Education_, emphasizes the educational value of puppets. She would have
shows in the schools, or better yet, in playgrounds with the advantage
of fresh air. Subjects, she claims, could be vivified, literature and
history lessons more deeply impressed upon the great number of pupils
who never get beyond the grades. And for older children there would
be the training in the writing of dialogues, in the declaiming of
them, practice in fashioning the puppets, the costumes, the scenery,
the properties and in operating and directing. Miss Curtis concludes:
“Anyone who has watched a throng of small boys and girls as they sit
in the tiny, roped-off square before a little chatelet in Paris on
the Champs Élysées, or those that gather in Papa Schmidt’s exquisite
little theatre in Munich, or before the tiny booths at fairs and
exhibitions anywhere in Italy, must have noticed the rapturous delight
of these small people. The tiny stage, its equipment, accessories,
the diminutive garments and belongings of the puppets satisfy the
childish love of the miniature copies of things in the grown-up world.
Their animistic tendencies make it easy to endow the wooden figures
with human qualities and bring them into close rapport with their own
world of fancy. The voice coming from some unknown region adds the
mystery which children dearly love, and before the magic of fairy-tales
their eyes grow wide with wonder. The stiff movement of the puppets,
their sudden collapses from dignity, are irresistibly funny to the
little people and the element of buffoonery is doubly comical in its
mechanical presentation.”
Less specifically, but with equal conviction of their deep educational
importance, Gordon Craig proclaims: “There is one way in which to
assist the world to become young again. It is to allow the young mind
to learn nearly all things from the marionette.”
_A Plea for Polichinelle_
I am making a plea for Polichinelle and I hope I shall be pardoned for
summoning to my assistance some of his more eloquent and illustrious
admirers. We have seen that the past has eminently honored him, but
there is also ample testimony that he can adapt himself to our present
time and taste, nay more, to the various tastes and tempers of this
modern day. For there are divers theories and principles among critics
of the puppets, but the puppets are so versatile they can play many
parts in many manners. “Chacun a son gout!” quoth Polichinelle with a
flourish.
There are those who believe that the grotesque is an inherent,
indispensable trait of the marionette; that, as Flögel claims,
Kasperle, quintessence of grotesque comedy, belongs inseparably to the
marionette stage and that everything else is meaningless, insipid,
and merely experimental. Similarly, Professor Wundt asserts that
the ministration to the sense of the comic is the chief function of
the puppets and perhaps the greatest factor in their popularity. He
mentions their mirth-provoking superiority to the situation, the
element of the unexpected, heightened enormously by wooden creatures
who imperturbably proceed upon occasions to contradict the very law
of gravity. These traits, he feels, are essential and distinguishing
characteristics of marionettes.
In comparing the merry Kasperle theatre of Munich with the serious
puppet theatre established by the young artists of that city, Wilhelm
Michel emphasizes this point of view. “Pure tragic effects cannot
emanate from the marionette stage because, in the first place, there
are no human beings acting upon it but rather ironies of humanity,
mockeries of men; suffering cannot be given upon it, only travesties of
suffering. If this constitutional irony of the puppet is not handled
in an artistic spirit, unbearable dissonances occur.... The working of
the marionette stage is pure, unmixed gayety. The dolls are not, as
our young poets imagine, representatives and agents of submission, but
rather delightful little liberators, amiable, amusing victors over the
petty doubts which we all carry about with us in unobserved corners of
our souls.”
This opinion is undeniably supported by traditional usage. Humor may
vary from the buffoonery of Hanswurst to the satirical subtleties of De
Neuville’s pupazzi, but the spirit of comedy has had a representative
on the puppet stage in every land. What a long list might be compiled,
starting with the hunchback Vidusaka of ancient India, then on through
Semar of Javanese comedy, Karagheuz of Turkey, Pahlawan of Persia
(squeaking in the same feigned voice as the English Punch), to say
nothing of Maccus, the Roman Puppet, and Arlecchino, and Pulcinella
with their merry train from all over Italy, even including the later
Signor Macaroni. There are the German and Austrian Hanswurst and
Kasperle, Jackpudding and Punch in England, Polichinelle, Harlequin,
Jean Potage, and even more recently Guignol and Guillaume in France,
Paprika, Jancsi of Hungary, Picklehoerring of Holland and ever so many
more, rollicking and indispensable humorists of the puppet theatre.
M. Charles Magnin, most distinguished historian of the marionette,
proclaims his unalterable faith in Polichinelle: “Do you know, then,
what Polichinelle is? He is the good sense of the people, the brisk
sally, the irrepressible laughter. Yes, Polichinelle will laugh and
sing as long as the world contains vices, follies and things to
ridicule. You see very well that Polichinelle is not near his death.
Polichinelle is immortal!”
Professor Pischel agrees that the puppet play is the favorite child
of the people and merely the step-child of the cultured because it
owes its origin to the common people and is a clearer mirror of their
thoughts and feelings than any more finished poetry. Mr. Howard,
too, in the _Boston Transcript_, somewhat resents the marionette
performances in the new manner, feeling that the old traditional shows
were “more childlike, more simple, more human.”
Innumerable artists of the last few decades, however, esteem the
marionette as an excellent medium of serious dramatic expression,
possessing a poetic style and a conventionalized, impersonal
symbolism. Ernst Ehlert, himself an actor as well as lover of puppets,
writes thus of Pühony’s marionettes:
“The object of every work of art, the thing that makes it truly
artistic, is the attainment of the greatest possible emotional effect
with the simplest possible means. What makes a work of art a real
delight is that it does not fully express but merely suggests and
excites the imagination of the observer to help in the presentation
of the reality. That is why a puppet play is not only more amusing
but more artistic than a real one.” He continues: “Puppets, moreover,
have style. They are cut out sharply to represent their particular
characteristics, and those characteristics are pronounced. The manager
of a puppet show has a free hand in the fashioning of such a company
as best carries out his creative impulse. But with real actors it
is impossible to make them other than they are, to subordinate them
entirely to the manager’s will. I have been an actor, both in Germany
and in Russia ... so I know.”
Again, Mr. Arthur Symons, after witnessing the fantoccini of the
Cortanzi theatre in Rome, expresses the following belief in the
art-marionette: “Gesture on the stage is the equivalent of rhythm in
verse. In our marionette, then, we get personified gesture, and the
gesture, like all forms of emotion, generalized. The appeal in what
seems to you these childlike manoeuvers is to a finer because to a more
intimately poetic sense of things than the merely rationalistic appeal
of our modern plays.” Furthermore, he adds concerning the puppet: “As
he is painted so he will smile, as the wires lift or lower his hands so
will his gestures be and he will dance when his legs are set in motion.
There is not, indeed, the appeal to the senses of the first row in the
stalls at a ballet of living dancers. But why leave the ball-room? It
is not nature one looks for on the stage in this kind of a spectacle,
and our excitement in watching it should remain purely intellectual.
This is nothing less than a fantastic and direct return to the masks of
the ancient Greeks, that learned artifice by which tragedy and comedy
were assisted in speaking to the world in the universal voice by this
deliberate generalizing of emotions.”
The marionettes of M. Signoret, as we have seen, from Anatole France’s
enthusiastic account, presented the classic drama of all epochs to the
satisfaction of the most acutely sensitive critics of Paris. M. Paul
Margueritte brilliantly eulogizes them in the following discussion:
“They are indefatigable, always ready. And while the name and too
familiar face of a living actor imposes upon the public an obsession
which renders illusion impossible or very difficult, the puppets being
of wood or cardboard possess a droll, mysterious life. Their truthful
bearing surprises, even disquiets us. In their essential gestures there
is the complete expression of human feelings. We had it proved at the
representations of Aristophanes; real actors would not have produced
this effect. In them the foreshortening aided the illusion. Their masks
in the style of ancient comedy, their few and simple movements, their
statuesque poses, gave a singular grace to the spectacle.”
This leads us to the well-known name of Gordon Craig and to his
inspired, emphatic utterances concerning the actor and the marionette.
No one of late has done as much as he toward reviving the interest in
puppets and stimulating curiosity concerning them. His collection of
puppets and shadow figures forms a veritable museum of marionettes
from all parts of the world. His many articles in _The Mask_ and in a
later publication called _The Marionettes_, both published in Florence
at the Arena Goldoni, direct attention to the puppet;--more, it must
be admitted, as a model or suggestion to the actor, than as a minor
art-form in itself. Recognizing its many merits, Mr. Craig would send
the modern actor to the school of the burattini to learn virtues of
silence, obedience, “to learn how to indicate instead of imitate.” He
deems the stage of to-day devoid, in great part, of genuine dramatic
value, filled up with much meaningless realistic detail, inartistic
and irritating gestures, and prominent players exhibiting their own
peculiar personalities more or less attractively in various rôles. He
would agree with Anatole France: “The actors spoil the play for me. I
mean good actors,--their talent is too great; it covers everything.
There is nothing left but them. Their personality effaces the work
which they represent.” Indeed, Gordon Craig boldly proclaims: “The
actor must go and in his place comes the inanimate figure, the
Über-marionette we may call him until he has won for himself a better
name.” And in _The Promise of a New Art_ he has written: “What the
wires of the Über-marionette shall be, who shall guide him?--The wires
which stretch from Divinity to the soul of the poet are wires which
might command him.”
These sentiments are familiar to those acquainted with the art and
writings of Mr. Craig, but it is indeed interesting to find somewhat
similar ideas expressed in the delightful but “different” manner
of a most eminent contemporary, Mr. G. Bernard Shaw. In a letter
concerning the puppets of his acquaintance, Mr. Shaw has written: “In
my youth (say 1865–75) there was a permanent exhibition in Dublin, the
proprietor of which was known as Mons Dark, which is Irish for Monsieur
d’Arc. From that show I learned that marionettes can produce a much
stronger illusion than bad actors can; and I have often suggested that
the Academy of Dramatic Art here try to obtain a marionette performance
to teach the students that very important part of the art of acting
which consists of not acting: that is, allowing the imagination of the
spectator to do its lion’s share of the work.”
Aside, however, from this not insignificant value as an example to
the actor of the future, the marionette has a positive and individual
contribution to make in the field of drama, a contribution which
the marionette alone can provide. There seem to be certain types
of plays more advantageously presented by puppets or shadows than
by human beings. These little creatures of wood or cardboard have
naturally that “sense of being beyond reality” which, according to
John Balance, “permeates all good art.” There is an article in the
_Hyperion, 1909_, by Franz Blei, critic and aesthete. He states: “I
believe there will always be certain dramatic poetry whose beauty
can be more significantly and effectively revealed by shadows than
by living actors. The shadow play will supplement the theatre of
living actors on one side as the marionette stage already does on the
other, in Paul Brann’s very brilliant productions, for example. With
shadows, the forcefulness of the verse and the emotional element is
very much heightened in effect; with marionettes the significance of
the action is intensified to a far greater degree than is attainable
by human beings, a point to which H. V. Kleist has already drawn
attention in praise of marionettes. With shadow plays, as with puppet
performances, the readers should not be professional actors, for their
very way of speaking invariably mimics the mannerisms of the man. The
limited movements of the shadows, however, suffer from this and also
the gestures of the marionettes which have a wider range but which
do not in the least resemble the customary stage gestures. Talented
dilettantes with good taste are more apt to strike the right note. I
fancy that the shadows and marionettes might please some people who had
not visited the theatre for quite a while, because they were unwilling
to waste their time on highly lifelike but utterly lifeless theatrical
productions.”
Professor Brander Matthews, in his _Book about the Theatre_, also
insists upon the adaptability of the marionettes for certain types of
drama unsatisfactory when performed by living actors. He suggests that
a passion play or any form of drama in which Divinity has perforce to
appear is relieved in the puppet show of any tincture of irreverence,
all personages of the play, whether heavenly or earthly, appearing
equally remote from common humanity upon the miniature stage. The
religious plays of Maurice Bouchor, artistic and reverent productions
in every detail, beautifully illustrate this point. The atmosphere
M. Jules Lemaître describes as “far away in time and space,”--this
of the mystery play, _Noël_. Again Professor Matthews maintains that
when _Salome_ was performed by Holden’s marionettes and created the
sensation of the season, all vulgarity and grossness which might have
been offensive either in the play or in the dance of the seven veils
was purged away by the fact that the performers were puppets. “So
dextrous was the manipulation of the unseen operator who controlled
the wires and strings which gave life to the seductive Salome as she
circled around the stage in a most bewitching fashion; so precise
and accurate was the imitation of a human dancer, that the receptive
spectator could not but feel that here at last a play of doubtful
propriety has found its only fit stage and its only proper performance.
The memory of that exhibition is a perennial delight to all those who
possess it. A thing of beauty it was and it abides in remembrance as a
joy forever. It revealed the art of the puppet show at its summit. And
the art itself was eternally justified by that one performance of the
highest technical skill and the utmost delicacy of taste.”
There are other spheres also in which the puppets have an advantage
over mere mortal actors. Fairy stories, legends of miraculous
adventure, metamorphoses are tremendously heightened by the quality
of strangeness inherent in the marionettes. “For puppet plays,” says
Professor Pischel, “are fairy-tales and the fairy-tale is nourished by
strangeness.” Transformations, animal fables, fairy flittings in scenes
of mysterious glamour are obviously more easily presented by fleshless
dolls than by heavy, panting and perspiring actors tricked out in
unnatural and unearthly raiment.
Even horseplay humor of the Punch and Judy variety is unobjectionable
with puppets where the whacking and thwacking is done by and upon
jolly, grotesque little beings who are neither pained nor debased by
the procedure. With some such idea William Hazlitt has written:
“That popular entertainment, Punch and the Puppet-show, owes part
of its irresistible and universal attraction to nearly the same
principle of inspiring inanimate and mechanical agents with sense and
consciousness. The drollery and wit of a piece of wood is doubly droll
and farcical. Punch is not merry in himself, but ‘he is the cause of
heartfelt mirth in other men.’ The wires and pulleys that govern his
motion are conductors to carry off the spleen, and all ‘that perilous
stuff that weighs upon the heart.’ If we see numbers of people turning
the corner of a street, ready to burst with secret satisfaction, and
with their faces bathed in laughter we know what is the matter--that
they are just come from a puppet-show.
“I have heard no bad judge of such matters say that ‘he liked a comedy
better than a tragedy, a farce better than a comedy, a pantomime better
than a farce, but a peep-show best of all.’ I look upon it that he who
invented puppet shows was a greater benefactor to his species than he
who invented Operas!”
The marionette has come to America. Some of the more venturesome of
this wandering race have crossed the high seas and entered hopefully
into our open country. Are we not to welcome these immigrants? Can
we not possibly assimilate them into our national life? Might we not
benefit by their contribution? I make a plea for Polichinelle in the
United States, the pleasant hours, the joyous moments of his bestowing.
How excellent if schools and playrooms might have their puppet booths
for the happier exposition of folk and fairy tales or even for
patriotic propaganda! I can see innumerable quaint silhouettes of
_Pilgrim Fathers_ bending the knee and giving thanks, or of _Indian
Chiefs_, all feathery, in solemn conclave, with Pocahontas dashing
madly forward to save the life of Captain John Smith. It would be
delicious to witness _George Washington_, in shadows, chopping down his
father’s little cherry tree: and as for _Lincoln and Slavery_ ... it
actually happened that in 1867 Benedict Rivoli produced _Uncle Tom’s
Cabin_, with a company of puppets; it has happened in our vaudeville
houses often, why not once in a while in our schools? Small groups of
grown folks, too, in city or village, might easily build their own
marionette stages and attempt to produce dramas of all times; humorous,
satirical, poetic or mystical, each to his taste and independent of
the whim of a Broadway manager or the peculiarities of a popular star.
It is such a naïve and simple pastime and sometimes so delightful. I
should like to suggest it as an antidote for the overdose of moving
pictures from which an overwhelming number of us are unconsciously
suffering atrophy of the imagination, or a similar insidious malady.[9]
One must be quite unsophisticated to enjoy the marionettes, or quite
sophisticated. Plain people, children and artists, seem to take
pleasure in them. One must have something childlike, or artistic, in
one’s nature, perhaps merely a little imagination in an unspoiled,
vigorous condition. Of course the stiff little figures, the peculiar
conventions of the puppet stage are strange to us in America. There are
those who do not _like_ puppets and those who _do_ not _can_ not, I
suppose. No one _must_ like them: but none should scorn them. To scorn
them is, somehow, to show too great disregard and lack of knowledge.
And we, over here, who have not as youngsters laughed aloud at the
drolleries of Guignol, who have not learned our folk-tales interspersed
with the antics of some local Kasperle, who are not surprised by Punch
and Judy at a familiar street corner, now and then, who have not been
privileged to witness the spectacular faeries of Italian fantoccini,
the exquisite shadows of the Chat Noir, the elaborate modern plays at
the Munich art-theatre,--how can we really say _what_ we think of the
marionette? If we see more of him first; if we give our puppeteers
(professional and amateur) more time to master their craft, perhaps,
who knows, something nice may come of it all. There are some great
words I should like to quote for little Polichinelle, artificial
or strange as he may seem. “And therefore, as a stranger, give him
welcome.”
_Behind the Scenes_
FOR THE FUN OF IT
But why prate of benefit or pleasure to past or present audiences of
the marionette when the best reason for the pupazzi, the true reason
I do believe, for their continuance and longevity is the _fun_ of
puppet-playing? I confess it: nay, I proclaim it the foundation for
my deep affection. And who shall find a firmer basis for any love
than this,--interest, amusement, stimulation? Reverence or even
understanding are far less vital, less compelling motives. Of course
this applies to puppets. Everything applicable to humanity fits the
burattini, for we are all so much the dancing dolls of destiny, satiric
or serious, crude or precious puppets, all of us. One should truly have
a fellow feeling for Punch and Judy.
As to the fun, however, of making puppets and of tinkering with the
mechanical contrivances, the total absorption with such problems and
the elation in overcoming absurd but seemingly insurmountable technical
difficulties; the delight in carving and cutting, in designing
costumes and then in sewing, glueing, painting, patching them into
proper semblance of the original design: the art required properly to
conceive a setting for dolls, the ingenuity exerted to decorate the
stage, the delicious Lilliputian proportions of things, the charming
effects contrived out of almost anything or nothing at all; and, in
manipulating, the thrill of acquiring after long effort a full control
of the doll at the end of the wires, of telegraphing one’s emotions
down into the responsive little body; and the whimsical delight in
writing for puppets (one dare be so impudent, being so impersonal and
unpretentious!)--who shall say that such an aggregate of wholesome,
creative enjoyment to an entire group of childlike grown-up folk is
not sufficient vindication for Polichinelle and his kind? With so
much bubbling enthusiasm behind the scenes, how can a proper audience
be altogether bored? If they are bored it is a sure sign they are no
proper audience!
WRITING FOR THE PUPPETS
“The life of man to represent
And turn it all to ridicule,
Wit did a puppet-show invent,
Where the chief actor is a fool.”
JONATHAN SWIFT.
No one appreciates how funny people are until he has written a play
for puppets. There’s nothing any person has ever said which isn’t
amusing, honestly and truly amusing, when transferred to the mouth of a
marionette. Try it and see.
Take any conversation you may have overheard. Take as many puppets as
there were people talking. Dress them to indicate the characters, try
to imitate the most pronounced gestures and postures of your people
... and let them speak, verbatim, the words that have been spoken.
It is simply funny, a sort of unconscious, undeniable criticism of the
manners of men. There will always be a _point_, too, a sort of moral
at the minimum. No one can fail to see it, either in the words or the
gestures or the situations. The puppets will find it and bring it out.
Produce the puppets and try it!
I frankly confess I shudder to imagine myself _done in puppet_. What a
cure for idiosyncrasies and affectations!
A REHEARSAL OF TINTAGILES
In all the lack-luster of realism we “stood on the bridge at midnight.”
Four of us stood on the bridge and we were very weary. It was the
bridge of our marionette stage over which we had been bending for
hours. From out in front somewhere the director spoke: “Now, once more
the third act ... and remember they must lean _against_ the door when
it opens as if they were trying desperately to hold it. See that the
strings do not catch. Readers, please watch the figures and give them
plenty of time.... Ready?” We were, tensely so.
The beautiful, sad voice of Ygraine gave us the mood. “I have been to
look at the doors ... there are three of them....” Aglovale (old and
tremulous): “I will go seat myself upon the step, my sword upon my
knee....”
“Aglovale, lean back farther against the step; don’t perch on the
edge.” (This from the front.) Aggie (as we familiarly called him)
thereupon proceeded to jerk up and sit down deliberately a couple of
times, then followed a twitching, collapsing, stiffening process....
“Sorry, it’s the little hump in his shoulders and the step is so
narrow!” wailed a tired unseen operator. During the struggle Belangere
flopped inelegantly on the floor, her manipulator resting a weary
wrist. Clearing of throats, scraping of chairs from the readers in the
wings.
Patient director: “Well, let it go for to-night. You may have to remove
the hump. Are we ready?” We were.