In the _scenario_ of his _Three Oranges_, a play not preserved in its entirety, Gozzi has explained how he burlesqued his rivals, as, for instance, when the long journeys which Chiari’s personages are supposed to perform within the compass of a single action are ridiculed by Tartaglia and Truffaldino being propelled two thousand leagues by the devil with a pair of bellows. (“They sprawled on the grass at the sudden cessation of the favouring gale.”) The success of the _Three Oranges_ was immense, and contributed to drive Goldoni from Venice. It was followed by a rapid succession of similar pieces, tending, however, to assume more of a literary character, and become more and more remote from the original type of the Comedy of Masks. This, if diminishing their value as illustrations of popular manners and sentiment, renders them more generally enjoyable; and they would have a wide European reputation were they not principally composed in the Venetian dialect. _Turandot_, in the translation, or rather imitation, of Schiller, is known wherever German literature extends; but the scarcely inferior merits of the _Blue Monster_, the _Green Bird_, and the like, have not in general induced foreigners to learn the Venetian patois. Gozzi, in truth, just missed greatness; he had the artistic talent to work out a clever idea, but not the poetical fancy requisite to elevate this lo a region of ideal beauty. As suggested by Symonds, his pieces would supply excellent material for operatic libretti. Tieck subsequently undertook the task with higher qualifications, but the favourable moment had gone by. Gozzi’s plays are the true offspring of the national spirit, Tieck’s merely importations. After four years of brilliant triumphs, Gozzi slopped short, fearing to fatigue the public taste, or conscious of having exhausted his vein. The remainder of his career as a dramatic author was chiefly occupied with adaptations from the Spanish. While in the later seventeenth and early eighteenth century the Comedy of Masks was decaying, a new form of drama was silently growing up, the operatic, “a thing,” says Vernon Lee, “born of scenic displays and concerts, moulded into a romantic, wholly original shape, by the requirements of scenery, music, and singing.” Its character as a literary production is indicated by the fact that its proper title of _melodrama_ has become synonymous with something quite different, the prose tragedy which aims at strong sensational situations, while _melodramatic_ evokes no association with music.