Educated Sicilians have not a high opinion of the marionettes; it is
sometimes difficult to induce them to talk on the subject. They say the
marionettes are for the lower orders and accuse them of being responsible
for many of the quarrels we read about in the newspapers. The people
become so fascinated by the glamour of the romance in which they live
night after night that they imitate in private life the chivalrous
behaviour of the warriors they see fighting in the little theatres, and
thus what may begin as a playful reminiscence of something in last
night's performance occasionally leads to a too accurate imitation of one
of last night's combats and perhaps ends in a fatal wound. This being
like the accounts in English papers about boys becoming hooligans or
running off to sea as stowaways in consequence of reading trashy
literature, my desire to attend a performance of marionettes was
increased, but I did not want to go alone for, in the event of a row,
with knives, among the audience it would be better to be accompanied by a
native.
I was in Palermo where I knew a few students, whose education was of
course still incomplete, but they were cold on the subject and said that
if they came with me we should probably be turned out for laughing. That
was not what I wanted. It ought to have been possible to do something
with the waiter or the porter, or even with the barber whom I met on the
stairs and in the passages of the hotel when he came in the morning to
shave the commercial travellers; but they all made difficulties--either
they did not get away from their work till too late, or it was not a
place for an Englishman or it was not safe. At home, of course, one does
not go to the theatre with the waiter, but when in Sicily, though one
does not perhaps do altogether as the Sicilians, one does not do as one
does in England. I know a Palermitan barber with whom I should be proud
to be seen walking in the Via Macqueda any day--that is, any day when his
Sunday clothes were not in pawn--and there used to be a conduttore at my
hotel who took me round to many of the sights in the town and who was a
person of such distinguished manners that when with him I felt as though
walking with a Knight-Templar in disguise--a disguise that had to be
completed by my buying him a straw hat, otherwise he would have given us
away by wearing his cap with "Albergo So-and-so" written all round it.
These are the people who really know about the marionettes, for whenever
they get an evening off they go. It seemed, however, that I had met with
a conspiracy of obstruction. Palermo was treating me as a good woman
treats her husband when he wants to do something of which she
disapproves--there was no explanation or arguing; what I wanted was
quietly made impossible. So I replied by treating Palermo as a good man
treats his wife under such circumstances--I pretended to like it and
waited till I could woo some less difficult city.
Catania provided what I wanted. There I knew a professor interested in
folk-lore and kindred subjects to whom I confided my troubles. He
laughed at me for my failures, assured me there was no danger and offered
to take me. It was a Sunday evening. On arriving at the teatrino, he
spoke to an attendant who showed us in by a side entrance and gave us the
best places in the house, that is, we were near the only open window.
The seating arrangements would have been condemned by the County Council;
there were rows of benches across the floor and no passages, so that the
people had to walk on the seats to get to their places; two galleries ran
round the house very close together, an ordinary man could not have stood
upright in the lower one, and it was difficult to move in the upper one
in which we were, because the arches supporting the roof nearly blocked
it in three places on each side. Presently a man came round and
collected our money, twenty centimes each, the seats on the ground being
fifteen.
There were four boys sitting on the stage, two at each side of the
curtain, as they used to sit in Shakespeare's theatre. Like the rest of
the audience, these boys were of the class they call Facchini, that is,
porters, coachmen, shop assistants, shoeblacks, water-sellers, and so on.
It sometimes happens when travelling in Sicily that one has to spend half
an hour, half a day, or it may be more, in company with one of these men.
He is usually a delightful person, dignified, kind, courteous, full of
fun and extremely friendly without being obtrusive. During conversation
one may perhaps ask him whether he can read and write; he will probably
reply that at school he was taught both. Presently one may ask him to
read an advertisement, or to write down an address; he will probably
reply that the light is bad, or that he is occupied with the luggage or
the horses. The fact is that reading and writing are to him very much
what the classics and the higher mathematics are to many an English
gentleman--the subjects were included in his youthful studies, but as
they have never been of the slightest use to him in earning his bread, he
has forgotten all he ever learnt of them, and does not care to say so.
The Sicilian, however, no matter how uneducated he may be, has an
appetite for romance which must be gratified and, as it would give him
some trouble to brush up his early accomplishments and stay at home
reading Pulci and Boiardo, Tasso and Ariosto, he prefers to follow the
story of Carlo Magno and his paladins and the wars against the Saracens
in the teatrino. Besides, no Sicilian man ever stays at home to do
anything except to eat and sleep, and those are things he does out of
doors as often as not; the houses are for the women, the men live in the
street. It is as though in England the cab-drivers, railway porters and
shop-boys were to spend evening after evening, month after month, looking
on at a dramatized version of the _Arcadia_ or _The Faerie Queene_.
Presently the curtain went up and disclosed two flaring gas-jets, each
with a small screen in front of it about halfway down the stage; these
were the footlights, and behind them was a back cloth representing a hall
with a vista of columns. In the rather confined space between the
footlights and the back cloth there came on a knight in armour. He stood
motionless, supporting his forehead with his right fist, the back of his
hand being outward.
"Is he crying?" I inquired.
"No," replied the professor, "he is meditating; if he were crying the
back of his hand would be against his face."
He then dropped his fist and delivered a soliloquy, no doubt embodying
the result of his meditation, after which he was joined by his twin
brother. They conversed at length of battles and the King of Athens, of
Adrianopoli and the Grand Turk, of princesses and of journeys by sea and
land. The act of speaking induced a curious nervous complaint, useful
because it showed which was the speaker; not only did he move his head
and his right arm in a very natural and Sicilian manner, but he was
constantly on the point of losing his balance, and only saved himself
from falling by swinging one leg from the hip forwards or backwards as
the case required. The listening knight stood firm till he had to speak,
and then he was attacked by the complaint and the other became still.
At first I was puzzled as to the actual size of the figures and, starting
with the idea that marionettes are always small, assumed that these were
about three feet high; but, as the novelty wore off, I compared them with
the audience and especially with the boys sitting in the corners and with
various assistants of whom occasional glimpses could be caught at the
wings; sometimes the hand of an operator appeared below the scenery and
gave a hint, and gradually I came to the conclusion that the puppets
could not be much smaller than life, if at all.
The operators must have been standing on a platform behind the back
scene; the figures were able to pass one another, but never came forward
more than a step or two, the footlights being in the way, and no doubt
the operators could not reach further forward than they did. Each figure
was worked by two iron rods, one to his head and one to his right hand,
and several strings to which after a few minutes I paid no attention;
perhaps their very obviousness saved them from notice. Any attempt to
conceal them would have been a mistake, for what is the use of announcing
a performance by marionettes and then pretending there is no mechanism?
Besides, if one cannot accept a few conventions one had better stay away
from the theatre altogether.
At the conclusion of the interview the knights followed one another off;
and the buoyancy of their walk must be seen to be believed. The students
have seen it and believe it so thoroughly that, when they meet one
another in the Quattro Canti, they not unfrequently adopt it to the
amusement of the bystanders. But the students make the mistake of
slightly overdoing it. The marionettes often take a step or two quite
naturally, and this, while adding to the absurdity (which cannot be the
intention of the operator), also shows what is possible and makes one
think that with a little extra trouble they might be made to walk always
as smoothly as they move their heads and arms. It might, however, be
necessary for them to have more strings, and this would make them more
difficult to manipulate. In Sicily the marionettes who tell the story of
the Paladins do not lay themselves out to be of a mechanism so ingenious
that they shall appear to be alive; such illusion as they do produce,
like the incompetent illustration to Shakespeare which Lamb preferred, is
insufficient to cripple the imagination of the audience who are the more
intimately touched by the romance of the story and by the voice of the
speaker.
The back cloth was raised and we had before us a tranquil sea with two
little islands sleeping under a sunset sky. Michele entered; he was a
very splendid fellow in golden armour with draperies of purple and
scarlet and white, and in his helmet a plume that nearly trailed on the
ground. No playbill was provided, but none was wanted for Michele, he
could not have been taken for anything but an operatic tenor of noble
birth about to proceed against the Saracens. He first meditated and then
soliloquized as he paced the sandy shore. The Princess of Bizerta in a
flowing robe, covered with spangles, though not actually in sight, was
not far off, imparting her griefs to the unsympathetic ocean. Spying the
paladin, she strolled in his direction and spoke to him, but it was not
an assignation; Michele, indeed, was obviously distressed at having his
soliloquy interrupted; nevertheless, being a knight and a gentleman, he
could but reply politely, and so they got into conversation. She told
him who she was, which would not have been necessary if they had ever met
before, then she told him of her unhappy plight, namely, that she was in
the custody of an Arabian giant, and then she implored his assistance.
Michele was as unsympathetic as the ocean, his mind being full of
Saracens; but before he had time to invent a plausible lie, the giant
entered very suddenly. Physically he was not a particularly gigantic
giant, being but three or four inches taller than Michele. If he had
been much more, his head, which like that of all stage giants was
undeveloped at the back, would have been hidden by the clouds that hung
from the sky. His inches, however, were enough, for, in romance, height
is given to a giant to symbolize power, and provided he is perceptibly
taller than the hero, the audience accept him as a giant and a bully and
one, moreover, who is, as a rule, nearing the end of his wicked career.
Accordingly, when, in a voice of thunder, he demanded of Michele an
immediate explanation--wanted to know how he dared address the
princess--we all felt that he was putting himself in the wrong and that a
catastrophe was imminent. Giants, that is, unscrupulous people in power,
are too fond of assuming this attitude of unprovoked hostility and
overbearing insolence, but they assume it once too often. Had he
remembered Adam and Eve and the apple it might have occurred to him to
inquire whether in the present case also the lady had not begun it.
Giants, however, are for the most part unintelligent, not to say
downright stupid people, and seldom have the sense to know how to use
their power wisely--think of the giant in _Jack and the Beanstalk_, think
of Polyphemus and Ulysses, think of the Inquisition and Galileo.
And then this giant made the mistake of losing his temper, and the
further mistake of showing that he had lost it, and when giants do this,
it means that they know they are in the wrong and don't care. He
insulted Michele most grossly, and the knight very properly drew his
sword and went for him, and a terrible battle ensued throughout which
realism was thrown to the waves. The combatants rose off the ground so
high that Michele's head and the giant's head and shoulders were
frequently lost in the clouds; and they clanked down again upon the sandy
shore two or three feet in front of where they had stood--or behind, just
as it happened; and their swords banged against their breast-plates and
shields, proving that they were real metal and not merely tinsel; and
they twirled round and round like beef on a roasting-jack, until at last
Michele dealt the inevitable blow and the giant fell dead on the sand
with a thud that jolted the coast, shook the islands, rippled across the
sunset sky and restored animation to the lifeless form of the princess.
While the battle raged she had been standing by, unmoved, blankly glaring
at the audience; and yet she must have known as well as we did that it
was all about her. The probability is that her operator had temporarily
moored her to a convenient peg in the back of the clouds while he worked
the giant, and that at the conclusion of the duel he was free to return
to her. She first looked round and then swooped hurriedly across the
stage, three inches from the ground; before quite touching her protector,
however, she swung halfway back again, then a little forwards, and
finally, coming to anchor at a suitable distance, raised her two hands
and, as though offering him a tray of refreshments, said--
"Grazie."
He, pursuing his policy of frigid politeness, bowed in acknowledgment and
followed her off the stage, leaving the corpse of the giant lying near
the sea.
The back cloth was intentionally too long, so that the bottom was
crumpled into folds which did well enough for little waves breaking on
the shore. These waves now began to be agitated, and gradually rose
gustily and advanced until they had covered the dead giant. It was a
very good effect and avoided the banality of removing the body in sight
of the audience; it looked as though the wind had risen and the depths
had swallowed him. And this, as I afterwards was told, is what happens
to the giant's body in the story.
When the back cloth went up for the next scene the corpse was gone, and
we were in The House of the Poor Man where Michele came to take
refuge--from what I did not clearly understand, but if from the Princess
of Bizerta he would have been better advised had he sought some other
sanctuary; for no sooner had he performed his usual meditation and
soliloquy and got himself to sit down on The Poor Man's chair, where he
instantly fell asleep with his head resting on his hand, than Her
Highness entered and, addressing the audience confidentially, said that
she loved him and intended to take this opportunity of giving him a kiss.
She was, however, on the other side of the stage and had first to get to
him, which she did so like a bird with a broken wing that he woke up
before she reached him. She evidently did not consider that this added
to her difficulties, but something else did.
A dispute had been simmering in the gallery just opposite where we sat,
and now began to boil over, and threatened to swamp the play as the waves
had submerged the Arabian giant. I thought perhaps we ought to leave,
though it would have been impossible to pass out quickly, but the
professor again assured me there was no danger; the management are
accustomed to disturbances and know how to deal with them. So I sat
still, and the proprietor came on the stage and stood in front of the
gas-jets. He joined his hands as though in prayer and begged us to be
quiet, saying that it was a complicated story and would require all our
attention, that Michele would die on Wednesday, and he hoped we should
not cause the speaker to die of starvation before that day by preventing
him from earning his bread. The appearance of the proprietor among his
puppets confirmed me in the conclusion I had arrived at as to their size;
he may have been a small man, but he was about the size of the giant. He
must have been a strong man, for, with all their armour, the figures must
be very heavy.
The proprietor's appeal went to all our hearts; silence was restored and
the princess repeated to the warrior what we already knew--that she loved
him and desired to kiss him. Something of the kind was exactly what poor
Michele had been dreading. He turned to her and, almost choking with
despair, said, "Misericordia," not meaning to be hostile, but that the
killing of her giant had already delayed him, and if he were to allow
himself to yield to her blandishments he would be too late for the
Saracens. No doubt he also had a vow. But when a lady has made up her
mind on a matter of this kind, to thwart her is to invite disaster--think
of Joseph and Potiphar's wife. Not that Michele thought of them, nor
would it have influenced him if he had, for he was a paladin and
incapable of fear; but he had the instincts of a gentleman, so, in spite
of his anxiety to be off to the wars, he rose as well as he could, which
was unsteadily, and staggered towards the princess who made every effort
to meet him. In time they drew close enough to fall into one another's
arms, and the curtain descended as they were accomplishing not a
passionate but a quite creditable embrace.
Then there was a scene between three kings with golden crowns who
conversed at length of battles and the King of Athens, of Adrianopoli and
the Grand Turk, of princesses and of journeys by sea and land. These
were the things they spoke about as they stood together in the hall that
had served for the first scene with a vista of columns behind, and when
they had done they followed one another off. Then we also followed one
another out of the theatre, not because of the Saracens, nor because we
had any vow, nor because we feared a repetition of the uproar, nor even
because of the coming-on disposition of the Princess of Bizerta, but
because one open window was not enough.
TRAPANI