The history of the harlequinade, volume 2 (of 2)

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 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.

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.)

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.

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.

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!”

A very common absent-mindedness with him is to array himself in his master’s dressing-gown and slippers, and to lie down in his master’s bed. The numerous cuffs he has received have never cured him of this abstractedness. You should see him waiting at table, putting sugar into the soup as though it were salt, pouring wine on to the heads of the guests, and then taking off their wigs to dry them by the fire; he mistakes the candle for the vinegar bottle, and scatters tallow into the salad. He is often to be seen throwing the garments of his master through the window, which he has mistaken for the wardrobe, and doing a thousand other things of a like nature.

Pantaloon, seeing him with a button in his ear, comments upon it. “I wear it,” he replies, “because without it I should be sure to hear something dirty.” That is the wittiest thing he ever uttered.

iii

Gianduja and Girolamo are one and the same character. At the Fiano theatre in Milan, he was existing still in the nineteenth century under the name of Girolamo, and was performing, in the dialect of Lombardy, the same rôles of talkative, poltroon and greedy peasant as the Gianduja of Turin and Genoa. The Piedmontese, fearing in 1802 that in the name of Girolamo (Jérôme), borne by the king, some political allusion might be suspected, he was rebaptized, and renamed Gianduja.

He is a native of Caglianetto, near Asti, as his dialect shows. He is an astute peasant, who simulates stupidity, either a pretended dolt or else a cunning dolt. His is the style of wit which the English attribute to the Irish. He is very much less fantastic than Stenterello, and when he became Gianduja he ceased to show any of the absent-mindedness of Meneghino and Girolamo. Of this last the following is related:—

In the history of the marionettes, M. Ch. Magnin says:

Gianduja wears a maroon coat and a yellow waistcoat, both trimmed with red, a pair of green or maroon breeches, red stockings and a black wig with a trumpet-shaped queue in red. His physiognomy is a mixture of coarseness and cunning. His large eyes, his arched and heavy eyebrows, his flat nose, his thick lips, his fat chin and his fleshy cheeks remind us of the countenance of the ancient Silenus.

He was to be seen in Genoa at the Delle-Vigne theatre, playing in his own costume the part of a servant of Ugolino and coming with his quips, to throw a little gaiety into the midst of a black melodrama, in which Ugolino, in his tower, before perishing of hunger, watched his children expiring about him. During these critical moments, Gianduja would enter the sombre dungeon from time to time; it is not clear why he should have had the liberty to do this, for, far from bringing the least nourishment to the dying man, he came to jest in his patois upon this horrible situation.

He was to be seen again at Cuneo at the foot of the Alps. The theatre was more or less open to the sky and admission was not expensive: a penny for the front seats and a halfpenny for the others, and an audience that ate apples and nuts throughout the performance. The piece was La Principessa Mirabella, and to one who inquired whether it was written and learned by heart or improvised, the impresario replied: “Improvisato tutto, e sempre; Gianduja talks like a peasant.” It was an affair of primitive marionettes like those of the Guignol of the Champs-Elysées.

First came a prince dressed in sky-blue satin slashed with white, a cloak of yellow velvet, a cap with white feathers, laced with gold. He was accompanied by Gianduja in his classic costume, and both were lost in a blue forest, and were devising some means of finding food. Gianduja has several notions, such as to repair to the baker at the corner, or the pastrycook opposite. But his master draws his attention to the fact that they are lost in a vast solitude, that their horses are worn out, with weariness and hunger, and that for himself he desires only one thing, death, since the Princess Mirabella will never consent to see him again unless he shall have accomplished her thirty-seven wishes. Gianduja is not disposed to die; he says that he imagined himself at Cuneo, which is entirely outside of the subject, and which shakes the audience with laughter. After having sought for a little while, Gianduja discovers a spring of pure and limpid water. Thus both are saved from certain death. But Gianduja can think of nothing but dying. This marvellous water has quickened his appetite. He has not eaten since morning, he says, since when he has done nothing but walk, which is to treat his body very treacherously. “It is all very well for my master, who at the end of his travels will find Mirabella. But I would very gladly possess a loaf surrounded with sausages.” Thereupon he is taken ill, and believes himself to be dying. He implores his master to bury him after he has expired, and whether it be so as not to die under his eyes, whether from other causes, he goes off, followed by the laughter of the spectators.

The action continues thus through four or five scenes, which repeat always the same situation. In each scene the amorous cavalier recommences his trials until the moment in which the Princess Mirabella—a very beautiful marionette, in cloth-of-gold and velvet, who always makes the same gesture by means of a cord pulled by the impresario—informs her cavalier that she accepts him in marriage, “because he has performed all her wishes, and since nothing pleases women so much as the obedience of men.” After this Gianduja demands the hand of the first lady of the court.

Without Gianduja no performance would have been possible. The indulgent public yawned through the scenes of love and rivalry, for there was a traitor in the piece—a traitor dressed like Buridan, with a terrible beard and squinting eyes. Did the impresario perceive that his public was languishing, he never hesitated to cut short the scene and to introduce Gianduja, who abandoned himself to amorous incoherencies.

Gianduja enjoyed his greatest favour in Turin during the nineteenth century. In The Taking of Delhi, a long, terrible and spectacular melodrama, Gianduja, disguised as the aide-de-camp of an Indian chief, amused the audience by his reflections, his sallies and his witticisms, always in Piedmontese. He would come and go amidst English soldiers in red coats and white trousers, or amidst kilted Highlanders as freely as among Brahmins dressed like the Turks to be seen at fancy-dress balls. Gianduja crosses the battlefields, enters the besieged garrison or leaves it, is present at war councils, and listens to the enumeration of the dead and wounded without the least discomposure. He is afraid everywhere and of everything, although no one, with the exception of the public, takes the least notice of him.

iv

Zacometo, which is Venetian for Giacometto, who, down to the eighteenth century, was called Momolo (diminutive of Girolamo) is the Venetian caratterista. Usually dressed in white calico, he whitens his face like Pierrot save for a large blood-red stain, placed brutally upon one cheek only, and one red stocking as worn by the Venetians in the fifteenth century. Zacometo, whatever costume he may assume, preserves always this red stocking.

There is something of Scapin, something of Harlequin and something of Stenterello in the character, so that his doings and his ways are very varied. When he plays with Brighella, who is sharp, astute and very witty, Zacometo is a dolt, a clown. In Le Baruffe Chiozzotte of Goldoni, Zacometo’s rôle is that of the fool; dressed like a fisherman of Chioggia he still preserves his distinctive cheek and stocking.

This character comes to Venice to fling athwart no matter what piece his amusing reflections and his fantastic interludes. He is akin to the absent-minded Stenterello; he says very cunning things with the air of not knowing what he is saying; he begins a sentence to finish it in another act, or not to finish it at all, and he stares at the public, and even addresses it, always with the air of not perceiving its presence.

It may be said that when the actor entrusted with this rôle is equipped with talent and wit, he gives Zacometo a countenance proper to the people of the lagoons. He is more of an epicure than a glutton, more of a talker than a gallant with women; he is superbly lazy, yet capable of great vivacity, displaying alternations between dreamy somnolence and sudden awakenings; in short, he displays the petulance and the agility of the cat. He fully portrays the nature of the barcarolo, who passes so promptly from slumber, his body dangling over the sleepy waters of the lagoon, to laughter, to jests and above all to the derision of strangers.

Zacometo has never quitted Venice, and if at times he is absent from the theatres of San Samuele or San Gallo, it is that he may go as a marionette to amuse the merchants and fishermen on the quay of the Schiavoni.

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The character of Jeannot, a rustic and stupid servant, who destroys by his transposition of words the sense of what he wishes to say to us, although believed to have been created in 1779 in the forain theatres by the actor Volange, is nevertheless a very ancient type. From Zanni the Florentine authors of the sixteenth century have created Gianni, Giannino, and Giannico, comedy servants.

From these come Jeannin, Janin, Jennicot, Janicot, Janot, comics of the French farces, who amused the public in the sixteenth century being coeval with Jean-de-l’Epine.

Jeannot (Giannino) reappears in the scenarii and pieces of the Comédie-Italienne at the end of the seventeenth century, and in the plays of Gherardi in which he performs several old man parts (1694).

All the world knows his nonsense (janotismes): he has sold more than a hundred trusses to a man of straw; he buys a loaf from a butter merchant: