Part 8
“Maccus, the Oscan character,” says M. Ferdinand Fouque, “has a character compounded of stupidity, impertinence, and disorder, as his name indicates, because in Greek, μακκοἃδθαι signifies to play the buffoon, to drivel, to be mad. Maccus of the Atellanæ corresponds sometimes to Harlequin, but more often to Polichinelle. The image in metal preserved in the museum of the Marquis Capponi is a Maccus. He wears a sort of cloak, which descends to his knees, and he is shod in sandals. His head is shaved, his nose is large and hooked. Another Maccus is to be seen upon a cornelian: he is dressed in purple, his feet are naked, his head shaven, his pendulous nose covers his mouth and chin, giving him a stupid expression; his face is phlegmatic, and his arms, crossed upon his breast, are entwined into his coat. He represents a philosophic Maccus akin to the Pulcinella of the comedy entitled _Pulcinella the Pretended Doctor_ (_Pulcinella Finto Dottore_).
“Bucco is of Oscan origin. In name and countenance he resembles the parasites of comedy. His character is compounded of loftinesses and meannesses, of oddities and of follies. He can be pleasant at need, impertinent according to the circumstances; subtle, officious, insinuating, clownish, garrulous, indolent, greedy and familiar: he has all the vices which go with the manners of a corrupt nation; also he possesses the secret of pleasing the great and rendering himself necessary to them: he studies their tastes, adapts himself to their fancies, ministers to their passions and countenances their libertine undertakings. Bucco had monstrous cheeks and an enormous mouth.”
Pulcinella, then, descends in a direct line from Maccus. But how has the name of Pulcinella come to substitute that of Maccus? The point has been practically cleared up by now. We know that Maccus had a crooked nose, long legs, a slightly arched back, a prominent stomach, and that, after the fashion of all the ancient mimes, he excited mirth quite as much by his gestures and his cries as by such witticisms as he uttered. The special attribute of Maccus was to imitate the cries of birds and the cackle of hens, by means of a sort of bird-call which became the _sgherlo_ or _pivetta_. This instrument cannot have been of his invention; no doubt he borrowed it from those schœnobates, or Greek marionette performers, who had invented their _sgherlo_ to imitate the voices of actors passing through the speaking trumpet of the mask and acquiring thus a metallic ring. Maccus came therefore to be nicknamed, in consequence of these avian cries of his, and perhaps also because of his beak-like nose and his eccentric gait, _Pullus gallinaceus_, and hence, by contraction, Pulcinella.
A little bronze figure suggesting Maccus, now in the Capponi Museum, was unearthed in Rome in 1727. Of this the Abbé of Saint-Non remarks in his _Voyage de Naples_, in 1782: “But what may perhaps seem remarkable is to find here a Polichinelle who, in the essential features, is absolutely similar to our own, with the humps behind and in front.” He supplies a drawing of this little image, of which he further says: “This bizarre figure is copied from an ancient bronze found in Rome in 1727. The original is preserved in the Capponi Museum, together with the history of this character, of whom it is impossible to deny that the titles and the genealogy are of the greatest antiquity:
“Vetus histrio personatus in Esquiliis repertus an. 1727 ad magnitudinem æri archetypi expressus, cui oculi et in utroque oris angulo Sannæ seu globuli argentæi sunt. Gibbus in pectore et in dorso, inque pedibus socci. Hujus generis moriones et ludiones, verbis gestique ad risum movendum compositi, locum habuerunt in jocularibus fabulis Atellanis, ab Atella Oscorum opido, inter Capuam et Neapolim, ubi primum agi cæperunt denominatæ. Unde homines absurdo habitu oris et reliqui corporis cachinnos a natura excitantes, etiamnum prodeunt; huic nostro persimiles et vulgo Pullicinellæ dicuntur, a Pulliceno fortasse: qua voce Lampridius in Severo Alexandro, Pullum gallinaceum appellat. Pullicinellæ autem speciatim excellunt adunco, prominentique naso, rostrum pullorum et pipionum imitante.”
Louis Riccoboni gives at the end of his _Histoire du Théâtre Italien_ a reproduction of this same little image. It is to be observed that in each corner of the mouth there is a little ball which can only belong to a sort of _sgherlo_ or bird-call.
“In the course of writing my _History of the Italian Theatre_,” he says, speaking of the _Mimus Centunculus_, “I had entered into conjectures on the score of the character of the Neapolitan Polichinelle, and I had supposed him a _Mimus Albus_, giving him a derivation as ancient as that of Harlequin; but as I failed to find proofs that should in any way support my opinion I suppressed that chapter when the book was on the point of going to press. If at that time I had been acquainted with the monument of which I speak (the little bronze image) I should have worked on Diomedes and Apuleius, to arrive at the conclusions which have been reached by Italian scholars. No further proof is needed to assure me that I was not mistaken when I believed Polichinelle to be a direct descendant of the _Mimus Albus_ of the Atellane comedies.”
In an article upon the Italian comedy written by George Sand in 1852, is the following statement:—
“The most ancient of all the types is the Neapolitan Polichinelle. He descends in direct line from Maccus of the Campagna, or, rather, he is the same character. The ancient Maccus did not appear in regular comedy but in that very ancient kind of satirical drama called Atellanæ, from the name of the city of Atella, which had given it birth. A bronze statue, discovered in Rome in 1727, can leave no doubt on the score of the identity of Maccus and Polichinelle. The Polichinelle of the Atellanæ is equipped like his descendants with two enormous humps, a nose hooked like the beak of a bird of prey, and heavy shoes, tied about the ankle, which are not unlike our modern sabots. His air is mocking, sceptical and evil; two little silver balls placed at the corners of his lips increase the size of his mouth and lend his countenance something false and base, an expression entirely foreign to that of the modern Polichinelle. This difference between the externals of the two personages seems to me to indicate a profounder difference between the characters. The ancient type must have been somewhat baser and more hateful than the modern Polichinelle; provoking laughter chiefly by his deformities, I imagine that I can see from afar a sort of Thersites, popular in the struggle with the oppression of slavery and ugliness. Polichinelle personifies the accomplished revolt; he is hideous but he is terrible, severe and vengeful; neither god nor devil can make him tremble when he wields his great cudgel. By means of this weapon, which he freely lays about the shoulders of his master and the heads of public officers, he exercises a sort of summary and individual justice which avenges the weak side and the iniquities of official justice. I am confirmed in this opinion by the fact that in the Neapolitan farces two Polichinelles are to be found: one is base and doltish, the veritable son of Maccus: the other is daring, thieving, quarrelsome, Bohemian and of a more modern creation.”
When the pagan theatres were destroyed, and the tragedies and the comedies suppressed with them, we know that the Atellanæ continued to be performed in the public places. Polichinelle took part in them as well as Harlequin who also was beloved by the Romans.
Throughout the entire Middle Ages, an epoch in which the theatres saw none but mystery plays, Polichinelle was never seen. He had disappeared. It is only in the sixteenth century, upon the renascence of the theatres, that a comedian named Silvio Fiorello wrested this character from oblivion and introduced Pulcinella into the Neapolitan shows. Fiorello was the leader of a troupe of comedians. He himself played under the name of Captain Matamoros, and entrusted the rôle of Pulliciniello (as it was then called) to Andrea Calcese, a sometime tailor, surnamed _Ciuccio_, who imitated to perfection the accent and the ways of the peasants of Acerra, near Naples.
[Illustration]
The costume of Pulcinella has varied but little since the days of this Andrea Calcese. Pulliciniello—it is thus that he is still called in the beginning of the seventeenth century—wears a sort of ample white blouse, gripped about his waist by a leather belt which carries a wooden sabre and a purse. His trousers are wide and pleated; his shoes are of leather. He wears no collar and a rag of white material with green embroidery serves him as a _tabaro_; he wears a black half-mask with long moustachios; his head is covered by a white skull-cap and an enormous grey hat whose brim is looped up on either side into the shape of an enormous cap such as was still worn under Louis XI.
It was thus that he was presented by Argieri, born in Rome, and known in Paris as _Polichinel romain_. At the foot of a picture of him is to be read: “Burlesque mask, speaking the language of the Neapolitan peasants and dressed in white linen feigning stupidity.”
In the middle of the seventeenth century at the Comédie-Italienne in Paris Pulcinella suddenly effected a change in his costume. Barbançois, the _Pulcinella_ of Mazarin’s troupe, imitated Jupilles, the French _Polichinel_ of 1640. He assumed doublet and breeches of red and yellow, laced with green, but he continued to wear the hat and mantle of the Italian tradition.
In 1697 Michael Angelo da Fracassano exaggerated the two humps of the costume, assuming a grey felt hat adorned by two cock’s feathers, and thus rendering his appearance absolutely similar to that of the Polichinel of the fairs. It is in this guise that he has been represented by Watteau.
In the beginning of the eighteenth century we find Pulcinella succumbing in Italy to the French influence; under the name of _Pulcinello_, Coleson, who enjoyed a great vogue in the forain theatres of Florence, Venice, Milan and Paris, represents him with a stomach which entirely fills his ample coat buttoned from top to bottom. He wears the black half-mask with a protuberant nose, surmounted by a great wart, the collar and the high-crowned, wide-brimmed great hat; his trousers are wide and rather short. He is still dressed in white linen and wields a heavy cudgel. This character, called in Bologna Purricinella, seems to me to be Roman rather than Neapolitan, for the costume of the Neapolitan type has been but little modified since his creation. According to Riccoboni this fat and heavy personage was the second Neapolitan Pulcinella, the stupid type.
“The Neapolitan comedies” (he says), “instead of a Scapin and a Harlequin, have two Polichinelles, one cunning and the other stupid. It is the common opinion of the country that these two opposite characters were drawn from the city of Beneventum, the capital of the Samnites of the Latins. It is said that this city, the half of which is on the top of a hill, the other half at the foot, produces men of entirely different characters.”
Beneventum is built like Bergamo, where, as we have seen, the same tradition existed, the stupid Harlequin representing the inhabitants of the lower town, and the witty Brighella those of the higher.
Pulcinello, then, is to be accepted as the type of the stupid and the coarse, a direct descendant of Maccus; whilst the Neapolitan Pulcinella, witty and astute, may be considered the sensual descendant of Bucco. This latter type became European. In France he was known as Polichinelle; in England as Punch, an abbreviation of Punchinello, and Jack Pudding; in Germany as Hanswurst (Jack Sausage) and Pulzinella; in Holland as Toneelgek; in Spain as Don Christoval Pulichinela; even in the East, Karagheus is none other than Polichinelle.
Pulcinella is, turn by turn, and according to the piece, master, servant, magistrate, poet or dancer, but never an acrobat; in essentials the character is always the same. In what concerns him the piece adapts itself to his rôle. Sometimes, but rarely—and then only in the marionette theatres—one has seen him married to a Pulcinellina, and thus equipped with wife and children.
“Thirty years ago,” says a wit, in the middle of the nineteenth century, “there was not a single individual in Naples who had not in himself something of Pulcinella. A deal of that has been lost to-day, but sufficient still remain.”
In Naples, Pulcinella took up his domicile in the theatre of San Carlino.
“It is there,” says M. Fred. Mercey, “that night and day he is the hero of marvellous and comical adventures. Indeed, although the Polichinelle of San Carlino is not of wood, he never rests, and whenever some new piece has been announced for morning and evening performance, _most choice in all its scenes, full of bizarre happenings, with Pulcinella_, Pulcinella must be under arms and on view living or dead.”
Do you wish to form an idea of these pieces, _most choice in all their scenes, full of bizarre happenings_, pieces which owe their success entirely to Pulcinella? Let us analyse one or two, selecting preferably from those which best reveal the Neapolitan character.
_Pulcinella, Brigand-Chief_
The scene is laid in Calabria. Pulcinella, whose business affairs have been going badly, devotes himself to a fresh line of industry; he exploits the highways. Pulcinella has all the attributes that go to make an excellent brigand-chief. He is without scruples and without mercy, and he professes a most sovereign contempt for human life. The new chief has designs upon the wife of a miller of the neighbourhood of Nicastro, who, in addition to her personal attractions, has, if public rumour is to be believed, a great sack of ducats in her cupboard. Pulcinella leaves his band in a neighbouring wood and, accompanied by a single follower, he goes to visit the miller’s wife. So as not to arouse her suspicions, he conceals his follower behind a bush, and presents himself alone upon her threshold. The day is Sunday, and the brigand has chosen it because he knows that the miller will be at Mass in the neighbouring township and that he will have left his wife alone with her child at the mill. Pulcinella represents himself as a miller’s boy out of work. He is well received. Suddenly, seizing a moment in which the child has gone apart, he draws a knife and threatens to cut the woman’s throat unless she gives him at once all the money she possesses. “My money is up there,” she says, “in my cupboard. Come with me and I will give it to you.” Pulcinella follows her. Whilst he is rummaging in the cupboard, the woman slips quickly out of the room, shuts the door and turns the key. The windows are equipped with iron bars; the door is a half-foot thick. Pulcinella is taken in a gin like a starling. The miller’s wife loses no time; she calls her child: “Run to Nicastro,” she bids him, “and fetch your father and the carabineers; run quickly, tell him that there is a brigand in the house.” The child sets out, but Pulcinella’s companion, hearing the cries of his chief, bars the lad’s passage and seizes him. The miller’s wife, however, does not lose courage. She bolts the doors and barricades the windows. Her situation is most critical. She hears Pulcinella who, by means of a hammer, is beginning to demolish the ceiling over her head, and she sees her child threatened with death by the other brigand unless she opens. Eventually this brigand pinions the child, casts him into a corner, and sets about seeking some door or opening by which he may enter the house to deliver his chief. Presently the idea occurs to him to slip down the wheel of the mill and through the opening left by the axle of the sails; but at the same moment the miller’s wife conceives the notion of setting this wheel in movement. The brigand is already half through the space between the wall and the axle when the miller’s wife draws back the bolt which holds the wheel; this begins to move, and before it has turned twice the brigand is crushed as if by a pestle in a mortar. Meanwhile Pulcinella has completed his hole in the ceiling and is about to drop through into the chamber below when the miller arrives with a detachment of carabineers. Pulcinella does not lose courage. As these ascend the staircase leading to the chamber in which he is locked, he jumps down through the hole in the ceiling, escapes by another staircase, and climbs on to the roof of the house.
The remainder of the piece is merely a sort of burlesque divertissement, in which we see the miller’s wife, the soldiers and the peasants pursuing Pulcinella, who displays his address and performs all sorts of _tours de force_. We see him, for instance, taking the place of the vane, and turning this way and that in the wind; but in the instant in which the carabineers are aiming at this extremely unmetallic vane, he leaps to the roof, and from the roof to the gardens, and thrusts himself into a corner, where he pretends to be a pillar. A soldier climbs upon this pillar to look through a window; the pillar comes to life and takes to its heels; then Pulcinella slips under a winnowing basket, and attempts to reach the wood, crawling like a tortoise. In the end he is taken and conducted to Nicastro to be hanged. The history of his hanging is well known. Pulcinella permits himself calmly to be led to the scaffold, but when the rope is ready he plays all sorts of tricks upon the hangman; he feigns stupidity and pretends not to be able to find the noose. “You fool!” cries the impatient hangman. “Look! It is thus that the noose is adjusted.” And he slips his own head through it. Pulcinella seizes this favourable moment, takes hold of the rope, and strangles the hangman, crying to him: “How now? Am I still a fool?”
In _Le Ruine di Pompeia_, Pulcinella, who is in love with the daughter of one of the custodians of the place, has attached himself to a group of foreign visitors, whom he amuses with his sallies, and at whose expense he regales himself, stealing the best bits of their dinner, and for ever juggling away the coin which they place in the custodian’s hand. The visitors end by seeing through his game, are displeased with it, and seek to seize him by the collar. Pulcinella grows angry; he raises his voice indignantly to protest that anyone should suspect an honourable man such as he, a person of his importance. He pretends to be, by turns, an English lord and a French officer. Soon, however, being convicted of imposture, and closely pressed, he plies his cudgel, takes to flight through the ruins, and suddenly disappears at the very moment in which his pursuers believe they have captured him. He is found at last in one of the newly discovered caves, lying amid a litter of empty amphoræ in company with the custodian’s daughter. Everything is arranged, and the piece concludes with a marriage which appears to be extremely necessary.
The characters taking part in these pieces of an entirely national type are, in addition to Pulcinella and Scaramouche, the peasant, the Roman woman and the soldier.
Polliciniella, as he is called in the Neapolitan dialect, wears a sort of short and very ample blouse, with or without girdle, the sleeves of which are gathered at the wrist as are the trousers at the ankle; his white shoes are strongly soled. He wears no collar; his black half-mask is beardless, and his hat is a rimless grey or white felt in the shape of a sugar-cone. On certain occasions when it is necessary for him to dress up a little, he changes his felt hat for another of white cambric like his coat, as high and as singular in shape, but adorned with rose-coloured ribbons. His black half-mask has a large aquiline nose, embellished by a wart, and its cheeks are profoundly wrinkled to announce that Polliciniella was not born yesterday.
The spirit of this Polliciniella differs greatly from that of the French Polichinelle and the English Punch. He is a buffoon, a mocker and a jester, but not wicked. He represents the type of the Neapolitan bourgeois in its natural grossness but instinct with that biting spirit of which the Abbé Galiani is a refined type. He is slow in his movements (all famous Pulcinelle are very sparing of gesture), his air is foolish, but his wit is ready money, particularly in the asides which he always addresses directly to the public.
Although to be seen in various theatres in Naples, Pulcinella’s special stage was that of the San Carlino, whither he would attract twice daily an audience drawn from all ranks of society. The San Carlino had a famous troupe, chiefly composed of masks of unalterable national types. Here, from the beginning of the nineteenth century onwards, several actors created great reputations, such as Celesi Balli and Tomaso Fabioni in 1800, Lucio Bebio in 1803, Camerano in 1805, etc. One famous Pulcinella was applauded there throughout five and twenty years. After having been one of the most brilliant cavalry captains of King Murat, after having accompanied him upon several great and victorious campaigns, after having been decorated by the Emperor Napoleon, when the Bourbons returned to Naples, he donned—either out of necessity or caprice—the coat of Pulcinella, and in this amassed a very handsome fortune. He was the idol not only of all Neapolitans but of all who understood the dialect. Restrained in his movements, cold, sluggish, full of awkwardness, speaking as little as possible, but seeing to it that the few words he uttered bore the imprint of the liveliest and most biting wit, he contrived, notwithstanding the mask which covered the half of his countenance, a miraculously expressive physiognomy. One of the buffooneries which he repeated frequently, especially during carnival (because in this season Polliciniella is forbidden to wear either mask or costume) was to eat mountains of macaroni, of which the character is traditionally very fond, out of an enormous _cantaro_. You might see him drawing forth these long macaroni and causing them to descend into his mouth from the full height of his arm, to the peals of laughter of his audience.
Speaking of Pulcinella, M. Charles Magnin says:
“The Pulcinella of Naples, a tall fellow, as straight as anyone else, noisy, alert, sensual, with his great hooked nose and black half-mask, his pyramidal grey bonnet, his white camisole, his wide white pantaloons, gathered and girt about his waist by a rope from which hangs a little bell, may well bring to mind the _Mimus Albus_, and the still more remote Maccus; but, with the exception of his beak-like nose and his bird-like name, he has no connection with, nor does he resemble, our French Polichinelle. For one trait of resemblance that is perceptible ten contrasting ones may be pointed out.”
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