Mention of the Arcadia and of Goldoni leads to another art, most characteristic of these two centuries, the player's art. The drama had never been a success in Italy; Machiavelli and Ariosto wrote comedies, but they were no better from a dramatic than from an ethical point of view. After the acknowledged failure of serious comedy, another species took the field, the "Commedia dell'Arte," and definitely established itself at about the time of the beginning of the Baroque. In this species of comedy the dramatis personae were masked and always impersonated certain definite characters, and the dialogue was improvised. These masks were _Pantalone_, our Pantaloon, a Venetian merchant, who always wore a black robe and scarlet stockings, and spoke the Venetian dialect; _Il Dottore_, the doctor, a pompous ass from Bologna; _Arlecchino_, Harlequin, a silly and credulous servant in tight hose and motley jerkin, and _Brighella_, a quick-witted and knavish servant, both speaking the patois of Bergamo; _Colombina_, the soubrette, a pretty maid-servant from Tuscany; _Capitano Spavento_, Captain Terrible, a fire-eater from Naples, etc. This comedy, necessarily kept within narrow limits by these characters, was strictly improvisation, except that the playwright provided a _scenario_, a skeleton plot. It had great success, and troops of Italian comedians went all over Europe; but by the eighteenth century it had run its course and become mere vulgar horseplay, and Goldoni (1707-93), the only brilliant comic playwright that Italy has produced, gave it a death-blow. Goldoni was a Venetian, and a perfect embodiment of the happy, careless, amiable, entertaining society of the time. He led a roaming life, going to Tuscany to learn good Italian, and finally ending his career with twenty years in Paris. Some of his plays are in the Venetian dialect; two were written in French. There are more than a hundred, counting tragedies, interludes, and all. Their virtue is their lightness. They are made of foam, a delicious dramatic _souffle_, and in the hands of accomplished Italian actors, like Eleonora Duse or Ermete Novelli, retain their charm to this day. They are essential for the history of the period, with their counts, barons, marquesses, their ladies, their waiting-maids, their innkeepers, _camerieri_, cobblers, adventurers, and all their gay mockery of the idle habits of the time.