In the first year after my retirement, the public began to grumble at the lack of new pieces. In the second, it began to growl. The audiences thinned, and Sacchi's theatre became a desert. There were not wanting folk who from the boxes shouted insults at the actors. Their dejection increased daily; and then they all with one accord broke into protestations of affection and fervent entreaties for my help.
I had accustomed the public to novel kinds of drama, and the company had seconded my efforts. I did not think it right to assist them for ten years and then to drop them. To condescend to take affront at what comedians say or do is utterly impossible for me. I could, indeed, have laughed in their faces and turned my back. But I preferred to laugh in my sleeve while once more coming to their aid with the energy and good results which I shall presently describe.
The owners of the other theatres in Venice, finding themselves extremely injured by the plays I gave to Sacchi, kept making me proposals to write{167} for their houses; and the pretty actresses who worked there seconded these misplaced endeavours by spreading snares to catch me with their charms. Though my old protegés would have richly deserved it, I had the burlesque heroism not to desert them.
Sacchi often complained of having to remain in theatres out of the way and inconvenient for the people, such as S. Samuele and S. Angelo, where only striking novelties like mine could draw large houses. He was always sighing to get the lease of S. Salvadore,[35] a most popular theatre, since it is situated at the centre of the town, within easy reach of its densely inhabited quarters. Now it so happened that this theatre was occupied by a company which performed pieces in the fashion introduced by Chiari and Goldoni. I have already said that the vogue of such things had declined; and the proprietor, his Excellency Vendramini, was anxious to secure me in the interest of his failing house. He sent a priest of my acquaintance, a certain Don Baldassare, as envoy, offering me his cordial regards, together with considerable emoluments, if I would pass from Sacchi's company to that which occupied S. Samuele. I draped myself in the dignity of Attilius Regulus, and replied that I did not write for money, but for pastime. As long as Sacchi's troupe kept together and remained competent, I did not mean to give away my work to any other.{168} If his Excellency had the fancy to see plays of mine performed at his theatre, he could indulge it by placing the house at Sacchi's disposal. Not many months passed before I was chosen by that gentleman as arbitrator between him and Sacchi. I acted the solicitor, drew up a lease, and installed my manager in the theatre his heart was set on.
I should have liked to devote myself entirely to my private studies; but the responsibility I had taken by transferring Sacchi's company to S. Samuele, together with the informal engagement I felt under to Signor Vendramini, made me resume my task of writing for the stage. I ought to add that my old habit of associating with the actors weighed strongly with me in this circumstance. Therefore a new chapter of some fourteen years in my life was opened, the principal events of which I mean to write with all the candour and the piquancy I can.
XLV.
Dangerous innovations in Sacchi's company.—My attempts to arrange matters, my threats, prognostications, and obstinate persistence on the point of honour to support my protegés—things sufficient to move reasonable mirth against me.
The grant of the theatre at San Salvadore for the next year had hardly been handed over to Sacchi,{169} when the other troupe, who were expelled to make room for him, engaged the theatre at Sant'Angelo, which he was leaving, and began at once to plot revenge. They tried, by flatteries and promises of money (always needed by Italian comedians), to circumvent the best actors of the company, among whom were Cesare Derbes, the excellent Pantalone, and Agostino Fiorelli, the famous Tartaglia. In fact, they did seduce these two champions of impromptu comedy to desert Sacchi's ranks and join their squadron, more with the object of weakening our forces than of strengthening theirs, since their own members were unfit for any performances but those of the so-called cultivated drama.
This desertion mortified the sharers in Sacchi's company, and they whispered their misfortune in my ears. For my own part, I was sorry to think that the quartette of masks, real natural wonders, who made such pleasant mirth in concert, should be scattered. I determined, therefore, to try whether I could not dissuade these two actors from the somewhat shabby step they had resolved on. When I remonstrated with Derbes, who was my gossip, the answer he gave me ran as follows: "Precisely because I feared that you would attempt to separate me from my new comrades, and because I know my inability to refuse you anything, I concealed the agreement from your eyes, and signed it in secret, so that I might not have it in my power to comply with{170} your request. It grieves me that I am no longer able to meet your wishes." On hearing this preposterous excuse, I lost my humour for a moment, and burst into serious reproaches. He assumed a theatrical air of sorrow, and defended himself by repeating the complaints which were current among the disaffected members of Sacchi's troupe. I contented myself with prophesying that he would find himself without place or part in his new company, adding by way of menace that I should well know how to make him repent of his desertion to the enemy.
Then I repaired to Fiorelli with as much solicitude as though I were bent on averting some grave disaster from myself. Him I found more tractable. He had not signed his agreement; and I was able to reconcile him with his old comrades, and to make him subscribe a paper, by which he promised to remain with them for the next three years.