Il servitore di due padroni: an Italian graded reader at level B1

Glossary

affare · business deal ((sin. faccenda, contratto))

Una faccenda di soldi, un contratto fra due persone.

A matter of money or a contract between two people.

For Pantalone everything is business, even his daughter’s marriage: promising Clarice to Federigo Rasponi as a child had been “a good deal”, and it remains a good deal now. The book does not call him wicked for it: it only says that in his world, this is how people reason.

astuzia · cunning ((sin. furbizia, scaltrezza))

L'intelligenza pratica di chi trova subito una soluzione, anche disonesta.

The practical intelligence of someone who finds a quick solution, even a dishonest one.

Truffaldino is not an educated man, but he is cunning: he invents excuses, changes his story, saves the scene. His cunning is not the cunning of the powerful: it is that of a man who has nothing and must stay on his feet with his tongue.

bacio · kiss ((sin. abbraccio delle labbra, tenerezza))

Il contatto delle labbra con la pelle di un'altra persona.

The touch of the lips on another person's skin.

In the book kisses are always denied, never given on stage: Beatrice cannot kiss Florindo because she is in disguise, Silvio does not kiss Clarice because they are quarrelling. Only in the finale (and not even in writing, but implied) do the kisses arrive. It is the theatrical delicacy of the eighteenth century: suggested, not shown.

baule · trunk ((sin. cassa, cofano))

Una grande cassa di legno con il coperchio, che si usa per portare i vestiti in viaggio.

A large wooden chest with a lid, used to carry clothes on a journey.

The two trunks (Beatrice’s and Florindo’s) are the comic device of the book. In Brighella’s inn they are identical outside and different inside. Truffaldino opens both, puts one thing into the other, and from there come the two final twists: the portrait and the prayer book.

bugia · lie ((sin. menzogna, frottola))

Una cosa detta che non è vera.

Something said that is not true.

Truffaldino lies constantly, but his lies are always small and invented on the spot. He is not a liar by character: he is a liar by necessity, with two masters on his shoulders. Every time he tells one, you can see him already preparing the next.

cameriera · maid ((sin. domestica, serva))

Una donna pagata per fare i lavori di casa e servire a tavola.

A woman paid to do housework and wait at table.

Smeraldina is Clarice’s maid and in the book she is much more: she is the voice of the serving women of an eighteenth-century middle-class household. Her lines about men who promise and never deliver are the most modern satire Goldoni ever wrote.

The glossary contains 60 entries in all