Part 9

“Polichinelle,” says M. Charles Magnin, “such as we have made or adapted him, represents in the highest degree Gallic humour and physiognomy. I might even say that under the compulsory obligation of a loyal caricature, Polichinelle permits us to perceive the popular type, I dare not say of Henry IV., but at least of the Gascon officer, imitating his gait in the guard-rooms of the castle of Saint-Germain or of the old Louvre. As for the hump, Guillaume Bouchet reminds us that from time immemorial it has been the appendage of the jester _ès farces_ of France. In the thirteenth century Adam de la Halle was called _the hunchback of Arras_, not because he was a hunchback, but on account of his mocking spirit:

“On m’appelle bochu, mais je ne le suis mie.”

As for the second hump, it brings to mind the bright and bulging cuirass of the soldier, and the pigeon breasts so much the fashion in that time which imitate the curve of the cuirass. Even the hat of Polichinelle (I do not refer to his modern _tricorne_, but to the felt with turned-up rim which he wore in the seventeenth century) was the headdress of the cavaliers of the time, the hat _à la Henri IV._ Lastly there is even in certain characteristic features, even in the jovial, daring, amorous humour of a good soldier, something that reminds me of the qualities and short-comings of the Béarnais. In short, notwithstanding his Neapolitan name, Polichinelle seems to me to be a type entirely French, and one of the most spontaneous and vivacious creations of Gallic fantasy.”

It was in 1630, they say, that Polichinelle passed from the trestles to the marionette theatre. But in any case it is quite certain that in 1649 Polichinelle had his theatre on the left bank of the Seine, at the house of one Brioché or Briocci.

“I am Polichinelle Who stand as sentinel Before the Gate of Nesle.”

“A tradition which still survives,” says M. Charles Magnin, the learned historiographer of Polichinelle, “and which the true children of Paris, of Chartres and of Orléans transmit from one to another, has preserved for us the air and the couplets of the famous song of Polichinelle:

“‘Je suis le fameux Mignolet, Général des Espagnolets. Quand je marche, la terre tremble: C’est moi qui conduis le soleil, Et je ne crois pas qu’en ce monde On puisse trouver mon pareil.

“‘Les murailles de mon palais Sont bâties des os des Anglais; Toutes mes salles sont dallées De têtes de sergents d’armées Que dans les combats j’ai tués.

“‘Je veux, avant qu’il soit minuit, A moi tout seul prendre Paris. Par-dessus les tours Notre-Dame, La Seine je ferai passer; Des langues des filles, des femmes, Saint-Omer je ferai paver....’

“This song places Polichinelle as belonging to the reign of Henry IV. and the epoch of our long quarrels with Spain.”

The real home of Polichinelle was in the fairs of Saint-Germain and Saint-Laurent, at Bertrand and at Francisque, where for over a century he jested, making a mock of all people and all things; but many of his wickednesses were forgiven him on account of his shape and his wooden person.

In 1721, when the Théâtre-Français caused the theatres of the fairs to be closed, Polichinelle laughed and mocked more thoroughly than ever. In the following year Polichinelle covered again with his cudgel a vengeance which Lesage, Fuzelier and d’Orneval set themselves to extract from the united theatres of the Opéra, the Comédie-Française and Comédie-Italienne. They came to an understanding with Laplace, who managed a marionette theatre, and they gave him three unpublished comic operas which attracted all Paris, and emptied the royal theatres. Polichinelle sang and mocked still more loudly. Our three associates had hung out a sign upon which was a life-sized Polichinelle with this legend: “I am worth many another” (_J’en valons bien d’autres_).

The number of actors who have played Polichinelle is incredible. Among the pieces which had most success we may mention: _Polichinelle Grand Turc_; _Polichinelle Colin-Maillard_; _La Noce de Polichinelle et L’Accouchement de sa Femme_; _Les Amours de Polichinelle_; _Polichinelle Magicien_; _Polichinelle à la Guinguette de Vaugirard_; _Polichinelle Maçon_; _Polichinelle Don Quichette_; _Polichinelle Gros-Jean_, etc.

In 1793 the _Vieux Cordelier_ exclaims:

“This egotistical multitude is made blindly to follow the impulse of the stronger.... Alongside of the blade of the guillotine, under which crowned heads are falling and in the same place and at the same time, Polichinelle also is being guillotined, thus earning the attention of the avid mob.”

But, after the 10th of Thermidor, Polichinelle took his revenge upon the executioner and upon the devil himself. He began again to beat and hang the pair of them as before and from the same rope.

In 1819, Arnault, speaking of the rôle of Polichinelle played at the Opéra by Ely and at the Porte Saint-Martin by Mazurier, wrote:

“He is an important character; he is the man of the day. During his quarter of an hour no one will dispute with him his public favour unless it is himself; for Polichinelle is double, as was Amphitryon in other days, and like that hero he combats also against himself, to the great satisfaction of the public. When one thinks of all the qualities that a perfect Polichinelle must unite in himself, it is difficult too greatly to congratulate the century which produced in duplicate such a model. In the matter of deformity Polichinelle should be what Apollo is in the matter of perfection. Humped, in front and behind, perched upon legs like a heron’s, equipped with the arms of an ape, he must move with that nerveless stiffness, with that suppleness without springs which characterises the steps of a body deprived of the principle of movement, whose limbs, set in action by a cord, are attached to the trunk not by articulations but by rags. The aim of the actor in this rôle is to imitate the machine with the greatest fidelity which, in another rôle, this machine would employ to imitate the man. It is in this that the Polichinelle of the Porte Saint-Martin (Mazurier) is marvellously successful. There is nothing human about him; from the nature of his movements and his tumbles one cannot believe him to be flesh and bones; he seems of cotton-wool and cardboard. His countenance is truly wooden, and such is the illusion that he creates that children take him for a grown-up marionette, and perhaps they are right.”

Speaking of Ely, at the Opéra, he says:

“What is there more clever than his gestures and his attitudes, whether when leaning against one of the wings he seems suspended from it rather than supported by it, or when collapsing upon himself he appears to have been abandoned by the hand which sustained him, or the nail from which he hung? It is truly sublime. Polichinelle has been accorded the honours of lithography. One may inscribe according to one’s predilection for one or the other of these virtuosi the name either of Mazurier or of Ely.”

Towards the middle of the nineteenth century M. Champfleury presented several very original pantomimes at the theatre of the Funambules. He sought to restore to light the character of Polichinelle, and in his scenarii he gave him something more to do than perpetually to break himself. He sought to rejuvenate the personage; but the ancient tradition was already lost, and Vauthier, who was an admirably wooden Polichinelle, could render only that with which he was acquainted—namely, the traditions of Mazurier and Ely.

“O Polichinelle,” exclaims M. Charles Nodier, “original and capricious fetish of children! grotesque Achilles of the people! modest and powerful Roscius of the highways! inappreciable philosopher of the unfortunate ages which did not know Shakespeare!

“O Polichinelle, animated simulacrum of natural man given over to his naïve and ingenuous instincts! eternal type of truth of which the indolent centuries were slow to seize the deformed but witty and agreeable outline! O Polichinelle, whose original theme so often enchanted the leisures of Bayle and revived more than once the indolence of La Fontaine!

“O Polichinelle, inexhaustible orator, imperturbable philosopher, intrepid and vigorous logician, mighty practical moralist, infallible theologist, able and unerring politician!

“O Polichinelle, thou whose wooden head contains essentially in its compact and inorganic mass all the knowledge and all the common sense of the moderns!”

“Should we not be well-advised to reawaken Polichinelle?” asks M. Ch. Magnin. “... Above all do not suggest that he is dead. Polichinelle never dies. Do you doubt it? You cannot know, then, what Polichinelle is. He is the good sense of the people, he is the alert sally, he is laughter irrepressible. Yes, Polichinelle shall laugh and sing and whistle as long as there are vices, follies and eccentricities in the world. You see then that Polichinelle is very far from being dead. Polichinelle is immortal.”

iv

It was in 1688, after the Stuarts, that Polichinelle passed into England. His English name of PUNCH is clearly derived from Punchinello, for in the early days of his installation in London he was called indifferently Punchinello and Punch. There, as in Paris, Punch became the king of the marionettes. This Neapolitan, after having been French, became, when he naturalised himself English, a difficult fellow to manage, of a mocking ferocity, which is still to-day the basis of his character.

M. Charles Magnin says that “Punch, according to the definition of Mr Payne, is the Don Juan of the populace.” The most ancient text in which this able critic finds mention of the adventures of Punch and Judy is a ballad thought to be no older than 1790.

v

The German Polichinelle, HANSWURST (Jack Sausage), is, in the matter of character and wit, a mixture of Pulcinella and Harlequin, though resembling neither in costume. In the tenth century Hanswurst’s exterior resembled that of the Neapolitan Pulcinella of the time, whilst, however, being very much fatter.

“He is,” says M. Magnin, “a sort of _Franca-Trippa_. In the last two centuries the physical and moral type of Hanswurst has changed but little. This buffoon, according to Lessing, possesses two characteristic qualities. He is doltish and voracious, but of a voracity which profits him, so that he is in very different case from Harlequin, whose greediness profits him nothing and who in spite of it remains always light, svelte and nimble. In Holland, Hanswurst has for a long time now been no better than a clown: he thumps the drum at the door of the booth, and invites the crowd to enter. As actor and as marionette he has been supplanted by Hans Pickelharing (Jack Pickled Herring), and more recently by Jan-Klaassen. This latter, who has become the hero of the Dutch marionette theatre, has appropriated, not without success, the turbulent and jovially rascally habits of the English Punch and the Parisian Polichinelle. In Germany Hanswurst has had several rivals. He has been compelled to give way more than once to Harlequin, to Polichinelle and to Pickelharing.”

In the eighteenth century this character was played in the German improvising troupes by Prehauser, who made of him a sort of lackey having some points of resemblance with Brighella. But the improvisation theatre of Vienna having been forced to give way to the classical theatre, Hanswurst was supplanted by Casperle, the joyous Austrian peasant.

vi

In Rome the inhabitants of Trastevere possessed two types which are certainly of the family of Polichinelle—types which nevertheless have aged a little: they are Meo-Patacca and his faithful companion Marco-Pepe.

MEO-PATACCA is a native of Trastevere. He claims descent like Pulcinella from Maccus, in which very possibly he is justified. Like Maccus he is witty and insolent, and no better able to suffer contradiction, his most persuasive argument lying in his cudgel. He begins by striking, and having felled his man to earth he then proceeds to explanations with him. He has a bright and lively eye, a tanned skin, a profile exaggerating the ancient Roman type. He is the personification of the inhabitant of Trastevere, the descendant of Nero or of Maccus, whose blood has been slightly mingled in the course of time. He speaks the Roman dialect, and never utters a sentence without repeating its most energetic word, thus: “I want you to do so-and-so—I want it.”

“He swallows,” says M. Mercey in his _Théâtre en Italie_, “all the final syllables of his infinitives. He says _sape_ for _sapere_, and _fa_ for _fare_; or else he replaces the last syllables of these words by the particle _ne_, which he uses on all occasions; he thus says _fane_ for _fare_, _sapene_ for _sapere_, _chine_ for _chi_, _quine_ for _qui_. It also pleases him to transpose his _l_s and _r_s; thus when he speaks of his glory he does not say _gloria_ but _grolia_, etc.”

Giuseppe Berneri has written an entire poem of twelve cantos, in the popular dialect of Rome, on the subject of Meo-Patacca, and this poem, printed in Rome in 1685, would perhaps have fallen into oblivion if Bartolomeo Pinelli, the Roman draughtsman, had not happened to illustrate it in 1823.

Berneri’s poem begins as follows:—“I sing the glory of the bravest young Roman plebeians, the most redoubtable of all the chiefs of their band” (“_Il capo-truppa della gente sgherra_”)—which is to say, the chief of the quarrelsome, brawling and more or less assassin troupe.

Meo-Patacca is irritated by the audacity of “these infamous sons of dogs of Turks” who dare to besiege the Christian city of Vienna. He conceives the project of going to its deliverance, and halting before the statue of Mark Antony, “whose hand is raised in sign of triumph,” he considers it and says: “Who knows but that one day you will see another statue standing here? Who knows but that a man whom I call _I_ will not show himself worthy of the honour?” His companions to the number of ten, who follow as sheep follow their leader, admire him and already bow down before him. He leads them thus through the ruins of ancient Rome, and fires their courage by war-like speech. To drive out the Turk all that he will need, he says, is a company of five hundred young Trasteverins, well armed with arquebuses, pikes, hangers and slings. He would continue to talk to them, but that the company, weary of saying nothing, interrupts his harangues with _Viva Meo-Patacca! Viva!_ rendered in tones that might disturb the ashes of the ancient Romans of the Campo Vaccino. Amid the acclamations of the mob, he is carried in triumph to his lodgings.

At the beginning of the second canto, all these heroes are ready to set out. It is the hour at which the grocers, the fruit-sellers and other victuallers, set up upon poles their linen sun-blinds before their shops so as to protect them from the heat which, to the profit of the iced-water sellers, becomes intolerable. It is noon, and Meo-Patacca is surrounded by a crowd of women who loudly give tongue to their despair. They are the more or less legitimate wives of the heroes who are about to follow Patacca. After several speeches he comes triumphant out of this contest, which he considers the most severe he was ever engaged in. Nothing now can arrest his valiant arm. They are about to set out when the news arrives of the deliverance of Vienna by Sobieski. Meo-Patacca is by no means sure that he has not had something to do with the rout of the Turks. He convokes his followers and they deliver themselves to great rejoicings. During this they learn that Bude has been taken by assault by the Christians and that the Jews have united with the Turks to repel the attack. “Vengeance! Vengeance upon the Jews!” This phrase, flung into the middle of the mob, is soon no less than a battle-cry and the entire army of Patacca hurls itself upon the _ghetto_, which it attacks and pillages to the greater honour and glory of God.

It is in the theatre of Palla-Corda, says M. Mercey, that Meo-Patacca, an epic rather than a dramatic hero, figures in a number of little dramas _à coups de bâton_.

“But he is no longer quite the malicious fellow of other days. The bravo has changed his costume, his character and his estate. Instead of the _fungo_, the waistcoat and the velvet breeches, with their two lines of silver buttons, he is in foul rags, and occupies, by his patched costume, a middle place between Brighella and Polichinelle.”

During his sojourn in Rome in 1740, the Président de Brosses wrote:

“All the troupes of comedians which I have seen in this country are at least as good as those of Paris. They include characters which we have not; such as Brighella, the first _Zanni_, who takes the place of Harlequin and wears his mask but with a different costume; for second _Zanni_ they have a sort of ragged Polichinelle, very different from our own, and rather resembling the ancient Pierrot. You could not feel resentment towards him if you saw him in the middle of a synagogue, borrowing money from Jews, who, after having subjected him to a damnable usury, demand of him in addition that he shall become a Jew. It is then that he loses his temper, and with the great cudgel, with which he is armed, belabours them again and again. In a word, they make one laugh. They are excellent comedians playing in wretched comedies.”

From the drawings of Pinelli, it is seen that the costumes of Meo-Patacca and Marco-Pepe are very similar. The hair is gathered into a sort of cloth bag; the neck is naked, although they wear upon their shoulders a sort of scarf which serves for ornament and which is tied in a large rosette upon the breast. A broad girdle once carried a dagger, but weapons having been forbidden, this is now replaced by a stout cudgel. The sleeved waistcoat is buttoned at the side. The breeches are open at the knee as in the time of Berneri; but the garters seem to us more modern as well as the shoes with their steel buckles, which Meo-Patacca can never have worn in the seventeenth century. He wears also the wide-brimmed _fungo_ and the mantle.

Pinelli certainly found his types among his friends and compatriots of Trastevere, and Meo-Patacca in the dress we have described has the air rather of a bravo than of a Pulcinella in rags, such as he was but a few years earlier.

vii

In the poem of Berneri, MARCO-PEPE is the only one who dares to stand before the face of Meo-Patacca. He plays the rôle of traitor. Meo-Patacca provokes him; they fight; but from the combat Marco-Pepe gets nothing but dishonour.

In the dramas of Palla Corda, Marco-Pepe is the friend and the sympathiser of Meo-Patacca. He seeks to imitate his hero, who walks behind him, for Marco-Pepe is a boaster, a brawling, boisterous fellow, whom one would suppose capable of swallowing everything; his air is very much more terrible than that of his companion; his voice is very much louder; but if Meo-Patacca becomes angry, or merely clenches his fist, Marco-Pepe disappears as if by enchantment. Meo-Patacca fears nothing; Marco-Pepe fears everything.

These types were still to be seen in Rome in the Emilian Theatre (Triato Mijani) in the middle of the nineteenth century. Tacconi, a hunchback, leader of the troupe, performed one day in the dialect of the hills, another in the dialect of Trastevere, the pieces of which he was always the author. The dramas or heroic pieces, such as _Hero e Leandro_, _Francesca da Rimini_, _Giulietta e Romeo_, were all arranged by him and adapted to the taste of the public.

In _Giulietta e Romeo_, for instance, we find Romeo, dressed after the fashion of Meo-Patacca, wearing a plumed hat, and trailing a great cavalry sabre, replying as follows to Juliette, who has reproached him in no very choice terms with the death of her cousin-german:

“Silence, child, I will make you understand. Know that yesterday, as I was leaving you at the foot of the staircase, I lighted a cigar. At the corner of the street I heard this foul word: ‘You are smoking it, you ugly carrion!’ (_Te la fumi, brutta carogna_). Having received this insult, I returned at once, I drew my sabre, and ... but you know the rest, etc.”

viii

The Neapolitans have a very popular type which they name IL GUAPO and IL SITONNO (the lad). He represents the popular bully. He is dressed like a Neapolitan of the lower classes, still to be found in certain quarters of the town: a round, wide waistcoat, of cinnamon-coloured cotton velvet, a sort of cap over one ear, light coloured breeches with a red belt round the waist; he carries a long stick, and struts in an insolent and provocative fashion; he speaks of nothing but blows, be they of knife, stick, stone or carbine, and he uses an emphasis full of menacing reticences. Nevertheless, although he is not entirely a coward, his deeds correspond but little with his words and, more often than not, his threats and quarrels terminate, not in the shedding of blood, but in the shedding of wine in the nearest tavern.

In the Piovana of Angelo Beolco (Ruzzante), 1530, an amorous young peasant bears the name of Siton. That beyond doubt is the primitive type of _Sitonno_, who again is a type of peasant, but one who has become suburban and denaturalised.

“I can find no difference between a lover and a young calf, to which the herdsman, to amuse himself, shall have bandaged the eyes and thrust a thorn into its tail, so that it runs hither and thither without knowing where it is or whither it is going. I am the calf; love is the herdsman, the thorn is the sorrow which I have in my heart, and the bandage over the eyes is my bewilderment. I do not know whither I am going, for I am not where I am. I am here and my heart and soul are with Nina.”

ix

In Bologna the marionette theatres have yet another type which personifies the _facchini_, the young men of the lower class of the town; this BIRRICHINO, according to the annotations of the poem of _Bertoldo Bertoldino e Cacasenno_, is derived from a certain idle and mendicant class, which lives by petty thefts and trickeries, exercising in Bologna a still uglier trade. The word is probably derived from _buricus_ of the Latins, or _borrico_ (donkey) of the Spaniards, because, like the gypsies, they follow the trade of horse-dealers, mule-shavers and kindred employments.

Birrichino is mocking, jocund and addicted to practical jokes; he never fails to thrust out his leg at the police officer when the latter enters the stage. He is an elusive, agile and lively being, gifted with a pair of legs which would win a coursing prize from a hare. He is never a thief. If he ever abstracts anything it is not that he may profit by it—it is a joke which he plays upon an enemy to discompose him, and compel him to hunt for the missing thing, for Birrichino always ends by restoring it. He is dressed after the fashion of the people of Bologna. It is questionable whether he may be included among the varieties of Polichinelle.

III

THE CAPTAIN