Chapter III: Part 3

Mademoiselle Bastolet, born in Paris, joined the _Jeu de Bertrand_ in 1698, on a salary at the rate of tenpence a day. Afterwards she played with Dolet, with the Sieur Saint-Edme, with Lalauze in 1721, and with Honoré in 1724, and she married an Italian doctor in 1735. Later, in the company of the Sieur Pontau, she scored considerable success in the rôles of mothers.

Mademoiselle Lambert played leading parts and sang in vaudevilles; she married Dolet, who, before being a manager of the theatres at the fairs of Saint-Laurent and Saint-Germain, had filled an engagement in the Italian company of Constantini, and afterwards in that of Tortoretti. She left the theatre in 1709, became a _modiste_ at the fairs of Saint-Germain and Saint-Laurent, but, failing to make a success of this business, she induced her husband to give up the theatre, and jointly with him opened a lemonade shop.

In 1700, Mademoiselle Babron, the daughter of a box opener at the Comédie-Italienne, sister of Babron (the forain Harlequin), appeared in rôles of Columbine and of women disguised as men, in Bertrand’s company. In 1707 she married the actor Prevost, and went with him into the country.

In 1710, Mademoiselle d’Aigremont, known under the name of _Camuson_, left her modiste shop to join the Opéra-Comique. She remained there until 1723.

X

THE BALLERINA

The art of dancing is inseparable from the art theatrical, and especially from pantomime. Xenophon relates that on the occasion of the return of the ten thousand Greeks sent to assist Cyrus in his campaign against Artaxerxes, after they had performed their celebrated retreat, dilated upon by all historians, the Greeks instituted the public games and festivals.

“Thracians were the first to appear, full-armed, and leaping to
the sound of flutes. They sprang so high and dropped again with
so much force, that the spectators seem to have been frightened.

“Next came a Mysian who held a shield in either hand. He span
rapidly round and performed dangerous leaps whilst retaining
these shields. He ended by striking them one against the other,
after the fashion of the Persians, and by executing to the
sound of this novel instrument a delightful dance-step.

“After him came a company of Arcadians. They were in brilliant
armour and advanced rhythmically, hand in hand, whilst a
warlike march was being played by flutes. Some detached
themselves from the company, others joined it, and they
concluded by dancing in a ring, but with so much rapidity and
unanimity that the movement of a wheel is neither swifter nor
more equal.

“Finally came two women arrayed in the most elegant garments.
One of these performed the Pyrrhic dance, a shield in her
hand; the other went through the dance of Ariane, waving a
kerchief, and she moved with so much lightness and grace that
she delighted the spectators and was greeted at the conclusion
of her ballet by the applause of all.”

Pindar refers to a dance executed by a troupe of Lacedemonian virgins. The greater part of the Laconian dances were common to boys and to girls. In _Hormus_ young men and maidens formed by their interlacings the figure of a collar. The young corypheus advanced with the vigour of his sex, striking male and bellicose attitudes, whilst the girl who led the choir advanced on her side with graceful and modest steps.

“At the beginning,” says Lucian, “the same person danced and
sang at the same time; but as it was perceived that the effort
of the dance was troubling to the breathing, it was considered
well to appoint some to sing and others to dance.”

Among the dancers of antiquity there were those who imitated the form and the movements of beasts.

“From the imitation of animals the dancers passed on to the
imitation of men, selecting those whose professions or vices
rendered their movements more nearly akin to those of animals.
As the _Emmelie_ was the imitation of the most graceful and
healthy bodies, the _Cordace_, or comic dance, was the
imitation of bodies ill-made or deformed as a consequence of
sensuality and low passions” (Magnin, _Origines du Théâtre
Moderne_).

Pliny speaks of the famous Lucceia, who to a talent for dancing added that of declamation, and who reappeared on the stage in her hundredth year, to recite some verses. He speaks also of an actress, Galeria Copiola, mime and dancer, who had made her début in Rome in 671, and who reappeared in the time of Augustus. She had then reached the age of a hundred and four. Phœbe Vocontia and the famous Dionysia, who received two hundred thousand sesterces (about two thousand pounds sterling per annum) were also _saltatriculæ_ (dancing mimes).

These two types are to be found in the Renaissance. The animal, the imitative and the burlesque is to be seen as much in the classical masques of the Italian comedy as in the grotesque ones of Leonardo da Vinci; whilst we find the graceful, the noble and the beautiful in the person of the ballerina.

Pietro Maria Cecchini (Fritellino) says, in his discourses on comedy published in 1614 but written at the end of the sixteenth century: “It is more than fifty years since the custom arose of introducing women into the theatre.” He means by that, without doubt, that the women were entrusted with rôles holding an important place in the plot, and supplanting the boys to whom such parts had been entrusted until then. From the fifteenth century (1494), in Italy, we find women in the theatre, performing concurrently with young men, and very often licentious in word and deed, the rôles of goddesses, nymphs or of allegorical and mythological characters. These early actresses in the comedy of the sixteenth century, notwithstanding the great liberty of customs and of language, contrived to maintain some of the reserve proper to their sex.

In his _Supplica_, N. Barbieri (Beltrame) says:

“I shall never bow to the custom of having the rôles of women
or of young girls performed by boys, especially after having
seen the disadvantages which result from this in certain
troupes. To begin with these young people do not know how to
dress themselves in the garments which do not belong to their
sex, and they get themselves dressed at home by their women
or their brainless servants, who sometimes amuse themselves
by trifling with them, so that he whose senses have not been
calmed by age or by serious care may easily become vain and
fatuous; being thus disguised as women, these youngsters
show themselves about the town, talking and fooling one with
another; they come dishevelled to the theatre, and it is then
necessary that their friends or preceptors should dress their
heads again, renew their paint and rearrange their garments.
We are to be thankful if they but come in time, and then it
is necessary to flatter them and to cajole them so to give
them courage; there is more than enough in all this to weary
the patience of those entrusted with such matters. It is more
natural that women should fill the rôles that are proper to
them; they know how to dress themselves and, as they lead
decent lives, far from being a source of scandal, they set none
but good examples. But, one will exclaim, I have successfully
paid my court to an actress. That is possible; but all women
are not so accommodating, nor all men so fortunate. Here is a
man who for years has pursued an actress and fruitlessly spent
treasures upon her. It must be remembered that actresses are
women with the same nature as their sister women. They may not
fall but all the world knows it; and, apart from the fear of
God, they are compelled to live with more care and virtue than
those who are in a position to cover their faults with the
mantle of hypocrisy.”

“For the rest,” says M. H. A. Soleirol, in an interesting work
on Molière and his troupe, “the appearance of women on the
boards seems to go back to very remote ages, as may be seen
in ancient drawings. According to these pictures, which give
the names of actors and indicate the rôles which they filled,
we see that in the fifteenth century many women performed in
the mystery plays rôles either of females or of angels. Many
other old portraits show us that in the sixteenth century women
performed on the trestles in the public places; and lastly we
know the costumes of the women who took part in the comedies of
Marguerite of Navarre in 1540.”

If in the fifteenth century in France women were permitted to appear and to take part in the mystery plays, there is every reason to suppose that they were performing long before then in the theatres of Italy, a nation which always led the way in artists of all kinds.

It is very certain that throughout the Middle Ages there was no lack of Bohemiennes and _joculatores_ on the trestles. They came to enliven the sumptuous repasts of the great lords by performing comedy-scenes like those of _Le Berger et la Bergère_, _Courtois_, _Mariage_ and _Pèlerin_. The performances of these plays were intermingled with dances and songs. The earliest actresses derived a great deal from these _ballerine_. The rôles which they performed, however, were very short ones in scenarii that were very simple, and one woman in a troupe would often be sufficient to discharge all the female parts. We know that down to the end of the seventeenth century the broader female rôles (such as those of gossips) were invariably performed by men, by Scaramouche, Harlequin and Pierrot.

Later on it became necessary that all Italian actresses should be able to dance; that was part of their primary education. For many celebrated actresses, indeed, it was the essential factor in their admission into the theatre; and even in the eighteenth century it was necessary for the immortal tragic actress Hippolyte Clairon to be able to dance and sing so as to be accepted into the Théâtre-Italien. Coraline and Camille, the famous daughters of the actor Veronese, owed their chief success to their dancing. This applies also to Madame Favart, whose village dance in sabots took Paris by storm.

In the plays of Angelo Beolco (Ruzzante, 1530), the young woman does not take up more than two or three scenes, somewhere about the middle of the piece, leaving it to other characters to continue and work out the story. We find her still the object of the plot; but, contrary to our modern theatrical rules, she disappears sometimes in the very moment when the interest of which she is the pivot reaches its climax. The reason for the slight development of these rôles was without doubt the insufficiency and inexperience of the actresses entrusted with them, and perhaps also their obligation to go and change their dress for the final ballet. In _La Mandragora_, of Macchiavelli, Lucretia appears for the first time in the third act, and does not reappear thereafter until the end of the fifth.

With the Italians, the dance was in such high repute that in the sixteenth century young Frenchwomen “would go beyond the Alps to learn it.” No spectacles were given in Italy that did not include dances and music, and to this day there are interludes in _Norma_ and _Semiramide_ of ballets imitating village dances.

In the seventeenth century the court of Savoy set the fashion to all other courts of Europe by its ballets and fairy scenes, under the direction of the famous Comte d’Aglié, a fertile genius in the matter of theatrical invention.

The scenario of one of his ballets, given on the occasion of the birth of the Cardinal of Savoy in 1634, is extremely curious by virtue of the singular allegorical personages introduced into it. The title of this ballet is: _La Verità nemica della Apparenza sollevata dal Tempo_.

“At rise of curtain a choir of False-Reports and of Suspicions
is discovered, preceding Appearance and Falsehood. The back
of the stage is opened. Upon a great cloud borne by the Winds
Appearance is seen dressed in a garment of changing colours
sewn with mirrors, and equipped with the wings and tail of
a peacock; she is in a sort of nest whence issue a crowd of
Pernicious Falsehoods, Frauds and Cheats; Pleasant Falsehoods,
Flatteries and Intrigues; Comical Falsehoods, Pleasantries and
Pretty little Stories.

“These characters had their various entrances until the advent
of Time. He drove out Appearance, and caused the cloud upon
which she had been enthroned to be opened. Within it was then
discovered a huge hour-glass from which came Truth and the
Hours. These last characters, after various speeches analogous
to the subject, formed the great ballet.”

It was then the custom for great personages, even sovereigns themselves, to take part in fêtes of this brilliant kind. Thus, Louis XIV., desiring in his pleasures as in other things to be the first of his century, danced in the ballets of his court, and received the applause of the comedians for his performance as actor, singer and dancer.

“The King has twice rehearsed the ballet which he intends to
dance before the Queen of England” (Guy Patin, 1661). It was
in this same year that the great monarch created a dancing
academy, “because,” he says in his letters patent, “the art of
dancing has always been recognised as one of the most virtuous
and necessary to adapt the body to exercise, and consequently
one of the most useful to our nobility, not only in time of war
in our armies, but also in time of peace in our ballets.”

Louis XIV. loved the rôle of the Sun in these splendid ballets, for the production of one of which no less than nine hundred new costumes were prepared. Sometimes, however, he did not disdain to be seen in a comic part. In the ballet of the _Seasons_ he represented the golden-headed Ceres surrounded by the reapers, which were played by Messeigneurs de Saint-Aignan and de Vertpré, MM. Lulli and Bruneau, the Sieurs Beauchamp, Raynal, Lecomte and Lapierre. In the _Triumph of Bacchus_, he performed the part of a sort of good-for-nothing cutpurse and bully, and even sang a couplet in favour of the fair sex. In _Les Amants Magnifiques_, a comedy-ballet by Molière (1670), he not only co-operated in the preparation of the scenery and in the production, but mimed, danced, sang and played the flute and the guitar.

Let us cite amongst the most famous dancers Gertrude Boon, called _la belle Tourneuse_; a surname derived from the style of dance which she performed. She appeared and obtained the greatest possible success in the theatre of Dame Baron, at the fair of Saint-Germain. Gertrude Boon was young, beautiful and extremely gracious in the performance of her bizarre evolutions. She was no less virtuous than gifted and turned a deaf ear upon the sighs of her numerous suitors. Amongst these was a Sieur Gervais who had amassed a considerable fortune at play and who, to prove to this austere maiden how sincerely he loved her, offered her his fortune and his name. Gertrude accepted him for her husband, not on account of his fortune, but believing in the genuineness of his affection. The marriage however was not a happy one, and Gertrude was driven to seek a dissolution of it. But she failed in this, the validity of the marriage being confirmed by a judgment of the 4th March 1715.

Violente, a famous rope dancer, was an Italian. She made her first appearance at the fair of Saint-Laurent in 1717, and she was there seen dancing at the _Folies d’Espagne_ upon a balanced plank, eight inches wide, with as much grace as security.

Mademoiselle Hamoche, the wife of Hamoche, the Pierrot of the fairs, united, in 1721, the capacities of tragic actress and première danseuse in the forain theatres.

In 1724, Mademoiselle Grognet was dancing at the Opéra-Comique; she passed into the service of the Duke of Modena in 1736, and married the Marquis d’Argens, at Berlin.

Mademoiselle Cuppi de Camargo, born in Brussels in 1710, made her first appearance at the Opéra in 1726 at the age of sixteen, and did not leave it until 1751. Voltaire compares her to Mademoiselle Sallé, another dancer quite as famous:

“Ah! Camargo, que vous êtes brillante!
Mais que Sallé, grands dieux! est ravissante!
Que vos pas sont légers, et que les siens sont doux!
Elle est inimitable, et vous êtes nouvelle:
Les Nymphes sautent comme vous,
Et les Grâces dansent comme elle.”

She was received with enthusiasm, her name became so popular that fashions assumed it. There were Camargo bonnets, Camargo corsets, Camargo head-dresses, Camargo cakes, etc., etc.; never had such a vogue been known. Compelled, notwithstanding her brilliant début, to remain among the supernumeraries in consequence of the jealousy of Mademoiselle Prévot, Camargo contrived to issue in a brilliant manner from those ranks.

“A dance of Demons was being done. The principal actor misses
his entrance and whilst the orchestra, nevertheless, plays
the air of the solo, murmurs rise from the groundlings; they
become noisy and the actor is embarrassed, when the young
débutante, seized with a happy inspiration, leaps to the middle
of the stage, and improvises with spirit a Spanish step which
delights the dissatisfied spectators, and transports them with
admiration.”

Camargo was chiefly distinguished for her extraordinary lightness and her wild gaiety.

In a letter written from Italy in 1739 by the Président de Brosses, the following passage occurs:—

“There is nothing better to do when one arrives than to go to
the comedy to seek amusement; this is what we did at Verona.
I cannot get accustomed to the cheapness of the prices; the
first places do not cost ten sous; but the Italian nation is
imbued with the taste for spectacles so that the quantity of
people who attend fully compensates for this. Thanks be to God
there is no trouble to find room at the comedy in Verona. It
is performed right in the middle of the ancient amphitheatre
of the Romans, and there are no other places provided for the
spectators but those on the steps of the amphitheatre, where
all sit together and where some thirty thousand persons can be
accommodated. The companies of the country itself are, in my
view, better than those which are transplanted to Paris and to
our provinces, but the object of my ever-increasing surprise,
although I have seen her every day, is a young dancer who leaps
at least as high as Javilliers who can make twenty successive
capers without once repeating herself, and perform every one of
the steps that are so admired in our dancing masters; so that
on the score of lightness Camargo, by comparison with her, is
a dancer of stone. In general the dancers of this country are
very much stronger and cleverer than our own.”

Favart, in a letter of the 20th June 1762, proposed to the Count of Durazzo the engagement of Baletti the elder, a son of Silvia and he spoke at the same time of Mademoiselle Dumalgé:

“Baletti is young, no more than thirty to thirty-three years
of age. He has with him a young dancer, Mademoiselle Dumalgé,
of sixteen to seventeen years old; she is very shapely, though
perhaps a little high in the shoulders, which is but a trivial
fault. After Catinon and Camille, she is the very best of our
first dancers at the Théâtre-Italien. She will follow the
fortunes of Baletti, who has, it is said, secretly married her.”

The dance has changed like the fashions, and yet when we look at the ancient figures, statues, painting and Etruscan, Greek and Roman bas-reliefs which preserve for us numerous types of dancers of both sexes, we are impressed by the fact that the grace of the human body is above and beyond all transient conventions, and that it has remained the same throughout the ages in which the art of dancing has been spreading through the world. One might compare the Ballerina of the Renaissance with the dancer with the timbrel of Herculaneum, and discover the same movement of body and the same simplicity of garments. In other paintings the manner of holding up a corner of the gown, of draping the body in the _tarentina_ or of raising cymbals or a veil above the head, might have been created yesterday by the latest brilliant choregrapher from Italy—Taglioni, Carlotta Grisi, La Rosati or La Ferraris.

The famous Bigottini, the greatest mime of the nineteenth century in the serious manner, who could draw tears from her audience in her pathetic scenes, was French. In her day (1809), France was infatuated with Italian artists to such an extent that several of our composers gave the first performances of their compositions as if they were the work of ultramontane artists; an instance of this is afforded by Mohul, with his comic opera _L’Irato_.

XI

STENTERELLO

STENTERELLO, MENEGHINO and GIANDUJA are what the Italians call _caratterista_—that is to say, they are character parts interposed; in other words, they are rôles which, whilst frequently being of no value to the action of the piece, are nevertheless introduced so as to throw, even into the darkest melodrama, a little mirth by jests and pleasantries that are frequently incoherent and quite irrelevant. Whatever the piece that is performed, the _caratterista_ comes to discharge his own peculiar part in it—speaking his own dialect, and dressed in his own traditional costume—among other actors who speak Italian and are dressed according to the exigencies of the situation and the piece. Stenterello in Tuscany, Meneghino in the Milanese, and Gianduja in Piedmont are all of them the same type, modified to suit the particular taste of each province. Each of these three masks is to-day the sole representative mask of his country. They have dethroned and replaced throughout northern Italy Harlequin and Brighella, who survive merely as puppets in the marionette shows.

“The gentlemen of La Crusca,” says M. Frédéric Mercey, “and
the purists of Florence in general, are the avowed enemies
of poor Stenterello. They cannot bring themselves to speak
of him without scorn and anger, and it is less his conduct
than the incorrectness of his language and his weakness for
dialect which provokes their hatred. Stenterello, in effect, is
Tuscan rather than Florentine. You will find him at Perugia,
at Arezzo, at Pistoia, and at Siena; he is even naturalised
in Lucca, in Pisa and in Bologna, and he speaks perfectly
the accented language of the people of these towns, of which
you would believe him to be a native. But if his language
varies his actions are always the same. In Bologna Stenterello
took some time ago the ways of his companions of Venice,
Milan and Turin, Harlequin, Meneghino and Girolamo, between
whom and himself it is not to be doubted that certain bonds
of relationship exist. The fact is that all these are mere
variants of the same type, various countenances of the same
character, modified by environment and climate.”

The Florentines claim that their Stenterello, a very fantastic personage, was created in the late eighteenth century by an extremely popular actor named Il Buono. The cut of this character’s costume, however, does not tend to prove him of so recent a creation. The showy and variegated colours of the garb of Stenterello, the three deep parallel lines at each corner of the mouth—derived from the ancient _rictus_ worn by all the masks of the Renaissance—seem to us to belong to a sixteenth-century type, a type no doubt forgotten, but strikingly resuscitated by the actor Buono.

This opinion that types are no longer improvised, but merely transformed, is that of M. Frédéric Mercey. “In the days of the republic of Florence,” he says, speaking of Stenterello, “he dwelt in palaces; he was then in the very prime of life, and in the fine vigour of his spirit; he was called Macchiavelli, Boccaccio, L’Aretino or Poggio. Stenterello is the rather vulgarised descendant of these fine wits, and he has inherited in particular their vices and their meannesses. I am surprised that instead of taking the name of _Stenterello_ he should not have retained that of Poggio. But the name of Stenterello—derived from the verb _stentare_, to endure—prevailed.”

Stenterello does not deliberately aim either at wit or at malice; when he achieves one or the other he does so unconsciously, as a result of his natural ingenuousness. Like all the types of the Italian comedy, he is a faithful reflection of the people who created him.

During the carnival of Florence, great sheets, upon which were painted the acts and _gesta_ of Stenterello, were wont to drape the corners of every street. His performances were held in the little theatres of the _Piazza Vecchia_ and the _Borgo Ogni Santo_. The lower orders of Florence encumbered the pit and the aristocracy filled the boxes. Twopence was the price of a seat in the pit, and the best boxes were to be had for a florin. At these same prices admission was to be gained also throughout the remainder of the year when the entertainment consisted of operas sung by worn-out tenors and young creatures who had discarded the needle for the pursuit of art. Nevertheless everybody attended when the great theatres were closed, and one even heard in these places the music of Cimarosa, of Rossini and of Meyerbeer.

No piece was possible in Florence without Stenterello. He was sometimes the servant, sometimes the master; sometimes he parodied the hero of drama, of comedy or of a fashionable romance. Sometimes he personified passions and political caricatures of a palpitating actuality, and his popularity was heightened when, under the anger of the censors, he was sent to spend some days in prison in the person of the actor who performed him, or even of the impresario who admitted him to the stage. Apart from the special pieces of which he is the hero, he is to be seen in a great number of others into which he is introduced even if he has to be dragged in by the ears; thus, for instance, we have _Robert the Devil, with Stenterello_; _Don Giovanni, with Stenterello_, etc. Tragedy, drama and serious opera, all make room for him. From choice he undertakes in them the rôle of a cowardly and comical servant. He is very amusing when he is seduced by the nuns in _Robert the Devil_ or when he receives the statue of the commander to supper in _Don Giovanni_.

He changes his costume freely, according to the exigencies of the piece, but he preserves immutably his triumphant black wig, which terminates in a long red queue after the Prussian fashion, his black eyebrows either in the form of corkscrews or else terminating at the ears like those of certain ancient masks, his three deep parallel lines at the corners of his mouth, and finally his white-painted cheeks, on which he sometimes plasters a daub of rouge, shaped like a cart-wheel. But his chief characteristic, the seal without which Stenterello’s existence would be impossible, is the absence of the handsomest of his front teeth. The actor who is to devote himself to the reproduction of this amusing character must, to begin with, undergo this sacrifice. The more marked is the black gap thus made in his upper jaw, the more sure is his success. Moreover the absence of this middle tooth is of enormous assistance to the actor in the imitation of the dialect of the Tuscan folk.

Stenterello is addicted to violent colours. He wears a pale blue coat and a yellow waistcoat, a pair of breeches that are black, or of which one leg is sometimes of an apple-green. His cotton stockings, one of which is red, the other striped blue and white, are stretched upon slightly knock-kneed legs, which bear witness to his Florentine origin. He leaves high heels to the gentlemen of the court of Louis XIV.; he parades his great feet in stout shoes adorned with enormous tin buckles.

Stenterello has neither the malice nor the coarseness of most of the Italian buffoons. We feel that he belongs to a people whose prime requirement is a black coat, and whose greatest desire is to be addressed in the third person. The lively pleasantries of Stenterello are never indecent. His appearance is always in harmony with the proprieties, and he has a certain naïveté proper to the Tuscan people. He is not brave, he never wants to kill anyone, but he lives in great fear of being killed himself. Lean and active, he is always ready to run for it at the first sign of danger. Extremely susceptible, he is gallant towards all women, but it does not amuse him to pay them a protracted court; he lacks the necessary patience. He does not eschew manners which frequently lead to his being cuffed. After women, life’s chief attraction for him lies in the table. Greediness will lead him to forget love; to obtain a good dinner he will perform a thousand knaveries, he will even submit, perhaps, to be beaten, although he has no love for blows, and is greatly in dread for their effect upon his health. His laziness is proverbial, and there is no doubt that if he were possessed of a few halfpence he would be as avaricious as he is gluttonous; but since he possesses nothing of his own, he contents himself with coveting the wives and the dinners of his neighbours, and he loves to lie in the sun like a lizard, dozing, with one eye on the watch. He is happy if he can find an indulgent ear into which to speak ill of this person and that; he will then forget that his belly is empty, and will himself be more amused by his own quips than will others.

M. Frédéric Mercey, in his _Théâtre en Italie_, speaks of several scenarii in which Stenterello plays the protagonist part, the entire action of the piece turning about him. He is the lover of a princess, and desires to declare to her his passion after having performed an exaggerated toilet, with his wig nicely curled. He has even borrowed the travelling satchel of an Englishman of his acquaintance, so as to be irreproachable in his personability. “This satchel contains a multitude of objects whose purposes he cannot even guess, besides fourteen nail-brushes of various patterns. The implied criticism of the meticulous cleanliness of the English is entirely Italian and very droll. Stenterello is astonished by the contents of the satchel, and, after examining each object at length, he attempts to use it. His embarrassment and his commentaries are extremely amusing. Finally, after a hundred futile endeavours appropriately to employ this complicated machinery, he ends by depilating his nose with the corn-razor, and by brushing his teeth with a soap-box full of soap, which distorts his countenance into horrible grimaces.”

Here is an episode from the misfortunes of Stenterello, from which it will be seen that the author has had no scruples about pillaging the adventures of Falstaff:

A prince surprises Stenterello at the feet of the princess his wife. Stenterello thinks to escape by pretending that he is seeking a bracelet which the lady has dropped. The princess, in agreement with her husband, gives Stenterello an assignation. Intoxicated with fatuity, he forgets all prudence, and goes, to be flouted in the chamber of the princess. The prince arrives, Stenterello hides in a coffer. The husband pretends to have heard a noise in his wife’s room. He feigns jealousy, and beats with his sword on the coffer. Stenterello, enclosed in it, bounds with fear. The princess explains that the noise is made by rats. The prince orders the coffer to be thrown into the River Arno. Stenterello, who is in terror, and wants to raise the lid, which is crushing his fingers, cries out and is discovered. The princess pretends to swoon. Four men arrive, and they seize Stenterello, who leaves his wig in their hands. He begs for mercy. He says that he was but preparing a surprise for the princess in the hope of amusing her, “and I mistook this coffer for the door when I attempted to leave the room.”

“No, no! Don Stenterello,” says the prince. “You are an old debauchee, and you are going to be punished.” The prince draws an enormous hunting knife sharp as a razor, and threatens him by a terrible gesture, to the great applause of the public. Stenterello begs again for mercy, and swears that he is not guilty.

“And if I were to forgive you, and to restore you to liberty, what should you do now?”

“I am of agreeable appearance,” says Stenterello, lifting up his bald scarred head, “and have a voice as lovely as a flute; the impresario of the theatre of the _Borgo Ogni Santo_ would, I am sure, give me an engagement as _soprano_.”

Sometimes he imitates the boasts of the captains or of Scaramouche. He then assumes a military costume, causes his spurs to jingle, and trails a great sword after him. He swears by bombs and cannons, and he relates how, at a single sword-stroke, he split in twain a cavalier and his horse.

After having engaged in all professions, after having been a doctor, a lawyer, a brigand, a porter, without ever making a success of anything, he returns to Florence. He had left his wife there in misery in a hovel. He finds her now dressed with great elegance, and occupying a handsome house.

“Am I really at home?” he inquires.

Upon receiving an affirmative reply from his wife, and having made the discovery that she is more beautiful than he had ever suspected, he asks her whence proceeds all this wealth.

“My friend,” says she, “you recommended me to Providence when you departed, and Providence has not forgotten me.”

Stenterello is enchanted. After he has eaten and drunk, and as he is reposing in one of the arm-chairs of Providence, his wife enters with three children who throw themselves upon his neck. Thereupon he protests: “Per Bacco! I did not leave a single child in Florence. Is it Providence again that has undertaken to make me a father?”

“Without a doubt,” says Madame Stenterello, “and you shall lose nothing by it.”

Stenterello accepts his position with an air of comical resignation. No sooner has he become accustomed to his house and his furniture than he grows miserly. He will not consent to cut an egg into four, deeming it wasteful.

“At breakfast,” he says, “an egg ought to be pricked at one of its ends with a pin. Through this puncture half the contents is sucked, the rest being left for dinner. In this fashion taste is satisfied, the pleasure of eating is long-drawn and the purse does not grow empty. Moreover the egg is not lost, the shell may be taken back to the poultry-keeper, so that with it she may invite the hens to lay further. That is what I call eating an egg in a profitable manner.”

Having turned avaricious, he becomes a speculator, and, seeking quickly to double his capital, he so contrives that he loses everything. But Stenterello is growing old and his wife with him; with age she can no longer hope for anything from Providence. Stenterello drives her out, with reproaches upon her evil conduct, and sends the children to the devil, calling them bastards.

Stenterello is often oppressed in his home life. In an Italian farce which shows him as a musician, he has for wife a virago who constantly scolds and shouts. He decides never to answer her in dangerous moments, save by a funereal note, drawn from the depths of an enormous hunting horn, very much larger than himself. A sound and no more; but what a sound!

This idea of replying only by a sound is reminiscent of the scene of Arzigogolo, a Florentine peasant of the sixteenth century, an ancestor of the more modern Stenterello. Charged with theft, Arzigogolo repairs to Alesso, a lawyer, to undertake his defence. The affair being explained, Ser Alesso sees only one way out of it for Arzigogolo, and that is to feign insanity.

ARZIGOGOLO. Oh! uh! I don’t know how to do it. It is difficult.
If I were wise I should do this. (_He strikes him with his
stick._)

ALESSO. May the devil take you, wretch! You have nearly broken
my shoulder; you will be a fool indeed if you caress the judge
in that fashion.

ARZIGOGOLO. I have heard tell that fools always strike; I had
a brother whose brain was deranged who always behaved like that
to me. (_He advances to strike again._)

ALESSO. Be quiet, animal! Can you think of no other way to play
the fool?

ARZIGOGOLO. I have heard tell that fools throw stones. I will
go and find one and throw it at your head.

The lawyer, having prevailed upon him to be quiet, advises him to answer all the judge’s questions by a whistle.

Arzigogolo appears before the judge, who asks him: “What is your name, peasant? Where do you live?” etc. Arzigogolo answers each of these questions by a sharp whistle. The judge dismisses him acquitted, greatly pitying him.

Comes the lawyer to claim his fee, and he receives from the peasant no other answer but the same whistle.

The Stenterello of Bologna does not play parts of an importance equal to those of the Florentine Stenterello. He is usually a servant, wearing his livery with negligence and dressed awry. Like his Florentine namesake he wears stockings of different colours, which is, as we have said, a tradition of the variegated costumes of the sixteenth century. He is a poltroon and a dolt, but his most distinctive trait is his preoccupation, so profound that it sometimes amounts to imbecility. In Bologna Stenterello is a rather fantastic being. His continual absent-mindedness, his mania for relating stories which never come to an end, and which he interrupts at the most interesting point, his jests and his grimaces are all accepted as drolleries and impertinences by the public. The manner in which he turns to crave his master’s pardon for having committed a fresh stupidity disarms the anger of old Tabarino himself, who laughs and takes the public to witness, with an air of resignation, exclaiming: “What would you? It is Stenterello!”

It has been said that there never have been, and never will be, two Stenterelli who resemble one another. He is the most difficult personage to present of all the masks of the Italian comedy. He is a type full of fantasy in his jests, and of spontaneity in his improvisation.

Stenterello, having angered his master, who has withdrawn so as not to be driven to beat him, takes the public into his confidence: “Conceive now—— But then you saw him for yourselves, didn’t you? My master had given me a letter to get mended and a watch to put in the post, into that big hole with which you are perfectly acquainted, like the mouth of Gina, who is a pretty girl with eyes bigger than my nose. Well then, it happened that I met Signor Birrichino, who said to me: ‘Stenterello!’ ... a droll of a name that, which comes to me from my father, who married my mother, so that my mother, who was the daughter of my grandfather, who was the father of my father, who was the father of his son, who was the father of my mother, had a husband who was the son of my grandmother. Oh! no, no!” (He turns a pirouette and is on the point of going out.) “Where is my master? What a droll master! He is so absent-minded that he has forgotten to give me a new pair of stockings.” (He thrusts out his leg, loses his balance, stumbles over his foot and pretends to fall; but he recovers, and carefully seeks the thing that may have tripped him. He picks up a hair.) “I am losing them all.” (He takes off his wig and shows his bald head, a disclosure which never fails to amuse the public. Taking the hair, he replaces it on his head with care, whereafter he puts on his wig back to front, and seeks to continue his discourse; but the long queue which hangs down over his nose, and which he thrusts aside at every moment, causes him horribly to squint.) “My hair, which was the son of my wig, which was the grandmother of the watch which I took to the post.... But what the devil’s this?” (And he pulls at the end of the long queue, which gradually comes undone; he continues to pull, and draws off so many yards of ribbon that he becomes entangled in it, and ends by running off shouting: “The devil, the devil!” leaving the public in suspense on the score of the explanation which he had to offer of the way in which he had discharged his errand.) It is quite impossible to convey any adequate notion of his utterance of all these inconsequent ideas, interrupted by poses and grimaces; the performance must be witnessed if the success of such a type is to be understood.

“Harlequin is made, but Stenterello is born,” said one who still laughed twenty years afterwards in relating the jests and postures of Dominicone, a comic actor of great gifts. He played the parts of father with Stenterello for his servant. The troupe of Bon and Romagnoli, which was in the service of the King of Sardinia in 1833, still possessed a very remarkable Stenterello, who was the cause of a deal of laughter, particularly when Gattinelli played the rôle of master at the theatre of the Corso, at Bologna.

In Florence, Ricci was the most famous of the modern Stenterelli. He was an actor of endowments greatly above those of the buffoon. He played with great spirit and taste the rôles of Bouffé and Arnal, intermingling them with Stenterellic jests.

In 1853, at the theatre of San Carlino in Naples, Altavilla was still a remarkable _caratterista_ in every sense, using always the Neapolitan dialect. What an extraordinary verve of improvisation must have been necessary to enable an actor to create a fresh rôle every second or third day!

ii

The modero MENEGHINO, a character sometimes servant, sometimes master and sometimes peasant, speaking the dialect of Lombardy, descends in fairly direct line from the Menego of Ruzzante, and the Menghino of _La Lena_ of Ariosto.

Whilst it is true that his garments, of a rather modern cut, are reminiscent of those of Stenterello, but more sober in the matter of colour, they do not at all resemble those of his ancestor Menego. But why should Meneghino more than any other mask have been faithful to tradition in the matter of costume? The modern Brighella, for instance, resembles but faintly the Brighella of the sixteenth century, whilst about the Pantaloon of to-day very little remains of the erstwhile Venetian Pantalone.

Meneghino, the Milanese, wears a short coat and breeches of green cloth with red buttons and lacings; his waistcoat is flowered, and his stockings striped. His countenance, jovial of expression with its tip-tilted nose, is framed in a wig of flat hair gathered into a queue wrapped in red; and his hat, laced in red, is far more like one of those enormous castors worn by the sixteenth-century buffoon than a tricorne.

Menego and Menato are, under two different names, one and the same personage, created by Marco Aurelio Alvarotto, an actor in the Paduan troupe of Ruzzante. He is a comic type, a sort of simple and poltroon peasant and sometimes a servant. Under his apparent stupidity, Menego (Domenico), thinking and speaking in the manner of the peasants, frequently complains of the customs and vices of the day.

Here is a “very facetious and very comical” dialogue from the plays of Ruzzante, declaimed at Fossone during the hunt in 1528. (_Recitato a Fosson alla caccia._)

MENEGO. January, February, March, April, May, and June—the
month of wheat; to the devil with the others! The year is too
long. Provided that wheat becomes bread through the sickle,
that is all that matters. But who is this that comes? Is it not
my gossip Duozzo? It is he. Gossip, how goes the harvest?

DUOZZO. Badly, gossip. Whoever seeks misery this year will find
it without a signpost to guide him.

MENEGO. As for me, I seek a means to eat as little as possible.
These cursed beetroots have so enlarged me that I take a deal
of filling.

DUOZZO. To tell you the truth, gossip, I think you ought to
eat sorb-apples so as to reduce your poor stomach; that is my
opinion.

MENEGO. What I seek, gossip, is to render myself ill, because
when I am ill I have no appetite; and to have no appetite is
all that I can desire. Do you understand, gossip?

DUOZZO. You speak very wisely, gossip.

MENEGO. The usurers will neither sell wheat nor even display
it, so that there is nothing to be done. I am inclined to think
that there will be quite enough even should they sell it at a
large profit. But they hunger after the blood of the poor more
than a lean horse hungers after new grass.

DUOZZO. That is very true, gossip, and we may shout, curse, or
grow as rabid as dogs before wheat will be harvested for the
common weal; but judging from the month of January, I think
that there will be abundance and all men will rejoice.

MENEGO. But for that hope, gossip, we should be in bad case.
And as for me, I fear lest the highway robbers and the gentry
may eat the harvest before it is ripe.

DUOZZO. I share your fears, but they cannot carry off
everything.

MENEGO. Ay! We’ll get what they leave, and we shall grow so fat
on it that we shall look like hanged men, and so light that the
wind will blow us away.

DUOZZO. So that, gossip, you are afraid?

MENEGO. I? I am afraid of nothing but fear. I am a man, and if
any are going to survive, I should like to be one of them.

DUOZZO. As for me I am troubled by neither wife nor child.
I live like a thief. And now, gossip, let us speak of more
pleasing things. How go your love affairs?

MENEGO. Eh, gossip, how shall love affairs progress when one
possesses nothing? How shall a man take home a wife when there
is only a single piece of bread in the house? If she has a good
appetite she will not be able to live on words. You understand?

DUOZZO. Of course; it is quite clear.

The conversation continues on these lines. Menego announces that he is awaiting the harvest to marry a certain Gnva. Duozzo tells him, little by little, that he knows a _quidam_ who will not await the new harvest to find food for Gnva, and that in fact he carried her off three days ago.

“I don’t believe it,” says Menego; “nevertheless let us go and find her and hear the truth from her.”

Duozzo begs leave to go and fetch his weapons, saying that there are wolves in the forest, and that he does not care to quarrel with Nale, who is Menego’s rival. Menego replies that there is no need for weapons on a visit to Gnva, that he has his knife, which is sufficient. (Here follow some very equivocal pleasantries and puns.) He winds up by saying that he did not know his gossip for a coward, but now that he sees that he is, he will go alone. Gnva, however, solves the matter by arriving in person.

MENEGO. Good-morrow, my dear Gnva, how are you?

GNVA. I should be better if I had bread. This is a very evil
year.

MENEGO. I have brought you a large piece which, on my honour, I
shall give you if you will answer me on certain matters which
my gossip here has told me.

Before replying Gnva wants to sing. They sing, and, as they are finishing, Nale, Menego’s rival, enters and leaps upon him, sword in hand, shouting: “I have got you, traitor! Surrender!”

Menego attempts to escape without answering; he darts this way and that, receiving so many blows that in the end he falls down. Nale carries off Gnva, and Menego is left on the ground.

“Am I unfortunate enough?” he cries. “One hundred against one! He has pierced me through and through; there are more holes in me than in a sieve. What a beautiful life awaited me! I think of it now that I am on the point of death. Confession! confession! I am covered with blood. Duozzo, my gossip, go and find me a doctor; but then he lives too far away; and perhaps he wouldn’t come; and even if he came perhaps he wouldn’t be able to heal my wounds. I am certain that I shall never get well again, I shall be crippled for life, that is sure. Woe me! Must I die then in such a moment as this? Something told me that I should die this year, if not from wounds then from hunger in this devastated country. And so that you die, Menego, what does it matter whether you die thus or of hunger? And I shall never see my Gnva again! Yet my heart tells me that perhaps I shall get well! Shall I allow myself to die or not? What am I to do, or what am I not to do? What if I were to take vengeance upon this dog of a traitor who has just slashed me into ribbons? Yes, I shall be avenged! I shall let it be known everywhere that he has killed me. May the plague stifle him, the coward! I shall send him to the galleys! I shall kill myself. It shall be said everywhere that he is my assassin. But how shall I kill myself? That is the trouble. There are so many ways, yet now that I come to seek one I cannot find any! Where is the knife? Now that I need it I no longer have it. But I shall find a way. I shall eat myself. That will begin by satisfying my hunger. None but myself will know it, and it will be said that this wretch murdered me and that dogs ate my body, and in this fashion he will be sent to the galleys. Ah yes, you shall go to the galleys; yes, to the galleys! Don’t grow impatient, gossip, I shall bequeath you my knife and my shoes. Yet it is a pity to die so young! Farewell, Gnva, I shall never see you again. Yet, wait! I don’t want to eat myself, I should suffer too much. I shall strangle myself.”

A magician arrives. Duozzo tells him that Menego has gone mad. The magician, half-priest, half-doctor, cures him, and fortifies him with fresh hope. He assures him that he shall see his Gnva as much as he desires, and that he shall have abundance of bread. Menego, comforted, thanks him and announces that he never felt so well.

Then follow predictions: “You shall not die of hunger this year, although you may have to live on very meagre fare. There will be great wars, and after them there will be peace. After famine there will be abundance, and wealthy men will live happily in the world. Thereupon I leave you, I must go. I shall come again on Sunday or some other day.”

The piece ends in excuses offered to Menego by his rival. Menego takes the hand of Gnva, who swears for ever after to be faithful to him, whereupon they abandon themselves to joy, dancing and singing.

The character of the modern Meneghino is the same, with few differences, as that of Stenterello; the same costume, the same parts, the same buffoonery, and therefore the same reception from the Milanese public.

“Meneghino,” says M. Frédéric Mercey, “has taken the place of
Harlequin and Brighella. Meneghino is the spoilt child of the
Milanese, the hero of the theatre of la Stadera; his talent
consists particularly in a sort of adroit awkwardness, in the
amusing manner in which he knocks against walls and trips upon
the pavement without ever falling, and without ever losing his
nonchalance.”

In absent-mindedness and naïveté he surpasses Pierrot. Meeting in the streets of Milan a painter who is carrying two portraits on his shoulders, Meneghino returns to his master, refusing to go the errand upon which he was sent: “I shall not go out again to-day,” he says; “disaster would befall me; I met a man with three heads, and that is not natural.”

On another occasion, coming home at night, Meneghino wishes to light his candle, and seeks to strike a light in the darkness. He hurts his fingers and drops flint and steel. How is he to find them again? His ideas work quickly. He gropes about for the candle, finds it, and runs to his next-door neighbour for a light, with which he returns to look for his flint and steel. “I knew I should find them like this,” he says, and you behold him striking them once more. A spark flies, the tinder ignites, and he applies it to the candle which has lighted his labours. “Behold,” he cries, “it is lighted!”