GOLDONI, Carlo.

Le Bourru bienfaisant, comédie en trois actes et en prose... dédiée à Madame Marie Adélaïde de France.

Paris, Chez la veuve Duchesne, 1771. 8vo, pp. 112 (mis-paginated 1-96, 85-100), old ownership note in lower outer corner of title, occasional spots and stains, one bifolium slightly loose, front endleaf cut away; in a contemporary binding of green paper boards, spine rubbed and partially lacking paper covering; lettered in gilt on front cover: 'Mlle. Dupont'. First edition: one of Goldoni's best and most successful comedies, written in French on the occasion of Louis XVI's marriage to Marie Antoinette, and published in France. It was Goldoni's first work in French, and it carries a printed dedication in italic letter to Princess Adélaide, to whom he was teaching Italian. Goldoni later translated the play into Italian himself under the title Il burbero di buon cuore.'[Goldoni's] last comedies were written in French in the 1770s: Le Bourru bienfaisant and L'Avare fastueux, which show how well he had learned the lessons provided by Molière, whom he always admired. The better-known of the two, Le Bourru, which was well received when performed in 1771 by the Comédie française, is a decorous version of the theme of La casa nova and the Villeggiature, a story of frivolous and imprudent young people who are finally rescued by wiser elderly relatives. But now the contradictions are within the characters themselves (as in Molière's Le Misanthrope) - the living oxymorons of the burbero benefico (grumpy benefactor) and the avaro fastoso (miserly show-off) - as though Goldoni recognised a germ of incipient madness beneath the surface of polite French society' (Cambridge History of Italian literature).

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