It was not my fault that a courteous public called for the repetition of this fantastic parody on many successive evenings. The theatre was crowded, and Sacchi's company began to breathe again after their long discouragement.
Such is Gozzi's own account of his first acted fable.
The public had been invited to sit as umpires in the controversy between him and their two favourite playwrights. They had been requested to suspend their judgment before finally pronouncing sentence against the _Commedia dell' Arte_. The result of the experiment was a decided triumph for the author of the _Three Oranges_, for Sacchi's company, and for the Granelleschi. But, what was more important, Gozzi, at the commencement of his forty-first year, now discovered himself to be possessed of dramatic ability in no common degree, and of a peculiar kind. The success of the _Three Oranges_ suggested the notion that use might be made of fairy tales, not only for maintaining the impromptu style of Italian Comedy, and amusing the public with piquant novelties, but also for conveying moral lessons under the form of allegory, and mingling tragic pathos with the humours of the masks. Accordingly Gozzi composed a succession of similar pieces, gradually suppressing the burlesque elements, enlarging the sphere of didactic satire, pathos, and dramatic action, relying less upon the mechanical attractions of transformation scenes and _lazzi_, writing the principal parts in full, and versifying a considerable portion of the dialogue.
_Il Corvo_ was produced at Milan in the summer of 1761, and at Venice in October 1761. _Il Rè Cervo_ appeared in January 1762; _Turandot_ perhaps in the same month; _La Donna Serpente_ in October 1762; _Zobeide_ in November 1763; _I Pitocchi Fortunati_ in November 1764; _Il Mostro Turchino_ in December of the same year; _L'Augellino Belverde_ in January 1765; _Zeim, Rè de'Geni_ in November 1765. These, with _L'Amore delle Tre Melarancie_, form the ten _Fiabe._ After the production of _Zeim_, Gozzi judged that the vein had been worked out, and turned his attention to adaptations of Spanish dramas for the stage.
The occasional origin of the _Fiabe_, on which I have already insisted, accounts for their want of plastic unity, their jumble of oddly contrasted ingredients. They were not the spontaneous outgrowth of artistic genius seeking to fuse the real and the fantastic in an ideal world of the imagination; but monsters begotten by an accident, which the creative originality of a highly-gifted intellect turned to excellent account. Gozzi's predilection for burlesque, his satirical propensity and fondness for moralising on the foibles of his age, found easy vent in the peculiar form he had discovered by a lucky chance. But these motives were not subordinated to the higher coherence of imaginative poetry. His fancy, command of dramatic situations, intuition into character, rhetorical eloquence, and inexhaustible inventiveness expatiated in the region of caprice and wonder. Yet we do not feel that he has succeeded in harmonising these divers elements with the spiritual instinct of an Aristophanes or a Shakespeare. Probably he did not seek to do so. The numerous reflections on the _Fiabe_, which are scattered up and down his works, prove that art for art's sake was far from being the leading consideration in their production. They remained with him pastimes, which had partly a practical, partly a didactic purpose--convenient vehicles for indulging his literary bias and airing his ethical opinions--serviceable ammunition in the battle against men whom he regarded as impostors and pretenders--excellent means of putting money into the purses of his protegés, the actors, and of keeping himself in favour with his friends, the actresses. To the last they retained something of the _punctilio_, which, as he says, inspired him at the outset.