I
In an advertisement issued by one of the huge department stores of New
York not long ago, the assertion was made that the house had on sale
"all the new novelties." A purist in language might be moved to protest
that this proclamation was plainly tautological, because it is the
essential quality of every novelty to be new. But even a purist in
language, if he happens also to be an honest observer of things as they
are, would be forced to admit that his supercilious cavil had only a
superficial justification, since, as a matter of fact, there are many
novelties which are not new, and which, indeed, are venerably ancient.
It was Solomon, superabundantly married, and therefore in an excellent
position to acquire wisdom, who declared that there is nothing new under
the sun. Wireless telegraphy is only a development of the signaling by
beacon-fires, which was practised by the Greeks and which they employed
to convey immediately to Greece the glad tidings of the fall of Troy;
and moving-pictures are only an ingenious amplification of the zoetrope
of our childhood.
The amusement-parks which sprang up all over the United States in the
early part of the twentieth century, in imitation of those at Coney
Island, bear an undeniable resemblance to the Foire Saint Laurent and
to the other fairs of Paris in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
and even the loud-voiced crier who proclaims the merits of the several
side-shows, and who is now known as a "barker," bears a name which is
only a translation of that given to his forbears two hundred years ago
in France--_aboyeur_.
The so-called cabaret-shows, prevalent in the larger cities of the
United States in the winter of 1911-1912, were hailed as the very latest
form of amusement, combining as they did the solid pleasures of the
table with the ethereal delights of song-and-dance; and yet Froissart is
a witness that something very like the cabaret-show was known in the
Middle Ages, and Gibbon has recorded its existence nearly a thousand
years earlier, at the court of Theodoric. Indeed, the Romans, and the
Greeks before them, had employed performers of one sort or another to
relieve the monotony of their banquets. Gaditanian dancers were popular
thruout the wide realm of Rome, almost two thousand years before
Carmencita came from Cadiz to warble and caper at midnight in the
studios of American painters, just before and just after the guests had
enjoyed the refreshments provided by their artistic hosts.
As the cabaret-show is only another form of the well-known "vaudeville
supper," it must be relegated to the class of novelties which are not
new. And vaudeville itself is only the long familiar variety-show. It
may now be called by a new name, and many of those who do not look
behind a label may accept it as a new thing; nevertheless it is very
old, indeed. The name "vaudeville" is an absurd misnomer, like so many
other terms due to our habit of careless borrowing from other tongues.
In French _vaudeville_ originally designated a kind of topical song,
bristling with pointed gibes at the follies of the moment; and then in
time it took on another meaning, when it was used to describe a light
and lively farce interspersed with occasional lyrics set to
old-fashioned tunes. It is impossible to say just how and why this
French word, which had two distinct meanings in its own language, should
have been imported into English to characterize improperly a form of
amusement which we had long known by the admirably exact name of
variety-show. The French themselves call their own type of variety-show,
at which refreshments are served, a _cafe-concert_. Their nickname for
it is a _beuglant_, a place where there is "howling"--which seems to
imply that they do not expect too much melody from the singers, who
appear at these performances. In England an establishment of this kind
is called a music-hall; and it was more than half a century ago that
Planche described their blatant lyrics set to brazen tunes as "most
music-hall, most melancholy."
Whatever its name may be in the different parts of the world, the
entertainment is much the same. The most frequent item on the program is
the comic song, often accompanied by a rudimentary dance. Sometimes it
is in the martial staccato of Paulus's 'En revenant de la revue' which
boosted General Boulanger into a furious but fleeting political
popularity. Sometimes it is the coonful melody of 'Under the Bamboo
Tree' or 'Dinah, the Moon am Shining.' Sometimes it is an almost
epileptic lyric, like 'Tarara-boom-de-ay.' Sometimes a singer of a more
delicate art, like Yvette Guilbert, ventures upon songs of a more subtly
sentimental appeal. There may be a swift succession of solos, male
singers and female alternating, those of the most fame appearing latest,
as is the practise in the first part of the Parisian open-air
_cafe-chantant_, the Alcazar or the Ambassadeurs. There may be duets or
trios or quartets, serious or comic, decorously unadorned or diversified
by dancing. There may be songs to be interpreted by half a dozen
performers, accompanied by more or less dramatic action, like the
'Mulligan Guards,' which was the simple germ wherefrom sprouted the long
series of more and more elaborate Harrigan and Hart plays, delineating
with keen insight and with sympathetic humor the manifold aspects of
tenement-house life in New York, and possessing a rich flavor of fun
curiously akin to that which amuses us in the plays wherein Plautus had
sketched the tenement-house life in Rome two thousand years ago.
While the song and the song-and-dance and the song-and-parade may be the
staple of the entertainment, the variety-show justifies its name by the
medley of other exhibitions it presents. It delights in the dance
unaccompanied by the song; and in some of the English music-halls, the
Alhambra and the Empire in London, the ballet is the foremost
attraction, providing an opportunity for the display of her dainty art
to so exquisite a dancer as Mlle. Genee. In New York it is now a refuge
for the waifs and strays of vanishing negro-minstrelsy. It is ready to
welcome the wandering conjurer and the strolling juggler. It extends its
hospitality to the acrobat, single or in groups, throwing flipflaps on
the stage, flying thru the air on a trapeze or diving into the water in
a tank. It acts as host to the trainer of performing animals, dogs and
cats, seals and elephants. It lends its stage to the puppet-show
performer, to the sidewalk conversationalist, and to the ventriloquist,
with his pair of stolid figures seemingly seated uncomfortably on his
knees and actually supported by his hands, while his adroit fingers
manipulate their mechanical mouths.
Of late, the variety-show has accepted the aid of the exhibitors of
moving-pictures, just as the exhibitors of moving-pictures have invoked
the casual assistance of song-and-dance teams and of other vaudeville
performers to relieve the strain on the eyes of their spectators. And
the introduction of the cinematograph, or the bioscope, or whatever it
may be called, is, perhaps, the only real novelty in our latter-day
variety-show. All the other performers are presenting feats of a kind
known to our remote ancestors, even if these feats are now more
skilfully presented. Animals were put thru their paces hundreds of years
ago; and performing dogs and educated bears figure frequently in the
illuminations which decorate many a medieval manuscript. There were
tight-rope dancers in Alexandria and in Byzantium; there were
contortionists in Rome and in Greece, and the flexibility of these
latter is preserved for us in the vase-paintings which have been
replevined from the ashes of Pompeii and the lava of Herculaneum.
Quintillian tells us of the wonderful feats of certain performers on the
stage in his day, "with balls, and of other jugglers whose dexterity is
such that one might suppose the things which they throw from them to
return of their own accord, and to fly wheresoever they are commanded."
The art of modern magic has enlarged its boundaries by the aid of the
modern sciences of mechanics and physics, but elementary
sleights-of-hand were known to a remote antiquity, and savages always
had their medicine-men and their marabouts, workers of primitive wonders
to strike awe into the souls of their unsophisticated beholders. The
variety-show may have the variety it vaunts itself as possessing; but to
novelty it can lay little claim.