If a performance by puppets deprived 'Salome' of its vulgar grossness by
removing it outside the arena of humanity, so to speak, and by
relegating it to an unreal world beyond the strict diocese of the
conscience, so a performance by puppets of a passion-play or of any
other drama in which the Deity has perforce to appear as a character, is
thereby relieved of any tincture of irreverence. We no longer see a
divine being interpreted by a human being. We cannot help feeling that
all the persons in the play, whether they dwell in heaven or on earth,
are equally remote from our common humanity. And therefore we need not
be surprised when we discover that the marionette has long been allowed
to appear in religious drama. Indeed, it appears probable that the very
name _marionette_ is directly derived from the name of the Virgin.
Very early in the history of the Christian Church were the puppets
permitted to perform passion-plays and little dramas derived from the
stories contained both in the New and the Old Testaments. In England
under Elizabeth and James religious puppet-shows of this kind went
wandering about the kingdom, taking into the smallest villages an
entertainment which would afford to the rural inhabitants the same kind
of pleasant instruction which the dwellers in the larger towns had in
the more elaborate and long-drawn mysteries performed by the
trade-guilds on the Corpus Christi day. That masterly rogue Autolycus in
the 'Winter's Tale' tells us that in his time he had been on the road
with "a motion of the Prodigal Son"--and a _motion_ was the Elizabethan
term for a marionette-exhibition. In like manner one of the characters
in Ben Jonson's 'Every Man out of His Humor' speaks of "a new motion of
the city of Nineveh, with Jonas and the whale." Of course, the puppet
performers, like the grown-up actors, did not long confine themselves to
sacred themes; they ventured also into contemporary history. A puppet
showman who appears in Ben Jonson's 'Bartholomew Fair' tells us that a
certain motion setting forth the mysterious Gunpowder Plot, was "a
get-penny."
Story described one puppet-play which he saw in a little village on the
main road from Rome to Naples, and which had for its central figure
Judas Iscariot. But here again his attitude is unsympathetic, perhaps
because the performance was clumsy. "The kiss of Judas, when, after
sliding along the stage, he suddenly turned with a sidelong jerk and
rapped the other wooden puppet's head with his own, as well as the
subsequent scene in which he goes out and hangs himself, beggar
description." Yet the expatriated American spectator honestly recorded
that the Italian spectators "looked and listened with great gravity,
seemed to be highly edified, and certainly showed no signs of seeing
anything ludicrous in the performance." We may venture the suggestion
that even the sophisticated sculptor-poet himself would have seen
nothing ludicrous in this performance if the operator of Judas had been
as skilful as the operator of Salome in Holden's marionettes.
[Illustration: A Neapolitan Punchinella
From "By Italian Seas," by Ernest C. Peixotto]
A few years ago in Paris one of the younger poets wrote a passion-play
which was performed during Lent by a company of dolls, designed and
dressed in fit and appropriate costumes by an artist friend familiar
with the manners and customs of the Holy Land. While the wires were
managed by expert hands, the words of the dialog were spoken by the poet
himself, and by two or three other poets who came to his aid. This must
have been a seemly spectacle, and it won careful consideration from more
than one of the most eminent dramatic critics of France. Here we may
find a useful suggestion for those who wish to see certain plays by
modern dramatic poets, in which the Deity is a necessary
character--Rostand's 'Samaritaine,' for one, and Hauptmann's 'Hannele,'
for another. Many of the devout have a natural repugnance to any
performance on the stage (with its materialistic environment and its
often sordid conditions) which calls for the impersonation of a divine
being by an actor of ordinary flesh and blood. Yet if these same plays
were reverently performed by marionettes the aroma of irreverence would
be removed. It might even be possible to reproduce in the puppet-show
not a little of the solemn religious effect which is felt by all
visitors to the passion-play at Oberammergau.
(1912.)