gozzi (1720–1808), brother of Gaspare Gozzi, already mentioned, would merit an honourable place among Italian writers merely on the strength of his entertaining memoirs, translated by Symonds. His real significance in literary history, however, is confined to the four brilliant years in which he carried all before him on the Venetian stage by his fiabe or dramatised fairy tales, composed in the spirit of the commedia dell' arte, in so far that many of the characters belonged to
