Between the script and the performance: some notes about a new critical edition of Gozzi’s “Re cervo”

Abstract

In 2003, the Swiss scholar Fabio Soldini discovered a big amount of unknown manuscripts, mostly unpublished, by Gasparo and Carlo Gozzi: for such reason I felt the urgency to prepare a new critical edition of Re cervo, since previous one, brought out by me several years ago, had been necessarily based only on the witnesses at that time known. Through the comparative analysis of all the manuscripts now available, I was able to go back up to the script probably used by Antonio Sacchi for the 1762’s performance and to some of the previous drafts of the scenic tale. I was also able to document the different writing’s modalities of the dramatist directly working for the stage and the one of the man of letters revising his own text for the printing.