As, however, they were mainly improvised, and no care was taken of such parts as might chance to be written down, they have virtually perished. No literary relic of their palmy days seems to exist except the _scenarios_ or skeleton plans of some of them, mere outlines to be filled up by the performers. Modern readers will hardly obtain a better idea of their spirit than from Vernon Lee’s inimitable _Prince of the Hundred Soups_, a fantastic tale laid in the seventeenth century, the culminating period of these dramatic impromptus, towards the close of which they began to yield to the musical drama. Their capability of real dramatic excellence is revealed by two more recent developments--the improved Pulcinello farces of FRANCESCO CERLONE, a Neapolitan tailor, who, in the later half of the eighteenth century, “lifted,” says Scherillo, “Pulcinello from the crowd of masks, and made him the monarch of the popular theatre”; and the fairy dramas of Carlo Gozzi, a Venetian of the same period. Both usually wrote their plays out, or at least left comparatively little to the invention of the actors; but Cerlone composed entirely in the spirit of the _commedia dell’ arte_. His Pulcinello is commonly a butt, designed to keep the audience throughout in a roar of laughter by his ridiculous adventures, an object most fully attained. Gozzi’s pieces are of higher literary quality, and demand a more particular notice. CARLO GOZZI (1720-1808), brother of Gaspare Gozzi, already mentioned, would merit an honourable place among Italian writers merely on the strength of his entertaining memoirs, translated by Symonds. His real significance in literary history, however, is confined to the four brilliant years in which he carried all before him on the Venetian stage by his _fiabe_ or dramatised fairy tales, composed in the spirit of the _commedia dell’ arte_, in so far that many of the characters belonged to the old conventional types, and that a portion of the action was highly farcical. These characteristics were nevertheless combined with a regular plot capable of exciting deep interest. The _fiabe_ originated in a literary quarrel. Goldoni, the restorer of true comedy to Italy, had denounced the buffooneries of the old _commedia dell’ arte_, and Gozzi, who had himself cultivated that form, and whose partiality for it was enhanced by a misunderstanding with Goldoni, determined to show its capabilities, and at the same time to ridicule his dramatic rivals, Goldoni and the Abate Chiari. To this end he hit upon the extremely happy idea of dramatising the fairy tales in Basile’s _Pentamerone_, thus creating a form represented in English literature by the admirable burlesques of Planché, but with even more resemblance to an ancient form of which no complete example remains, the mythological parodies of the Attic Middle Comedy, which combined ridicule of the tragic poets with a regular plot derived from ancient tradition.