The Venetian Twins: For the Love of Money

"The point is ladies and gentlemen that greed, for lack of a better word, is good."

This contrarian statement made by Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko (Wall Street - 1987) is what rings in my ears when I ponder Carlo Goldoni's The Venetian Twins.

Greed is the intense and selfish desire for something. Usually it is wealth, or food, or power.  It is an emotion that ever present in human society.  It is that emotion which drives people, corporations, economies, politics, civilizations, and plays.

Greed is, arguably, the foundation of this story.  Without the greed of the Professor (his folly, if you will), the play would not have been nearly the same.  It would have been a completely different tale altogether; it would most assuredly not have been a comedy either.

Consider for a moment if the Professor had lost his biological daughter and had taken the time to grieve as any rational father would have.  He would have lost the inheritance he was offered to his nephew.  That is not the same story and nor is it funny.  Let us mull over an alternate scenario: the Professor lost his daughter and adopted the orphan child because of his need to fill the hole in his heart with the love and trust of a young infant instead of cold hard cash.  He would have raised the girl to be a normally functioning member of society without the ulterior motive of essentially selling her to a rich husband. Paying no mind to how superficial or vapid he may be.  Heart warming? Yes. Comic? No.

In The Venetian Twins, it is greed that drives the story. It is greed that creates the conflict. It is greed that give the audience the opportunity to laugh.

Greed, for lack of a better word, is the crux.

Carnival Play: Priest's food and the poor

In The Grand Inquisitor in the Soup a monk/priest tries to blackmail or trick Simon the innkeeper into giving the church money. The priest is originally considered a responsible and trustworthy person in history.  Hans Sachs brings up this character multiple times to show that many of the commoners considered priests to be untrustworthy. I will focus on The Grand Inquisitor in the Soup and parallel it to something found in the bible.
In 1 Samuel 2:12-17 two wicked priests named Hophni and Phineas would take portions of sacrifices that were not theirs to take. Animal sacrifices were to be presented to the priest alive, slaughtered, and certain portions would be burned for God, some uncooked meat would be given to the priests, and some would go home with the family to be cooked and consumed within 2 days. Hophni and Phineas would send their servants to go into a family's home while they were cooking the meat from their sacrifice and take some of the meat for the priests.


"13 Now the priests would always treat the people in the following way: Whenever anyone was making a sacrifice, while the meat was boiling, the priest’s attendant would come with a three-pronged fork in his hand. 14 He would jab it into the basin, kettle, caldron, or pot, and everything that the fork brought up the priest would take for himself." -1 Samuel 2:13-14

Considering what the priests would take was not part of their portion, they were sinning. Many of the people would remind the priest of this but the priests would threaten them until the meat was given. The Inquisitor threatens Simon with purgatory, hell, long journeys, etc to try and get money out of him. The priest even uses acts of "kindness" to make himself look better through giving the poor some of his soup. In reality he removes "any meat or pieces of fish and save these for ourselves for our own meal this afternoon." (p.77) By threatening Simon and making him sit through his sermon the Inquisitor hoped to gain money or food from him. Simon however fooled the Inquisitor's plan by using the sermon against him and leaving without any threat following him.

This parallel shows that not everyone is who they seem on the outside. The priests in the bible certainly were not who they were supposed to be and neither was the Inquisitor. So maybe we need to examine who we follow, and ourselves, every once in a while.