_A description of Sacchi's company in particular.--I continue the tone
of a philosophical observer._
Having recorded the impression made upon me by Italian actors and
actresses in general, I shall now attempt a description of Sacchi's
company, which I had good opportunities of studying through some
twenty-five years.
Though I read with sufficient ease into the hearts and characters of
these my proteges, and could supply them with sentiments, dialogues, and
soliloquies adapted to their inmost natures, I found it difficult to
penetrate the motives of their moral conduct, which were far more
closely fenced about from prying gaze than either their intellectual or
their physical peculiarities.
There is no doubt that at least seven members of this troupe were
excellent artists in the national _Commedia alla sprovveduta_--a species
of comedy which has always afforded innocent recreation to the public
when performed with taste and spirit, but which is utterly insufferable
when badly executed. This much I concede to the persecutors of the
species--little talents, more ridiculous and useless with their
ostentation of gravity than are even bad harlequins.
Sacchi's company enjoyed general respect in so far as their personal
conduct was concerned. On this point they differed widely from the
majority of our actors, who are for the most part very badly looked
upon. This excellent reputation weighed strongly with me, when I sought
their society, and entered into fraternal relations with them. The way
they held together, the harmony which reigned among them, their
domesticity, studious habits, severity in moral matters, their rules
against visits being paid to women, the abhorrence the women themselves
displayed for those who took presents from seducers, the regularity with
which they divided their hours between household duties, religious
exercises, and charitable attentions to the indigent among their
members, gratified my taste. I may incidentally mention that if any of
the salaried actresses or actors exceeded the prescribed bounds of
decent conduct, they were quickly sent about their business; and such
offenders were replaced by others, whose moral character had been
subjected to stricter inquiry than even their professional ability.
I am sufficiently unprejudiced and free from scruples; I have never
evaded opportunities of studying human nature, which brought me into
passing contact with all sorts of men; yet it is certain that I should
not have entered into familiar relations and daily converse in my hours
of recreation with these people, for upwards of the space of twenty
years, if it had not been for their exceptional good character.
I not only composed for them a long series of theatrical pieces, novel
in kind and congenial to their talents, but I also furnished them with a
new arsenal of stock passages, essential to the _Commedia dell'Arte_,
and which they call its _dote_, or endowment.[29] I could not say how
many prologues and epilogues in verse I wrote, to be recited on the
first and last evenings of the run of some play by the leading lady for
the time being; nor how many songs to be inserted in their farces; nor
how many thousand pages I filled with soliloquies, sallies of despair,
menace, reproach, supplication, paternal reprimand, and such-like
matters appropriate to all kinds of scenes in improvised comedy. The
players call such fragments of studied rhetoric _generici_, or
commonplaces. They are vastly important to comedians who may not be
specially gifted for improvisation; and everything of the sort I found
in their repertory was vitiated by the turgid mannerisms of the
_seicento_.
[Illustration: PANTALONE (1550)
_Illustrating the Italian Commedia dell'Arte, or Impromptu Comedy_]
I was godfather at the christening of their babies, author-in-chief,
counsellor, master, and mediator to the whole company; all this without
assuming the pretentious airs of a pedant or a claimant on their
gratitude; but always at their own entreaty, while I preserved the tone
of disinterested, humane, and playful condescension.
Some of the girls of this dramatic family--none of whom were ugly, and
none without some aptitude for the profession--begged me to help them
with support and teaching. I consented, provided them with parts adapted
to their characters, taught them how they ought to act these parts, and
put them in the way of winning laurels. At their entreaties I devoted
some hours of my leisure to giving them more general instruction. I made
them read and translate French books suited to their calling. I wrote
them letters upon divers familiar themes, calculated to make them think
and develop their sentiments under the necessity of composing some reply
or other. I corrected their mistakes, which frequently consisted in the
unexpected and uncalled-for use of capital letters, and laughed
heartily while doing so. This afforded me sprightly amusement and gave
them a dash of education.
When they left Venice for the customary six months,[30] I ran no risk of
not receiving letters from them, written in rivalry with one
another--sometimes real love-letters--arriving by each post from Milan,
Turin, Genoa, Parma, Mantua, Bologna, all the cities where they stopped
to act. Nor were answers wanting upon my side; playful, affectionate,
threatening, derisive; taking any tone which I judged capable of keeping
these young creatures wide-awake. It seemed to me that such an active
correspondence and exchange of sentiments was the most appropriate and
profitable school for a comedian.
Let no man deceive himself by supposing that it is possible to converse
with actresses without love-making. You must make it, or pretend to make
it. This is the only way to guide them to their own advantage. Love
moulds and kneads them in flesh, bones, and marrow. Love begins to be
their guiding-star at the age of five or six. In this respect, I soon
discovered that the austerity of Sacchi's company was a barren formula;
just as I had previously noticed that strictness in private families,
beyond a certain point, had ceased to be accounted of utility or value.
Among actresses, the term friendship is something fabulous and
visionary. They immediately substitute the word love, and do not attend
to distinctions. Their idea of friendship only serves as the means of
mutual deception between women, accompanied by deluges of endearing
phrases and Judas kisses.
I ought, however, to declare that the actresses of Sacchi's company
carried on their love-affairs with prudence and without indecency. The
ideal of severity which prevailed there bore at least these fruits of
goodness; and the ideal of honesty produced notably different results
from those which other systems in the trade of love elicited elsewhere.
How many actresses lay siege deliberately and in cold blood to their
lovers, despoil them of their property, and do their very best to suck
them dry! Catching at the locks of what they call their fortune and I
call their infamy, these women do not stop to see whether the path
before them be clean or filthy. They worship wickedness and abhor good
living, if they hope to fill their purse or gratify their cupidity by
the former. Though they strive to cloak their baseness with the veil of
verbal decency, and do all in their power to preserve external decorum,
they trample in their souls on shame and sing this verse:--
"Colla vergogna io gia mi sono avvezza."
("With infamy I long have been at home.")
For the actresses of Sacchi's company, it is only justice to assert
that they were far removed from harbouring such sentiments of vile and
degrading venality.
There are two phrases in the slang of the profession; one is
_miccheggiare_, which means to cozen folk out of their money by
wheedling; the other is _gonzo_, gull or cully, the foolish lover who
believes himself an object of affection, and squanders all his fortune
under the influence of this impression. I must declare that the women of
Sacchi's company never put the arts which these words imply into
practice. They made love by instinct, inclination, and hereditary
tradition.
This does not mean that they were not eager to get lovers who could
support them on the stage, or who would be likely to marry them, and
withdraw them from a calling which they always professed, hypocritically
I believe, to abhor.
In what concerned myself, I looked upon their love-intrigues as duels of
wit and comic passages, which furnished me amusement. Closely related to
each other, and ambitious for advancement in their art, they regarded me
as a bright shining star, worshipped by the leading members of the
troupe, and capable of securing them success upon the stage. Their
mutual rivalry, which I made use of for their own advantage, the profit
of the company, and the success of my dramatic works, turned their
brains. They would have done anything to gain my heart. Possibly some
matrimonial projects entered into their calculations; but on this point
I was always careful to disabuse them in the clearest terms. Meanwhile,
their attentions, protests, fits of rage, jealousies, and tears on my
account had all the scenic illusion of an overwhelming passion.
In the cities where they passed the spring and summer, the same comedy
was re-enacted with a score of lovers. On their return to Venice, the
correspondence which they carried on with these admirers, and which they
vainly strove to hide from me, betrayed their inconstancy. By
cross-examination and adroit suggestive questionings, I always brought
them to make a clean breast of it, and their avowals furnished me with
matter for exquisite amusement. They protested that the letters they
received were written by young merchants or rich citizens, sometimes by
gentlemen of the Lombard towns, who entertained the liveliest intentions
of an honourable kind, and were only waiting for the death of an uncle
or a father or a mother, all upon the point of dying of apoplexy or
consumption or dropsy, to offer them their hands and fortunes. Finally,
in order to reveal the sincerity of their hearts, when lying could no
longer help them, they offered me these precious epistles. Probably they
hoped to excite jealousy in my own breast. This opened a new chapter of
diversion. I read the love-letters, and found that the vaunted admirers
were either bombastic lady-killers or romancers or libertines, or
sometimes, to my astonishment, dull Lombard hypocrites upon the scent of
goatish pleasure.
I enlightened them, so far as this was possible; advised them not to
waste their time in such perilous fooleries, which distracted their
attention from the serious concerns of their profession; bade them look
out for young comedians of talent, with whom they might marry and
propagate the breed of actors. They never failed to express that
loathing for the trade which all actresses profess, remaining actresses,
however, in the utterance of their repugnance. In order to open their
eyes to the real state of the case, I then dictated answers to these
lovers, affectionately urging them to declare themselves on the
essential point. Cold replies came with the next post, and after a short
exchange of letters the correspondence dropped. In this way, they were
brought to see their error, remaining always ready to resume it on the
next occasion.
Their sentiments for me, according to their own showing, were the most
enduring and substantial; and my incredulous laughter wounded them. They
bullied and maligned each other, complained, and accused their comrades
at my judgment-seat. I pronounced sentence against them all; but the
most persecuted were always the object of my heartiest protection. When
I wrote parts adapted to their characters, they were lifted to the
heavens. What obligations! What gratitude! What vows of love! I cannot
deny that in certain moments they were justified in thinking they had
gained my affection. The next day they found me quite another man,
indifferent and icy cold. _Amour propre_ then made them fly into a rage,
and grow the angrier the more they saw me laugh at their frenzies.
All things considered, it is very difficult to frequent the society of
young actresses, who harbour in their breasts six books upon the art of
love beside those of Ovid, to be their daily guide, philosopher, and
friend, to make their fortunes in the theatre, and not to fall into some
low matrimonial scrape, which would be called a solemn act of folly by
the world. I use such terms as scrape, baseness, folly here, in order to
adopt the language of people in general; although I am persuaded by
personal observation, and by philosophical study of the current training
given to girls, that it is easier to find a good wife on the stage than
in private families. People in general are not philosophers enough to
recognise and confess this truth; but the opinion of the general is
always respectable.
My temperament, my abhorrence of ties, my partiality for study, the pity
for human woes which I derived from knowledge of my neighbours, and the
thirty-five years which I counted at the period in question, were my
faithful counsellors. I have already written a chapter on my
love-affairs, which sufficiently explains my sentiments.[31]
In the midst of these feminine intrigues and rivalries, it is impossible
to distribute protection with perfect impartiality among all claimants.
The girl who is most persecuted by her comrades, most looked down upon,
and reckoned stupidest in her profession, will always be chosen out by
me for support and advancement, without regard for hostile gossip bred
by envy.
In course of time I saw all these young women married, thanks to the
fame they acquired through my efforts on their behalf. Some of them
found husbands in the theatre, and some outside it. Without withdrawing
my assistance from married actresses, I took care, from the moment of
their nuptials, to cause no shadow of disturbance in their home. This I
did by persistently refusing to visit them, which made them know me in
my true principles apart from pleasantry. My conduct astounded them, and
they affected notable displeasure at my withdrawal from their intimacy.
With regard to the chief men in this commonwealth of comedians, they
were always most attentive lest I should receive annoyances. Above all
things, they begged me not to take notice of any indiscretions prompted
by levity, professional jealousy, touchiness on points of honour,
pretensions to leading parts in my forthcoming plays, which might issue
from the steaming brains of their women. I used to reply that, so long
as the company maintained its good reputation, and so long as such
quarrels and idle chatterings were confined to the women, I should never
deign to be annoyed or to withdraw my aid and friendship from their
troupe; but that if the men took to the same follies and dissensions as
the women, I should have to think otherwise.
It was a comfort to me to pass my hours of leisure among those
lively-witted, humorous, civil, merry people. It gratified me to observe
that the men were eagerly sought after and invited to the tables of the
quality and honest folk, while the women received similar attentions
from gentlefolk of their own sex, a thing almost unheard of with respect
to others of their calling. Finally, I was pleased to see them thriving
in their business and making profits by their theatre, which I had
revived and continued to sustain by a long series of new and successful
dramatic pieces. If prejudice or malignity were to cast it in my teeth
that I had evil motives in this choice of my companions through so many
years, I might easily turn the satire back against what is commonly
called the respectable society of _casini_, assemblies, and caffes. In
order not to incur hatred by describing inconvenient facts, I will,
however, confine myself to begging my critics to reflect and to be
indulgent for differences of taste.
Returning to my comic proteges, I have yet to say that the insinuation
of so-called culture into our theatres gradually corrupted the customs
of this well-regulated family of actors, much in the same way as the
advance of culture into private families corrupted domestic manners.
Outsiders, hired at wages to swell the ranks and to take serious parts
in tragedies or comedies, introduced a new freedom of thinking and
behaving. The old habits of the troupe, which may perchance have only
worn a feigned appearance of respectability, altered for the worse. The
time has not arrived for describing this change, which I shall have to
do in its proper place, since it was closely connected with important
occurrences in my own life.
Some weaknesses are so entwined with our instincts as to be incurable.
Such, in my case, are good faith and compliance, which often degenerated
into silliness. During the whole course of my life, as my writings
prove, and as is well known to my friends and acquaintances, I have
always scourged hypocrisy. I cannot, however, deny the fact that the
apparent honesty, piety, and good behaviour, in which my proteges
persevered for so long a period, was convenient to their friends and
extremely profitable to their pockets; whereas the freedom of thinking
and acting introduced among them by the science of this depraved century
and by so-called culture, brought them to the condition of the builders
of the Tower of Babel.
I have seen them pass from ease to indigence, forget that they were
relatives and friends--all at war together, all suspicious, each man of
his neighbour--all irreconcilable and hostile--in spite of frequently
renewed attempts on my part to bring them into harmony again; so that,
at the last, I had to withdraw from their society, as will be stated in
the sequel of these Memoirs.