have neither legs nor arms?
PASQUARIELLO. You are afforded a fresh occasion on which to
cover yourself with glory. The enemy is badly placed, you
have closed round them, and, after issuing your orders for
the fight, you run hither and thither, giving courage to your
soldiers.
MEZZETIN. Good! I shall be giving courage to others whilst
myself I am dying of fright.
PASQUARIELLO. The battle is over: turn what way you will there
is nothing but carnage; grenades, bombs, carcasses, cannon
balls, all come hailing down. Pif! paf! zin! zan! bon! don!
don! tac!
MEZZETIN. Ah me! We have come to it again!
PASQUARIELLO. It is a bullet that has carried away the
general’s head.
MEZZETIN. Trivial, eh?
PASQUARIELLO. Exactly.
MEZZETIN. I shall be happy to know what rank you will give me
now.
PASQUARIELLO. Oh, as soon as your wounds are healed, peace will
be made, and you will go and serve in Hungary against the Turks.
MEZZETIN. I am to go and serve in Hungary without arms, legs
or head. Oh, go to the devil with your company! If ever I
become a captain of dragoons may all the tacs in the world
strike me at once!
In _La Fausse Coquette_, Pasquariello is again a servant, and in the
service of I know not what Polish prince, who is none other than Ottavio.
“He comes on with a lighted torch followed by one of his
friends who carries a bottle and a glass. And as Pasquariello’s
entire attention is engaged by the bottle, he thinks only
of emptying it, without paying attention to what his master
is saying. Hence it follows that he never returns proper
answers to the questions of the prince who, wearied by his
impertinences, looks at him closely, and, surprising him
glass in hand, delivers him a kick in the stomach and goes
off. Pasquariello falls backward, turns a somersault without
upsetting his glass, gets up, drains it, and goes off saying:
_Gran sventura di servire un giovane senza cervello!_ (What a
misfortune to serve a witless young man!)”
In the Regent’s troupe (1716) Giacopo Rauzzini was entrusted with the
rôles of Scaramouche. According to the brothers Parfait,
“He was an intruder in the troupe of the Italian comedians.
A hundred pistoles presented by him to the man who had been
charged by Riccoboni (_Lelio_) to find a good Scaramouche
obtained him the position. He had been an usher in Naples
before taking to the stage, and he was but a very mediocre
comedian. He was addicted to gambling, ostentation and
extravagance; he set up a coach, kept open house, and in
consequence made many debts. Riccoboni the elder was obliged
to apply to the court for an order to inhibit his comrade’s
creditors to stop persecuting him, and, being himself an honest
man, he compelled Rauzzini to pay three-quarters of his debts.
This state of things continued down to the death of this
comedian, who was stricken by an apoplexy in the church of
Saint-Eustache, where he died on the 24th October 1731. He was
buried on the morrow at the expense of the troupe.”
In 1711, Cavé, known as _Maillard_, made his début at the fair of
Saint-Germain in the rôles of Scaramouche. He toured the provinces
but was never seen at the Théâtre-Italien. One day at the fair of
Saint-Laurent, Maillard was in the shop of Dubois, the lemonade vendor;
his wife, who was playing Columbine, happened to pass by on her way to
the theatre, and gave him good-day in a friendly and coquettish manner.
“Do you by chance know that lovely comedienne?” Maillard was asked by one
who happened to be in the shop at the same time.
“Eh! Cadedis,” he replied, affecting a Gascon accent, “if I know her?
“... Au gré de mes désirs,
J’ai goûté dans ses bras mille et mille plaisirs.”
“Shake hands,” said the other, “for I can say the same.”
Maillard abandoned his tone of raillery to inform this indiscreet fellow
that he was the husband of the calumniated Columbine.
“Faith,” replied the other, “I am sorry to have been so frank; but I
cannot possibly retract a statement of fact.”
It was then that Maillard became really angry and demanded satisfaction.
Swords were drawn. Maillard was wounded and disarmed. His adversary
himself conducted him to a surgeon in whose care he left him, taking his
leave in the terms of the following mocking allusion from La Fontaine
upon deceived husbands:
“Quand on le sait, c’est peu de chose:
Quand on l’ignore, ce n’est rien.”
In 1745 Gandini made his début at the Théâtre-Italien in _La Vengeance de
Scaramouche_ and was very well received.
Other famous players of the part were Carlo Agati and Bertinelli, who
achieved a deal of success in Italy somewhere about 1715.
iii
PASQUINO is an intriguing lackey, who talks a deal and lies as much.
His reputation is detestable. He is a nincompoop who makes a ruin of
everything to which he sets his hands, including his own affairs, for
he spends far too much time in chattering with the waiting-women.
Nevertheless he is concerned with only one thing in the world—his own
interest. Pasquino is no more than a pale shadow of Brighella, or perhaps
he is the same type as Pasquariello.
PASQUINO (_as a traveller_). Ah, Fortune, Fortune! will
you always turn a pirouette at the pasquinades of the
unfortunate Pasquino? And will you never steer the wheel of
your inconstancy into the rut of my merit? Driven from Rome
by kicks, I have trailed my shoes from hostelry to hostelry,
having no other payment to offer for my lodging than that of
liberally maligning those who give me food. At last I arrive
here without money, with the hunger of a dog, and unable to
appease the starving murmurs of my languishing inside.
Oh, sweet Olivetta, my dear mistress, whose pretty and
coquettish ways so often contrived that I should find credit in
the hostelries, you should have mended my fortunes. But, since
all things are mutable, and since your beauty could but grow
pale before the inhumanity of innkeepers, I was compelled to
leave you. What should you say, O beautiful forsaken one, if
you could see your tender Pasquino, his stomach as hollow as
his purse, you who found me a hundred times lying gorged with
wine upon your door-sill, as upon a feather bed? It was then
that in assisting me to rise you were able with such charming
discrimination to distinguish between the hiccoughs of my
vinous plenitude and the sighs of my burning love. Oh, Kitchen!
enchanting and delicious retreat! Thou erstwhile favourable
asylum for my appetite, thou, the usual sojourn of my charming
Olivetta! Happy the peaceful stew-pans that are scoured by her
lovely hands! Grills, cauldrons, pots and frying pans, warlike
ministers to the jaws, you that are the usual trophies of my
lovely mistress. Alas!—for pity’s sake revolt against all the
roasts and the ragouts of which you are the secondary causes
and by a general and harmoniously funereal rattle inform my
dear Olivetta that a desperate hunger is about to break the
springs of the turnspit of her love!
iv
The costume of CRISPIN, of the French comedy, created by Raymond Poisson
in the middle of the seventeenth century, is borrowed from that of
Scaramouche, and particularly from that of the Neapolitan Scaramouche,
who, in imitation of the Captains, wears a long rapier and displays all
the arrogance and cowardice of that character. This type, which is that
of a lackey, more or less faithful according to the wages which he earns,
a flatterer, a drunkard, a liar and a thief like Brighella, is none the
less an entirely French creation which we owe to Poisson. We mention
the character as a transformation of that of Scaramouche, by which it
was inspired. Crispin was very quickly admitted to the forain theatres,
and was seen in the same pieces as Mezzetin, Harlequin, Polichinelle,
Scaramouche, Pantaloon and the other Italian types. Being of a more
modern creation, he wears no mask; he is dressed in black, with boots or
shoes, ruffle, gloves, a wide leather belt and a rapier.
Poisson was a tall and well-made man. Some say that to the costume of
Crispin he added boots to conceal the excessive thinness of his legs, but
it is more likely that he appeared thus upon the stage because, in his
youth, the streets of Paris, of which not more than one half were paved,
compelled footmen and servants to go booted.
XV
COVIELLO
CALLOT has left us engravings of the principal dancers, buffoons, mimes
and masks of the ancient Italian comedy, in his series known as _Les
Petits Danseurs_, but whose real title is _I Balli di Sfessania_ (_The
Dances of Fescennia_). All the world knows that the inhabitants of
Fescennia, whose ruins are still to be seen a quarter of a league from
Galesa in Piedmont, invented a style of verse which enjoyed a great vogue
in Rome, in which satire, allied with a primitive coarseness, called
things by their proper names. These verses were laden with raillery,
jests and buffooneries; they were accompanied by grotesque dances and
improvised scenes, absolutely like the Atellanæ, but of a more trivial
humour. In a letter addressed to Augustus, Horace writes:
“_Fescennina per hunc inventa licentia morem_
_Versibus alternis, opprobria rustica fudit._”
“The people of Fescennia,” says the Chevalier de Jaucourt,
“accompanied their fêtes and public rejoicings by pastoral
performances in which comedians declaimed an extremely
licentious sort of verse, and went through a thousand
buffooneries in the same taste. These verses were imported
into the theatre, and held the place of regular drama for over
a hundred years with the Romans. The biting satire for which
they were employed, discredited them still more than did their
primitive coarseness, so that they became really formidable.
“Catullus, seeing that the Fescennian verses were proscribed
by the public authorities, and that their coarseness was no
longer in the taste of his century, perfected and chastened
them in appearance. In their meaning, however, they remained no
less obscene, and they became far more dangerous to morals. The
frank, rude terms of a soldier are less hurtful to the heart
than the fine, ingenious and delicately turned speeches of the
man who follows the trade of a gallant.”
The Fescennian actors were still called in Rome _Mimi septentrionis_.
They were either naked or dressed in very tight garments, their
waists girt with a scarf whose ends floated in the wind. They danced,
accompanying themselves upon castanets very similar to those that are in
use to-day.
It is, then, under this title of _I Balli di Sfessania_ that Callot
reproduced some fifty actors, dancers and buffoons of the end of the
sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries. In the main he
represents actual personages, derived haphazard from the various Italian
troupes, such as the _Gelosi_, the _Accesi_, and the _Fedeli_, who
visited Florence when Callot was a student there.
These personages may be divided into two classes, rendered very distinct
one from the other by the garments worn by each: that of the jugglers
and tumblers, who were exclusively dancers or mimes, and that of the
buffoons, _zanni_ and comedians playing given parts.
The members of the former class wear skull caps like the ancient mimes,
or else caps decked with long feathers, the half mask with a very long
bottle nose, without beard, and tight garments, adorned by a line of
large buttons; they recall the costumes in fashion for court fools and
buffoons of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In the main they
are merely tumblers, addicted to contortionistic poses and wild dances,
equilibrists, sword swallowers and strong men. They are the descendants
of the real _funambuli_ and _acrobates_ of the ancients, and like them
they are phallophores.
Thanks to Callot, we find among these the following types that would
otherwise be lost to us: Ciurlo in an extravagant posture, inviting
Gian-Fritello, who disdains him, to the dance; Ratsa-di-Boio, abandoning
himself to a picturesque dance, whilst several kindred fellows, holding
hands, form a ring about a Smaraolo-Cornuto, perched upon stilts,
beating a drum; Pasquariello Truonno and Meo-Squaquara imitating by
their gestures a sort of _cancan_; Esgangarato and Cocodrillo as well
as Bello-Sguardo, wearing bracelets and hawk-bells on their arms and
legs; Razullo scratching, as his name suggests, his guitar, to the
sound of which Cucurucu, in fine spectacles, is striking a modest pose.
Cicho-Sgarra threatens Collo-Francisco, who trembles before him; Babeo
is seen with his friend Cucuba; Cardoni pursued by Maramao; Grillo,
a crippled, misshapen fellow; Cucorongna and Pernovalla, each going
through contortions; and lastly Coviello, famous for his grimaces and his
confused language.
This personage, according to Salvator Rosa, was one of the seven masks
of the ancient Commedia dell’Arte. The description which he affords us
proves that already in his day the costume of this buffoon had been
transformed, and probably by himself, for we know that, under the mask of
Coviello, Salvator Rosa earned the applause of all Rome in a character
of his own creation, _Il Signor Formica_. In Hoffman’s tale entitled
_Salvator Rosa_, a pleasant fiction is intermingled with the details of
historic reality on the subject of the transformations and disguises of
Salvator Rosa.
According to Salvator Rosa, Coviello is a native of Calabria; “his wit is
sharp and subtle; he is shrewd, adroit, supple and vain. His accent and
dress are those of his country—doublet and breeches of black velvet laced
with silver. He wears a mask with encarnadined cheeks and black brow and
nose.”
Apart from the mask there is nothing resembling this description in the
personage engraved by Callot, nor in all his collection of dancers in
extravagant poses, their tight-fitting and ridiculous garments adorned
by a row of enormous buttons running the whole length of the body, their
hats heavily plumed, their limbs charged with hawk-bells to render the
dance noisy as that of savages, each mask adorned by a nose like an
elephant’s trunk, some jumping and leaping, some playing the guitar or
mandolin, some threatening invisible enemies with their wooden sabres.
“_C’è un Coviello_” (He is a Coviello) is an old Italian saying
applicable to a boastful fool. Molière, in his _Bourgeois gentilhomme_,
has made of his Coviello a lackey after the fashion of Scapin, who
repeats everything said by his master, if not word for word at least idea
for idea. According to some Coviello is a nincompoop who affects to be
valiant; according to others he is an astute observer. In reality he is
a type that has already passed from fashion. In the early years of the
nineteenth century he still appeared from time to time in some marionette
scenario to discharge a rôle similar to that of the Captain. His costume
also had undergone considerable change: his black hat was adorned by
three red feathers, his doublet was slashed with red, his shoes were
black, his breeches red and yellow, his cloak red, he wore gloves, cannon
boots and the baldric and sword of the Captains. Even his bizarre mask
was gone and replaced by a flesh-coloured mask adorned with moustachios.
ii
The dancers in Callot’s second class above mentioned consist of those
comedians and buffoons who bring to mind Pulcinella by their simple and
ample garments—a wide pantaloon and a sort of blouse, gripped at the
waist by a girdle—carrying the wooden sabre and wearing the incomparable
plumed hat which takes the form of an enormous cap like that of
FRITELLINO. Also they have beards and masks.
In this fashion does Callot show us, at the beginning of the seventeenth
century, Pulcinello talking with Lucretia; Mezzetin playing the guitar
to Riciulina (a soubrette of the _Gelosi_ troupe); Guatsetto (a lackey
in the _Fedeli_ troupe) and Mestolino grimacing at each other; Fricasso
in rags, seeking sword in hand his adversary whilst taking care to turn
his back upon him. Bagattino mocking Spezza-Monti, who is furiously
endeavouring to draw a sword which has rusted in its scabbard; Fracasso,
sword in hand, and very different from the French Fracasse; Gian-Farina,
wielding his bat whilst dancing with Franceschina (the famous Silvia
Roncagli); Bernovalla, a dancer and tambourine player; Trastullo making a
declaration to Lucia, who is commanding him to kiss her slipper; Scapino
wrangling about a bottle with Zerbino; Franca-Trippa and Fritellino
dancing, the first accompanying himself upon his sabre, the second upon a
mandolin.
Franca-Trippa, whose real name was Gabriello di Bologna, was engaged in
the _Gelosi_ troupe in 1576 for the parts of _Zanni_. He went to France
in 1577 and played in the scenarii which were the delight of the court of
Henri III. at Blois.
The type of Fritellino, or Gian-Fritello, scored in Italy in the
sixteenth century a success equal to that enjoyed by Harlequin in the
century following.
In 1560, Pietro-Maria Cecchini, known by the name of Fritellino, was
playing in the _Accesi_ troupe rôles identical with those that were being
filled by Harlequin in the company of the _Gelosi_; thus, in the scenarii
of _Arlequin Maître d’Amour_ and _Arlequin Valet Etourdi_, the character
of Harlequin is played by Fritellino.
Towards 1612, Cecchini was summoned to the court of Matthias, Emperor of
Germany. He scored there so great a success that the emperor ennobled
him. He published in Venice in 1614 a small treatise: _Discorso intorno
alle commedie, commedianti e spettatori_, which he dedicated to the
Marquis Clemente Sanezio, and issued a second edition in 1616 dedicated
to the Cardinal Borghesi.
Some years later, in France, the character of Fritellino, then called
Fritelin and Fristelin, was entrusted with the rôles of lackey in the
Tabarinic farces.
Fritellino is dressed in ample garments, and wears the extraordinary hat
which, in the hands of Tabarin, assumed—as we shall see—a great variety
of forms. He wears the brown mask of the Bergamese mimes and the mantle
traditional to all the _Zanni_ of the sixteenth century, as well as the
wooden sabre and purse, which last, always empty, plays so great a part
in his existence.
iii
In 1570 an Italian troupe toured in France and even went to Paris to play
farces and comedies half in French and half in Italian, and sometimes
partly in Spanish. This was the company of Juan Ganassa. In it were to
be seen the Doctor in his black robe, Pantaloon with his red shoes,
Harlequin in his rags, and the Captain on his long legs. Pagliaccio
played the leading part and TABARINO was the _Zanni_. But this Tabarino
was not yet the famous Tabarin who, some fifty years later, with his
master Mondor, was to draw such crowds to witness his farces on the Place
Dauphine.
The Tabarino of 1570 was probably entrusted to double rôles, such as that
of servant with that of father or husband, like many other masks of the
Italian comedy.
There existed in the nineteenth century in Bologna a type which, like
all the others, entered the realm of marionettes, representing the old
man under the name of Tabarino or _Ser Tabarin_. He was nearly always a
retired and ignorant merchant, who began all his sentences in Italian
but, for want of practice in this language, invariably concluded them in
the Bolognese dialect. Usually he was the father of Columbine, and allied
with the Doctor. He is the Bolognese Cassandre or Pantaloon. He wears a
powdered bag wig; his coat, waistcoat and breeches are snuff-coloured,
his stockings red, coming above the knee and over the breeches; he is
shod in buckled shoes and crowned by a round hat. He is always an old
man of sixty.
The most famous of the Tabarins, the associate of the Italian Mondor,
who from 1618 to 1630 attracted all Paris was, according to some, of
Italian origin and born in Milan, whilst according to others he proceeded
from Lorraine. His real name, however, has remained unknown, eclipsed by
the glory of his patronymic. Was it by chance that he assumed that of
Tabarino, as he might have assumed that of Burattino or Cavicchio—two
other types greatly in vogue in the sixteenth century? Or did he
deliberately choose a name that was already known throughout France from
a member of Juan Ganassa’s company who had toured there under it?
Another itinerant troupe under the name of the _Comédiens de Tabarin_,
and managed by a certain Tabarini, also toured part of France and of
Germany in 1659, and ended by establishing itself at Vienna.
Tabarin, whose name is derived from _tabaro_ (a mantle or a tabard),
went, as we have said, to Paris in 1618, and became associated with
the charlatan Mondor, who, after the fashion of all charlatans of the
sixteenth century, set up his stage under the open skies. Upon this
farces were played with the object of attracting the crowd; that object
achieved, the merchandise to be sold was put forward with quips and
witticisms.
It was in this fashion that the Italian Cabotino (the probable source
of the word _cabotin_, meaning an itinerant actor) acquired so great a
reputation in the sixteenth century as a nomadic operator. He played
farce from a scenario, sold his drugs during the interludes, and drew
teeth at the end of the performance, all to the accompaniment of flutes
and violins.
The number of these charlatan directors of theatres is considerable;
the most famous were Scarniccia in the eighteenth century, in Italy,
Armando Niasi, on the Place du Châtelet, in Paris, and Mondor who came in
1618 to replace, on the Place Dauphine, Jacques May and Dulignac, whose
improvisatory wit had been amusing the gay people of Paris ever since
1598.
Tabarin reached the zenith of his glory in 1622. The Place Dauphine, the
scene of his exploits, became too small to contain the spectators who
flocked thither, far less for the purpose of buying his unguents than to
procure a preservative against melancholy.
“The Pont Neuf in the seventeenth century,” writes M. Paul de
Saint-Victor, “was the caravanserai of Paris. There you would
find encamped beggars, gypsies and comedians; the seven deadly
sins kept open fair there; you would behold swarms of those
eccentric figures of which the satires and prints of the times
have left us such lively portraits, raffinés twirling their
moustachios, courtesans in chairs, quacks upon their mules. It
was there that you would meet the muddy poet with his owlish
eyes and his beard like an artichoke leaf.
“What a pantomime in the manner of Callot! Here two duellists
are engaged upon the pavement, there a tooth extractor gropes
with his butcher’s forceps in the jaw of a screaming peasant,
yonder a hawker of hunting dogs beats his pack, further on a
pickpocket appropriates the purse of a passer-by, and beggars,
dragging their crutches along the unpaved ground, cling to the
doors of heavy coaches and to the poles of chairs.
“But the king of this new Cour des Miracles was Tabarin, the
servant of the charlatan Mondor. Their glorious stage was
erected on the Place Dauphine, and for more than ten years
the people of Paris stood ranged about it, a thousand mouths
gaping to consume the nostrums of the empiric and the jests of
the buffoon. It had an attendance, a vogue, a success of which
some idea may be gathered from the jeremiad which a pamphleteer
puts into the mouths of the women of the Rue Dauphine, furious
to see their husbands waste their time upon this comedian. ‘My
husband does not budge from Tabarin. I spend my days without
seeing him; first to this beautiful farce; then to play with
other debauched fellows like himself; after playing they must
go to the tavern. All the evil proceeds from that dog Tabarin.
And whence do you suppose came last year’s illness but from
this fine buffoon? Such was the heat on the Place Dauphine that
the air was corrupted by it. And that was the reason why the
king remained out of Paris for so long, and why we suffered so
much poverty.’”
[Illustration]