Carlo, Count Gozzi; 13 December 1720 – 4 April 1806) was an Italian playwright.

Gozzi was born and died in Venice; he came from an old Venetian family from the Republic of Ragusa. His father’s debts forced him to look for a means of supporting himself, and at the age of sixteen, he joined the army in Dalmatia; three years later he returned to Venice, where he soon made a reputation for himself as the wittiest member of the Granelleschi Society, to which the publication of several satirical pieces had gained him admission. This society, nominally devoted to conviviality and wit, had serious literary aims and was especially zealous to preserve Tuscan literature from foreign influence.

The displacement of the old Italian comedy by the dramas of Pietro Chiari and Carlo Goldoni, modelled on French examples, threatened to defeat the society’s efforts; in 1757 Gozzi came to the rescue by publishing a satirical poem, La tartana degli influssi per l’anno 1756, and in 1761 his comedy based on a fairy tale, The Love for Three Oranges or Analisi riflessiva della fiaba L’amore delle tre melarance, a parody of the style of the other two poets. To perform it, he obtained the services of the Sacchi company of players, who had been left without employment because the popularity of the comedies of Chiari and Goldoni offered no scope for the display of their particular talents. Their satirical powers thus sharpened by personal enmity, the play was an extraordinary success.

Struck by the effect produced on the audience by the introduction of the supernatural or mythical element, which he had merely used as a convenient medium for his satirical purposes, Gozzi produced a series of dramatic pieces based on fairy tales. These were briefly popular, but after the breaking up of the Sacchi company were completely disregarded. They were however much praised by Goethe, Schlegel, Madame de Staël and Sismondi; one of these pieces, Turandot or Re Turandote, was translated by Friedrich Schiller.

In his later years Gozzi began to produce tragedies in which the comic element was largely introduced; as this innovation proved unacceptable to the critics he turned to the Spanish drama, from which he obtained models for various pieces; these had minor success.