Part 7

Modern literature has made of him an historical personage. A very remarkable novel of M. de Latouche attributes to him a regular correspondence with Pope Clement XIV., who was in fact an old schoolfellow of his. MM. Rochefort and Gustave Lemoine wrote some years ago a very pretty piece on this subject. Carlin, ignorant that the new pope was that same Lorenzo Ganganelli, the friend of his youth, received a visit from him, addressed him familiarly in the second person singular, and performed with him a scene of which Ganganelli held the manuscript, laughing so heartily the while that he kept forgetting to take up his cues.

On the subject of the début of a Harlequin at the Théâtre-Italien, Collé, in his _Journal Historique_, speaks as follows of the masters of the burlesque art:—

“On Monday, the 21st inst. (June 1751), I went to the Comédie to see a new Harlequin who has been playing there for several days. He is a very nimble rascal, a mountebank, a sort of rope dancer, a buffoon and a sound comedian; as he is merely a bird of passage, the Italians would not have been so ill-advised as to have permitted him to appear upon the stage if he had been better than, or even the equal of Carlin, their present Harlequin. The latter, who for some years now has been in possession of this rôle, does not acquit himself at all badly, although he is sometimes ponderous in his action and always stupid in his subjects, whatever may be said to the contrary by the partisans of these paltry spectacles. But we may say at least that Thomassin, his predecessor was quite as stupid as Carlin, and even perhaps more so, although he repaired his short-comings by an unflagging energy and inimitable grace. This comedian even went so far as to endow his Harlequin with a singular attribute; he gave him a pathetic side; he could move his audience even to tears in certain pieces such as _La Double Inconstance_, _Timon_, _L’Isle des Esclaves_, and others; this has always seemed to me a prodigy to perform under the mask of Harlequin.”

In 1777 Bigottini took up the rôles of Harlequin. Grimm refers to him as follows:—

“A young Harlequin of sixty odd summers, the Sieur Bigottini, has made his début on the stage of the Comédie-Italienne in a piece of his own, entitled _Arlequin Esprit Follet_. The performance of the Sieur Bigottini has no analogy with that of the actor he is replacing; he has not the same grace nor the same subtlety, nor yet the same naïveté; nevertheless his metamorphoses are ingenious and varied, and his movements, without having the suppleness which characterised the slightest gestures of Carlin, are of extraordinary precision and lightness. Nothing could equal the swiftness with which he changes his costume and his mask; his talent on this point approaches prodigy, but it is a style of merit which must fail to amuse for very long. It is only wit that may be infinitely varied, it is only grace whose charm never stales.”

At the end of the eighteenth century, one of the most celebrated Harlequins of Italy was Golinetti.

The character of Harlequin, which underwent as many variations in its type as in the orthography of the name, which from _Harlequino_ became _Arlechino_, _Arlichino_ and, to-day, _Arlecchino_, has more or less passed from fashion in Italy. Meneghino and Stenterello have taken his place. Nevertheless he is still to be found in the marionette theatres. There he is dressed in garments broken into squares of yellow, red and green. He still wears his mask and his black chin-piece to simulate a beard; but, perhaps to indicate his great age, his moustachios and his eyebrows have become white.

In France the type is more or less extinct. The wit which he developed in the eighteenth century has descended once more to his legs. He is no more than a traditional mime, more or less graceful. His last successes were leaped and danced by Cossard and Derruder.

In Italy the principal actors who filled the part were: Fremeri, in 1624; Belotti, in 1625; Girolamo Francesco, in 1630; Astori of Venice, in 1720; Bertoli, in 1730; Ignazio Casanova, of Bologna, in 1734.

vi

Trivelino is, under another name and in a different costume, what Harlequin was before Domenico gave him that attribute of subtlety which his successors have always preserved.

Instead of lozenges arranged symmetrically, we find small triangles over the seams of his garments and suns and moons scattered here and there upon his coat and breeches. He too wears the soft hat with the rabbit-tail, but he does not carry a bat. For the rest his name, which signifies a wearer of rags, is perhaps the real name borne by Harlequin before the sixteenth century.

We have said that in 1635 Domenico Locatelli (Trivelin) was performing on the stage of the Comédie-Italienne in Paris, when Domenico Biancolelli went there to make his début under the name of Arlechino. They were both lackeys, and they portrayed more or less the same character. They presented a sort of duplicated rôle and they were known as first and second zany, for in many of the pieces of the Italian troupe which went to Paris in 1716 the rôles of zanies are played under the names of Trivelino, Arlechino and Scapino indifferently.

In the companies that roved through Italy in the seventeenth century the rôle of Trivelino was that of an intriguer who incessantly tormented that poor fool Arlechino. He was in league with Fritellino and Truffaldino to play the most damnable tricks upon the Doctor and upon Pantaloon; he was, in short, a thorough-paced rascal, a worthy rival of Brighella.

Thus, in _Artémire_, a parody given at the Théâtre-Italien in 1720, we have the following scene:—

TRIVELINO. The goods of Pantaloon shall be my salary. Crime is to be approved when it is necessary. But here comes Harlequin; though something of a fool, I would have him join us in this plot. (_To HARLEQUIN._) Are you brave?

HARLEQUIN. Yes, particularly at table.

TRIVELINO. I know your talents for eating and for drinking, and I know the activity of your jaws, but I want other exploits from you at present. I have chosen you for a daring enterprise.

HARLEQUIN. Pantaloon is alive....

TRIVELINO. That does not worry me. I have determined to murder him.

HARLEQUIN. Fie! that smells of the gibbet.

TRIVELINO. I want you, my dear Harlequin, to second me.

HARLEQUIN. In the art of murder I am still a novice. Do not reckon upon me.

TRIVELINO. You are a coward.

HARLEQUIN. Better words, my friend! I am prudent.... But, to assassinate Pantaloon—no, no.... I cannot without sorrow behold the slaughter of a pig. How then can I murder Pantaloon?

Domenico Locatelli, who performed the rôles of Trivelino at the Petit-Bourbon Theatre, went to France in 1645. He was an excellent comedian. He wrote a very spectacular French piece entitled _Rosaure, Impératrice de Constantinople_, which was performed in 1658. After a brilliant career he died in March of 1671.

Pierre-François Biancolelli, born in 1681, and known under the name of Domenico, which had been borne by his father, was educated at a Jesuit college. Upon leaving school he joined Giuseppe Tortoretti (Pasquariello) who was then touring the provinces. He made his début with success as Trivelino at Toulouse. He then went to Montpellier, where he married Tortoretti’s daughter, with whom he had become enamoured in Paris, and for whose sake he had turned comedian.

He repaired immediately to Italy with his wife, and performed in Venice, Milan, Parma, Mantua and Genoa, returning afterwards to France, where he played in the provinces until 1710. He returned to Paris and performed until 1717 at the fairs of Saint-Germain and Saint-Laurent, after which he entered the Italian company of the Regent. This Biancolelli was the author of more than eighty pieces for the Italian repertory. He died in Paris in 1734.

vii

The first creation of TRUFFALDINO took place somewhere about 1530 in the troupe of the famous Angelo Beolco (Ruzzante). He represents the sly and lying servant under the name of _Truffa_ (the crafty). This type achieved popularity in Italy, and towards the middle of the seventeenth century it became one of the varieties of Harlequin, under the diminutive of Truffaldino.

In _La Vaccaria_ of Ruzzante, Truffa is the servant of Flavio, a young lover, and in _La Rhodiana_ by the same author, he is the servant of Roberto, whom he aids in his amours.

“You may trust me entirely” (he assures his master), “because, although you see me in these peasant garments, I am nevertheless of anything but low extraction. I disclose myself to you alone, assured that you will not betray my secret. Learn that my real name is Gasparo, and that I am the son of Roberto San-Severino; I was compelled to flee my country on account of a love affair with a beautiful lady whose relatives sought my life. I have travelled in Italy, in the East and in the West, and I have learnt several languages that have proved very useful to me. Finally, being in Venice, I fell in love with the daughter of my mistress, named Lucretia, and so that I might commune with her in secret, I assumed the garments of a peasant. Do not be offended if, whether alone with you or in company, I employ a language that corresponds with my dress.”

Towards 1738 the actor Sacchi was playing in Italy, and particularly in Venice, rôles similar to that of Harlequin, under the name of _Truffaldino_, a Bergamese caricature. Goldoni and the Abbé Chiari had boasted that they would drive the Commedia dell’ Arte and the leather masks from the theatre. Sacchi, seeing the national company disappearing, quitted Venice with his troupe and his friends, Brighella, Tartaglia and Pantaloon, to seek his fortune beyond the seas. But the great earthquake at Lisbon drove them out of Portugal. Sacchi then returned to Venice with his troupe, and, in 1761, the theatre of San-Samuele, which had been closed for five years, was put into repair and reopened with _L’Amour des Trois Oranges_, a fable in five acts, by Carlo Gozzi. The marvellous genre being supported by Gozzi, became a subject of enthusiasm in Venice until 1769, in which year a rival troupe appropriated Sacchi’s pieces and actors, opened the theatre of Sant’ Angelo, and brought about his ruin, notwithstanding the endeavours made by Sacchi in giving the public _commedie sostenute_. “But,” says M. Paul de Musset, “the decadence and the dispersion of Sacchi’s company was none the less inevitable. Truffaldino was growing old and infirm. Further to complicate matters the old fool fell in love with La Ricci (Gozzi’s mistress), and notwithstanding his seventy years, he gave umbrage to our poet. One day Gozzi discovered La Ricci in the act of cutting out some white satin to make a gown. The material was a present from Sacchi, and the young leading lady would have desired, with Italian naïveté, to have retained at one and the same time the lengths of satin and her virtue. So much was decidedly impossible. She kept the satin.”

The character as performed by Sacchi was that of a poltroon, who is beaten and deceived. Bombastic, very proud of his birth, and calling all others low born, he was nevertheless the butt of the piece. Sacchi was an admirable improvisor, and the rôles destined for him in the plays of Carlo Gozzi are not written _in extenso_.

“No one,” says Gozzi, “may write the rôle of Truffaldino, either in prose or in verse. It suffices Sacchi to know the intention of the author, so as to enable him to improvise scenes superior to any which a writer might have prepared him.”

Those passages which are intended to be performed by Truffaldino are merely indicated as follows:—“Truffaldino enters, goes through his pleasantries,” or even more simply: “Enter Truffaldino,” and then “Exit Truffaldino.” In certain pieces nevertheless his rôle is more fully set forth.

TRUFFALDINO. You ask me what I am and what I am going to do. I am going to tell you; and I shall sincerely relate to you the story of my life. I came from the foundling hospital. Let me consider a moment my genealogical tree. It is most probable that I am the son of a king, because I have always experienced in my blood a great superiority. In the foundling hospital they attempted to teach me to read and to write, but my greatness of soul could never permit me to lower myself to such meannesses. In consequence of a certain inherent royal ferocity, it was my fate to break the skull of a teacher. After that I ran away and by virtue of my heroism I became a mendicant. Taken by corsairs I was sold as a slave. The Turks, perceiving in my physiognomy the indelible signs of my noble origin and admiring the majesty of my stomach, valued me in the market at the price of fifty philippes. My buyer, having thoroughly experienced how monarchically I was disposed to despise all such work as was set me, sold me again for fifty livres. My third buyer harnessed me with a donkey. In this situation I became so celebrated for my indifference to any kind of occupation other than that of eating that my latest buyer sold me for twenty-seven livres and a half. At last I was decorated with an honourable kick and thus I quitted slavery with honour and glory. I was as much out of place there as a fish in a meadow or a cheese in a library. After all that I have told you, you will readily see for yourself the nature of the employment for which I am fitted.

II

POLICHINELLE

“B-r-r-r-r-r.... B-r-r-r-r-r.... Yes, my children! Here I am! I, Polichinelle with my big stick! Here I am! The little man is still alive, you see. I come to amuse you, as pleasantly as I can, for certain _quidams_ have told me that you are sad! Now, why should you be sad? Is not life a pleasant thing, an idle jest, a veritable farce, in which all the world is the theatre and where there is plenty to excite your laughter, if you will but take the trouble to look? It is getting on for four thousand years, my children, that I have been parading my humps about the surface of the globe, among men who are no whit less ferocious and savage than tigers and crocodiles; and it is getting on for four thousand years that I have been laughing, sometimes until I have had a pain in my back. Is it not droll, is it not very droll, tell me, to see upon such a little space as that which we call the world, this ant-heap of creatures, each of which, taken separately, conceives itself to be privileged by all nature? Ask one of these atoms if it would change its skin with its neighbour. Ah no, be easy, its own skin pleases it too well. But ask it if it would change its purse with that of its neighbour. ‘Oh yes, if his is fatter than mine,’ it will answer you. And each one strives, comes, goes, amasses, stirs up, rolls, grovels, and gives more thought to to-morrow than to yesterday. You would suppose to look at them that they must live for ever. They are all mad! Observe me this one, he amasses and piles up ducat upon ducat, waiting until the hour of his death to make use of this fortune. His son makes haste to scatter it all, and goes to a deal of trouble to ruin himself in body as well as in purse; sometimes he dies before having succeeded. That is the law; to make and to unmake. Behold me this fellow, who plagues his brains to discover some means of attracting the attention of some other unfortunates who do not wish to be turned aside from the road which they follow, which their fathers followed, and which their children will follow. He has had some sort of a notion to disturb his neighbours; they seize him, shut him up, or have him burnt or drowned. Is it not droll? Ah! you would have laughed to have seen thousands of human carcasses hanging from the trees by the roadside after I know not what jest had gone through the minds of some lunatics. I never laughed so much as some fifteen centuries ago. There were whole roastings of people whose tort it was to be weaker than those who were the stronger at that time. It was very amusing to see them rent and devoured by wild animals. You’re going to call me a dull fellow, a fool, and to tell me that I have not understood what I have seen. Pish! my children! it is best to laugh at things, for the children of these disembowelled wretches avenged themselves later on.

“But droller still, the drollest thing of all, is woman. Ah! now there we have a strange animal! Oh, the vanity, the malice of these little beings, for whom I am still capable of committing follies! By Pluto or by Satan! (they are both one, and I don’t think much of either, for after all they are but human inventions) it is good to watch men and women desiring each other, deceiving each other, hating each other. The two sexes have declared war, and yet neither can live without the other. Ask a man what he thinks of women. He will reply: ‘They are vain and untruthful.’ Ask a woman what she thinks of men. She will say: ‘They are egotistical and perfidious!’ Come, come! there is truth on both sides, because with gold either may be bought. Be rich and you shall be honoured, loved and flattered; you shall be beautiful, even young if you please; you shall find love, consideration and honours. Be poor and you shall not be worth a string of onions!

“I can see from here one or two who do not share my opinion. They may please themselves; they are still young. If, like me, they had seen whole cities disappear under volcanic ashes, if their shoes had been scorched by the hot lava of Vesuvius, if they had seen the sanguinary people of the south hurl themselves upon the ferocious people of the north, and vice versa; if they had spoken the truth in three words, as I did, to the mighty ones of the earth; if they had told the proudest nations of the world that they were no better than savages and brutes, they would think differently, and they would consider the matter carefully before contradicting me.

“Is my conscience wide and easy? Of course it is! that which belongs to others belongs to me; and I have only to stoop so as to fill my hat with the gold and the wealth of my neighbours. You find that wrong? It is my point of view; I have such a contempt for men that I am little concerned with what they may think or say of me.

“But do not dare to call me a thief! It is not the word that wounds me, it is the intention. Take care! I have never been insulted with impunity, and I am never more to be feared than when I am in a good humour. You do not deserve that I should waste my merry words upon you, because that which should make you laugh seems, instead, to annoy you. What! would you weep because everything goes wrong? Look at me! I have suffered as much as any man, but I cover my hump and my heart with a cuirass. I am laughter incarnate, laughter triumphant. So much the worse for those rows of paper capuchins which are to be overthrown by the first breath that blows. I am of wood and iron, and as old as the world!”

Polichinelle is right to say that his heart is as dry as his cudgel: he is an egotist in the fullest acceptance of the term. Under a good-humoured exterior he is a ferocious being: he works evil for the pleasure of it. Caring no more for the life of a man than for that of a flea, he delights in quarrels, making a point of seeking them, and takes great pleasure in bloodshed. Far from being a boaster he does not always speak of his evil actions, and whenever you hear his laughter crackling, you may be sure that he has killed his man. He fears neither God nor devil, for he has beheld too many civilisations and religions come and go under his hooked and warty nose.

After his cudgel—his staff of credit, as he calls it, because it is the money with which he pays his debts—his chief predilections are women and the bottle. It is very true, as he says himself, that for women money is necessary, and he has no money. Although he pretends that he has only to stoop to take what he needs from the coffers of his friends, his friends are not quite so simple; they hide themselves and their riches on his approach. Without money it is necessary to be persuasive towards the fair sex, and, notwithstanding his humps and his unattractive figure, he is so caustic, so cajoling, so enterprising and so insolent, that he is not without his successes.

“I have no illusions on the score of my physical appearance,” he declares, “and I shall not disclose to you my secret, because I do not know it; on the other hand, can you explain women to me? He who pleases them does so because he pleases them; there are no other reasons. Woman is a bizarre and mysterious being: she is the only good thing in this world, after wine and hard knocks.”

He loves all women alike because there is not one who may boast that she held him long.

ii

It would be somewhere about the year 540 of Rome, that the Romans introduced the style of improvised pieces known as Atellanæ, with Maccus, Bucco, Pappus, and Casnar as the principal types, speaking Oscan, Greek and Latin.

Their subjects were nearly always rustic, setting forth the manners of the peasants of the Campagna, and the oddities of the inhabitants of the little cities. It is _Pappus præteritus_, or, as it were, Pantaloon dismissed; Maccus the soldier; Maccus, the testamentary legatee, the doctor, the painter, the baker; Pappus agricola, etc. The Atellanæ possessed two distinct buffoons, two _sanniones_: Maccus, who was lively, witty, insolent and a little ferocious; and Bucco, who was a self-satisfied flatterer, boaster, thief and coward. In the modern PULCINELLA these two characters are combined; he is a mixture of bravery and cowardice, of stupid vanity and witty insolence.

It is pretended that these opposite traits of character were similarly attributed to Maccus, the Oscan peasant, who in his day was as well known and loved as is Pulcinella now.