[40] By the playwright Arneau.
[41] Printed in vol. v. of the Opere, ed. cit.
[42] Francesco Gritti, of the ancient patrician family, was born in 1740 and died in 1811. His translations of French plays appeared in two vols. at Venice in 1788. Some of his poems in Venetian dialect were published in 1815. Venezia, Alvisopoli.
[43] Gozzi is here answering Gratarol, who had called him a hypocrite in his Narrazione.
[44] This and the ensuing chapters throw light upon Gozzi's intention when he wrote chaps. xl. xli. above. The generalities of the earlier chapters square point by point with the particularities of the later. It looks as if he wished to prepare his readers for a special self-apologetical statement of his case against Mme. Ricci. We need not impute to him insincerity or false suggestion. When he wrote these Memoirs, the manners and customs of comedians were patent to the world, and he probably uttered no more than the truth about them. Yet the forensic cleverness of a pleader may be detected in the account he gives of his relations with this woman. Considering their intimacy, he does not act quite chivalrously in the exposure of its dissolution. At this distance of time we cannot ascertain the facts. Gozzi was perhaps consistent and veracious in his disclaimer of more than a liaison of friendship. The reader of the following chapters must decide for himself whether the writer of them was carefully manipulating and colouring circumstances he wished to attenuate.
[45] Gozzi means that he had assumed the rôle of Cicisbeo to Mme. Ricci.
[46] This man was called Francesco Bartoli. We owe to his pen a valuable collection of biographical notes on Italian actors and actresses: Notizie Istoriche dei Comici Italiani che fiorirono intorno al MDL fino ai giorni presenti (Padova, Conzatti, 1781). This work contains a life of Teodora Ricci and the author's own autobiography. After the events of 1777 he separated from his wife, and only acknowledged the first of her three children. Critics may pause to wonder, at this point, whether Gozzi's relations to Mme. Ricci were as Platonic as he painted them. In 1782 Bartoli retired from the stage and lived at Rovigo. On Teodora's leaving the profession in 1793, he took her back, and endured her hysterical tempers until the date of his own death in 1806. She died mad about the year 1824 in the asylum of S. Servilio at Venice.
[47] Zannuzzi was premier amoureux at the Comédie Italienne in Paris. It was he who invited Goldoni to visit that city, and offered him an engagement for two years from the Court. See Goldoni's Memoirs, part ii. chap. xliii.
[48] The Greek rogue in Pulci's Morgante Maggiore.
[49] Gozzi here refers directly to the Gratarol episode.