On m’appelle bochu, mais je ne le suis mie.
On m’appelle bochu, mais je ne le suis mie.
On m’appelle bochu, mais je ne le suis mie.
On m’appelle bochu, mais je ne le suis mie.
The second hump, the one in front, conspicuous under his spangled doublet, reminds us of the glittering and protuberant cuirass of men-at-arms, and of the pigeon-breasted dress then in fashion, which imitated the curve of the cuirass.[6]The very hat of Polichinelle (I do not refer to his modern three-cornered covering, but to the beaver, with brim turned up, which he still wore in the seventeenth century), was the hat of the gentlemen of that day, the hatà la Henri IV.Finally, certain characteristic features of his face, as well as the bold jovial amorous temper of the jolly fellow, remind us, in caricature, of the qualities and the defects of the Béarnais. In short, notwithstanding his Neapolitan name, Polichinelle appears to me to be a completely national type, and one of the most vivacious and sprightly creations of French fancy.”
The first puppet-showmen in France whose names have been handed down to posterity, were a father and son called Brioché. According to the most authentic of the traditions collected, Jean Brioché exercised, at the beginning of Louis XIV.’s reign, the two professions of tooth-drawer and puppet-player. His station was at the end of the Pont Neuf, near the gate of Nesle, and his comrade was the celebrated monkey Fagotin. With or without his consent, Polichinelle was about this time dragged into politics. Amongst the numerous Mazarinades and political satires that deluged Paris in 1649, there was one entitledLetter from Polichinelle to Jules Mazarin. It was in prose, but ended by these three lines, by way of signature:—
“Je suis Polichinelle,Qui fait la sentinelleA la porte de Nesle.”
“Je suis Polichinelle,Qui fait la sentinelleA la porte de Nesle.”
“Je suis Polichinelle,Qui fait la sentinelleA la porte de Nesle.”
“Je suis Polichinelle,
Qui fait la sentinelle
A la porte de Nesle.”
It is also likely that the letter was the work of Brioché or Briocchi (who was perhaps a countryman andprotégéof the cardinal’s), written with a view to attract notice and increase his popularity (a good advertisement, in short), than that it proceeded from the pen of some political partisan. But in any case it serves to show that the French Punch was then a great favourite in Paris. “I may boast,” he is made to say in the letter, “without vanity, Master Jules, that I have always been better liked and more respected by the people than you have; for how many times have I, with my own ears, heard them say: ‘Let us go and see Polichinelle!’ whereas nobody ever heard them say: ‘Let us go and see Mazarin!’” The unfortunate Fagotin came to an untimely end, if we are to put faith in a little book now very rare (although it has gone through several editions), entitled,Combat de Cirano de Bergerac contre le singe de Brioché. This Cirano was a mad duellist of extreme susceptibility. “His nose,” says Ménage, “which was much disfigured, was cause of the death of more than ten persons. He could not endure that any should look at him, and those who did had forthwith to draw and defend themselves.” This lunatic, it is said, one day took Fagotin for a lackey who was making faces at him, and ran him through on the spot. The story may have been a mere skit on Cirano’s quarrelsome humour; but the mistake he is said to have made, appears by no means impossible when we become acquainted with the appearance and dress of the famous monkey. “He was as big as a little man, and a devil of a droll,” says the author of theCombat de Cirano; “his master had put him on an old Spanish hat, whose dilapidations were concealed by a plume; round his neck was a frillà la Scaramouche; he wore a doublet with six movable skirts, trimmed with lace and tags—a garment that gave him rather the look of a lackey—and a shoulder-belt from which hung a pointless blade.” It was this innocent weapon, according to the writer quoted from, that poor Fagotin had the fatal temerity to brandish against the terrible Cirano. Whatever the manner of his death, his fame lived long after him; and even as certain famous French comedians have transmitted their names to the particular class of parts they filled during their lives, so did Fagotin bequeath his to all monkeys attached to puppet-shows. Loret, in his metrical narrative of the wonders of the fair of St Germain’s in the year 1664, talks of “the apes and fagotins;” La Fontaine praisesFagotin’s tricksin his fable ofThe Lion and his Court, and Molière makes the sprightly and malicious Dorine promise Tartuffe’s intended wife that she shall have, in carnival time,
“Le sal et la grand ’branle, à savoir deux musettes,Et parfoisFagotin et les marionnettes.”
“Le sal et la grand ’branle, à savoir deux musettes,Et parfoisFagotin et les marionnettes.”
“Le sal et la grand ’branle, à savoir deux musettes,Et parfoisFagotin et les marionnettes.”
“Le sal et la grand ’branle, à savoir deux musettes,
Et parfoisFagotin et les marionnettes.”
Great honour, indeed, for a quadrumane comedian, to obtain even incidental mention from France’s first fabulist and greatest dramatist. It was at about the time of Tartuffe’s performance (1669) that puppet-shows appear to have been at the zenith of their popularity in France, and in the enjoyment of court favour. In the accounts of expenditure of the royal treasury is noted a payment of 1365 livres “to Brioché, player of marionettes, for the stay he made at St Germain-en-Laye during the months of September, October, and November, to divert the royal children.” Brioché had been preceded by another puppet-showman, who had remained nearly two months. The dauphin was then nine years old, and evidently very fond of Polichinelle—to whose exploits and drolleries, and to the tricks of Fagotin, it is not, however, to be supposed that the attractions of Brioché’s performances were confined. He and his brother showman had doubtless a numerous company of marionettes, performing a great variety of pieces, since they were able to amuse the dauphin and his juvenile court for nearly five months without intermission. Like all distinguished men, Brioché, decidedly one of the celebrities of his time, and to whom we find constant allusions in the prose and verse of that day, had his enemies and his rivals. Amongst the former was to be reckoned no less a personage than Bossuet, who denounced marionettes (with a severity that might rather have been expected from some straight-laced Calvinist than from a prelate of Rome) as a shameful and impure entertainment, calculated to counteract his laborious efforts for the salvation of his flock. M. Magnin’s extensive researches in puppet chronicles leave him convinced that the eloquent bishop must have been in bilious temper when thus attacking the poor little figures whose worst offences were a few harmless drolleries. Anthony Hamilton, in a letter, half verse and half prose, addressed to the daughter of James II. of England, describes the fête of St Germain-en-Laye, and gives us the measure of the marionettes’ transgressions. “The famous Polichinelle,” he says, “the hero of that stage, is a little free in his discourse, but not sufficiently so to bring a blush to the cheek of the damsel he diverts by his witticisms.” We would not take Anthony Hamilton’s evidence in such matters for more than it is worth. There was, no doubt, a fair share of license in the pieces arranged for these puppets, or in the jests introduced by their invisible readers; and as regards their actions, M. Magnin himself tells us of thehouzarde, an extremelygaillardedance, resembling that called theantiquailementioned in Rabelais. Notwithstanding which, the marionettes were in great favour with very honest people, and Charles Perrault, one of the most distinguished members of the old French Academy, praised them in verse as an agreeable pastime. The jokes Brioché put into the mouths of his actors were greatly to the taste of the Parisians; so much so that when an English mechanician exhibited other puppets which he had contrived to move by springs instead of strings, the public still preferred Brioché, “on account of the drolleries he made them say.” That he was not always and everywhere so successful, we learn by a quaint extract from theCombat de Cirano, already mentioned. Brioché, says the facetious author, “one day took it into his head to ramble afar with his little restless wooden Æsop, twisting, turning, dancing, laughing, chattering, &c. This heteroclite marmouzet, or, better to speak, this comical hunchback, was called Polichinelle. His comrade’s name was Voisin. (More likely, suggests M. Magnin, thevoisin, the neighbour or gossip of Polichinelle.) After visiting several towns and villages, they got on Swiss ground in a canton where marionettes were unknown. Polichinelle having shown his phiz, as well as all his gang, in presence of a people given to burn sorcerers, they accused Brioché to the magistrate. Witnesses declared that they had heard little figures jabber and talk, and that they must be devils. Judgment was pronounced against the master of this wooden company animated by springs. But for the interference of a man of sense they would have made a roast of Brioché. They contented themselves with stripping the marionettes naked.O poveretta!” The same story is told by the Abbé d’Artigny, who lays the scene at Soleure, and says that Brioché owed his release to a captain of the French-Swiss regiment then recruiting in the cantons. Punch at that time had powerful protectors. Brioché’s son and successor, Francis, whom the Parisians familiarly calledFanchon, having been offensively interfered with, wrote at once to the king. It would seem that, without quitting the vicinity of the Pont Neuf, he desired to transfer his standing to the Faubourg St Germains end, and that the commissaire of that district prohibited his exhibition. On the 16th October 1676, the great Colbert wrote to the lieutenant-general of police, communicating his majesty’s commands that Brioché should be permitted to exercise his calling, and should have a proper place assigned to him where he might do so.
The history of the French marionettes, during the first half of the eighteenth century, is given in considerable detail by M. Magnin, but does not contain any very striking episodes. It is to be feared their morals got rather relaxed during the latter years of Louis XIV.’s reign, and under the Regency, and Bossuet might then have thundered against them with greater reason than in 1686. Towards the middle of the century, a great change took place in the character of their performances: witty jests, and allusions to the scandal of court and city, were neglected for the sake of mechanical effects and surprises; the vaudeville and polished farce, for which the French stage has long been and still is famous, were replaced by showy dramas andpièces à spectacle, in which the military element seems to have predominated, judging from the titles of some of them—The Bombardment of Antwerp, The Taking of Charleroi, The General Assault of Bergen-op-Zoom. It was the commencement of the decline of puppet performances in France; the public taste underwent a change; the eye was to be gratified, wit and satire were in great measure dispensed with. “Vaucanson’s automatons, the flute-player, the duck, &c., were imitated in every way, and people ran in crowds to see Kempel’s chess-player. At the fair of St Germains, in 1744, a Pole, named Toscani, opened a picturesque and automatical theatre, which seems to have served as a prelude to M. Pierre’s famous show. ‘Here are to be seen,’ said the bills, ‘mountains, castles, marine views; also figures that perfectly imitate all natural movements, without being visibly acted upon by any string; and, which is still more surprising, here are seen a storm, rain, thunder, vessels perishing, sailors swimming, &c.’ On all hands such marvels as these were announced, and also (I blush to write it) combats of wild animals.” Bull and bear baits, wolf and dog fights, in refined France, just a century ago, for all the world as in England in the days of buxom Queen Bess. M. Magnin copies an advertisement of one of these savage exhibitions, which might pass for a translated placard of the beast-fighting establishment that complained of the opposition made to them by Will Shakespeare and his players. Martin was the name of the man who kept the pit at thebarrière de Sèvres; and after lauding the wickedness of his bull, the tenacity of his dogs, and the exceeding fierceness of his new wolf, he informs the public that he has “pure bear oil for sale.” When Paris ran after such coarse diversions as these, what hope was there for the elves of the puppet-show? Punch shrugged his hump, and crept moodily into a corner. Bull-rings and mechanism were too many for him. Twenty years later we find him again in high favour and feather at the fair of St Germains, where Audinot, an author and ex-singer at the united comic and Italian operas, having quarrelled with his comrades and quitted the theatre, exhibited large marionettes, which he calledbamboches, and which were striking likenesses of the performers at the Opéra Comique, Laruette, Clairval, Madam Bérard, and himself. Polichinelle appeared amongst them in the character of a gentleman of the bedchamber, and found the same sort of popularity that Cassandrino has since enjoyed at Rome. The monarchy was in its decline, the follies and vices of the courtiers of the 18th century had brought them into contempt, and a parody of them was welcome to the people. The fair over, Audinot installed his puppets in a little theatre on the boulevard, which he called theAmbigu Comique, to indicate the variety of the entertainments there given, and there he brought out several new pieces, one, amongst others, entitledLe Testament de Polichinelle. It was quite time for Punch to make his will; his theatre was in a very weakly state. It became the fashion to replace puppets by children; and one hears little more of marionettes in France until Seraphin revives them in hisOmbres Chinoises. Few persons who have been in Paris will have failed to notice, when walking round the Palais Royal between two and three in the afternoon, or seven and nine in the evening, a shrivelled weary-looking man, standing just within the railings that separate the gallery from the garden, and continually repeating, in a tone between a whine, a chant, and a croak, a monotonous formula, at first not very intelligible to a foreigner. This man has acquired all the rights that long occupation can give: the flagstone whereon, day after day, as long as we can remember—and doubtless for a score or two of years before—he has stood sentry, is worn hollow by the shuffling movement by which he endeavours to retain warmth in his feet. He is identified with the railings against which he stands, and is as much a part of the Palais Royal as the glass gallery, Chevet’s shop, or the cannon that daily fires itself off at noon. A little attention enables one to discover the purport of his unvarying harangue. It begins with “Les Ombres Chinoises de Seraphin”—this very drawlingly spoken—and ends with “Prrrrenez vos billets”—a rattle on ther, and the wordbilletsdying away in a sort of exhausted whine. In 1784, the ingenious Dominique Seraphin exhibited his Chinese shadows several times before the royal family at Versailles, was allowed to call his theatre “Spectacle des Enfans de France,” and took up his quarters in the Palais Royal, in the very house opposite to whose door the monotonous and melancholy man above described at the present day “touts” for an audience. There for seventy years Seraphin and his descendants have pulled the strings of their puppets. But here, as M. Magnin observes, it is no longer movablesculpture, but movablepainting—the shadows of figures cut out of sheets of pasteboard or leather, and placed between a strong light and a transparent curtain. The shadows, owing doubtless to their intangible nature, have passed unscathed through the countless political changes and convulsions that have occurred during the three quarters of a century that they have inhabited a nook in the palace which has been alternately Cardinal, Royal, National, Imperial—all things by turn, and nothing long. They have lasted and thriven, as far as bodiless shades can thrive, under Republic and Empire, Directory and Consulate, Restoration and Citizen Monarchy, Republic, and Empire again. We fear it must be admitted that time-serving is at the bottom of this long impunity and prosperity. In the feverish days of the first Revolution, marionettes hadsans-culottetendencies, with the exception of Polichinelle, who, mindful doubtless of his descent from Henry IV., played the aristocrat, and carried his head so high, that at last he lost it. M. Magnin passes hastily over this affecting phase in the career of his puppet friends, merely quoting a few lines from Camille Desmoulins, which bear upon the subject. “This selfish multitude,” exclaims theVieux Cordelier, indignant at the apathetic indifference of the Parisians in presence of daily human hecatombs, “is formed to follow blindly the impulse of the strongest. There was fighting in the Carrousel and the Champ de Mars, and the Palais Royal displayed its shepherdesses and its Arcadia. Close by the guillotine, beneath whose keen edge fell crowned heads, on the same square, and at the same time,they also guillotined Polichinelle, who divided the attention of the eager crowd.” Punch, who had passed his life hanging the hangman, was at a nonplus in presence of the guillotine. He missed the running noose he was so skilful in drawing tight, and mournfully laid his neck in the bloody groove. Some say that he escaped, that his dog was dressed up, and beheaded in his stead, and that he himself reached a foreign shore, where he presently regained his freedom of speech and former jollity of character. M. Magnin himself is clearly of opinion that he is not dead, but only sleeps. “Would it not be well,” he asks, “to awaken him here in France? Can it be that the little Æsop has nothing new to tell us? Above all, do not say that he is dead. Polichinelle never dies. You doubt it? You do not know then what Polichinelle is? He is the good sense of the people, the brisk sally, the irrepressible laugh. Yes, Polichinelle will laugh, sing, and hiss, as long as the world contains vices, follies, and things to ridicule. You see very well that Polichinelle is not near his death. Polichinelle is immortal!”
To England M. Magnin allots nearly as many pages as to his own country, and displays in them a rare acquaintance with our language, literature, and customs. It would in no way have surprised him, he says, had the playful and lightsome muse of the puppet-show been made less welcome by the Germanic races than by nations of Greco-Roman origin. The grave and more earnest temper generally attributed to the former would have accounted for their disregard of a pastime they might deem frivolous, and fail to appreciate. He was well pleased, then, to find his wooden clients, his well-beloved marionettes, as popular and as well understood on the banks of the Thames, the Oder, and the Zuyder Zee, as in Naples, Paris, or Seville. “In England especially,” he says, “the taste for this kind of spectacle has been so widely diffused, that one could hardly name a single poet, from Chaucer to Lord Byron, or a single prose-writer, from Sir Philip Sydney to Hazlitt, in whose works are not to be found abundant information on the subject, or frequent allusions to it. The dramatists, above all, beginning with those who are the glory of the reigns of Elizabeth and James I., supply us with the most curious particulars of the repertory, the managers, and the stage of the marionettes. Shakespeare himself has not disdained to draw from this singular arsenal ingenious or energetic metaphors, which he places in the mouths of his most tragic personages at the most pathetic moments. I can name ten or twelve of his plays in which this occurs.” (The list follows.) “The cotemporaries and successors of this great poet—Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Milton, Davenant, Swift, Addison, Gay, Fielding, Goldsmith, Sheridan—have also borrowed many moral or satirical sallies from this popular diversion. Thanks to this singular tendency of the English dramatists to busy themselves with the proceedings of their little street-corner rivals, I have found in their writings much assistance—as agreeable as unexpected—in the task I have undertaken. Deprived, as one necessarily is in a foreign country, of direct sources and original pamphlets, having at my disposal only those standard works of great writers that are to be met with on the shelves of every library, I have found it sufficient, strange to say! to collate the passages so abundantly furnished me by these chosen authors to form a collection of documents concerning English puppets more circumstantial and more complete, I venture to think, than any that have hitherto been got together by the best-informed native critics.” Others, if they please, may controvert the claim here put forward; we shall content ourselves with saying that the amount of research manifested in M. Magnin’s long essay on English puppets does as much credit to his industry as the manner of the compilation does to his judgment, acumen, and literary talent. It must be observed, however, that he has not altogether limited himself, when seeking materials and authorities, to the chosen corps of English dramatists, poets, and essayists, but has consulted sundry antiquarian authorities, tracts of the time of the commonwealth, the works of Hogarth, those of Hone, Payne Collier, Thomas Wright, and other modern or cotemporary writers. At the same time, this portion of his book contains much that will be novel to most English readers, and abounds in curious details and pertinent reflections on old English character and usages. If we do not dwell upon it at some length, it is because we desire, whilst room remains, to devote a page or two to Germany and the Northerns. We must not omit, however, to mention that M. Magnin joins issue with Mr Payne Collier on the question of the origin of the English Punch. Mr Collier makes him date from 1688, and brings him over from Holland in the same ship with William of Orange. M. Magnin takes a different view, and makes out a very fair case. He begins by remarking that several false derivations have been assigned to the name of Punch. “Some have imagined I know not what secret and fantastical connection between Punch’s name, and even between the fire of Punch’s wit, and the ardent beverage of which the recipe, it is said, came to us from Persia. It is going a great deal too far in search of an error. Punch is simply the name of our friendPulchinello, a little altered and contracted by the monosyllabic genius of the English language. In the early period of his career in England we find the names Punch and Punchinello used indifferently for each other. Is it quite certain that Punch came to London from the Hague, in the suite of William III.? I have doubts of it. His learned biographer admits that there are traces of his presence in England previous to the abdication of James II.... Certain passages of Addison’s pretty Latin poem on puppet-shows (Machinæ Gesticulantes) prove that Punch’s theatre was in great progress on the old London puppet-shows in the days of Queen Elizabeth.” The personal appearance, and some of the characteristics of Punch, certainly induce a belief that he is of French origin; and even though it be proved that he was imported into England from Holland, may it not be admitted as highly probable that he went to the latter country with the refugees, who for several years previously to the Revolution of 1688 had been flocking thither from France? We risk the question with all diffidence, and without the slightest intention of pronouncing judgment on so important a matter. And as we have no intention or desire to take up the cudgels in behalf of the origin of that Punch, who, as the unfortunate and much-battered Judy can testify, himself handles those weapons so efficiently, we refer the reader to M. Magnin for theprosandconsof the argument, and start upon a rapid tour through Germany and northern Europe. M. Magnin accelerates his pace as he approaches the close of his journey, and pauses there only where his attention is arrested by some striking novelty or original feature, to omit mention of which would be to leave a gap in the history he has undertaken to write.
Germany is the native land and head-quarters of wood-cutters. We mean not hewers of wood for the furnace, but cunning carvers in smooth-grained beech and delicate deal; artists in timber, we may truly say, when we contemplate the graceful and beautiful objects for which we are indebted to the luxuriant forests and skilful knives of Baden and Bavaria. The Teutonic race also possess, in a very high degree, the mechanical genius, to be convinced of which we have but to look at the ingenious clocks, with their astronomical evolutions, moving figures, crowing cocks, and the like, so constantly met with in all parts of Germany, in Switzerland, and in Holland. This double aptitude brought about an early development of anatomical sculpture in Germany, applied, as usual, to various purposes, religious and civil, serious and recreative, wonderful images of saints, figures borne in municipal processions, and dramatic puppets. These latter are traced by M. Magnin as far back as the 12th century. Even in a manuscript of the 10th century he finds the wordTochaorDochaused in the sense of doll or puppet (puppa), and also in that of mime (mima,mimula). Somewhat later the wordTokke-spil(puppet-show) occurs in the poems of the Minnesingers. One of these, Master Sigeher, when stigmatising the Pope’s abuse of his influence with the Electors of the Empire, writes—
“Als der Tokken spilt der Welche mit Tutschen Vürsten.”“The Italian plays with the German princes as with puppets.”
“Als der Tokken spilt der Welche mit Tutschen Vürsten.”“The Italian plays with the German princes as with puppets.”
“Als der Tokken spilt der Welche mit Tutschen Vürsten.”
“Als der Tokken spilt der Welche mit Tutschen Vürsten.”
“The Italian plays with the German princes as with puppets.”
“The Italian plays with the German princes as with puppets.”
There still exists in the library at Strasburg a manuscript dating from the end of the 12th century, and adorned with a great number of curious miniatures, one of which, under the strange title ofLudus Monstrorum, represents a puppet-show. Two little figures, armedcap-à-pie, are made to move and fight by means of a string, whose ends two showmen hold. The painting proves not only the existence of marionettes at that period, but also that they were sufficiently common to supply a symbol intelligible to all, since it is put as an illustration to a moral reflection on the vanity of human things. From the equipment of the figures it may also be inferred that military subjects were then in favour on the narrow stage of the puppet-show. And M. Magnin, zealous to track his fox to its very earth, risks the wordNiebelungen, but brings no evidence to support his surmise. In the 14th and 15th centuries we obtain more positive data as to the nature of thepuppenspiel, and of its performances. Romantic subjects, historical fables, were then in fashion—the four sons of Aymon, Genevieve of Brabant, the Lady of Roussillon, to whom her lover’s heart was given to eat, and who killed herself in her despair. The history of Joan of Arc was also a favourite subject. That heroine had an episodical part in a piece performed at Ratisbon in 1430. “There exists,” says M. Magnin, “a precious testimony to a performance of marionettes at that period. In a fragment of the poem of Malagis, written in Germany in the 15th century, after a Flemish translation of our old romance of Maugis, the fairy Oriande de Rosefleur, who has been separated for fifteen years from her beloved pupil, Malagis, arrives, disguised as a juggler, at the castle of Rigremont, where a wedding is being celebrated. She offers the company the diversion of a puppet-show; it is accepted; she asks for a table to serve as a stage, and exhibits upon it two figures, a male and female magician. Into their mouths she puts stanzas, which tell her history and cause her to be recognised by Malagis. M. Von der Hagen has published this fragment from the MS. preserved at Heidelberg, inGermania, vol. viii., p. 280. The scene in question is not to be found either in the French poem or the French prose romance.” The 16th century was an epoch in the annals of German puppets. Scepticism and sorcery were the order of the day. Faust stepped upon the stage and held it long.
It appears to have been the custom, rarely deviated from by the puppet-shows of any nation or time, to have a comic character or buffoon, who intruded, even in the most tragical pieces, to give by his jests variety and relief to the performance. There was nothing odd or startling in this in the Middle Ages, when every great personage—emperor, king, or prelate—had his licensed jester attached to his household. M. Magnin is in some doubt as to the name first given to this character in Germany, unless it was Eulenspiegel (a name which in modern times has acquired some celebrity as a literary pseudonyme), or rather Master Hemmerlein, whose caustic sarcasm partakes at once of the humour of the devil and the hangman. Master Hemmerlein, according to Frisch, had a face like a frightful mask; he belonged to the lowest class of marionettes, under whose dress the showman passes his hand to move them. This author adds that the name of Hemmerlein was sometimes given to the public executioner, and that it is applied to the devil in theBreviarium Historicumof Sebald. This will bear explanation. The word Hämmerlein or Hämmerling (the latter is now the usual orthography) has three very distinct meanings—a jack-pudding, a flayer, and a gold-hammer (bird). The German headsman, in former days, combined with his terrible duties the occupation of a flayer or knacker, charged to remove dead horses and other carrion; hence he was commonly spoken of as Master Hämmerlein.[7]
It is difficult to say by what grim mockery or strange assimilation his name was applied to the buffoon of the puppet-show. We have little information, however, concerning Hämmerlein the droll, who appears to have had but a short reign when he was supplanted by the famousHanswurst, to whom out-spoken Martin Luther compared Duke Henry of Brunswick. “Miserable, choleric spirit” (here Martin addresses himself to Satan), “you, and your poor possessed creature Henry, you know, as well as all your poets and writers, that the name ofHanswurstis not of my invention; others have employed it before me, to designate those rude and unlucky persons who, desiring to exhibit finesse, commit but clumsiness and impropriety.” And that there might be no mistake as to his application of the word, he adds: “Many persons compare my very gracious lord, Duke Henry of Brunswick, toHanswurst, because the said lord is replete and corpulent.” One of the consequences in Germany of Luther’s preachings, and of the more fanatical denunciations of some of his disciples and cotemporaries, was terrible havoc amongst church pictures and statues, including automatical images and groups, then very numerous in that country, and an end was at that time put to dramatic church ceremonies, not only in districts that embraced the new doctrine, but in many that adhered to Rome. Some of the performances were of the most grotesque description. They were particularly frequent in Poland, where, at Christmas time, in many churches, and especially in those of monasteries, the people were amused between mass and vespers, by the play of theSzopkaor stable. “In this kind of drama,” says M. Magnin, “lalki(little dolls of wood or card-board) represented Mary, Jesus, Joseph, the angels, the shepherds, and the three Magi on their knees, with their offerings of gold, incense, and myrrh, not forgetting the ox, the ass, and St. John the Baptist’s lamb. Then came the massacre of the innocents, in the midst of which Herod’s own son perished by mistake. The wicked prince, in his despair, called upon death, who soon made his appearance, in the form of a skeleton, and cut off his head with his scythe. Then a black devil ascended, with a red tongue, pointed horns, and a long tail, picked up the king’s body on the end of his pitchfork, and carried it off to the infernal regions.” This strange performance was continued in the Polish churches until the middle of the 18th century, with numerous indecorous variations. Expelled from consecrated edifices, it is nevertheless preserved to the present day, as a popular diversion, in all the provinces of the defunct kingdom of Poland. From Christmas-tide to Shrove Tuesday it is welcomed by both the rural and the urban population, by the peasantry, the middle classes, and even in the dwellings of the nobility.
In Germany, the last twenty years of the seventeenth century witnessed a violent struggle between the church and the stage, or it should rather be said a relentless persecution of the latter by the former, which could oppose only remonstrances to the intolerant rigour of the consistories. The quarrel had its origin at Hamburg. A clergyman refused to administer the sacrament to two stage-players. An ardent controversy ensued; the dispute became envenomed; the Protestant clergy made common cause; the anti-theatrical movement spread over all Germany. In vain did several universities, appealed to by the comedians, prove, from the most respectable authorities, the innocence of their profession, of which the actors themselves published sensible and judicious defences; in vain did several princes endeavour to counterbalance, by marks of esteem and consideration, the exaggerated severity of the theologians; the majority of the public sided with its pastors. Players were avoided as dissolute vagabonds; and although, whilst condemning the performers, people did not cease to frequent the performances, a great many comedians, feeling themselves humiliated, abandoned the stage to foreigners and to marionettes. The regular theatres rapidly decreased in number, and puppet-shows augmented in a like ratio. “At the end of the 17th century,” says Flögel, “theHaupt-und-Staatsactionenusurped the place of the real drama. These pieces were played sometimes by mechanical dolls, sometimes by actors.” The meaning of the termHaupt-und-Staatsactionis rather obscure, but it was in fact applied to almost every kind of piece performed by puppets. It was bound to include a great deal of incident and show, to be supported by occasional instrumental music, and to have a comic personage or buffoon amongst its characters. The tenth chapter of M. Magnin’s fifth and final section shows us a strange variety in the subjects selected for these plays—in which, it is to be noted, each puppet had its own separate speaker behind the scenes. Weltheim, the manager of a company of marionettes in the last twenty years of the 17th century, and the beginning of the 18th, usually recruited interpreters for his puppets amongst the students of Leipzig and Jena. He was the first who performed a translation of Molière’s comedies in Germany. In 1688, we find him giving at Hamburg, a piece founded on the fall of Adam and Eve, followed by a buffoonery calledJack-pudding in Punch’s Shop. Then we come to such pieces asThe Lapidation of Naboth;Asphalides, King of Arabia;The Fall of Jerusalem, andThe Death of Wallenstein—a strange medley of ancient, modern, sacred and profane history. The following performance, at which M. Schütze, the historian of the Hamburg theatre, declares that he was present in his youth, must have been as curious as any we have named. “A little musical drama on the fall of Adam and Eve (performed at Hamburg rather more than a century ago), the characters in which, including that of the serpent, were filled by puppets. The reptile was seen coiled round the tree, darting out his pernicious tongue. After the fall of our first parents, Hanswurst addressed them in a strain of coarse pleasantry that greatly diverted the audience. Two bears danced a ballet, and at the end, an angel appeared, as in Genesis, drew a sword of gilt paper, and cut at a single blow the knot of the piece.” Later than this a tailor named Reibehand, who kept a puppet theatre, contrived to burlesque the touching parable of the Prodigal Son. His playbill ran thus: “The arch-prodigal, chastised by the four elements, with Harlequin, the joyous companion of a great criminal.” The merit of this most irreverentHaupt-Actionconsisted in the transformations it contained. Thus the fruit the young prodigal was about to eat changed itself into death’s heads, the water he was about to drink, into flames; rocks split open and revealed a gallows with a man hanging from it. The limbs of this corpse swinging in the wind, fell off one by one, then assembled upon the ground and reconnected themselves, and then the dead man arose and pursued the prodigal. A very German and not very pleasing device. When Charles XII. of Sweden fell dead in the trenches at Friedrichshall, slain, according to popular superstition, by an enchanted bullet, his death was immediately taken advantage of by the indefatigable marionettes. A great historical piece was brought out at Hamburg, in which Friedrichshall was twice bombarded. In it a soldier excited great admiration as a prodigy of mechanism, by lighting his pipe and puffing smoke from his mouth. This feat was soon imported into France, and may be seen at the present day executed in great perfection at Seraphin’s theatre in the Palais Royal.
The triviality, absurdity, and profanity that tarnished the German stage during the first half of the eighteenth century, were followed by a reaction in favour of better taste and common sense. Gottsched and Lessing gave the signal of the revival of art and poetry. The theatre resumed its importance; actors their proper place, from which they had been ousted by the intolerance of the consistories; puppets returned to the modest sphere which circumstances had permitted and encouraged them temporarily to quit, and resumed their old stock pieces, consisting of Biblical dramas and popular legends. Faust was exceedingly popular, and novelties were occasionally introduced. Lewis’sBravo of Venicewas taken for the subject of a grand drama, performed by the Augsburg marionettes, which also played, with great success, a drama founded on the well-known story of Don Juan and his marble guest. And this brings us to the time when a boy, Wolfgang Goethe by name—kept at home by his parents during certain gloomy episodes of the Seven Years’ War, when Frankfort was occupied by the French—delighted his leisure with a marionette theatre, a Christmas gift from his grandfather, and so fostered his inborn dramatic taste and genius. In his memoirs, and inWilhelm Meister, he tells us, in some charming passages, what pleasure he took in the management of his mimic comedians.
“We are indebted,” says M. Magnin, “for what follows, to a confidential communication made by the illustrious composer Haydn, at Vienna, in 1805, to M. Charles Bertuch, one of his fervent admirers.” And he relates that when Hadyn wasmâitre de chapelleto Prince Nicholas-Joseph Esterhazy, that enlightened and generous patron of art, and especially of music, he composed four little operas for a marionette theatre, which existed in the Esterhazys’ magnificent Castle of Eisenstadt in Hungary. They were written between 1773 and 1780. “In the list of all his musical works, which the illustrious old man signed and gave to M. Charles Bertuch, during the residence of the latter at Vienna, occur the following lines, which I exactly transcribe:—Operettecomposed for the marionettes:Philémon and Baucis, 1773;Geniêvre, 1777;Didon, parody, 1778;La Vengeance accomplie ou la Maison Brulie(no date). In the same list theDiable Boiteuxis set down, probably because it was played by Prince Esterhazy’s marionettes, but it was composed at Vienna, in the author’s early youth, for Bernardone, the manager of a popular theatre at the Corinthian Gate, and twenty-four sequins were paid for it. It was thought that these curious operas, all unpublished, had been destroyed in a fire which consumed a part of the Castle of Eisenstadt, including Haydn’s apartment; but that was not the case, for they were seen in 1827 in the musical library of the Esterhazys, with a score of other pieces whose titles one would like to know.”
Goethe has told us, in an interesting passage of his memoirs, that the idea of his great work of Faust was suggested to him by the puppet-show. M. Magnin, who takes an affectionate interest in the triumphs of the marionettes with whom he has so long associated, and whose career he has traced from their cradle, exults in the claim they have thus acquired to the world’s gratitude—not always, it must be owned, shown to those who best deserve it. He concludes his history with a double recapitulation—first, of the celebrated persons who have taken pleasure in this class of dramatic performances; and, secondly, of the most distinguished of those who have wielded pen in its service. And he calls upon his readers to applaud, and upon the ladies especially to wave kerchief and throw bouquet at the gracefulFantasia, the pretty fairy, the sprightly muse of the marionettes. We doubt not but that the appeal will be responded to; although her fairyship may fairly be considered to be already sufficiently rewarded by meeting with a biographer in every way so competent.