Part 13

“There is a greater difference between the characters of the Italian and French comédiennes than there is between our opera and theirs. Education, prejudice, custom and remuneration are the four things which produce the difference existing between the morals and the habits of life of the two. It has been one of our affectations to cast ignominy and infamy upon those who by their talents render our country illustrious. The Italians are very far from having any such ridiculous prejudices. True lovers of art, they are careful not to wither those who produce it. Senesini, Scalsi and Farfalini are beloved and cherished in Rome; not only are they not considered unworthy of burial, but, when one is compelled to render them the last honours, to the sorrow of losing them will be united all that will go to proclaim how much they were esteemed.

“It is by these distinctions and these rewards that the Italian comédiennes are inspired with sentiments unknown to our own; they share in the honours of civil society; they are encouraged by the respect in which their talent is held, and, since their profession includes nothing that is not brilliant, they are careful not to render themselves contemptible by debauchery.

“Our French comédiennes, on the contrary, seem to wish to profit by the idea which we have of them; they avail themselves of the advantage of being regarded as libertines and, since their art exposes them to contempt, they cease to be restrained by sentiments which would be useless.

“It would be ridiculous to demand that Italian actresses should conduct themselves better than other women; it is more than sufficient that, being more exposed than ordinary women, they should, nevertheless, be as virtuous. If after reading my letter you do not agree with me, examine the French and Italian troupes in Paris, and you will perceive living arguments to support me.”

V

PIERROT

There was in the sixteenth century, in Bologna, a sort of improviser, or popular poet, named Giulio-Cesare Croce who sang in the public places to the accompaniment of stringed instruments, which caused him to be given the surname of _Della Lira_. The burden of his songs was a lament on the life and adventures of a fictitious personage named Bertoldo. Perceiving that the crowd listened attentively and took pleasure in his burlesque epic, he conceived the notion to print his songs in prose and to offer them for sale. The public snatched at these books with enthusiasm, a circumstance which led to his increasing the _Life of Bertoldo_ and adding that of his son _Bertoldino_, which latter enjoyed no less success than the former.

Croce was born in 1550 in the Bolognese village of Persiceto. At the age of seven he lost his father, and went to live with an uncle, a farrier at Castel-Franco. After having been admitted as a master of his trade of blacksmith, he settled in Bologna, was twice married, and became the father of fourteen children. It was there that the spirit of improvisation seized him and brought him his great reputation. The _Cavalieri_ of Bologna paid him a pension in his old age, and he died in 1609.

Some years after the death of Croce _Della Lira_, Camillo Scaligero _Della Frata_ composed a third volume, containing the _Life of Cacasenno_, the son of Bertoldino. This series enjoyed such a success in Italy that it ran into a large number of editions, and at the end of the seventeenth century the Bolognese painter, J. M. Crespi, illustrated various passages of these popular ballads; these were engraved by Lodovico Mattioli, and, instead of issuing a new edition of the romance in prose, several wits shared among themselves the labour of composing a poem in twenty cantos. Twenty-six authors, all of them Bolognese, Ferrarese or Lombards, co-operated in this task. The result was a superb volume _in quarto_, adorned with pictures and accompanied by notes, arguments and allegories, with Tuscan and Bolognese texts and a Bolognese vocabulary. This work appeared first in 1736 and then in 1740, published by Lelio della Volpe, “At the Sign of the Fox.” A third edition appeared in 1747 in Venice, printed in Bolognese and in Venetian. Such was the vogue of this little poem that it was translated into modern Greek and enjoyed the greatest success in Greece and in Turkey. The fame of this buffoon creation has not yet ceased; to this day in Italy all who can read have read _La Vita di Bertoldo_, and nurses relate it to their nurslings. Bertoldo is better known in Italy than Bluebeard or Tom Thumb elsewhere. In general the principal features, sallies, retorts, witticisms or episodes of _La Vita di Bertoldo_ are so celebrated that they have become proverbial, like “the peace of Marcolfa.”

Marcolfa was Bertoldo’s wife, a good woman, who, after quarrelling during the day with her husband, made the peace with him in the evening, and she found this peace-making so pleasant that, so as to provide occasion for it, she would frequently set up little disputes.

Croce _Della Lira_’s little poem begins as follows:—

“In the tenth century of our era, King Alboin reigned over Lombardy and resided in Verona. This prince, who had conquered all Italy, was none the less very good, very gentle and very just.

“At the same time there lived in a little Veronese village a peasant named Bertoldo, whose countenance was ridiculous, whose head was as big as a pumpkin, whose hair was flat and red, whose ears were enormous and whose little eyes were red-rimmed; his nose was thick and flat, and red as a beetroot; his wide mouth was a slit from ear to ear; he displayed two teeth like the tusks of a boar, and his beard was coarse and dirty. His figure was no better than his face; his hands were large, his legs massive and crooked and his skin rough. But his wit was sharp and subtle, his judgment sound, and he was the pleasantest fellow in the village of Bertagnana, in which he lived. His fellow-citizens preferred his moralisings and his discourses to those of their priest. He adjusted their differences more satisfactorily than their lords and judges; and, lastly, he made them laugh more than the charlatans and buffoons who sometimes passed through the village.

“He was the youngest of ten brothers and had barely enough for his own subsistence, that of his wife, Marcolfa, and a child named Bertoldino.

“One day Bertoldo was taken with a fancy to see the city and the court, this from mere curiosity, without any particular intention.

“Arrived in the market-place in Verona, he was in the act of looking at the king’s palace, which he took for a great church, when he perceived two women who were fighting for a mirror. An officer of the guards came to inform them that the king desired to know the subject of their difference. Thus Bertoldo learned that Alboin was a good prince, who lent an ear to everybody. He saw that the gates of the palace stood open and that the guards hindered none from entering. He went in and penetrated to the audience chamber where the king was enthroned. There were some other seats, placed below and destined for the greater of his lords, who, nevertheless, remained respectfully standing. Bertoldo sat down without ceremony. Some courtiers, observing the impertinence of the peasant, and his grotesque countenance, admonished him that it was indecent to sit in the presence of the king.

“‘Why so?’ demanded Bertoldo. ‘I sit down in church in the presence of God!’

“‘But do you not know that the king is a personage elevated above all others?’

“‘Per Bacco, he is not as high as the cock on our village steeple, which even tells us what the weather is going to do.’

“These words are reported to the king, who then questions Bertoldo:

“‘Who are you?’ he demands.

“‘A man.’

“‘When did you come into the world?’

“‘When it pleased the good God to send me, and my parents to bring me into it, for it is a matter with which I was not concerned.’

“‘What is your country?’

“‘The world.’

“These replies stimulated the good king’s curiosity. ‘What,’ he asked, ‘is the fleetest thing in all the world?’

“‘Thought.’

“‘Which is the best wine?’

“‘That which is drunk in your neighbour’s house, for it costs nothing.’

“The king’s fool was named Fagotto. He became extremely jealous of the friendship which the king began to show Bertoldo and of the credit which the latter began to enjoy at court. He had the audacity to pit himself against him, thinking to surpass him in wit.

“‘How,’ quoth the fool, ‘would you set about carrying water in a sieve?’

“‘I should wait until it was frozen.’

“‘How would you catch a hare without running?’

“‘I should wait until it was on the spit.’

“Fagotto set him no riddle which he could not answer on the spot. In the heat of the dispute Bertoldo desired to spit. He begged permission of the king.

“‘I grant it willingly,’ said the king, ‘but choose a place in my palace where there will be nothing to spoil.’

“Bertoldo, after having sought awhile, spat upon Fagotto.

“Alboin the Debonnaire conceived a friendship for Bertoldo, perhaps because the latter did not conceal the truth from him, and set about inducing him by facts to contradict the things he had said the day before.

“Bertoldo, to afford the king a proof of the inconsequence, the indiscretion and the inquisitiveness of the fair sex whispered in the ear of a woman of the town that the king had pronounced a decree according seven wives to every husband. The revolted sex came in a crowd, shouting, screaming and insulting the King Alboin, to demand the revocation of his absurd decree. The king had a great deal of trouble to make himself heard, but he contrived it in the end, and informed them that they had been misinformed. On another occasion the ladies of the court claimed the exercise of political rights. Bertoldo gave them a box inclosing a bird, with the prohibition to open it within the following twenty-four hours. Two hours later the bird had taken flight. Thus Alboin proved to them that their inquisitiveness and their disobedience excluded them from affairs of state. But the Lombard monarch had a proud and haughty wife, who determined to avenge herself upon Bertoldo.

“Bertoldo was summoned to the presence of the queen and, after insults and blows administered by the ladies of the court, he was thrust into a great sack, which was tied at the neck, and in which he was left, the intention being to throw him into the river that night. A guard was set to watch him. The unfortunate Bertoldo ransacked his mind for a way out of the worst pass in which he had ever found himself.

“He persuaded the guard that he was thus imprisoned for very singular reasons, and that he would explain them if the fellow would untie the sack, and permit him to whisper in his ear the truth of the matter. The guard believed him and permitted him to put his head out of the sack. Bertoldo then told him that he was a great nobleman, that it was desired to compel him to marry a lady who was rich and beautiful, but of suspected chastity; that he preferred to drown sooner than make such a marriage, and that he had been imprisoned by way of compulsion; that in the evening they would come again to seek to drive him into this marriage, but that he would prefer to drown. The guard answered him that he was a fool, and offered to take his place and marry the damsel. Bertoldo got out of the sack, tied up the guard in it and departed from the palace.”

This farce of the sack has since been transported into many Italian scenarii and French farces, and Molière, in _Les Fourberies de Scapin_ has written round it a whole scene in the Italian manner.

“Bertoldo was recaptured and taken back to the palace. The queen obtained her complacent monarch’s consent that her enemy should be hanged, and the king announced this to his dear Bertoldo, excusing himself by the fact that he was compelled to the step so as to be agreeable to his wife.

“‘Sir,’ said Bertoldo, ‘I understand your reasons. It is necessary that the little should suffer for the caprices of the great. But, since I am to hang, I ask a favour: It is that I myself shall have the choice of the tree; for after all if a man is hanged to his own taste he is in part consoled.’ The king consented.

“Bertoldo found fault with every tree proposed to him, and discovered none that suited him. This one was too high, that one too low. The branches of this one were too weak, the branches of that one too strong. The leaves of a cypress were of too sombre a green, and those of a lime too bright. Bertoldo promenaded thus his escort, which consisted of an officer, two soldiers and the hangman, for several days, and visited every wood in the country. They tramped all day and stopped only to dine and sup in the villages. Bertoldo kept his guards in good humour, telling them fine stories of old times, the merriest tales in the world, and thus causing them to forget the object of their commission. When, in the end, they bethought them of it, they could not reconcile with their consciences the hanging of so merry a fellow. They advised him to return home, and themselves went back to the city.

“The queen, persuaded that her orders had been carried out, repented of having enforced the death of the unfortunate Bertoldo, and testified her repentance to the king. The king, who knew that the sly peasant was not dead, arranged things in such a fashion that the queen was the first to demand his recall. The monarch sent to fetch Bertoldo. He was slow to decide to return to court, insisting that soup and friendship are never worth anything when warmed up, and that an ounce of liberty is better than a hundredweight of gold. He received, however, so many proofs of friendship on the part of the king and queen that he went; but he bargained: firstly that his wife Marcolfa and his son Bertoldino should remain in the village, and continue to cultivate the little corner of land which they owned in Bertagnana; secondly that he should always retain his peasant garb, consenting, however, to wear garments without patches and stockings without holes; thirdly that he should be permitted always to eat his bread and onion, and his cheese soup.

“But Bertoldo did not long enjoy the royal favour. Compelled to go to bed later than was his custom, because often the king retained him until after sunset; compelled instead of delving the earth to charge himself with serious affairs, to reason upon them and to talk himself hoarse (because he could not write) his health broke down. The doctors compelled him to take medicine, a thing he had never done in his life, and so he died.

“King Alboin, in memory of the services which Bertoldo had rendered him, brought Marcolfa and Bertoldino to court. He had them properly dressed and presented them with a little farm at the gates of Verona, adding to the gift a coffer filled with gold pieces.

“Near the farm there was a pond in which the frogs made a noise such as Bertoldino had never heard in Bertagnana. He conceived a desire to silence them, and looked round for something to throw at them so as to scare or kill them. He came upon the coffer, took the gold pieces, and flung them into the pond at the aggravating beasts. Some few were killed, but the others croaked more loudly than ever. Thus he flung away all the gold that had been given to him. Marcolfa, perceiving what was done, reproached him bitterly, saying, amongst other things, that if men were to be silenced with money, such was not the case with frogs.

“Bertoldino, reasoning from this that animals preferred to be fed rather than paid, took all the provisions of the house and flung them into the pond. Fresh remonstrances from Marcolfa: ‘Since we have no more flour we shall be forced to eat the chickens, and we have but few hens, and they can only hatch a few eggs at a time.’

“‘Leave it to me,’ said Bertoldino. ‘I am bigger than a hen, I shall be able to hatch more.’ And driving away all the hens from their eggs, he gathered the lot into a heap, sat upon it, and reduced it to a horrible omelette.

“Although admonished and sermonised by the king, who perceived that the son was as stupid as the father had been shrewd, Bertoldino continued to commit folly upon folly. He whipped himself with nettles to drive away the flies. Wishing to hinder a hawk from taking little birds from a nest he tied them all together; as a consequence the bird of prey, which had been taking but one every now and then, carried off the lot at once. Having seen at court some little pug dogs whose ears had been clipped to improve their appearance, he cut the ears of his donkey, and paraded it with ostentation, that it might be admired. This last deed was the cause of his being sent back to his village. Marcolfa followed him thither, and they lived there very happily. Bertoldino married a peasant girl named Menghina, who bore him Cacasenno, the third hero of this history. Alboin the Debonnaire, curious to know whether the grandfather’s wit might not have skipped a generation, summoned Cacasenno to court with the good Marcolfa. But the grandson was no greater success than his father. He was lazy and greedy, and all that is related of him turns upon these two faults. His last feat, and that which brings the epic to a close, was his eating a plate of glue which he mistook for broth. He died of it, or was reduced to the point of death.”

There is nothing surprising in the success scored by this peasant Bertoldo, who, solely by his wit and his naïve simple sense, makes his fortune at the court of a great king, soars above all the ridicule which it is sought to heap upon him, issues cleverly and wittily from all the traps that are set for him, and surmounts by his wit the short-comings of his education. Is it possible that Cervantes was acquainted with the doings of Bertoldo when he created that other type of naïve good sense, Sancho Pança?

Bertoldo was not long in being transferred from fiction into life. The types of Bertoldo, of his son Bertoldino, and even of his grandson Cacasenno, passed on to the trestles of Italy towards the end of the sixteenth century. In Florence, in Bologna and in Lombardy there was no troupe of actors without a _Bertoldo_, a sort of lackey, a famous utterer of truths; but _Bertoldino_ appears to have had a much more enduring vogue in the theatre. This type, entirely doltish in the original, becomes, according to the actors by whom it was played, a mixture of rustic artlessness and shrewdness; he displays a sententiousness akin to Bertoldo’s, whilst at the same time flinging his gold to the frogs to silence them. For the rest, the adventures of our two heroes have furnished a goodly number of scenes, and even of scenarii, in the three hundred years during which they have been reaping success under different names, such as Pirolino and Bigolo.

In the sixteenth century the Comédie-Italienne performed in Paris a comic opera entitled _Bertholde à la Ville_, drawn from an interlude entitled _Bertoldo in Corte_. This was sung by the Italian Company at the Opéra in 1753.

Nicolò Zeccha was playing these naïve rôles under the name of Bertoldino at the end of the sixteenth century. Nicolò Barbieri (Beltrame) says, in speaking of him, that he was a young man of great courage, very skilled in the use of weapons, and a fine dancer. He was skilled too in killing birds on the wing, and so fleet a runner that he had many times brought down stags by pursuing them. Victor Amédée I., Duke of Savoy, invited him often to take part in his hunts, and accorded to him, in addition to this honour, full permission to take such horses from his stables as he might desire, and to hunt when or where he should please in the ducal preserves, with the right to banish from them all those who enjoyed this privilege before him. Zeccha was still a member of the _Fedeli_ troupe in 1630.

ii

PAGLIACCIO first made his appearance in the troupe of Juan Ganassa, and travelled through Italy, France and Spain in 1570.

The name of Pagliaccio (literally, cut straw), which has become the synonym of madcap or giddy fellow, is no more than a corruption of Bajaccio (a bad jester): it is the pejorative of _baja_ (mockery), signifying an utterer of raileries, good or bad.

[Illustration]

In one of the Italian troupes that passed through Florence at the end of the sixteenth century, in 1598, there appeared a personage named Gian Farina, his countenance white like Pagliaccio’s and dressed in very ample linen garments, but wearing in addition the _tabaro_ and a wooden sword. We cannot ascertain the real name of this actor, who, under his sobriquet of Gian Farina, enjoyed a certain celebrity as a comedian and was the director of an itinerant troupe. Like Pagliaccio he was dressed in white, and his face—as his name implies—was whitened with flour. That it was also the custom of the French comedians thus to whiten their faces so as to give more character to their grimaces, we may gather from Montaigne:

“These men of vile condition who seek to recommend themselves by dangerous leaps and other strange mountebank movements were compelled to whiten their faces and to indulge in savage grimaces to induce us to laugh.”

The custom was anterior to Montaigne, for as early as 1502 we find Jean Serre, and his son Auguste Serre, parading under costumes analogous to those transmitted to us by Callot.

In point of costume, Pagliaccio is but a variant of Pulcinella; his pointed hat of white wool and his garment of white linen seem to be no more than the undress of the Neapolitan macaroni eater. His character, however, is quite different.

Salvator Rosa, who was deeply interested in the theatre and in its costumes, has left us the following description:—

“Pagliaccio is dressed in a coat that is extremely full and pleated, and fastened by enormous buttons; his hat is soft and white and capable of assuming any shape; he wears a mask, yet his face is covered with flour. He is stupid, giddy and awkward, and whilst for ever urging others to the most daring measures, he is himself the greatest poltroon on earth; he affects agility, merely to tumble incessantly and drag down with him his old master, whom he has the air of endeavouring to support.”

His flour-covered face and his white mask particularly distinguish him in point of external features from the Neapolitan Pulcinella. In point of character he differs to a still greater degree. Pagliaccio, the stupid lackey, is no more than a trestle jester, whose rôle consists in clumsily imitating, like the English clown, the gestures and movements of the other mimes, and in receiving constant beatings, to the great amusement of the audience.