month of wheat; to the devil with the others! The year is too
long. Provided that wheat becomes bread through the sickle,
that is all that matters. But who is this that comes? Is it not
my gossip Duozzo? It is he. Gossip, how goes the harvest?
DUOZZO. Badly, gossip. Whoever seeks misery this year will find
it without a signpost to guide him.
MENEGO. As for me, I seek a means to eat as little as possible.
These cursed beetroots have so enlarged me that I take a deal
of filling.
DUOZZO. To tell you the truth, gossip, I think you ought to
eat sorb-apples so as to reduce your poor stomach; that is my
opinion.
MENEGO. What I seek, gossip, is to render myself ill, because
when I am ill I have no appetite; and to have no appetite is
all that I can desire. Do you understand, gossip?
DUOZZO. You speak very wisely, gossip.
MENEGO. The usurers will neither sell wheat nor even display
it, so that there is nothing to be done. I am inclined to think
that there will be quite enough even should they sell it at a
large profit. But they hunger after the blood of the poor more
than a lean horse hungers after new grass.
DUOZZO. That is very true, gossip, and we may shout, curse, or
grow as rabid as dogs before wheat will be harvested for the
common weal; but judging from the month of January, I think
that there will be abundance and all men will rejoice.
MENEGO. But for that hope, gossip, we should be in bad case.
And as for me, I fear lest the highway robbers and the gentry
may eat the harvest before it is ripe.
DUOZZO. I share your fears, but they cannot carry off
everything.
MENEGO. Ay! We’ll get what they leave, and we shall grow so fat
on it that we shall look like hanged men, and so light that the
wind will blow us away.
DUOZZO. So that, gossip, you are afraid?
MENEGO. I? I am afraid of nothing but fear. I am a man, and if
any are going to survive, I should like to be one of them.
DUOZZO. As for me I am troubled by neither wife nor child.
I live like a thief. And now, gossip, let us speak of more
pleasing things. How go your love affairs?
MENEGO. Eh, gossip, how shall love affairs progress when one
possesses nothing? How shall a man take home a wife when there
is only a single piece of bread in the house? If she has a good
appetite she will not be able to live on words. You understand?
DUOZZO. Of course; it is quite clear.
The conversation continues on these lines. Menego announces that he is
awaiting the harvest to marry a certain Gnva. Duozzo tells him, little by
little, that he knows a _quidam_ who will not await the new harvest to
find food for Gnva, and that in fact he carried her off three days ago.
“I don’t believe it,” says Menego; “nevertheless let us go and find her
and hear the truth from her.”
Duozzo begs leave to go and fetch his weapons, saying that there are
wolves in the forest, and that he does not care to quarrel with Nale,
who is Menego’s rival. Menego replies that there is no need for weapons
on a visit to Gnva, that he has his knife, which is sufficient. (Here
follow some very equivocal pleasantries and puns.) He winds up by saying
that he did not know his gossip for a coward, but now that he sees that
he is, he will go alone. Gnva, however, solves the matter by arriving in
person.
MENEGO. Good-morrow, my dear Gnva, how are you?
GNVA. I should be better if I had bread. This is a very evil
year.
MENEGO. I have brought you a large piece which, on my honour, I
shall give you if you will answer me on certain matters which
my gossip here has told me.
Before replying Gnva wants to sing. They sing, and, as they are
finishing, Nale, Menego’s rival, enters and leaps upon him, sword in
hand, shouting: “I have got you, traitor! Surrender!”
Menego attempts to escape without answering; he darts this way and that,
receiving so many blows that in the end he falls down. Nale carries off
Gnva, and Menego is left on the ground.
“Am I unfortunate enough?” he cries. “One hundred against one! He has
pierced me through and through; there are more holes in me than in a
sieve. What a beautiful life awaited me! I think of it now that I am on
the point of death. Confession! confession! I am covered with blood.
Duozzo, my gossip, go and find me a doctor; but then he lives too far
away; and perhaps he wouldn’t come; and even if he came perhaps he
wouldn’t be able to heal my wounds. I am certain that I shall never get
well again, I shall be crippled for life, that is sure. Woe me! Must
I die then in such a moment as this? Something told me that I should
die this year, if not from wounds then from hunger in this devastated
country. And so that you die, Menego, what does it matter whether you
die thus or of hunger? And I shall never see my Gnva again! Yet my
heart tells me that perhaps I shall get well! Shall I allow myself to
die or not? What am I to do, or what am I not to do? What if I were to
take vengeance upon this dog of a traitor who has just slashed me into
ribbons? Yes, I shall be avenged! I shall let it be known everywhere that
he has killed me. May the plague stifle him, the coward! I shall send him
to the galleys! I shall kill myself. It shall be said everywhere that
he is my assassin. But how shall I kill myself? That is the trouble.
There are so many ways, yet now that I come to seek one I cannot find
any! Where is the knife? Now that I need it I no longer have it. But
I shall find a way. I shall eat myself. That will begin by satisfying
my hunger. None but myself will know it, and it will be said that this
wretch murdered me and that dogs ate my body, and in this fashion he will
be sent to the galleys. Ah yes, you shall go to the galleys; yes, to the
galleys! Don’t grow impatient, gossip, I shall bequeath you my knife and
my shoes. Yet it is a pity to die so young! Farewell, Gnva, I shall never
see you again. Yet, wait! I don’t want to eat myself, I should suffer too
much. I shall strangle myself.”
A magician arrives. Duozzo tells him that Menego has gone mad. The
magician, half-priest, half-doctor, cures him, and fortifies him with
fresh hope. He assures him that he shall see his Gnva as much as he
desires, and that he shall have abundance of bread. Menego, comforted,
thanks him and announces that he never felt so well.
Then follow predictions: “You shall not die of hunger this year, although
you may have to live on very meagre fare. There will be great wars, and
after them there will be peace. After famine there will be abundance, and
wealthy men will live happily in the world. Thereupon I leave you, I must
go. I shall come again on Sunday or some other day.”
The piece ends in excuses offered to Menego by his rival. Menego takes
the hand of Gnva, who swears for ever after to be faithful to him,
whereupon they abandon themselves to joy, dancing and singing.
The character of the modern Meneghino is the same, with few differences,
as that of Stenterello; the same costume, the same parts, the same
buffoonery, and therefore the same reception from the Milanese public.
“Meneghino,” says M. Frédéric Mercey, “has taken the place of
Harlequin and Brighella. Meneghino is the spoilt child of the
Milanese, the hero of the theatre of la Stadera; his talent
consists particularly in a sort of adroit awkwardness, in the
amusing manner in which he knocks against walls and trips upon
the pavement without ever falling, and without ever losing his
nonchalance.”
In absent-mindedness and naïveté he surpasses Pierrot. Meeting in
the streets of Milan a painter who is carrying two portraits on his
shoulders, Meneghino returns to his master, refusing to go the errand
upon which he was sent: “I shall not go out again to-day,” he says;
“disaster would befall me; I met a man with three heads, and that is not
natural.”
On another occasion, coming home at night, Meneghino wishes to light his
candle, and seeks to strike a light in the darkness. He hurts his fingers
and drops flint and steel. How is he to find them again? His ideas work
quickly. He gropes about for the candle, finds it, and runs to his
next-door neighbour for a light, with which he returns to look for his
flint and steel. “I knew I should find them like this,” he says, and you
behold him striking them once more. A spark flies, the tinder ignites,
and he applies it to the candle which has lighted his labours. “Behold,”
he cries, “it is lighted!”
A very common absent-mindedness with him is to array himself in his
master’s dressing-gown and slippers, and to lie down in his master’s
bed. The numerous cuffs he has received have never cured him of this
abstractedness. You should see him waiting at table, putting sugar
into the soup as though it were salt, pouring wine on to the heads of
the guests, and then taking off their wigs to dry them by the fire; he
mistakes the candle for the vinegar bottle, and scatters tallow into the
salad. He is often to be seen throwing the garments of his master through
the window, which he has mistaken for the wardrobe, and doing a thousand
other things of a like nature.
Pantaloon, seeing him with a button in his ear, comments upon it. “I wear
it,” he replies, “because without it I should be sure to hear something
dirty.” That is the wittiest thing he ever uttered.
iii
GIANDUJA and GIROLAMO are one and the same character. At the Fiano
theatre in Milan, he was existing still in the nineteenth century under
the name of Girolamo, and was performing, in the dialect of Lombardy,
the same rôles of talkative, poltroon and greedy peasant as the Gianduja
of Turin and Genoa. The Piedmontese, fearing in 1802 that in the name of
Girolamo (Jérôme), borne by the king, some political allusion might be
suspected, he was rebaptized, and renamed Gianduja.
He is a native of Caglianetto, near Asti, as his dialect shows. He is
an astute peasant, who simulates stupidity, either a pretended dolt or
else a cunning dolt. His is the style of wit which the English attribute
to the Irish. He is very much less fantastic than Stenterello, and when
he became Gianduja he ceased to show any of the absent-mindedness of
Meneghino and Girolamo. Of this last the following is related:—
“A farmer from the neighbourhood of Bergamo had taken his
servant, Girolamo, to market to bring home the cattle which
he intended to purchase. This cattle turned out to consist of
seven donkeys. Having made his purchase, the farmer called
Girolamo, and after counting the animals in his presence he
bids him drive them home. Girolamo offers no comment: ‘Seven,’
he says; ‘very well.’ He bestrides one and drives the others
before him. Three hours later he arrives at his master’s gate,
and counts the donkeys without dismounting. After having
counted them thrice he still can find only six. ‘What a
misfortune! What a misfortune!’ he exclaims in his despair.
‘If only it were my own property! But since it is the property
of another, however honest I may be, I shall be charged with
negligence! It is absolutely necessary that I should find
the seventh.’ He spurs his mount and goes back, searching
everywhere and making inquiries from everyone he meets. It is
all in vain. Indefatigable, he continues this course for three
days and nights, without even pausing to give himself time to
eat. In the end the poor beast he is riding falls from fatigue
and exhaustion. Girolamo rolls into the dust, picks himself up,
and suddenly finds what he was seeking. ‘The seventh! I have
found it,’ he cries. ‘Where the devil was it lost?’ And he goes
back to his master, leaving the poor donkey dead of exhaustion.”
In the history of the marionettes, M. Ch. Magnin says:
“In Milan Girolamo fills the principal part in all the farces,
in all the parodies, in all the little pieces made up of
satirical allusions, the triple source whence flows the fortune
of the _Fantoccini_. We have seen Girolamo play Pirithoüs,
in a parody of Alceste, powdered white, wearing the wings of
a pigeon and a purse. In this farce he accompanies Hercules
into hell, and his terrors on the way are somewhat reminiscent
of the poltrooneries which, under similar circumstances,
Aristophanes attributes to Xanthias in _The Frogs_. In 1841,
M. Bourquelot found Girolamo very amusing in a five-act
piece: _Il Terribile Maino, Capo di Briganti_, a melodrama to
the accompaniment of daggers, swoons and pistol shots. Let
us add that the common butt of Girolamo’s pleasantries is a
Piedmontese, represented as perfectly stupid, a graciousness
and neighbourliness which the Fantoccini of Turin did not fail
to reciprocate to their little colleagues of Milan.”
Gianduja wears a maroon coat and a yellow waistcoat, both trimmed with
red, a pair of green or maroon breeches, red stockings and a black wig
with a trumpet-shaped queue in red. His physiognomy is a mixture of
coarseness and cunning. His large eyes, his arched and heavy eyebrows,
his flat nose, his thick lips, his fat chin and his fleshy cheeks remind
us of the countenance of the ancient Silenus.
He was to be seen in Genoa at the Delle-Vigne theatre, playing in his
own costume the part of a servant of Ugolino and coming with his quips,
to throw a little gaiety into the midst of a black melodrama, in which
Ugolino, in his tower, before perishing of hunger, watched his children
expiring about him. During these critical moments, Gianduja would enter
the sombre dungeon from time to time; it is not clear why he should have
had the liberty to do this, for, far from bringing the least nourishment
to the dying man, he came to jest in his patois upon this horrible
situation.
He was to be seen again at Cuneo at the foot of the Alps. The theatre was
more or less open to the sky and admission was not expensive: a penny for
the front seats and a halfpenny for the others, and an audience that ate
apples and nuts throughout the performance. The piece was _La Principessa
Mirabella_, and to one who inquired whether it was written and learned
by heart or improvised, the impresario replied: “_Improvisato tutto, e
sempre_; Gianduja talks like a peasant.” It was an affair of primitive
marionettes like those of the Guignol of the Champs-Elysées.
First came a prince dressed in sky-blue satin slashed with white, a cloak
of yellow velvet, a cap with white feathers, laced with gold. He was
accompanied by Gianduja in his classic costume, and both were lost in a
blue forest, and were devising some means of finding food. Gianduja has
several notions, such as to repair to the baker at the corner, or the
pastrycook opposite. But his master draws his attention to the fact that
they are lost in a vast solitude, that their horses are worn out, with
weariness and hunger, and that for himself he desires only one thing,
death, since the Princess Mirabella will never consent to see him again
unless he shall have accomplished her thirty-seven wishes. Gianduja is
not disposed to die; he says that he imagined himself at Cuneo, which
is entirely outside of the subject, and which shakes the audience with
laughter. After having sought for a little while, Gianduja discovers a
spring of pure and limpid water. Thus both are saved from certain death.
But Gianduja can think of nothing but dying. This marvellous water
has quickened his appetite. He has not eaten since morning, he says,
since when he has done nothing but walk, which is to treat his body
very treacherously. “It is all very well for my master, who at the end
of his travels will find Mirabella. But I would very gladly possess a
loaf surrounded with sausages.” Thereupon he is taken ill, and believes
himself to be dying. He implores his master to bury him after he has
expired, and whether it be so as not to die under his eyes, whether from
other causes, he goes off, followed by the laughter of the spectators.
The action continues thus through four or five scenes, which repeat
always the same situation. In each scene the amorous cavalier
recommences his trials until the moment in which the Princess Mirabella—a
very beautiful marionette, in cloth-of-gold and velvet, who always makes
the same gesture by means of a cord pulled by the impresario—informs her
cavalier that she accepts him in marriage, “because he has performed all
her wishes, and since nothing pleases women so much as the obedience of
men.” After this Gianduja demands the hand of the first lady of the court.
Without Gianduja no performance would have been possible. The indulgent
public yawned through the scenes of love and rivalry, for there was a
traitor in the piece—a traitor dressed like Buridan, with a terrible
beard and squinting eyes. Did the impresario perceive that his public was
languishing, he never hesitated to cut short the scene and to introduce
Gianduja, who abandoned himself to amorous incoherencies.
Gianduja enjoyed his greatest favour in Turin during the nineteenth
century. In _The Taking of Delhi_, a long, terrible and spectacular
melodrama, Gianduja, disguised as the aide-de-camp of an Indian chief,
amused the audience by his reflections, his sallies and his witticisms,
always in Piedmontese. He would come and go amidst English soldiers in
red coats and white trousers, or amidst kilted Highlanders as freely as
among Brahmins dressed like the Turks to be seen at fancy-dress balls.
Gianduja crosses the battlefields, enters the besieged garrison or leaves
it, is present at war councils, and listens to the enumeration of the
dead and wounded without the least discomposure. He is afraid everywhere
and of everything, although no one, with the exception of the public,
takes the least notice of him.
iv
Zacometo, which is Venetian for Giacometto, who, down to the eighteenth
century, was called Momolo (diminutive of Girolamo) is the Venetian
_caratterista_. Usually dressed in white calico, he whitens his face like
Pierrot save for a large blood-red stain, placed brutally upon one cheek
only, and one red stocking as worn by the Venetians in the fifteenth
century. Zacometo, whatever costume he may assume, preserves always this
red stocking.
There is something of Scapin, something of Harlequin and something
of Stenterello in the character, so that his doings and his ways are
very varied. When he plays with Brighella, who is sharp, astute and
very witty, Zacometo is a dolt, a clown. In _Le Baruffe Chiozzotte_ of
Goldoni, Zacometo’s rôle is that of the fool; dressed like a fisherman of
Chioggia he still preserves his distinctive cheek and stocking.
This character comes to Venice to fling athwart no matter what piece
his amusing reflections and his fantastic interludes. He is akin to the
absent-minded Stenterello; he says very cunning things with the air of
not knowing what he is saying; he begins a sentence to finish it in
another act, or not to finish it at all, and he stares at the public, and
even addresses it, always with the air of not perceiving its presence.
It may be said that when the actor entrusted with this rôle is equipped
with talent and wit, he gives Zacometo a countenance proper to the
people of the lagoons. He is more of an epicure than a glutton, more of
a talker than a gallant with women; he is superbly lazy, yet capable of
great vivacity, displaying alternations between dreamy somnolence and
sudden awakenings; in short, he displays the petulance and the agility of
the cat. He fully portrays the nature of the _barcarolo_, who passes so
promptly from slumber, his body dangling over the sleepy waters of the
lagoon, to laughter, to jests and above all to the derision of strangers.
Zacometo has never quitted Venice, and if at times he is absent from
the theatres of San Samuele or San Gallo, it is that he may go as a
marionette to amuse the merchants and fishermen on the quay of the
Schiavoni.
v
The character of JEANNOT, a rustic and stupid servant, who destroys by
his transposition of words the sense of what he wishes to say to us,
although believed to have been created in 1779 in the forain theatres
by the actor Volange, is nevertheless a very ancient type. From _Zanni_
the Florentine authors of the sixteenth century have created Gianni,
Giannino, and Giannico, comedy servants.
From these come _Jeannin_, _Janin_, _Jennicot_, _Janicot_, _Janot_,
comics of the French farces, who amused the public in the sixteenth
century being coeval with _Jean-de-l’Epine_.
Jeannot (Giannino) reappears in the scenarii and pieces of the
Comédie-Italienne at the end of the seventeenth century, and in the plays
of Gherardi in which he performs several old man parts (1694).
All the world knows his nonsense (_janotismes_): he has sold more than a
hundred trusses to a man of straw; he buys a loaf from a butter merchant:
“Moi, pour leur montrer mon adresse,
Je renversai les assiettes et les plats,
Je fis une tache sur ma veste, de graisse,
Sur ma culotte et mes jambes, de drap.
Et sur les bas que mon grand-père, de laine,
M’avait donnés avant d’ mourir, violet.
Le pauv’ cher homme est mort d’une migraine,
Tenant une cuisse dans sa bouche, de poulet.”
This type scored its triumphs in the eighteenth century. Grimm writes of
him as follows:—
“(May 1779.) A new spectacle, set up last year at the fair of
Saint-Laurent, has been drawing for the past two months both
the city and the court in consequence of the prodigious success
of a sort of dramatic proverb whose subject it is not easy to
expound. But it is impossible to forgo speaking of a work which
has delighted all Paris, for which the masterpieces of Molière
and Racine have been abandoned, and which, having reached its
hundred-and-twelfth performance, is still drawing more than
ever. The object of so great an enthusiasm, the idol of so
rare and sustained an admiration, the man, in short, whom at
this moment we may call the man of the nation, is a certain
M. Jeannot who plays, it must be confessed, with the greatest
truth, the part of a dolt, who is watered from a window like
Don Japhet d’Arménie, who, upon the advice of his friends, goes
to complain to the clerk of the commissary, who dupes him and
who, after having fought with a view to avenging himself, is
caught in the street by the watch, and finds himself in the
end stripped of the little that he possessed; all of which
goes to prove very clearly without doubt that it is always
_les battus qui payent l’amende_. This proverb which serves as
a moral to the piece is also its title. The author to whom
we are indebted for so noble a production is M. Dorvigny. He
has assembled into the rôle of Jeannot many features which,
if already known, are none the less truly comical. As for the
actor (le Sieur Volange), who has performed this rôle with so
much success, he gives us more than hope. It is impossible to
have a countenance more mobile and natural, inflexions of voice
more varied and more exact, movements more simple and easy, or
a gait more frank and naïve. The gentlemen of the chamber have
already taken steps to bring about his appearance in a theatre
more worthy of his glory.”
In January of 1780, Grimm speaks again of Jeannot: