When we compare the account which Professor Lawrence has here given of
the Italian puppet-shows in New York with the description of these same
performances in their native land half a century ago, which we find in
the 'Roba di Roma' of W. W. Story, the American sculptor-poet, we
perceive that there has been little modification of method in the past
threescore years. Story studied all sides of the Roman populace, and he
maintained that nothing was more characteristically Italian than the
marionette theater. He tells us that the love for the acting of
_burattini_ [or puppets] is universal among the lower classes thruout
Italy, and in some cities, especially in Genoa, no pains are spared "in
their costume, construction, and movement to render them lifelike. They
are made of wood, generally from two to three feet in height, with very
large heads, and supernatural glaring eyes that never wink, and are clad
in all the splendor of tinsel, velvet, and steel. Their joints are so
flexible that the least weight or strain upon them effects a
dislocation, and they are moved by wires attached to their heads and
extremities. The largest are only about half the height of a man, yet as
the stage and all the appointments and scenery are upon the same scale
of proportion, the eye is soon deceived, and accepts them as of
life-size. But if by accident a hand or arm of one of the wire-pullers
appears from behind the scenes or descends below the hangings, it
startles you by its portentous size; and the audience in the
stage-boxes instead of reducing the _burattini_ to Lilliputians by
contrast, as they lean forward, become themselves Brobdingnagians, with
elephantine hands and heads."
Story insisted that there is nothing ludicrous to an Italian audience in
the performances of these diminutive men and women. On the contrary,
nothing is more serious both to the spectators and to the unforeseen
operators. In fact, he declared, no human being could be so serious as
these tiny performers. "Their countenances are as solemn as death, and
more unchanging than the face of a clock. Their terrible gravity when,
with drooping heads and collapsed arms, they fix on you their great
goggle-eyes is at times ghastly. The plays they perform are mostly
heroic, romantic, and historical. They stoop to nothing which is not
startling in incident, imposing in style, and grandiose in movement. And
the Italian audience listens with a grave and profound interest, as tho
the performers were not mere puppets, but actually the heroes they are
supposed to be. The inflated and extravagant discourse of the characters
is accepted at its face value; to the spectators it is grand and noble.
And the foreign visitor must control any desire he may feel to smile at
the extraordinary spectacle he is witnessing, and at the marvelous
rodomontade he is hearing. To laugh out loud at one of these heroic
puppet-plays would be as indecorous as to indulge in laughter during a
church service."
[Illustration: A Belgian puppet A Chinese puppet theater Puppet figure
representing the younger Coquelin]
Incidental to the heroic dramas which the puppets play are interludes of
ballet-dancing like those which are intercalated, more or less adroitly,
into the grand opera performed by full-grown men and women. The Italians
are born pantomimists, and they are accomplished dancers. Therefore,
there is no reason for surprise that human pantomime and human dancing
are imitated in the marionette theaters. There is reason for surprise,
however, that Story did not perceive clearly the advantages possessed by
the dancing puppets over the dancers of more solid flesh and blood. He
found something comic in the pantomime of the puppets, "whose every
motion is effected by wires, who imitate the gestures of despair with
hands that cannot shut, and, with a wooden gravity of countenance, throw
their bodies into terrible contortions to make up for the lack of
expression in the face." In mere pantomime it is probable that the
puppets would labor under a serious disability, for if a performer
cannot use his voice, he needs facial expression to assist the gestures
by which only can he then convey his meaning to the other performers and
to the spectators. Perhaps it is not too much to assert that the
puppet-show is not the proper place for pantomime.