1820.] . [ 493 ] 



MODERN ITALIAN COMEDY*. THE PLAYS OP GHERARDO DA 



ROSSI. 



THE man whose travel is by necessity confined to books, should read 

 the comedy of those countries which he would wish to visit, almost in 

 preference to any class of their literary productions. With all allow- 

 ance for that spirit of caricature which forms a fair proportion of dra- 

 matic licence for the deference of writers to critical rules or political 

 apprehensions and for those odd conventional arrangements which every 

 where, more or less, distinguish the " life" of the theatre from the life of 

 reality such, for example, as that, in England, which puts every man 

 of forty years old upon the stage into a garb which, for forty years past, 

 no man any where but upon the stage has seen ; still it is hardly pos- 

 sible to read the comic drama of any country, differing considerably in 

 civil and social condition from our own, without finding apart from the 

 merit of the composition, a considerable charm in the insight which we 

 obtain as to the tastes and morals, as well as into the habits and domestic 

 institutions of its inhabitants. This is a description of entertainment, 

 however, which can only be derived fromreading: we never can get it, even 

 in a slight degree, from our dramatic exhibitions or performances at home. 

 When we translate, for the theatre, (in England) we go uniformly for our 

 matter to France ; because the thoughts and associations of the French 

 people are those which run the most in unison with our own. From the 

 drama of Germany, we take nothing but a few horrors which tell alike 

 in all countries ; from Spain, nothing but the names and dresses ; and from 

 Italy except in the department of music nothing at all. And all this 

 wisely and expediently ; because a drama, the force of which should lay 

 in the exhibition of foreign opinions or manners, whatever interest it 

 might have in the closet, could have none at all it would not be compre- 

 hended on the stage. At the same time, as the species of information to 

 be gained from such works does possess both interest and value, we shall 

 feel no apology necessary for laying occasionally sketches from the drama 

 of Europe generally before our readers : and we shall begin with the 

 works named at the head of the present article the comedies of Ghe-. 

 rardo da Rossi. 



The four volumes of plays, published by Da Rossi, at different times, 

 between the years 1789 and 1798, contain sixteen dramatic pieces (of 

 which fifteen are comedies) of rather unequal merit. The author, who 

 died a few months since at Rome, at the advanced age of seventy-three, 

 announces, in his first volume, that, if the work should be received 

 favourably, other volumes will follow: and the success, though not 

 equal to his hopes, was sufficient to produce that result ; for the " other 

 volumes" appeared in due course, as undertaken. Of the dramatic worth 

 of these performances the relative value of which, as we have already 

 observed, is unequal it would be difficult for any but an Italian fairly to 

 judge. Comedy is a thing in its nature, if not ephemeral, at least so 

 local, that no translation (and the reading in the original language by 

 a foreigner, though the best species of translation, still is a translation) 

 can afford any very adequate idea of it. We constantly see works of 

 great interest and value in our own language (an Irish novel of Miss 

 Edgeworth's, or Lady Morgan's, for instance) of which the whole excel- 

 lence would be lost in any version attempted in a foreign language. And 



