Play: Mirandolina

Overview

Carlo Goldoni's Mirandolina, also titled La locandiera and first performed in 1753, is a sharp, witty comedy centered on a clever innkeeper whose intelligence and charm upend social expectations. The play focuses on the interplay between social classes and gendered power, staging a compact battle of wills among a small cast of colorful suitors and the woman who outmaneuvers them. Its energy comes from quick dialogue, situations that expose vanity and hypocrisy, and a heroine who blends commercial savvy with personal agency.

Main characters

Mirandolina is the spirited, resourceful owner of an inn who has learned to use hospitality as a means of influence. The Cavaliere di Ripafratta is a proud, misogynistic nobleman who scorns women and all notions of romantic entanglement. Two other aristocratic suitors, a foppish count and a complacent marquis, flatter Mirandolina with different kinds of attention. Fabrizio is Mirandolina's loyal servant and foreman of the inn's day-to-day life; his steady presence anchors the household and ultimately figures into Mirandolina's final choice.

Plot summary

The drama unfolds at Mirandolina's inn where a parade of noble guests repeatedly fall under her spell. The count and the marquis openly court her with flattery and gifts, while the Cavaliere boasts about his contempt for women. Mirandolina enjoys the attention and uses it to boost her business, but she is also curious to test the limits of her influence. When the Cavaliere resolves to resist every woman's advances, Mirandolina decides to treat his disdain as a challenge and deliberately sets out to make him fall in love.
Her flirtations with the Cavaliere are calculated and theatrical, designed to wound his pride more than to win his heart. The strategy works: the Cavaliere is unexpectedly disarmed, exposed as vulnerable and confused. His ego cannot reconcile the experience, and his vanity turns to rage when he realizes he has been conquered by a woman he considered beneath him. In a dramatic, humiliating moment he strikes Mirandolina. Rather than recoil, she answers with a final, craftily staged reversal: she accepts Fabrizio's long-standing devotion and marries him, choosing a partner whose status will repay the social insult and confound the aristocrats who had presumed to possess her.

Themes and tone

The play explores themes of power, class performance, and gender roles with irony and realism. Goldoni strips away baroque artifice to present characters driven by recognizable motives, ambition, vanity, desire for control, rather than by stock types. Mirandolina's business acumen and emotional intelligence subvert the expected hierarchy between servant and noble, revealing the porousness of social distinctions when confronted with personal cunning. Comedy arises from the friction between public posturing and private need, and Goldoni balances satire with warmth, making Mirandolina both a social commentator and an empathetic figure.

Legacy and significance

Mirandolina stands as one of Goldoni's most enduring comedies and a highlight of 18th-century Italian theater reform. Its compact structure, lively dialogue, and realistic characters helped move drama away from contrived masks and toward more human, relatable portrayals. The title role became a touchstone for actresses and a model of the clever, independent heroine who negotiates power through wit rather than brute force. The play continues to be revived, adapted, and reinterpreted, inviting fresh readings about autonomy, performance, and the economics of desire.