....Although one Chicago critic declared that “The Coffee-House will inspire no emotion save that of ennui,” while another dismissed it as “artistic fluff,” the charm of this quaintly naturalistic comedy was keenly felt by that intrepid champion of dramatic excellence, Mr. James O’Donnell Bennett, of the Record-Herald, his critique being so intuitively just to this droll portrayal of the life in Venice in her decadence that it shall be quoted here as a vicarious expression of the present writer’s views regarding it... [286]
Here came the male babbler, preening and mincing in lace and silk, sipping his coffee in the open, lying in wait for a bit of gossip like a cat for a mouse, putting two and two together and making what he liked out of it, symbolizing — in a different way but just as wonderfully — the “motiveless malignity” of Iago, and epitomizing mischief and malevolence. . . . The character is drawn full length — perfect in every puttering detail, an officious, gloating, eavesdropping babbler who wins for himself in the dénouement the word — of terrifying import in the Venice of 1760 — “spy,” and who thinks himself so little deserving of that word that he whimpers as the curtain falls: “I have a good heart, but — but — I talk too much!” He is an unforgivable, unforgettable old man, and he was as alive last night as he was one hundred and fifty-two years ago.
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ex Chapter 9, “Comedies of the Bourgeoisie,” in H. C. Chatfield-Taylor, Goldoni : A Biography (London, 1914) : 286
Princeton copy/scan (via google books) : link
4 December 2025