Part 4

In 1779 the administration dismissed the Italian players and thereafter comic operas only were performed. “The Comédie-Italienne having obtained permission not to perform any more Italian pieces, has replaced these by others of its old repertory which it had entirely abandoned after its amalgamation with the Opéra Comique. Therefore all our ultramontane actors have been dismissed with the exception of Carlino Bertinazzi and his double, who continue to perform their rôles of Harlequin in the French pieces” (Grimm, April 1779).

In 1780 the theatre of the Comédie-Italienne assumed the name of Théâtre des Italiens notwithstanding that there was no longer a single Italian actor connected with it.

In 1783, when the hall in the Rue Mauconseil began to show signs of falling into ruin, a theatre was built on the side of the Hôtel de Choiseul, on the Boulevard des Italiens, and the _Théâtre des Italiens_ assumed the name of the _Théâtre-Favart_. Necessary repairs compelled the company to abandon it and to transfer themselves to the theatre of the Rue Feydeau, which was destined for a company coming from Italy. This company arrived in 1789 under the protection of Monsieur, the king’s brother.

After this rapid sketch of the history of the Italian comic style and of its types, let us say with the learned M. Charles Magnin, whose researches are so precious, that “the popular and plebeian drama along the open roads and in unroofed spaces has never failed to lighten the sadness of the serfs and the brief leisures of the rustics; it is an indestructible theatre which lives again in our own day in the open-air performances of Deburau, a theatre which links together the ancient and the modern stages. Erudition may discover for these _joculatores_, for these _delusores_, and for these _goliardi_ of our own times and of the Middle Ages the most honourable ancestry in Greek, Latin, Oscan, Etruscan, Sicilian and Asiatic antiquity, from Æsop the wise Phrygian hunchback down to Maccus, the jovial and disguised Calabrian, the hero of the Atellanæ farces, who has since become in the streets of Naples, by the simple translation of his name, the very sprightly Master Pulcinella.”

Pierrot, Harlequin, Pantaloon and Columbine are the only Italian types of pantomime surviving to-day, and each has been thoroughly transfigured. In Italy they are to be found only in the lesser theatres or among the marionettes.

A propos of the witty pantomime of M. Chaumpfleury that was performed at the Funambules, M. Théophile Gautier writes as follows:—

“Pantomime is the true _comédie humaine_, and although it does not employ two thousand characters like that of M. de Balzac, it is no less complete. With four or five types, it suffices for everything. Cassandre [_i.e._ Pantaloon] represents the family; Léandre, the stupid and wealthy fop, favoured by parents; Columbine, the ideal; Béatrix, the dream pursued, the flower of youth and of beauty; Harlequin, with the face of an ape and the sting of a serpent, with his black mask, his many-coloured lozenges, his shower of spangles, represents love, wit, mobility, audacity, all the showy and vicious qualities; Pierrot, pallid, slender, dressed in sad colours, always hungry and always beaten is the ancient slave, the modern proletarian, the pariah, the passive and disinherited being, who, glum and sly, witnesses the orgies and the follies of his masters.”

None must expect to find here a history of the Italian theatre; we shall make no mention of the mystery play, which, in Italy and in Europe, was essentially religious throughout the Middle Ages, nor of the academic and classic drama and comedy, which, from the fifteenth century onwards, amused the courts of the Italian princes. Nor yet shall we occupy ourselves with the serious dramas and comedies, in verse or in music, performed in Italy in later times, and largely derived from the modern French theatre. Our researches are concerned only with that which sets forth the real character of Italy; with that art _sui generis_ which is only to be found there, the impromptu comedy begotten of the Atellanæ, the masks full of originality, the buffoons full of wit and spontaneity, as much at their ease in the public square as in the Court of Versailles; it is in short of these _Commedianti dell’ Arte_, and of their successors along the same road, that we are going to attempt to disclose the history and to trace the types with the aid of our drawings, given to the light—as was said of old, in speaking of engravings—by our friend Alexandre Manceau.

I

HARLEQUIN

“Sirs, I was born in Bergamo, but so long ago that I remember nothing of it. I was called in those days—— Ah, but wait!... I can no longer remember my name, by Bacchus! Forgive me if I appeal to Bacchus, but he is the only god whom I ever take to witness.

“Sirs, I was well acquainted of old with one Maccus, whose temper was not always amiable, and it also happened that I had more wit than that coarse brute. Later I was lackey to a doctor who in reality was but an apothecary, and so miserly that for clothes he gave me no more than such old rags of his own as could no longer be employed to repair less seedy ones. I endured a noble poverty, and for long. You are looking at my hat! It is almost new. It was given to me by Henry III. He did not care about hats; he gave me one that proved too small for his monkish head. This rabbit’s tail is the emblem of his courage and of mine; not the courage of the lamb, but the courage of the hare, to run quickly and long.

“I was very naïve, not to say stupid, my masters; but with age, experience and wit came to my assistance, and to-day I have all that I need and some to spare. I said to myself at first, when I left my old apothecary, that I should be well advised to imitate my brother Brighella—that is to say, to find myself a situation where one may eat well. Therefore I chose hostelries. But, alas! if shoemakers are the worst shod, eating-house lackeys are the worst nourished. I abandoned that profession and became a soldier; a poor condition, believe me; later I turned comedian, tumbler, dancer, merry-andrew and mountebank at one and the same time. But, perceiving that my rags did not make a good impression at Court, I bought new cloth of all colours, red, yellow, blue, to replace the tattered pieces of my little garment, the like of which is not to be seen at present within a thousand leagues. On Sundays and holidays I put on my satin clothes; but they wear out too quickly and are too dear. And the fact is—must I confess it sirs?—I never have a halfpenny. That, however, does not prevent me from being gay, or from being pleasing to beauty; upon waiting-maids, now, I exert a peculiar attraction. I understand perfectly how to contrive certain delicate love affairs into which fathers, husbands and guardians have no business to be thrusting their noses. I am, for the moment, a lackey of condition to some young people, whose purse is not always quite as empty as their brains. In short, whilst waiting to transact my own affairs I transact those of others, and I will say with my old friend Polichinelle: ‘I am as good as many another!’

“I contrive so well that I now go to Court; I am the Marquis of Sbruffadeli; I overlook the waiting-maids; I court their mistresses, and I aspire to the hand of Isabella....

“But what is that? Who strikes me? Ah me! Where shall I hide myself? I cry you mercy, my master! I will restore you your garments. Do not beat me to death; let me die of old age! I resume my rags, my bat and my mask; I return to Columbine, and I shall avenge myself upon Pierrot.”

The Greeks represented and put upon the stage all the inhabitants of the earth then known to them, and the members of all classes of society: Greek citizens, merchants of Tyre, Persian wizards and sorcerers, foreign doctors, Egyptian priests, Chaldean astronomers, Macedonian soldiers, Scythian barbers; pedants, parasites, matrons, young girls, courtesans of Lesbos or of Athens, peasants and Asiatic or African slaves. Among these last we find an actor dressed now in the skin of a goat, now in the skin of a tiger, variegated in colour, which clung tightly to his body, armed with only a wooden staff, his head shaved, and covered by a white hat, his face by a brown mask; he was called by the vulgar the young satyr. Could this be the first Harlequin?

In an article on Harlequin, Marmontel writes, in 1776:

“This is at one and the same time the most bizarre and the most amusing character in the theatre. A Bergamese negro is an absurdity. It is probable that an African negro was the first model of the character.”

The Sycionians, with whom the mimes were as ancient as with the Athenians, preserved the name of phallophores for their public phallic singers. These Sycionian phallophores wore no mask, they besmeared their countenances with soot, _fuligine faciem obductam_, or covered their faces with papyrus bark—that is to say, with a paper mask—to represent foreign slaves. They advanced rhythmically, from the side or back of the theatre, and their first words were always:

“Bacchus! Bacchus! Bacchus! It is to thee, Bacchus, that we consecrate these airs. We shall adorn their simple rhythm by varied songs which were not made for virgins. We do not repeat old songs; the hymn which we address to thee has never yet been sung.”

In Rome these same phallophores take the name of _planipes_. This name comes to them from the fact that having no need for the high tragic buskin to increase their size—since they performed quite close to the public on the thymele in the orchestra itself—they played, as it were, flat-footed. These actors performed only little pieces and improvisations of the Atellane farces.

“_Quid enim si choragium thymelicum possiderem? num ex eo argumentare etiam uti me consuesse trageodi syrmate, histrionis crocata, mimi centunculo_,” says Apuleius in his apology.

_Mimi centunculo_ indicates the garb of Harlequin, composed as it is of an infinity of pieces of various colours. His black mask is described by _fuligine faciem obductam_, and his shaven head, according to Vossius, by _Sanniones mimum agebant rasis capitibus_ (the buffoons performed in their pantomimes with shaven heads).

Harlequin and Brighella are called in Italy _zanni_, _zani_ or _sanni_, from the Latin _sannio_, a buffoon, a mocker; _sannium_, _sanna_, mockery, raillery, grimace.

“I have sought,” says Riccoboni (in his _History of the Italian Theatre_), “the origin of this name of _zanni_, and I think that it is a change in the first letter that has given rise to doubt. We see that our predecessors very often used Z in the place of S. All the most approved Italian authors have said _zambuco_ for _sambuco_, _zampogna_ for _sampogna_, _zanna_ for _sanna_.

“‘_Quid enim potest tam ridiculum quam sannio esse? qui ore, vultu, imitandis motibus, voce, denique corpore ridetur ipso?_’ (Cicero, _De Oratore_, lib. ii.)

“‘_Planipes graece dicitur mimus, ideo autem latine planipes quod actores planis pedibus, id est, nudi proscenium introirent_’ (Diomed. lib. iii.)

“Is not the footgear of Harlequin indicated there? His foot is simply enveloped in a piece of leather without a heel. From top to toe, then, the dress of Harlequin is precisely that of the Latin mime. I have found a book which, whilst not being as ancient as I might have desired, yet contains enough to show the difference between the costume in those days and the present one.

“... In the time of Henry IV. a troupe of Italian comedians came to Paris. The Harlequin of this troupe sought to induce the king to present him with a gold chain and a medal. He conceived the notion of writing a book, of printing it, and addressing it to the king. On the front page there is a figure of Harlequin of the height of some three inches.”

The costume of this Harlequin which Riccoboni has engraved consists of a jacket open in front, and laced with shabby ribbons, and skin-tight trousers, covered with pieces of cloth of various colours, placed haphazard. The jacket is similarly patched. He wears a stiff black beard, a black half mask, a slashed cap, in the fashion of the time of François I. and no linen; he is equipped with a girdle, a pouch and a wooden sword; his feet are shod in very small slippers, covered at the ankle by the trouser, which acts as a gaiter.

As for the mask with which Harlequin appeared in France, and which he wears still to-day, it is said that it was Michel-Angelo who restored it him, copying it from the mask of an ancient satyr. His costume in the seventeenth century, like his character, underwent a metamorphosis; we still find him arrayed in the same pieces of cloth of different colours, but henceforward they are symmetrically placed.

From the time of Domenico, who was the transformer of this type, the costume has changed but very little. The jacket has grown, little by little, whilst the trousers have shrunk, returning to their primitive form. Lozenges of different colours have lengthened; but the mask, the chin-piece, the black head, the rabbit tail—emblem of poltroonery—the bat and the girdle, have remained such as they always were.

That rabbit’s tail which adorns the head of Harlequin is a further tradition of antiquity. It was the custom to attach the tail of a fox or the ears of a hare to those upon whom it was sought to draw ridicule.

An innovation lies in the spangles which render the modern Harlequin a sort of streaming fish in gold and silver scales.

In the first Italian troupes of the sixteenth century—nomad troupes which derived as much from the Bohemians and the mountebanks as from the comedians—we find Trivelino, Mestolino, Zaccagnino, Truffaldino, Guazeto and Bagatino, who are of the same type under various names, and often under the same costume. It was not until Henry III. that a zany of this type appeared in Paris.

It has been pretended that as this zany was without doubt protected by the first president of Parliament, Achille de Harlay, his comrades came to call him Harlequino, meaning thereby the little protégé of Harlay. This name remained to him and to his successors in the type. But its etymology is victoriously refuted in an interesting passage of the learned commentators of Rabelais, Johanneau and Esmangard:

“Donat informs us that the procurers (_lenones_) in the ancient comedies were dressed in variegated costumes, no doubt after the manner of Mercury their patron, which persuades us that that character in comedy which we call Harlequin, is none other than Mercury, this being the reason why he is given a variegated costume, made up of pieces of different colours. Harlequin is a diminutive of _harle_, or _herle_, the name of an aquatic bird, and not a derivative of that of M. de Harlay or of Hercules. In Italy he is called Harlequino; in the anti-chopin he is called Harlequinus, and in a letter of Raulin in 1521 Herlequinus.”

“Harlequin’s performance down to the seventeenth century” (says Riccoboni) “consisted of just a series of extravagant capers, of violent movements and of outrageous blackguardisms. He was at once insolent, mocking, clownish and, above all, obscene. I think that with all this he mingled an agility of body which made him appear to be always in the air, and I might add with assurance that he was an acrobat.”

Our modern Harlequin is, above all, a dancer and a tumbler, in which he is in affinity with the most ancient type.

In the background of some of his drawings Callot shows us several Harlequins who are leaping and dancing and turning backward somersaults. So that in Callot’s day Harlequin was still a dancer.

Nevertheless, from 1560 onwards, we see Harlequin, the native of Bergamo, shedding some of the stupidity that had characterised him until then. He still remains a glutton, and he is always a poltroon, but he is no longer that type of farm servant from the neighbourhood of Bergamo, seeking everywhere for the donkey upon which he was mounted.

“His character,” says Marmontel, “presents a mixture of ignorance, naïveté, stupidity and grace. He is like a mere sketch of a man, a great child visited by flashes of reason and intelligence, in all of whose capers and awkwardnesses there is something sharp and interesting. The model Harlequin is all suppleness and agility, with the grace of a young cat, yet equipped with a superficial coarseness that renders his performances more amusing; the rôle is that of a lackey, patient, faithful, credulous, gluttonous, always in love, always in difficulties either on his master’s account or on his own, afflicting himself and consoling himself again with the readiness of a child, one whose sorrows are as amusing as his joys. Such a part demands a great deal of naturalness and of wit, and a great deal of physical grace and suppleness.”

At the time that the zany Arlecchino was a fool, Brighella, the other Bergamese, was sly and astute. Harlequin and Brighella are both from the town of Bergamo. This town is built like an amphitheatre on the hills between the Brembo and the Serio in their courses from the Valtelline hills. It is said that the inhabitants of the upper and lower town are entirely different in character. Those of the upper town, personified in the character of Brighella, are lively, witty and active; those of the lower town are idle, ignorant and almost entirely stupid, like Harlequin. I crave the pardon of the inhabitants of the lower town for this statement, made upon the assumption that, like Harlequin himself, they also have become, since the sixteenth century, as lively and as witty as their compatriots of the upper town. It is said in the north of Italy that Harlequin the imbecile had over his left eye a wart which covered the half of his cheek, and that it was for this reason that he assumed the mask, which he has retained ever since.

[Illustration]

Towards the close of the sixteenth century Harlequin, whilst adhering to his leaping movements, and his cat-like manner, becomes less simple, as we have said, and from time to time even goes so far as to permit himself a certain wisdom. It was in this manner that in 1578 the character was played in Italy by Simone of Bologna.

But it was in the seventeenth century that the rôle of Harlequin was completely transformed by Domenico Biancolelli, a man of merit, well informed, and the friend of literary men, who bestowed his own wit upon the character. Thus Harlequin became witty, astute, an utterer of quips and something of a philosopher. Even in the Italian troupes the actors who played the part under the names of Zaccagnino and of Truffaldino modelled their performances upon those of Domenico.

ii

Giuseppe-Domenico Biancolelli was born in Bologna in 1640. His father and mother were comedians in a company established in that city, and from his earliest infancy Biancolelli played with them in comedy, and made such rapid progress that at the age at which men are usually considering a career he was already counted amongst the good actors of Italy.

In 1659 Cardinal Mazarin, desiring to increase his Italian company, sent for several actors, including Biancolelli, who was then performing at Vienna in the troupe of Tabarini. This Tabarini had already been in France during the reign of Louis XIII. and the minority of Louis XIV. In response to the cardinal’s summons, then, young Biancolelli went to France in the following year, together with Eularia, Diamantina and Ottavio.

At the time an actor named Locatelli was playing the rôles of Trivelino, a sort of Harlequin, in the company which Biancolelli went to recruit. This, however, did not hinder Biancolelli from playing Harlequin, as second comic, alongside of Trivelino, until the death of the latter in 1671. From that moment the stage was dominated by Domenico, as he was generally known. He acquired the reputation of being the greatest actor of his century, and rendered popular the name of Arlecchino. He died at forty-eight of pneumonia contracted whilst dancing before Louis XIV.

“The Sieur Beauchamp, dancing master to Louis XIV. and composer of his ballet, had performed before his Majesty a very singular and greatly applauded dance in a divertissement which the Italian comedians had attached to one of their pieces. Domenico, who danced very well, gave forthwith an extremely comical imitation of Beauchamp’s dance. The king manifested so much delight in these parodying capers that Domenico persisted in them for as long as it was physically possible to him. He was so overheated that, being unable to change his linen upon leaving the stage (because he had to return to it immediately in his own rôle), he caught a severe chill which ended in pneumonia. He lay ill for only eight days, when, after having _renounced the theatre_, he died on Monday the 2nd of August, 1688, at six o’clock in the evening, and was buried at Saint-Eustache, behind the choir, opposite to the chapel of the Virgin. He dwelt in the Rue Montmartre near the old Hôtel Charôt.”

The loss of Domenico was a shattering thunderbolt upon the Italian comedy. His comrades closed the theatre for a month, and when they reopened it they put up the following announcement:—

“We have long marked our sorrow by our silence, and we should prolong it further if the apprehension of displeasing you did not influence us more profoundly than our legitimate pain. We shall reopen our theatre on Wednesday next, the 1st of September 1688. In the impossibility of repairing the loss we have sustained, we offer you of the best that our application and our care is able to supply. Bear us a little indulgence, and be assured that we shall omit nothing that will contribute to your pleasure.”

Domenico had married in Paris, in 1662, Orsola Corteze, who played under the name of Eularia. She bore him twelve children, five of whom survived him. They were:

Françoise Biancolelli, born in 1664, who played the rôles of Isabella;

Catherine Biancolelli, born in 1665, who played the rôles of Columbine;

Louis Biancolelli, knight of Saint-Louis, captain of the royal regiment of marines, military engineer, and director of the forts of Provence, who died at Toulon in 1729; he was a godson of Louis XIV., and the author of several pieces played at the Comédie-Italienne, and included in Gherardi’s collection;

Philippe Biancolelli de Bois-Morand, born in 1672, king’s councillor, elder councillor to Saint-Domingue, and marine commissioner;

Pierre-François Biancolelli, born in 1681, who, under the name of Dominique, played Trivelino parts at the Comédie-Italienne, and in forain theatres, and who died in 1734.

Anecdotes abound concerning the famous Domenico. It is related of him that being present one night at a royal supper he fixed his eyes upon a certain dish of partridges. Louis XIV., observing this glance of his, said to a lackey:

“Let this dish be given to Domenico.”

“And the partridges also?” inquired Domenico.

“And the partridges also,” replied the king, appreciating this readiness of wit. The dish was of gold.

Louis XIV. returning one day from a hunting expedition went incognito to attend the performance of an Italian piece that was being given at Versailles.

“That is a bad piece,” he said to Domenico, as he was leaving.

“Whisper it,” replied Arlecchino, “because if the king were to hear you he would dismiss me together with my troupe.”