Summarize Gordoni's transformation and innovation of Italian comedy.

Gaudoni attaches great importance to the social education function of comedy. Unlike Lessing, he pays attention to the targeted disciplinary effect. He believes that "comedy is invented to eradicate social evils and make bad habits look ridiculous", but it should not be aimed at "just making people laugh", but should be based on the comedy principle of "punishing evil with laughter" to prevent bad habits and all their consequences, thus turning the theater into a school. Lessing wanted to laugh without laughing, and Gordoni wanted to laugh without laughing. It seems just the opposite. Gordoni's Italian impromptu comedies are often mixed with many vulgar and superficial things, so he is eager to make them face up to reality and try to have clear social significance to fight against bad habits. As a representative of the Enlightenment, Lessing realized that it is more important to inspire and educate people to understand things and improve their cognitive ability than to simply expose ugliness. Therefore, the "laugh" he advocated was not the kind of shallow and boring laugh that Gordoni opposed, but just the generalization and suggestion of "ridicule" that Gordoni demanded. Similarly, goldoni did not abandon the artistic interest and typical significance of comedy, and blindly pursued "punishing evil with ridicule". He once added that comedy creation must still "use those funny and prominent features that are the basis of comedy to make the script more vivid". This statement is more in line with Lessing. In short, they face different dramatic phenomena and discuss comedy according to different social missions and ideological levels, so the emphasis is slightly different; However, the progressive position is generally consistent with the noble artistic taste, so although the language is contradictory, the meaning is not contrary.

What Gaudoni is particularly close to other enlighteners is that he emphasizes comedy's imitation of nature and the truth of life. He has repeatedly claimed that "comedy is an imitation of nature" and he wants to "extract the material of comedy from the ocean of nature". In his view, the most effective way for comedy to resist absurdity, noise and nonsense is to follow the law naturally. He was shocked by Machiavelli's comedy Ghost Wine when he was still in middle school in pavia. He sincerely hopes that after the performance of Ghost Wine, Italian comedies will "replace absurd plots with characters drawn from nature". Finding the opponent of "natural characters" for "absurd plot" is an important opportunity for him to embark on the road of realism. Since the principles of transformation are nature, truth and imitation, the dramatic principles such as "three unifications" have little weight in comparison. As a lively and innovative dramatist, Godoni also opposes having too many shackles to restrain himself. He said:

In any art and discovery, experience always precedes aphorism. In the process of the times, writers have explored a method of creative practice, but modern writers always have the right to make their own explanations to the ancients.

For example, goldoni's "own interpretation" is very flexible in grasping the "three unifications". After analyzing Aristotle and the current comedy phenomenon, he came to the conclusion: "If comedy can be performed in the same place without anything far-fetched or inappropriate, so be it, but if something absurd and unreasonable must be introduced for the same place, it is better to change places and follow the law of stage possibility." We can only make the "three unifications" obey nature and reason, but not the other way around. This view was simple, but it was quite progressive at that time.

Creating a good role in comedy is an important proposition of goldoni. His emphasis on "nature" is mainly "natural characters", so he thinks that the direct effect of adopting nature is to make people produce * * * sounds for the characters they represent. Writing a good role, in Gordoni's view, is not only a matter of scriptwriting skills, but an important step in the Italian comedy innovation movement. Only a solid personality can dwarf those "fooling around" comedies and let the audience decide their own artistic choices in the process of repeated interaction with personality on the stage. Therefore, in Chapter 40 of Memoirs I, Gordoni once described his inner activities when he made up his mind to start the drama reform: "Now is a good time to start the innovation movement that I have been thinking about for a long time. Yes, I must write the theme of personality: this is the source of good comedy; This is how the great Moliere began his career. " Godoni imitated Moliere here. In fact, his attitude towards Moliere is quite complicated. He deeply admired and appreciated Moliere, even from ignorance of French to determination to learn French well, and finally became proficient in French, partly for better understanding Moliere. However, he also felt that Moliere's characterization was often too single, and a series of scenes revolved around a passion. Gordoni believes that Italian character comedies should write all kinds of distinctive personalities, not just the personalities of the protagonists. "We require the main characters to be powerful, original and well-known; It is required that almost all characters, even those who interrupt, have personality. " This is the attitude of imitating Moliere and surpassing Moliere. Moliere's strengths can help overcome the weaknesses of Italian comedy. However, with the development of history, Moliere in the classical era may not fully meet the needs of writers in the Enlightenment era. It should be admitted that Gaudoni's revelation of Moliere's drama, a single character controlled by a kind of desire and passion, is very insightful. Later, the Russian poet Pushkin also made a similar exposition. On the theory of personality, goldoni developed Moliere obviously.

To write a variety of personalities, Godoni advocates comparing different types of characters to complement each other. This is just the opposite of Diderot's point of view. But interestingly, both Diderot and Gordoni expressed their views unswervingly. Diderot reminded playwrights to pay attention to the relationship between personality and environment, and advocated writing plays in the contrast between personality and situation, which showed profound materialism and realism, but he completely refused the positive and negative contrast of personality, which was too absolute. At this point, the successful playwright goldoni made up for Diderot's one-sidedness with his own experience, but he also liked to use words like "must" to explain technical problems, which was rather blunt.

Facial expression is an important aspect to show personality characteristics, and the vigorous promotion of personality portrayal will inevitably be dissatisfied with the masks on the actors' faces, so the future of masks has become a very specific and eye-catching issue in drama reform. After all, Gordoni is a denier in disguise. He said, "Masquerade must always damage the actors' actions in happiness or sadness; Whether in love, losing his temper or being happy, he always presents the same five senses; Although he can use gestures to change his tone, his face is the interpreter of his heart, but he just can't express the enthusiasm caused by his inner excitement through his face. " He explained the rationality of using masks in ancient Greece and Rome and the irrationality inherited from today according to his viewpoint that his dramatic methods changed with the historical process. He said that ancient masks could be used to transmit sound and amplify sound, which came from the theater conditions at that time; And because there was no need to express people's character and feelings very delicately at that time, it didn't hurt much to have a mask to cover them; "Our actors today must have souls; The soul under the mask is like a spark under the ashes. " In addition, Gaudoni believes that simply pulling down a mask will immediately encounter strong resistance. Impromptu comedy is also artistic charm, with no fixed lines, which shapes a group of sensitive and versatile actors; Typed masks promote the high development of actors in body performance. How can Gordoni be criticized by the audience, actors, national sentiment and years of appreciation habits because of his recklessness? So when he wrote Momolo in 1738, he allowed half of the whole play to be improvised (that is, the "curtain table"), and all the characters except the protagonist were allowed to keep masks. However, Gordoni used ingenious and graceful lines to contrast the poverty of the "screen table" and vivid protagonist images to contrast the thinness of the mask role. Even so, in the comedy theaters he created from 1750 to 175 1, he still said that it is not the right time to remove the mask in personality comedy, "you can't go against the public in anything"; Taking care of the interests of the audience at that time was in an ambiguous state during the transformation process. He advocated that "the mask should not be completely removed, but should be placed in a proper place." In his creative practice, he still created a lot of impromptu comedies and enthusiastically provided suitable scripts for impromptu comedians. Throughout the 1940s, he carried out this slow reform work almost cautiously and step by step. His famous play One Servant and Two Masters was an impromptu comedy written by 1744, and it was not until 1749 that the lines were rewritten. Of course, this can't be regarded as a gradual realization process of an established plan. This process itself is also to change and promote his reform plan with facts. He said: "We ask for a lot of things, which is too long. Only through use, practice and a certain period of time can we understand these things and make them come true. " This is a sincere confession that an art reformer encountered in his progress.