THE PUPPETS OF ALL NATIONS.[1]
The history of Puppets and their shows may at first appear but a trivial subject to fix the attention and occupy the pen of a learned academician and elegant writer. The very word history may seem misapplied to a chronicle of the pranks of Punchinello, and of the contortions of fantoccini. Puppet-shows! it may be said; troops of tawdry figures, paraded from fair to fair, to provoke the laughter of children and the grin of rustics—is that a theme for a bulky octavo at the hands of so erudite andspirituelan author as M. Charles Magnin? Had M. Magnin chosen to reply otherwise than with perfect candour to anticipated comments of this kind—the comments of the superficial and hastily-judging—he might easily have done so by saying that, whilst studying with a more important aim—for that history of the stage of which he has already published portions—he found the wooden actors so constantly thrusting themselves into the society of their flesh-and-blood betters, so continually intruding themselves, with timber joints, invisible strings, and piping voices, upon stages where human players strutted, that, to be quit of their importunity, he was fain to shelve them in a volume. This, however, is not the motive he alleges. He boldly breasts the difficulty, and stands up for the merits of his marionettes, quite deserving, he maintains, of a separate study and a special historian. He denies that time can be considered lost or lightly expended which is passed in tracing the vicissitudes of an amusement that, for three thousand years, has been in favour with two-thirds of the human race. And he summons to his support an imposing phalanx of great men—poets, philosophers, dramatists, musicians—who have interested themselves in puppets, taken pleasure in their performances, and even written for their mimic theatre. He reminds his readers how many pointed remarks and precious lessons, apt comparisons and graceful ideas, have been suggested by such shows to the greatest writers of all countries and ages, and heads the list of his puppets’ patrons with the names of Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Marcus Aurelius, Petronius, in ancient times; and with those of Shakespeare, Cervantes, Ben Jonson, Molière, Swift, Voltaire, and Goethe, amongst the moderns; to say nothing of Charles Nodier, Punchinello’s laureate, the assiduous frequenter of Parisian puppet-shows, who has devoted so many playful and sparkling pages to that favourite study of his literary leisure. M. Magnin begins to be alarmed at the shadows he has evoked. Is it not presumption, he asks himself, to enter a path upon which his predecessors have been so numerous and eminent? The subject, for whose frivolity he lately almost apologised, appears too elevated for his range when he reviews the list of illustrious names more or less connected with it, when he recalls the innumerable flowers of wit with which their fancy has wreathed it. So he marks out for himself a different track. Others have played with the theme; he approaches it in a graver spirit. “I am not so impertinent,” he exclaims, “as to seekto put(as the Greeks would have said)my foot in the dance of those great geniuses. Too well do I see the folly of attempting to jingle, after them, the bells of that bauble.” Following the example of the learned Jesuit, Mariantonio Lupi—who wrote a valuable although a brief dissertation on the Puppets of the Ancients—but allotting to himself a much broader canvass, M. Magnin purposes to write, in all seriousness, sincerity, and simplicity, a history of the “wooden comedians,” not only of antiquity, but of the middle ages, and of modern times.
A subject of far less intrinsic interest than the one in question could not fail to become attractive in the hands of so agreeable and skilful asavantas M. Magnin. But it were a mistake to suppose that the history of the Puppet family, from Euripides’ days to ours, has not a real and strong interest of its own. The members of that distinguished house have been mixed up in innumerable matters into which one would hardly have anticipated their poking their wooden noses and permanently blushing countenances. They have been alternately the tools of priestcraft and the mouthpiece of popular feeling. Daringimprovisatori, in certain times and countries, theirs was the only liberty of speech, their voice the sole organ of the people’s opposition to its rulers. Their diminutive stature, the narrow dimensions of their stage, the smallness of their powers of speech, did not always secure impunity to their free discourse, which sometimes, as their best friends must confess, degenerated into license. So that we occasionally, in the course of their history, find the audacious dolls driven into their boxes—with cords cut and heads hanging—or at least compelled to revise and chasten their dramatic repertory. Sometimes decency and morality rendered such rigour incumbent upon the authorities; but its motive was quite as frequently political. It is curious to note with what important events the Puppet family have meddled, and what mighty personages they have managed to offend. At the present day, when the press spreads far and wide the gist and most salient points of a successful play, in whatever European capital it may be performed, allusions insulting or irritating to friendly nations and governments may be fair subject for the censor’s scissors. It was only the other day that a Russian official journal expressed, in no measured terms, its high indignation at the performance, at a fourth-rate theatre on the Paris boulevards, of a drama entitled “The Cossacks,” in which those warriors of the steppes are displayed to great disadvantage. The circumstances of the moment not being such as to make the French government solicitous to spare the feelings of the Czar, the piece continued to be nightly played, to the delight of shouting audiences, and to the no small benefit of the treasury of theGaieté. One hundred and twenty-three years ago, Russian susceptibility, it appears, was held quite as easy to ruffle as at the present day. In 1731, the disgrace of Menschikoff was made the subject of a sort of melodrama, performed in several German towns by the large English puppets of Titus Maas, privileged comedian of the court of Baden-Durlach. The curious playbill of this performance ran as follows: “With permission, &c., there will be performed on an entirely new theatre, and with good instrumental music, aHaupt-und-Staatsaction, recently composed and worthy to be seen, which has for title—The extraordinary vicissitudes of good and bad fortune of Alexis Danielowitz, prince Menzicoff, great favourite, cabinet minister, and generalissimo of the Czar of Moscow, Peter I., of glorious memory, to-day a real Belisarius, precipitated from the height of his greatness into the most profound abyss of misfortune; the whole with Jack-pudding, a pieman, a pastrycook’s boy, and amusing Siberian poachers.” Titus Maas obtained leave to perform this wonderful piece at Berlin, but it was quickly stopped by order of Frederick-William I.’s government, for fear of offending Russia. In 1794 a number of puppet-shows were closed in Berlin—for offences against morality, was the reason given, but more probably, M. Magnin believes, because the tone of their performances was opposed to the views of the government. In what way he does not mention, but we may suppose it possible that thePuppenspielerhad got infected with the revolutionary doctrines then rampant in France. The Prussian police still keeps a sharp eye on exhibitions of this kind, which at Berlin are restricted to the suburbs. In France we find traces of a regular censorship of the marionette theatres. Thus, in the Soleinne collection of manuscript plays is one entitled:The capture of a company of players by a Tunis rover, in the month of September 1840. This piece, whose name, as M. Magnin remarks, reads more like the heading of a newspaper paragraph than the title of a play, was performed in 1741 at the fair of St Germains, by the puppets of the celebrated Nicolet, and annexed to it is a permit of performance, bearing no less a signature than that of Crébillon. It is not improbable that the puppet-show had fairly earned its subjection to a censorship by the irreverence and boldness with which it took the most serious, important, and painful events as subjects for its performances. In 1686, D’Harlay, then attorney-general at the parliament of Paris, wrote as follows to La Reynie, the lieutenant of police:—“To M. de la Reynie, councillor of the king in his council, &c. It is said this morning at the palace, that the marionettes which play at the fair of St Germain represent the discomfiture of the Huguenots, and as you will probably consider this a very serious matter for marionettes, I have thought it right, sir, to advise you of it, that you may so act as in your prudence shall seem fit.” It does not appear what result this advice had; but as the date of the note is little more than three months later than that of the edict of revocation, when Louis XIV. was exulting in the downfall of heresy in France, and when those who still clung to Protestantism were looked upon as hardened sinners, no better than common malefactors, it is quite probable La Reynie thought it needless to interfere with the puppet-scoffers at the Huguenots. D’Harlay, it will be remembered, was intimate with some of the chiefs of the proscribed party, and a particular friend of the Marquis de Ruvigny, although he some years afterwards betrayed, according to St Simon, the trust that friend had reposed in him. But we are wandering from our wooden play-actors.
The first two sections of M. Magnin’s work, devoted to the puppets of Antiquity and of the Middle Ages, are far briefer, and upon the whole, less interesting than the portion of his volume allotted to those of modern times. All those parts display extensive reading and patient research. The author commences by defining and classing his marionettes. “Everybody knows that marionettes are small figures of wood, bone, ivory, baked earth, or merely of linen, representing real or fantastical beings, and whose flexible joints obey the impulse given to them by strings, wires, or catgut, pulled by a skilful and invisible hand.” He divides them into three classes: hierarchical, aristocratic, and popular. In ancient times and in the middle ages, the first of these classes was decidedly the most important and influential. Auguries were obtained and miracles wrought by its aid, indispensable to priestly ambition and to idolatrous or erroneous creeds, dependent upon prodigies for support. Even at the present day, and in highly civilised countries, puppets of this kind are not wholly in disrepute, nor are the services of bleeding saints and nodding madonnas uniformly declined by the pastors of credulous flocks. The practice is very ancient—if that can give it respectability. The statue of Jupiter Ammon, when carried in procession on the shoulders of priests, previously to uttering its oracles, indicated to its bearers, by a motion of its head, the road it wished them to take. The golden statue of Apollo, in the temple of Heliopolis, moved when it had an oracle to deliver; and if the priests delayed to raise it upon their shoulders, it sweated and moved again. When the high-priest consulted it, it recoiled if it disapproved of the proposed enterprise; but if it approved, it pushed its bearers forward, and drove them, as with reins. M. Magnin quotes, from the writers of antiquity, a host of instances of this kind, in which machinery, quicksilver, and the loadstone were evidently the means employed. “In Etruria and in Latium, where the sacerdotal genius has at all times exercised such a powerful influence, hierarchical art has not failed to employ, to act upon the popular imagination, sculpture with springs.” The ancient idols of Italy were of wood, like those of Greece, coloured, richly dressed, and very often capable of motion. At Præneste the celebrated group of the infants Jupiter and Juno, seated upon the knees of Fortune, their nurse, appears to have been movable. It seems evident, from certain passages in ancient writers, that the little god indicated by a gesture the favourable moment to consult the oracle. At Rome, feasts were offered to the statues of the gods, at which these did not play so passive a part as might be supposed. Religious imagination or sacerdotal address aided their immobility. Titus Livius, describing the banquet celebrated at Rome in 573, mentions the terror of the people and senate on learning that the images of the gods had averted their heads from the dishes presented to them. When we meet with these old tales of statues invited to repasts, and manifesting their good or bad will by movements, we understand by what amalgamation of antique recollections and local legends was formed, in the Spain of the middle ages, the popular tale, so touching and so dramatic, of theConvidado de Piedra. Between these tricks of the priests of Jupiter and Apollo, and the devices resorted to by the Christian priests of the middle ages, a close coincidence is to be traced. M. Magnin touches but cursorily on this part of the subject, referring to the crucifix said to have bowed its head in approval of the decisions of the Council of Trent, to the votive crucifix of Nicodemus, which, according to popular belief at Lucca, crossed the town on foot to the cathedral, blessing the astonished people on its passage, and which, upon another occasion, gave its foot to kiss to a poor minstrel—perhaps himself a puppet-showman—and mentioning as a positive and undoubted fact the movement of the head and eyes of the crucifix in the monastery of Boxley in Kent, testified to by old Lambarde in his Perambulations of that county. It is to be observed that these winking, walking, and nodding images were not always constructed with a view to delude credulous Christians into belief in miracles, but also for dramatic purposes, with the object of exciting religious enthusiasm by a representation of the sufferings of the Redeemer and the martyrs, and probably, at the same time, to extract alms from the purses of the faithful. When thus employed, they may be said to form the link between mechanical church sculpture, used by priests for purposes of imposture, and the player-puppets of more modern times. It is the point where the hierarchical and the popular classes of puppets blend. Scenes from the life and passion of the Saviour were favourite subjects for such representations; but incidents in the lives of the Virgin and saints were also frequently acted, both in secular and monastic churches, and that almost down to our own times, notwithstanding canonical prohibitions. “In a synod held at Orihuela, a little Valencian bishopric, at the commencement of the seventeenth century, it was found necessary to renew the orders against the admission into churches of small images (statuettes) of the Virgin and female saints, curled, painted, covered with jewels, and dressed in silks, and resembling courtezans.” The abuse, nevertheless, continued; and we believe there would be little difficulty in authenticating instances of it in Spain within the present century. That it was an actual puppet-show which the ecclesiastical authorities thus strove to suppress, or at least to expel from churches, is clearly proved by a passage M. Magnin quotes from the proceedings of the synod: “We forbid the representation, in churches or elsewhere, of the actions of Christ, of those of the most holy Virgin, and of the lives of the saints, by means of those little movable figures vulgarly calledtiteres.” This last word is the exact Spanish equivalent to the French marionettes and the English puppet-show. It was atitererowho fell in with Don Quixote at a Manchegan hostelry, and exhibited before him “the manner in which Señor Don Gayferos accomplished the deliverance of his spouse, Melisendra,” and whose figures of paste were so grievously mishandled by the chivalrous defender of dames. And it may further be remarked, as a sign of the ancient alliance in Spain between the church and the theatre, that an altarpiece and the stage or theatre upon which a puppet-show is exhibited are both expressed, to the present day, by the wordretablo. To thetiteres, by no means the least diverting and original of the European marionette family, we shall hereafter come. The precedence must be given to Italy, the cradle and the paradise of puppets.
The eccentric and learned physician and mathematician, Jerome Cardan, was the first modern writer who paid serious and scientific attention to the mechanism of marionettes. He refers to them in two different works, and in one of these, a sort of encyclopedia, entitledde Varietate Rerum, when speaking of the humbler branches of mechanics, he expresses his surprise at the marvels performed by two Sicilians, by means of two wooden figures which they worked between them. “There was no sort of dance,” he says, “that these figures were not able to imitate, making the most surprising gestures with feet and legs, arms and head, the whole with such variety of attitude, that I cannot, I confess, understand the nature of the ingenious mechanism, for there were not several strings, sometimes slack and sometimes tight, but only one to each figure, and that was always at full stretch. I have seen many other figures set in motion by several strings, alternately tight and slack, which is nothing marvellous. I must further say that it was a truly agreeable spectacle to behold how the steps and gestures of these dolls kept time with the music.” Such variety and precision of movement prevent the possibility of confounding this exhibition with that puppet-show of the lowest class common in the streets at the present day, where a Savoyard boy makes a doll dance upon a board by means of a string fastened to his knee.[2]M. Magnin supposes that the single string, always at full stretch, was a little tube, through which passed a number of small strings connected with the interior of the puppet. A similar plan is general in Italy at the present day amongst the aristocracy of the marionettes—those whose performances are in regular theatres, and not in wandering show-boxes. The theatre and the mode of working of out-of-door puppet-shows is the same in most countries, and it appears more than probable, from the authorities adduced by M. Magnin, that the marionettes of Greece and ancient Italy had much the same sort of stage as that on which thepupazziof Italian towns, the London Punch, and the Guignol and Gringalet of Paris, are to the present day exhibited; namely, a sort of large sentry-box or little fortress, calledcastelloin Italy,castilloin Spain, andcastelletin France. In Persia, in Constantinople, in Cairo, the same form prevails. In modern times the extent of the stage has been diminished, and the apparatus lightened, so as to admit of theatre, scenery, actors, and orchestra being carried long distances by two men. Formerly, in Spain, as we gather from Cervantes and other authorities, a cart was necessary to convey the theatrical baggage of atiterero, which was on a larger scale than at the present day, many more figures appearing on the stage, and the mode of working them being different from that now in use in strolling puppet-shows, where the usual and very simple process is for the showman to insert his fingers in the sleeves of the actors, only half of whose body is visible. Master Peter’s show was of a much more elevated style, and seems to have possessed all the newest improvements; as for instance, when the Moor steals softly behind Melisendra and prints a kiss in the very middle of her lips, we are told that “she spits, and wipes them with the sleeves of her shift, lamenting aloud, and tearing for anger her beautiful hair.” If the Lady Melisendra really did spit—and that the word was not a figure of speech of Master Peter’s boy, whose flippancy his master and the Knight of the Rueful Countenance had more than once to reprove—the civilisation of Spanish puppets must have been in a very forward state, for we find M. Magnin recording, as a novel triumph of puppet-mechanism, similar achievements in Germany in the present century. When Goethe’sFaustgave a fresh vogue to the marionette exhibition, from which he had derived his first idea of the subject, Geisselbrecht, a Viennese mechanician, got up the piece with those docile performers, under the title ofDoctor Faust, the great Necromancer, in Five Acts, with songs, and performed it at Frankfort, Vienna, and at Weimar, Goethe’s residence. “He strove to excel Dreher and Schütz (other proprietors of marionettes) by the mechanical perfection of his little actors, whom he made raise and cast down their eyes. He even made themcoughandspitvery naturally, feats which Casperle,[3]as may be supposed, performed as often as possible. M. Von der Hagen, scoffing at this puerile marvel, applied Schiller’s lines, fromWallenstein’s Camp, to the Austrian mechanician:—
‘Wie er räuspert und wie er spucktDas habt Ihr ihm glücklich abgeguckt;Aber sein Genie....’”[4]
‘Wie er räuspert und wie er spucktDas habt Ihr ihm glücklich abgeguckt;Aber sein Genie....’”[4]
‘Wie er räuspert und wie er spucktDas habt Ihr ihm glücklich abgeguckt;Aber sein Genie....’”[4]
‘Wie er räuspert und wie er spuckt
Das habt Ihr ihm glücklich abgeguckt;
Aber sein Genie....’”[4]
As regards his puppets’ expectorating accomplishments, Geisselbrecht appears merely to have revived the traditions handed down from the days of Gines de Passamonte. But we are again losing the thread of our discourse amongst those of the countless marionettes that glide, skip, and dance over the pages of M. Magnin. Having spoken in this paragraph of the general form and fashion of the ambulant puppet-show, and having in so doing strayed from Italy into Germany and Spain, we will go somewhat farther, to look at the most compact and portable of all exhibitions of the kind. This is to be found in China. There the peripatetic showman elevates himself upon a small platform, and puts on a sort of case or sheath of blue cotton, tight at the ankles, and widening as it approaches the shoulders. Thus accoutred, he looks like a statue in a bag. He then places upon his shoulders a box in the form of a theatre, which encloses his head. His hands, concealed under the dress of the puppets, present these to the spectators, and make them act at his will. The performance over, he shuts up actors and sheath in the box, and carries it away under his arm.
The higher class of marionettes, that have permanent establishments in all the towns of Italy and in various other Continental countries, and a colony of whom lately settled in London, would surely feel a thrill of indignation through every fibre and atom of their composite bodies, were they to hear themselves assimilated to the hardy plebeian puppets that pitch their tent in the gutter or by the road-side, and jest for all comers on the chance of coppers. Here you have him at the street corner—Punch, the ribald and the profligate, maltreating his wife, teasing his dog, hanging the hangman, and beating the devil himself. Or, open this portfolio, containing Pinelli’s charming collection of Italian picturesque costumes. Here is Pulcinella, with his black half-mask, his tight white jerkin, his mitre-shaped cap. What a group he has gathered around him:—idle monks, stately and beautiful Roman women, swarthy and vigorousTrasteverini, children on tiptoe with delight, a lingering peasant, who has stopped his ass to enjoy for a moment the fascinating spectacle and pungent jokes. Nor is the audience always of so humble a description. Persons of rank and education have frequently been known to mingle with it; and tradition relates that the celebrated Leone Allacci, librarian of the Vatican under Alexander VII., author of many great theological works, and of theDramaturgia, went nightly for recreation to the puppet-show. In social position, however, theal frescoperformers are necessarily far inferior to the more elegant and tender puppets who have a settled habitation, a smart and spacious stage, a fixed price, and who, instead of having their master’s hands rudely thrust under their petticoats, are decorously and genteelly manœuvred by means of springs and wires. The difference is manifest: it is Richardson’s booth to the Italian Opera; theFunambulesto theComédie Française. Moreover, the materials of the marionette aristocracy are very superior indeed to those of the common out-of-door jokers. They are by no means of the same clay or from the same mould. They are not cut out of a block, daubed with gaudy paint, and dressed in coarse and tawdry rags. M. Magnin lets us into the secret of their structure and motions. “Their head is usually of card-board; their body and thighs are wooden, their arms of cord; their extremities (that is to say, their hands and their legs) are of lead, or partially so, which enables them to obey the slightest impulse given them, without losing their centre of gravity.” From the top of their head issues a little iron rod, by means of which they are easily transported from one part of the stage to another. To conceal this rod and the movement of the threads from the spectators, the plan was devised of placing in front of the stage a sort of screen, composed of very fine perpendicular threads, drawn very tight, which, blending with those that move the puppets, deceive the most attentive eye. By another still more ingenious invention, all the strings, excepting those of the arms, were made to pass within the body and out at the top of the head, where they were assembled in a slender iron tube, which served at the same time as the rod to move the figures. A totally different system was subsequently introduced by Bartholomew Neri, a distinguished painter and mechanician. It was that of grooves, in which the marionettes were fixed. Their movements were directed by persons beneath the stage, who also pulled their strings. These various systems, sometimes combined, have produced the most astonishing results. One of our countrymen, passing through Genoa in 1834, was taken to the marionette theatredelle Vigne, and witnessed the performance of a grand military drama,The Siege of Antwerp, in which Marshal Gerard and old General Chassé vied with each other in sonorous phrases, rolling eyes, and heroism. The fantoccini of theFiandotheatre at Milan are as celebrated and as much visited by foreigners as the dome, the arch of the Simplon, or the shrine of St Charles. In 1823, a correspondent of theGlobenewspaper spoke of them thus: “Such is the precision of movement of these little actors, their bodies, arms, head, all gesticulate with such judgment, and in such perfect unison with the sentiments expressed by the voice, that, but for the dimensions, I might have thought myself in the Rue de Richelieu. BesidesNebuchadnezzar, a classic tragedy, they performed an anacreontic ballet. I wish our opera-dancers, so proud of their legs and arms, could see these wooden dancers copy all their attitudes and graces.” Dancing is a department of their performances in which the Italian marionettes excel. A French author, Mr Jal, who published, nearly twenty years ago, a lively narrative of a ramble from Paris to Naples, was wonder-struck by what he saw at theFiando. The grand romantic drama in six tableaux,Prince Eugene of Savoy at the Siege of Temeswar, which composed the bulk of the evening’s performance, astonished him much less than the ballet between its acts. “The dancing of these wooden Perrots and Taglionis,” he says, “is truly not to be imagined; horizontal dance, side dance, vertical dance, every possible dance, all the flourishes of feet and legs that you admire at the opera, are to be seen at theFiandotheatre; and when the doll has danced her dance, when she has been well applauded, and the pit calls for her, she comes out from the side scenes, bows, puts her little hand on her heart, and disappears only when she has completely parodied the great singers and the proud dancers ofLa Scala.” But doubtless the greatest compliment these doll-dancers ever received, was the practical one paid them by the Roman authorities, who compelled the female marionettes to wear drawers! The completeness of the illusion in the case of these puppets suggested some curious reflections to a clever French critic, M. Peisse, with respect to reality in painting, and the laws of material illusion. Speaking of the Romanburattini, “These,” he says, “are little figures worked by a man placed above the stage, which is arranged exactly like that of our theatres. For some minutes after the rising of the curtain, the puppets preserve their true dimensions, but soon they grow larger to the eye, and in a short time they have the appearance of real men. The space in which they move, the furniture, and all the surrounding objects, being in exact proportion with their stature, the illusion is perfect, and is sustained so long as the eye has no point of comparison. But if, as sometimes happens, the hand of the manager shows itself amongst the little actors, it seems that of a giant.... If a man suddenly came amongst the marionettes, he would appear a Gargantua.” Another well-known and esteemed French writer on Italy, M. Beyle (Stendhal),[5]tells of the realisation of this last ingenious supposition. He relates, that after the performance (at the Palazzo Fiano at Rome) ofCassandrino allievo di un pittore(Cassandrino pupil of a painter), a child coming upon the stage to trim the lamps, two or three strangers uttered a cry; they took the child for a giant. In all the principal towns of Italy through which he passed, M. Beyle waited upon the marionettes—now in theatres, then in private houses—and the pages he devotes to them are full of that fineness of observation which characterised his charming talent. We can hardly do better than extract his first impressions. “Yesterday, towards nine o’clock,” he says, “I quitted those magnificent saloons, adjacent to a garden full of orange trees, which are called theCafé Rospoli. TheFianopalace is just opposite. At the door of a sort of cellar stood a man, exclaiming, ‘Entrate, ô signori!it is about to begin!’ For the sum of twenty-eight centimes (three-pence), I was admitted to the little theatre. The low price made me fear bad company and fleas. I was soon reassured; my neighbours were respectable citizens of Rome. The Roman people is perhaps in all Europe that which best loves and seizes delicate and cutting satire. The theatrical censors being more rigid than at Paris, nothing can be tamer than the comedies at the theatre. Laughter has taken refuge with the marionettes, whose performances are in great measure extemporaneous. I passed a very agreeable evening at the Fiano palace; the stage on which the actors paraded their small persons was some ten feet broad and four high. The decorations were excellent, and carefully adapted to actors twelve inches in height.” The pet character with the Romans is Cassandrino, an elderly gentleman of fifty-five or sixty years of age, fresh, active, dandified, well powdered, well dressed, and well got up, with excellent manners, and much knowledge of the world, whose only failing is, that he falls in love with all the women he meets. “It must be owned,” says M. Beyle, “that the character is not badly devised in a country governed by an oligarchical court composed of bachelors, and where the power is in the hands of old age.” I need hardly say that Cassandrino, although a churchman, is not bound by monastic rules—is in fact a layman—but I would wager that there is not a spectator who does not invest him in imagination with a cardinal’s red cap, or at least with the violet stockings of amonsignore. Themonsignoriare, it is well known, the young men of the papal court; it is the place that leads to all others. Rome is full ofmonsignoriof Cassandrino’s age, who have their fortune still to make, and who seek amusement whilst waiting for the cardinal’s hat. Cassandrino is the hero of innumerable little plays. His susceptible heart continually leads him into scrapes. Disguised as a young man, he goes to take lessons of a painter, with whose sister he is in love, is detected by the lady’s aunt whom he had formerly courted, escapes from her into the studio, is roughly treated by the pupils, threatened with a dagger’s point by the painter, and at last, to avoid scandal, which he fears more than the poniard, abandons all hope of the red hat, and consents to marry the aunt. In another piece, tired of the monotony of his solitary home, he makes a journey to Civita Vecchia, and meets with all manner of ludicrous mishaps; and in a third, entitledCassandrino dilettante e impresario, his too great love of music and the fair sex gets him into quarrels withtenoriandbassi, and especially with theprima donnawhom he courts, and with themaestrowho is his rival. Thismaestrois in the prime of youth; he has light hair and blue eyes, he loves pleasure and good cheer, his wit is yet more seductive than his person. All these qualities, and the very style of his dress, remind the audience of one of the few great men modern Italy has produced. There is a burst of applause; they recognise and greet Rossini.
Of the performances of marionettes in the houses of the Italian nobility and middle classes, it is naturally much less easy to obtain details than of those given in public. It is generally understood, however, that the private puppets are far from prudish, and allow themselves tolerable license in respect of politics. At Florence, at the house of a rich merchant, a party was assembled to witness the performance of a company of marionettes. M. Beyle was there. “The theatre was a charming toy, only five feet wide, and which, nevertheless, was an exact model of a large theatre. Before the play began, the lights in the apartment were extinguished. A company of twenty-four marionettes, eight inches in height, with leaden legs, and which had cost a sequin apiece, performed arather freecomedy, abridged from Machiavelli’sMandragora.” At Naples the performance was satirical, and its hero a secretary of state. In pieces of this kind, there is generally a speaker for every puppet; and as it often happens that the speakers are personally acquainted with the voice, ideas, and peculiarities of the persons intended to be caricatured, great perfection and point is thus given to the performance.
When the passion of the Italians for marionettes is found to be so strong, so general, so persevering, and, we may add, so refined and ingenious, it is not to be wondered at that most other European countries are largely indebted to Italy for their progress, improvement, and, in some cases, almost for the first rudiments of this minor branch of the drama. Even the Spain of the Middle Ages, in most things so original and self-relying, was under some obligations to Italy in this respect. The first name of any mark which presents itself to the student of the history of Spanish puppet-shows is that of a skilful mathematician of Cremona, Giovanni Torriani, surnamed Gianello, of whom the learned critic Covarrubias speaks as “a second Archimedes;” adding, that this illustrious foreigner broughttiteresto great perfection. That so distinguished a man should have wasted his time on such frivolities requires some explanation. The Emperor Charles V.’s love of curious mechanism induced many of the first mechanicians of Germany and Italy to apply themselves to the production of extraordinary automatons. Writers have spoken of an artificial eagle which flew to meet him on his entrance into Nuremberg, and of a wonderful iron fly, presented to him by Jean de Montroyal, which, took wing of itself, described circles in the air, and then settled on his arm—marvels of science which other authors have treated as mere fables. Gianello won the emperor’s favour by the construction of an admirable clock, followed him to Spain, and passed two years with him in his monastic retreat, striving, by ingenious inventions, to raise the spirits of his melancholy patron, depressed by unwonted inactivity. “Charles V.,” says Flaminio Strada, historian of the war in Flanders, “busied himself, in the solitude of the cloisters of St Just, with the construction of clocks. He had for his master in that art Gianello Torriani, the Archimedes of that time, who daily invented new mechanisms to occupy the mind of Charles, eager and curious of all those things. Often, after dinner, Gianello displayed upon the prince’s table little figures of horses and armed men. There were some that beat the drum, others that sounded the trumpet; some were seen advancing against each other at a gallop, like enemies, and assailing each other with lances. Sometimes the ingenious mechanician let loose in the room small wooden birds, which flew in all directions, and which were constructed with such marvellous artifice that one day the superior of the convent, chancing to be present, appeared to fear that there was magic in the matter.” The attention of Charles V., even in the decline of his genius, was not, however, wholly engrossed by such toys as these. He and Torriani discussed and solved more useful and more serious problems—one, amongst others, which Gianello realised after the prince’s death, and which consisted in raising the waters of the Tagus to the heights of Toledo. The improvements introduced by the skilful mechanician of Cremona into the construction of marionettes were soon adopted by thetitereros. Puppets were already a common amusement in Spain, and had right of station on all public places, and at all fairs, and entrance into most churches. It is to be observed, that Italian influence can be traced in the Peninsula only in the material and mechanical departments of the marionette theatres. The characters and the subjects of the plays have always been strictly national, notwithstanding that, from the beginning of the seventeenth century down to the commencement of the nineteenth—and probably even at the present day—the exhibitors of these shows were principally foreigners, including many gypsies. Punchinello succeeded in getting naturalised under the name of Don Cristoval Pulichinela; but he does not appear ever to have played a prominent part, and probably was rather a sort of supernumerary to the show, like Master Peter’s ape. Occupation was perhaps hard to find for him in the class of pieces preferred by Spanish taste. The nature of these it is not difficult to conjecture. Spain, superstitious, chivalrous, and semi-Moorish, hastened to equip its puppets in knightly harness and priestly robes. “Moors, knights, giants, enchanters, the conquerors of the Indies, the characters of the Old and the New Testament, and especially saints and hermits, are,” says M. Magnin, “the usual actors in these shows. Thetiteresso frequently wear monkish garb, especially in Portugal, that the circumstance has had an influence on their name in this country, where they are more often calledbonifratesthantiteres. The composition ofbonifrate(although the word is old, perhaps older thantitere) indicates an Italian origin.” Legends of saints and the book of ballads (Romancero) supplied most of the subjects of the plays performed by Spanish puppets. Of this we have an example in the drama selected by Cervantes for performance by Master Peter’stiteresbefore Don Quixote. In the course of his researches, M. Magnin was surprised to find (although he ought, perhaps, to have expected it) that bull-fights have had their turn of popularity on the boards of the Spanish puppet-show. He traces this in a curious oldpicaresqueromance, the memoirs of thepicara Justina. This adventurous heroine gives sundry particulars of the life of her great-grandfather, who had kept a theatre oftiteresat Seville, and who put such smart discourse into the mouths of his actors that, to hear him, the women who sold fruit and chestnuts andturrones(cakes of almonds and honey, still in use in Spain) quitted their goods and their customers, leaving their hat or theirbrasero(pan of hot embers) to keep shop. The popular manager was unfortunately of irregular habits, and expended his substance in riotous living. His money went, his mules, his puppets—the very boards of his theatre were sold, and his health left him with his worldly goods, so that he became the inmate of an hospital. When upon the eve of giving up the ghost, his granddaughter relates, he lost his senses, and became subject to such furious fits of madness, that one day he imagined himself to be a puppet-show bull (un toro de titeres), and that he was to fight a stone cross which stood in the court of the hospital. Accordingly, he attacked it, crying out, “Ah perra! que te ageno!” (words of defiance), and fell dead. The sister of charity, a good simple woman, seeing this, exclaimed, “Oh the thrice happy man! he has died at the foot of the cross, and whilst invoking it!” At a recent date (1808), a Frenchsavant, travelling in Spain, went to the puppet theatre at Valencia.The Death of Senecawas the title of the piece performed. In presence of the audience, the celebrated philosopher, the pride of Cordova, ended historically by opening his veins in a bath. The streams of blood that flowed from his arms were simulated cleverly enough by the movement of a red ribbon. An unexpected miracle, less historical than the mode of death, wound up the drama. Amidst the noise of fireworks, the pagan sage was taken up into heaven in aglory, pronouncing, as he ascended, the confession of his faith in Jesus Christ, to the perfect satisfaction of the audience. The smell of powder must have been a novelty to Seneca’s nostrils; but doubtless the rockets contributed greatly to the general effect of the scene, and Spain, the country of anomalies, is not to be disconcerted by an anachronism.
Into whatever country we follow the footsteps of the numerous and motley family of the Puppets, we find that, however exotic their habits may be on their first arrival in the land, they speedily become a reflex of the peculiar genius, tastes, and characteristics of its people. Thus in Italy, the land of song and dance, of strict theatrical censors, and despotic governments, we find theburattinidealing in sharp but polished jests at the expense of their rulers, excelling in the ballet, and performing Rossini’s operas, without suppressions or curtailment, with an orchestra of five or six instruments and singers behind the scenes. The Spanishtiterecouches his lance and rides forth to meet the Moor and rescue captive maidens, marches with Cortes to the conquest of Montezuma’s capital, or enacts, with more or less decorum, a moving incident from Holy Writ. In theJokkenandPuppenof Germany we recognise the metaphysical and fantastical tendencies of that country, its broad and rather heavy humour, its quaint superstitions, domestic sprites, and enchanted bullets. And in France, where puppet-shows were early cherished, and encouraged by the aristocracy as well as by the people, we need not wonder to find them elegant, witty, and frivolous—modelling themselves, in fact, upon their patrons. M. Magnin dwells long upon the puppets of his native land, which possess, however, less character and strongly marked originality than those of some of the other countries he discourses of. It is here he first traces the etymology of the wordmarionette—unmistakably French, although it has been of late years adopted in Germany and England. He considers it to be one of the numerous affectionate diminutives of the name of Marie, which crept into the French language in its infancy, and which soon came to be applied to those little images of the Virgin that were exhibited, gaily dressed and tinsel bedecked, to the adoration of the devout. In a pastoral poem of the 13th century, he finds the pretty name of Marionette applied by her lover to a young girl called Marion. “Several streets of old Paris, in which were sold or exposed images of the Virgin and saints, were called, someRues des Marmouzets(there are still two streets of this name in Paris), othersRues des Mariettes, and somewhat later,Rues des Marionettes. As irony makes its way everywhere, the amiable or religious sense of the wordsMarotte,Mariotte, andMarionette, was soon exchanged for a jesting and profane one. In the 15th century there was sung, in the streets and taverns, an unchaste ditty called theChant Marionnette. The bauble of a licensed fool was called, and is still called,marotte; ‘by reason,’ says Ménage, ‘of the head of a marionette—that is to say, of a little girl’—which surmounts it; and at last mountebanks irreverently called their wooden actors and actressesmarmouzetsandmariottes. At the end of the 16th century and commencement of the 17th, several Protestant or sceptical writers were well pleased to confound, with an intention of mockery, the religious and the profane sense of the wordsmarmouzetsandmarionettes. Henry Estienne, inveighing, in hisApologie pour Herodote, against the chastisements inflicted on the Calvinists for the mutilation of madonnas and images of saints, exclaims: ‘Never did the Egyptians take such cruel vengeance for the murder of their cats, as has been seen wreaked, in our days, on those who had mutilated somemarmouzetormarionette.’” It is curious here again to trace the connection between Roman image-worship and the puppet-show. The marionette, at first reverently placed in niches, with spangled robe and burning lamp, is presently found perched at the end of a jester’s bauble and parading a juggler’s board. The question here is only of a name, soon abandoned by the sacred images to its disreputable usurpers. But we have already seen, especially in the case of Spain, what a scandalous confusion came to pass between religious ceremonies and popular entertainments, until at times these could hardly be distinguished from those; and, as far as what occurred within them went, spectators might often be perplexed to decide whether they were in a sacred edifice or a showman’s booth. With respect to the French termmarionette, it had yet to undergo, after its decline and fall from a sacred to a profane application, a still deeper degradation, before its final confinement to the class of puppets it at the present day indicates. In the 16th century it came to be applied not only to mechanical images of all kinds, sacred and profane, but, by a strange extension of its meaning, to the supposed supernatural dolls and malignant creatures that sorcerers were accused of fostering, as familiar imps and as idols. From a huge quarto printed in Paris in 1622, containing a collection of trials for magic which took place between 1603 and 1615, M. Magnin extracts a passage showing how certain poor idiots were accused of “having kept, close confined and in subjection in their houses,marionettes, which are little devils, having usually the form of toads, sometimes of apes, always very hideous.” The rack, the gallows, and the faggot were the usual lot of the unfortunate supposed possessors of these unwholesome puppets.
There are instances on record of long discussions and fierce disputes between provinces or towns for the honour of having been the birthplace of some great hero, poet, or philosopher. In like manner, M. Magnin labours hard, and expends much erudition, to prove that the FrenchPolichinelle, notwithstanding the similarity of name, is neither the son, nor in any way related to the ItalianPulcinella, but is thoroughly French in origin and character. That Harlequin and Pantaloon came from south of the Alps he readily admits; also, that a name has been borrowed from Italy for the French Punch. But he stands up manfully for the originality of this jovial and dissipated puppet, which he maintains to be a thoroughly Gallic type. Whether conclusive or not—a point to the settlement of which we will not give many lines—the arguments and facts he brings forward are ingenious and amusing. After displaying the marked difference that exists in every respect, except in that of the long hooked nose and the name, between the Punchinello of Paris and that of Naples—the latter being a tall straight-backed active fellow, dressed in a black half-mask, a grey pointed hat, a white frock and trousers, and a tight girdle, and altogether of a different character from his more northern namesake—he has the audacity to broach, although with some hesitation, the bold idea that Polichinelle is a portrait of the great Béarnais. “To hide nothing of my thought, I must say that, under the necessary exaggeration of a loyal caricature, Polichinelle exhibits the popular type, I dare not say of Henry IV., but at any rate of the Gascon officer imitating his master’s bearing in the guardroom of the palace of St Germain, or of the old Louvre. As to the hunch, it has been from time immemorial the appendage, in France, of a facetious, witty fellow. In the thirteenth century, Adam de la Halle was called thehunchback of Arras, not that he was deformed, but on account of his humorous vein.