The Servant of Two Masters

Carlo Goldoni

Comedy. Adapted by David Turner and Paul Lapworth from the original
M8 F3. Extras. A room.

Goldoni skilfully adapted the commedia dell'arte pattern to his own very funny plots, and the most famous is this play wherein the story concerns the terrible complications wrought by Truffaldino when he gets himself engaged as a servant by two different people at the same time. The plot sparkles with invention and this adaptation in the modern idiom brilliantly matches the spirit of the play.
ISBN 0 573 11412 9

Truffaldino is engaged, first by Beatrice Rasponi, a gentlewoman who arrives in Venice disguised as her own brother. Beatrice has come to collect the dowry which her dead brother had been promised by Sir Pantalone, a rich merchant whose daughter Clarice was meant to become the dead man's bride. Out of greed, and a sense of bravado, Truffaldino then agrees to serve as well another new arrival to Venice, Florindo Aretusi, who turns out to be Beatrice's fiancé, and who is a fugitive from Turin where he faces a murder charge over the death of Beatrice's brother.

Truffaldino's need to conceal one master from the other keeps each one ignorant of the other's presence in Venice until, in a frenzy of revelations, the true identities of Beatrice and Florindo are revealed. However, Beatrice is forgiven her attempted fraud.