Carlo Osvaldo Goldoni (1707–1793) was an Italian playwright and librettist from the Republic of Venice. His works include some of Italy's most famous and best-loved plays. His plays offered his contemporaries images of themselves, often dramatizing the lives, values, and conflicts of the emerging middle classes. Goldoni also wrote under the pen name and title 'Polisseno Fegeio, Pastor Arcade', which, so he claimed in his memoirs, the "Arcadians of Rome" bestowed upon him.

Goldoni took to himself the task of superseding the Commedia dell'Arte by representations of actual life and manners through the characters and their behaviors. He rightly maintained that Italian life and manners were susceptible of artistic treatment such as had not been given them before. His works are a lasting monument to the changes that he initiated: a dramatic revolution that had been attempted but not achieved before.