Goldoni, Carlo, the founder of Italian comedy, born at Venice; in his youth he studied medicine and subsequently law, but in 1732 appeared as a dramatist with his tragedy “Belisario”; moving from place to place as a strolling-player, he in 1736 returned to Venice, and finding his true vocation in comedy-writing, turned out a rapid succession of sparkling character plays after the manner of Molière; in 1761 he went to Paris as a playwright to the Italian theatre; became Italian master to Louis XV.'s daughters, and subsequently was pensioned; his comedies displaced the burlesques and farces till then in vogue on the stage in Italy (1707‒1793).
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Golden Rose * Goldschmidt, Madame