There was in the sixteenth century, in Bologna, a sort of improviser, or popular poet, named Giulio-Cesare Croce who sang in the public places to the accompaniment of stringed instruments, which caused him to be given the surname of Della Lira. The burden of his songs was a lament on the life and adventures of a fictitious personage named Bertoldo. Perceiving that the crowd listened attentively and took pleasure in his burlesque epic, he conceived the notion to print his songs in prose and to offer them for sale. The public snatched at these books with enthusiasm, a circumstance which led to his increasing the Life of Bertoldo and adding that of his son Bertoldino, which latter enjoyed no less success than the former.
Croce was born in 1550 in the Bolognese village of Persiceto. At the age of seven he lost his father, and went to live with an uncle, a farrier at Castel-Franco. After having been admitted as a master of his trade of blacksmith, he settled in Bologna, was twice married, and became the father of fourteen children. It was there that the spirit of improvisation seized him and brought him his great reputation. The Cavalieri of Bologna paid him a pension in his old age, and he died in 1609.
Some years after the death of Croce Della Lira, Camillo Scaligero Della Frata composed a third volume, containing the Life of Cacasenno, the son of Bertoldino. This series enjoyed such a success in Italy that it ran into a large number of editions, and at the end of the seventeenth century the Bolognese painter, J. M. Crespi, illustrated various passages of these popular ballads; these were engraved by Lodovico Mattioli, and, instead of issuing a new edition of the romance in prose, several wits shared among themselves the labour of composing a poem in twenty cantos. Twenty-six authors, all of them Bolognese, Ferrarese or Lombards, co-operated in this task. The result was a superb volume in quarto, adorned with pictures and accompanied by notes, arguments and allegories, with Tuscan and Bolognese texts and a Bolognese vocabulary. This work appeared first in 1736 and then in 1740, published by Lelio della Volpe, “At the Sign of the Fox.” A third edition appeared in 1747 in Venice, printed in Bolognese and in Venetian. Such was the vogue of this little poem that it was translated into modern Greek and enjoyed the greatest success in Greece and in Turkey. The fame of this buffoon creation has not yet ceased; to this day in Italy all who can read have read La Vita di Bertoldo, and nurses relate it to their nurslings. Bertoldo is better known in Italy than Bluebeard or Tom Thumb elsewhere. In general the principal features, sallies, retorts, witticisms or episodes of La Vita di Bertoldo are so celebrated that they have become proverbial, like “the peace of Marcolfa.”
Marcolfa was Bertoldo’s wife, a good woman, who, after quarrelling during the day with her husband, made the peace with him in the evening, and she found this peace-making so pleasant that, so as to provide occasion for it, she would frequently set up little disputes.
Croce Della Lira’s little poem begins as follows:—
“In the tenth century of our era, King Alboin reigned over Lombardy and resided in Verona. This prince, who had conquered all Italy, was none the less very good, very gentle and very just.
“At the same time there lived in a little Veronese village a peasant named Bertoldo, whose countenance was ridiculous, whose head was as big as a pumpkin, whose hair was flat and red, whose ears were enormous and whose little eyes were red-rimmed; his nose was thick and flat, and red as a beetroot; his wide mouth was a slit from ear to ear; he displayed two teeth like the tusks of a boar, and his beard was coarse and dirty. His figure was no better than his face; his hands were large, his legs massive and crooked and his skin rough. But his wit was sharp and subtle, his judgment sound, and he was the pleasantest fellow in the village of Bertagnana, in which he lived. His fellow-citizens preferred his moralisings and his discourses to those of their priest. He adjusted their differences more satisfactorily than their lords and judges; and, lastly, he made them laugh more than the charlatans and buffoons who sometimes passed through the village.
“He was the youngest of ten brothers and had barely enough for his own subsistence, that of his wife, Marcolfa, and a child named Bertoldino.
“One day Bertoldo was taken with a fancy to see the city and the court, this from mere curiosity, without any particular intention.
“Arrived in the market-place in Verona, he was in the act of looking at the king’s palace, which he took for a great church, when he perceived two women who were fighting for a mirror. An officer of the guards came to inform them that the king desired to know the subject of their difference. Thus Bertoldo learned that Alboin was a good prince, who lent an ear to everybody. He saw that the gates of the palace stood open and that the guards hindered none from entering. He went in and penetrated to the audience chamber where the king was enthroned. There were some other seats, placed below and destined for the greater of his lords, who, nevertheless, remained respectfully standing. Bertoldo sat down without ceremony. Some courtiers, observing the impertinence of the peasant, and his grotesque countenance, admonished him that it was indecent to sit in the presence of the king.
“‘Why so?’ demanded Bertoldo. ‘I sit down in church in the presence of God!’
“‘But do you not know that the king is a personage elevated above all others?’
“‘Per Bacco, he is not as high as the cock on our village steeple, which even tells us what the weather is going to do.’
“These words are reported to the king, who then questions Bertoldo:
“‘Who are you?’ he demands.
“‘A man.’
“‘When did you come into the world?’
“‘When it pleased the good God to send me, and my parents to bring me into it, for it is a matter with which I was not concerned.’
“‘What is your country?’
“‘The world.’
“These replies stimulated the good king’s curiosity. ‘What,’ he asked, ‘is the fleetest thing in all the world?’
“‘Thought.’
“‘Which is the best wine?’
“‘That which is drunk in your neighbour’s house, for it costs nothing.’
“The king’s fool was named Fagotto. He became extremely jealous of the friendship which the king began to show Bertoldo and of the credit which the latter began to enjoy at court. He had the audacity to pit himself against him, thinking to surpass him in wit.
“‘How,’ quoth the fool, ‘would you set about carrying water in a sieve?’
“‘I should wait until it was frozen.’
“‘How would you catch a hare without running?’
“‘I should wait until it was on the spit.’
“Fagotto set him no riddle which he could not answer on the spot. In the heat of the dispute Bertoldo desired to spit. He begged permission of the king.
“‘I grant it willingly,’ said the king, ‘but choose a place in my palace where there will be nothing to spoil.’
“Bertoldo, after having sought awhile, spat upon Fagotto.
“Alboin the Debonnaire conceived a friendship for Bertoldo, perhaps because the latter did not conceal the truth from him, and set about inducing him by facts to contradict the things he had said the day before.
“Bertoldo, to afford the king a proof of the inconsequence, the indiscretion and the inquisitiveness of the fair sex whispered in the ear of a woman of the town that the king had pronounced a decree according seven wives to every husband. The revolted sex came in a crowd, shouting, screaming and insulting the King Alboin, to demand the revocation of his absurd decree. The king had a great deal of trouble to make himself heard, but he contrived it in the end, and informed them that they had been misinformed. On another occasion the ladies of the court claimed the exercise of political rights. Bertoldo gave them a box inclosing a bird, with the prohibition to open it within the following twenty-four hours. Two hours later the bird had taken flight. Thus Alboin proved to them that their inquisitiveness and their disobedience excluded them from affairs of state. But the Lombard monarch had a proud and haughty wife, who determined to avenge herself upon Bertoldo.
“Bertoldo was summoned to the presence of the queen and, after insults and blows administered by the ladies of the court, he was thrust into a great sack, which was tied at the neck, and in which he was left, the intention being to throw him into the river that night. A guard was set to watch him. The unfortunate Bertoldo ransacked his mind for a way out of the worst pass in which he had ever found himself.
“He persuaded the guard that he was thus imprisoned for very singular reasons, and that he would explain them if the fellow would untie the sack, and permit him to whisper in his ear the truth of the matter. The guard believed him and permitted him to put his head out of the sack. Bertoldo then told him that he was a great nobleman, that it was desired to compel him to marry a lady who was rich and beautiful, but of suspected chastity; that he preferred to drown sooner than make such a marriage, and that he had been imprisoned by way of compulsion; that in the evening they would come again to seek to drive him into this marriage, but that he would prefer to drown. The guard answered him that he was a fool, and offered to take his place and marry the damsel. Bertoldo got out of the sack, tied up the guard in it and departed from the palace.”
This farce of the sack has since been transported into many Italian scenarii and French farces, and Molière, in Les Fourberies de Scapin has written round it a whole scene in the Italian manner.
“Bertoldo was recaptured and taken back to the palace. The queen obtained her complacent monarch’s consent that her enemy should be hanged, and the king announced this to his dear Bertoldo, excusing himself by the fact that he was compelled to the step so as to be agreeable to his wife.
“‘Sir,’ said Bertoldo, ‘I understand your reasons. It is necessary that the little should suffer for the caprices of the great. But, since I am to hang, I ask a favour: It is that I myself shall have the choice of the tree; for after all if a man is hanged to his own taste he is in part consoled.’ The king consented.
“Bertoldo found fault with every tree proposed to him, and discovered none that suited him. This one was too high, that one too low. The branches of this one were too weak, the branches of that one too strong. The leaves of a cypress were of too sombre a green, and those of a lime too bright. Bertoldo promenaded thus his escort, which consisted of an officer, two soldiers and the hangman, for several days, and visited every wood in the country. They tramped all day and stopped only to dine and sup in the villages. Bertoldo kept his guards in good humour, telling them fine stories of old times, the merriest tales in the world, and thus causing them to forget the object of their commission. When, in the end, they bethought them of it, they could not reconcile with their consciences the hanging of so merry a fellow. They advised him to return home, and themselves went back to the city.
“The queen, persuaded that her orders had been carried out, repented of having enforced the death of the unfortunate Bertoldo, and testified her repentance to the king. The king, who knew that the sly peasant was not dead, arranged things in such a fashion that the queen was the first to demand his recall. The monarch sent to fetch Bertoldo. He was slow to decide to return to court, insisting that soup and friendship are never worth anything when warmed up, and that an ounce of liberty is better than a hundredweight of gold. He received, however, so many proofs of friendship on the part of the king and queen that he went; but he bargained: firstly that his wife Marcolfa and his son Bertoldino should remain in the village, and continue to cultivate the little corner of land which they owned in Bertagnana; secondly that he should always retain his peasant garb, consenting, however, to wear garments without patches and stockings without holes; thirdly that he should be permitted always to eat his bread and onion, and his cheese soup.
“But Bertoldo did not long enjoy the royal favour. Compelled to go to bed later than was his custom, because often the king retained him until after sunset; compelled instead of delving the earth to charge himself with serious affairs, to reason upon them and to talk himself hoarse (because he could not write) his health broke down. The doctors compelled him to take medicine, a thing he had never done in his life, and so he died.
“King Alboin, in memory of the services which Bertoldo had rendered him, brought Marcolfa and Bertoldino to court. He had them properly dressed and presented them with a little farm at the gates of Verona, adding to the gift a coffer filled with gold pieces.
“Near the farm there was a pond in which the frogs made a noise such as Bertoldino had never heard in Bertagnana. He conceived a desire to silence them, and looked round for something to throw at them so as to scare or kill them. He came upon the coffer, took the gold pieces, and flung them into the pond at the aggravating beasts. Some few were killed, but the others croaked more loudly than ever. Thus he flung away all the gold that had been given to him. Marcolfa, perceiving what was done, reproached him bitterly, saying, amongst other things, that if men were to be silenced with money, such was not the case with frogs.
“Bertoldino, reasoning from this that animals preferred to be fed rather than paid, took all the provisions of the house and flung them into the pond. Fresh remonstrances from Marcolfa: ‘Since we have no more flour we shall be forced to eat the chickens, and we have but few hens, and they can only hatch a few eggs at a time.’
“‘Leave it to me,’ said Bertoldino. ‘I am bigger than a hen, I shall be able to hatch more.’ And driving away all the hens from their eggs, he gathered the lot into a heap, sat upon it, and reduced it to a horrible omelette.
“Although admonished and sermonised by the king, who perceived that the son was as stupid as the father had been shrewd, Bertoldino continued to commit folly upon folly. He whipped himself with nettles to drive away the flies. Wishing to hinder a hawk from taking little birds from a nest he tied them all together; as a consequence the bird of prey, which had been taking but one every now and then, carried off the lot at once. Having seen at court some little pug dogs whose ears had been clipped to improve their appearance, he cut the ears of his donkey, and paraded it with ostentation, that it might be admired. This last deed was the cause of his being sent back to his village. Marcolfa followed him thither, and they lived there very happily. Bertoldino married a peasant girl named Menghina, who bore him Cacasenno, the third hero of this history. Alboin the Debonnaire, curious to know whether the grandfather’s wit might not have skipped a generation, summoned Cacasenno to court with the good Marcolfa. But the grandson was no greater success than his father. He was lazy and greedy, and all that is related of him turns upon these two faults. His last feat, and that which brings the epic to a close, was his eating a plate of glue which he mistook for broth. He died of it, or was reduced to the point of death.”
There is nothing surprising in the success scored by this peasant Bertoldo, who, solely by his wit and his naïve simple sense, makes his fortune at the court of a great king, soars above all the ridicule which it is sought to heap upon him, issues cleverly and wittily from all the traps that are set for him, and surmounts by his wit the short-comings of his education. Is it possible that Cervantes was acquainted with the doings of Bertoldo when he created that other type of naïve good sense, Sancho Pança?
Bertoldo was not long in being transferred from fiction into life. The types of Bertoldo, of his son Bertoldino, and even of his grandson Cacasenno, passed on to the trestles of Italy towards the end of the sixteenth century. In Florence, in Bologna and in Lombardy there was no troupe of actors without a Bertoldo, a sort of lackey, a famous utterer of truths; but Bertoldino appears to have had a much more enduring vogue in the theatre. This type, entirely doltish in the original, becomes, according to the actors by whom it was played, a mixture of rustic artlessness and shrewdness; he displays a sententiousness akin to Bertoldo’s, whilst at the same time flinging his gold to the frogs to silence them. For the rest, the adventures of our two heroes have furnished a goodly number of scenes, and even of scenarii, in the three hundred years during which they have been reaping success under different names, such as Pirolino and Bigolo.
In the sixteenth century the Comédie-Italienne performed in Paris a comic opera entitled Bertholde à la Ville, drawn from an interlude entitled Bertoldo in Corte. This was sung by the Italian Company at the Opéra in 1753.
Nicolò Zeccha was playing these naïve rôles under the name of Bertoldino at the end of the sixteenth century. Nicolò Barbieri (Beltrame) says, in speaking of him, that he was a young man of great courage, very skilled in the use of weapons, and a fine dancer. He was skilled too in killing birds on the wing, and so fleet a runner that he had many times brought down stags by pursuing them. Victor Amédée I., Duke of Savoy, invited him often to take part in his hunts, and accorded to him, in addition to this honour, full permission to take such horses from his stables as he might desire, and to hunt when or where he should please in the ducal preserves, with the right to banish from them all those who enjoyed this privilege before him. Zeccha was still a member of the Fedeli troupe in 1630.
Pagliaccio first made his appearance in the troupe of Juan Ganassa, and travelled through Italy, France and Spain in 1570.
The name of Pagliaccio (literally, cut straw), which has become the synonym of madcap or giddy fellow, is no more than a corruption of Bajaccio (a bad jester): it is the pejorative of baja (mockery), signifying an utterer of raileries, good or bad.
In one of the Italian troupes that passed through Florence at the end of the sixteenth century, in 1598, there appeared a personage named Gian Farina, his countenance white like Pagliaccio’s and dressed in very ample linen garments, but wearing in addition the tabaro and a wooden sword. We cannot ascertain the real name of this actor, who, under his sobriquet of Gian Farina, enjoyed a certain celebrity as a comedian and was the director of an itinerant troupe. Like Pagliaccio he was dressed in white, and his face—as his name implies—was whitened with flour. That it was also the custom of the French comedians thus to whiten their faces so as to give more character to their grimaces, we may gather from Montaigne:
“These men of vile condition who seek to recommend themselves by dangerous leaps and other strange mountebank movements were compelled to whiten their faces and to indulge in savage grimaces to induce us to laugh.”
The custom was anterior to Montaigne, for as early as 1502 we find Jean Serre, and his son Auguste Serre, parading under costumes analogous to those transmitted to us by Callot.
In point of costume, Pagliaccio is but a variant of Pulcinella; his pointed hat of white wool and his garment of white linen seem to be no more than the undress of the Neapolitan macaroni eater. His character, however, is quite different.
Salvator Rosa, who was deeply interested in the theatre and in its costumes, has left us the following description:—
“Pagliaccio is dressed in a coat that is extremely full and pleated, and fastened by enormous buttons; his hat is soft and white and capable of assuming any shape; he wears a mask, yet his face is covered with flour. He is stupid, giddy and awkward, and whilst for ever urging others to the most daring measures, he is himself the greatest poltroon on earth; he affects agility, merely to tumble incessantly and drag down with him his old master, whom he has the air of endeavouring to support.”
His flour-covered face and his white mask particularly distinguish him in point of external features from the Neapolitan Pulcinella. In point of character he differs to a still greater degree. Pagliaccio, the stupid lackey, is no more than a trestle jester, whose rôle consists in clumsily imitating, like the English clown, the gestures and movements of the other mimes, and in receiving constant beatings, to the great amusement of the audience.
In Italian pantomimes, Pagliaccio fills the place occupied by Pierrot in France; he no longer wears a mask, his face being merely covered with flour. He is the rival of Harlequin, and the lackey of Pantaloon. He is in love with Columbine, but—like the French Pierrot—he is never successful in carrying her off from Florindo, the lover who is always dressed in the latest fashion of his time and place. In these pantomimes the rôles of father fall to the lot of the Doctor or old Tabarino.
In 1670 Zaniazi, half Gilles, half Pulcinella, performed rôles which greatly resembled those of the doltish Harlequins.
In 1770 Natocelli achieved renown in Italy as a good Bajaccio, whilst in Paris in 1803 Martini was performing his farces with Podesta, Vanini and other Italian buffoons in the ancient gardens of Tivoli.
The French Paillasse is of very much more recent date. It would be towards the end of the eighteenth century that this character made its appearance in the Nicolet Theatre (La Gaîté) in a sort of satire upon the debauched young nobility, a piece based upon the Festin de Pierre, and coarsely adapted to the tastes of the boulevard public. Paillasse took the place of Sganarelle.
Reduced to the utmost misery in consequence of the follies and excesses of his master, having nothing left in which to dress himself, Paillasse would assume the tattered covering of an old mattress and successfully array himself in it to perform his tricks of equilibrium and juggling. Hence the costume, with blue and white or red and white squares, which from that date has been favoured by itinerant jugglers and knife throwers.
Paillasse neither wears a mask nor powders his face with flour. His Indian camisole in squares is short, tight to the figure, with shoulder-of-mutton sleeves fastened at the wrists; his breeches are wide and full, but tight below the knee. He wears the white collar and the black skull-cap.
Brazier says, in his Histoire des Petits Théâtres de Paris, when speaking of the Boulevard du Temple:
“This famous boulevard was a Parisian kermesse, a perpetual fair, an all-the-year-round market. Here you would find matter for laughter and amusement by day and by night; it was the rendezvous of the best society; a crowd of brilliant equipages were constantly stationed there. Cold and heat were braved for the sake of listening to a Paillasse who, in spite of Deburau, was not without merit. This Paillasse, who was named Père Rousseau, had made himself a reputation by singing in the open air:
“I myself have beheld the remains of this good fat Paillasse, and I have bowed respectfully before him.
“I can affirm that never was there a Paillasse more complete or more amusing; it was not a case of the pale and livid countenance of Deburau; it was not his wise and grave performance nor his artistic poses, nor his expressive winks. Here instead was a full, red, plethoric countenance; it symbolised the gaiety of the populace at its fullest. It was impossible not to laugh like a king’s fool at the sight of his grimaces, at the sound of his hoarse and broken voice; he achieved in song what Deburau achieved in pantomime, for this Paillasse of mine was also a great actor. Do not suppose that he recited like a pupil of the Conservatoire; he knew how to be witty and mordant in his declamation; his physiognomy was of an astounding mobility.... We would remain by the hour watching Père Rousseau, that classic Paillasse! We hardly dared to breathe, such was our fear of missing one of his gestures, one of his contortions!”
The farces performed by Rousseau in public at the close of the eighteenth century were very much what they are still to-day, a tissue of imbecilities and gross ineptitudes.
Paillasse. Sir, since you are so kind, I beg of you to do me a service.
Cassandre. What service?
Paillasse. To compose me a compliment for a lady with whom I am madly in love.
Cassandre. It is first necessary that I should know her qualities. Is she lovable, beautiful?
Paillasse. Oh, as for her beauty, there can be but one opinion. First of all, let me tell you that she has only one eye; but the one that remains is so engaging, so witty, so seductive, that it is without equal, and I really think that if it is alone it is because Nature was incapable of producing such another.
Cassandre. She has only one eye! Well, well, that at least is one charm.
Paillasse. Oh, and her mouth, sir! Oh! you cannot picture it. She can thrust a whole apple into it without the least trouble.
Cassandre. Another advantage; so that, when she wishes to tell herself a secret, she can whisper it in her own ear.
Paillasse. True, sir. And then her nose! It is a model nose, a curiosity; it has something of the pear, something of the mulberry, and something of the beetroot.
Cassandre. Ah, I see; it is a rarity.
Paillasse. Oh, and then her feet! They are so small that I assure you I can hardly get her shoes on over my own boots.
Cassandre. And her figure?
Paillasse. Her figure? She is built like a tower; she is quite round. I beg you, sir, to compose me this compliment, which I am burning to address her.
Cassandre. I consent; but first invite the present company to come inside and see the extraordinary spectacle which we are going to give this evening.
Paillasse (brusquely). Hey, there, you others! come inside!
Cassandre (kicking him). Animal! Is that the way to address polite society?
Paillasse. You are right. I made a mistake. Hi, there, you others! come inside!
(Cassandre chases him off.)
At the end of the sixteenth century the French enfariné or the barbouillé, as he was then called, was Robert Guérin, named Lafleur, but better known as Gros-Guillaume. He was a comedian of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, then managed by Valeran, named the Picard, which was as much as to say, a jester and a wit.
Valeran’s real name was Lecomte. “He was,” says Tallemant, “a tall handsome man. He was the head of the troupe and very generous towards its members, and he himself took the money at the door.”
Gros-Guillaume was more than a jester; he was a remarkable actor, greatly esteemed by Henry IV. and by Richelieu, and often commanded to the Louvre to amuse the Béarnais, who enjoyed performances which ridiculed the language and affectations of the gentlemen of his court, particularly those of the Marshal de Roquelaure, concerning whom Tallemant des Réaux relates the following anecdote:—
“One day the king held him between his knees whilst witnessing a command performance by Gros-Guillaume of the farce of the Gentilhomme Gascon. Every now and again, to amuse his master, the Marshal pretended to want to get away to thrash Gros-Guillaume, shouting, ‘Cousis, ne bous fâchez.’ It happened that after the king’s assassination, the comedians, not daring to perform in Paris in view of the general consternation there, repaired to the provinces and made their way to Bordeaux. There the Marshal was the king’s lieutenant. It was necessary for the players to obtain his sanction. ‘I give it you,’ said he, ‘on condition that you will play the farce of the Gentilhomme Gascon.’ They imagined that a sound cudgelling awaited them, and sought to excuse themselves. They were, however, prevailed upon to perform. The Marshal went to see the farce; but the memories it evoked of the good master he had lost occasioned him so much pain that he departed in tears almost immediately after the beginning of the play.”
Gros-Guillaume had been a baker. Fat beyond all measure, he wore two girdles, one above, the other below, his belly. Dressed in white, he discarded the usual mask of Pagliaccio, but covered his face with flour, which he would cause to fly all about him by blowing out his cheeks and by other grimaces. Turlupin, Gaultier-Garguille and he were the only real French buffoons. With Gaultier-Garguille and Gros-Guillaume, who died within a few months of each other, the French farce died also.
Gros-Guillaume wore a white linen blouse, pantaloons with wide brightly coloured stripes, and a red cap. “... This is my valet, Guillaume le Gros,” says Gaultier-Garguille when speaking of him, “and he is to be known by his piebald costume in the fashion of the Swiss of Francis I., and by his belly, copied from a calabash.”
Pedrolino, Piero and Pierrot are all one and the same personage. Under the designation of Piero, a lackey, he was seen on the Italian stage as early as 1574 in a comedy of Cristoforo Castelletti; we find him filling the same character in I Bernardi, by Giovanmaria Cecchi, in 1563, and in the plays of Luigi Grotto, La Altiera amongst others, in 1587. Under the name of Pedrolino we find him playing rôles of naïve lackeys with Bertolin (Zeccha). In the Gelosi troupe, from 1578 to 1604 inclusive, the rôles of lackey are played by Pedrolino, Burattino and Arlecchino.
Pedrolino is a very complex type, presenting, in point of character, the greatest resemblance to the modern French Pierrot; his especial characteristic is his honesty. In the fifty scenarii of Flaminio Scala he is almost always the preferred lover of the soubrette Franceschina, who, none the less, receives the homage of Pantaloon without prejudice to that of Arlecchino and Burattino. Sometimes he is the husband of Franceschina, and then he plays the rôle of a Sganarelle; betrayed by his wife and discovering it, he rebukes her coquetry, but ends by recognising that the fault is his own, and begs her pardon, which he obtains only after a deal of trouble.
Lackey to the coquette Flaminia, he refuses to undertake the delivery of her love letters to her lover Orazio. Flaminia and Orazio abuse him and call him a rascal. He becomes furiously enraged, whereafter he weeps upon the bosom of Harlequin, bewailing the loss of his reputation.
As the lackey of Pantaloon, and trusted to keep watch over the wife of his master whilst the latter sleeps, Pedrolino also falls asleep, or else he drinks with Captain Spavento and the Doctor, and all three, “drunk as monkeys,” commit the wildest extravagances and end by falling to the ground, “where they remain.” On the morrow, Pantaloon, furious to learn that whilst he slept his wife has been abroad, reproaches Pedrolino, who is still somnolent and weary from yesterday’s drunkenness. Pedrolino, remembering nothing, understands nothing of his master’s complaints. Pantaloon, beside himself with anger, beats him and bites him, to wrest him from his torpor, and ends by leaving him in tears; but the first pangs of sorrow being over, Pedrolino swears vengeance. He contrives so cleverly that all the characters of the piece mystify Pantaloon, and persuade him that his breath is very unpleasant. Pantaloon ends by believing it, and submits to the extraction of four excellent teeth. After that he understands that he has been fooled, and that Pedrolino is the author of this practical joke. Pedrolino simulates madness to escape the blows which threaten him.
He is a poltroon and a boaster. Bent upon avenging the wrong done him by Harlequin, he arrives armed to the teeth, perceives his enemy and hurls himself upon him with drawn weapons. Harlequin, armed with a door-bar, receives him firmly. Then, face to face, they heap abuse each upon the other, whilst depending upon those present to hinder them from coming to blows. The Captain seeks to separate them, whereupon they strike out furiously, with the result that it is the Captain who receives this shower of blows.
Elsewhere, after having boasted that he fears nothing, Pedrolino perceives Harlequin covered by a white garment, lantern in hand; at sight of him he interrupts his conversation and flees as fast as his legs will carry him.
His sorrows do not affect his appetite. We behold him weeping and complaining after having received a beating. He meets Harlequin, who brings him on behalf of the Captain a plate of macaroni. Pedrolino accepts it and continues to weep uninterruptedly whilst eating like an ogre; Harlequin, deeply affected, weeps also and begins to eat with him. Burattino arrives and, beholding them eating and weeping, he too bursts into tears and puts his hand into the dish. Not one of them says a word. The macaroni, watered by their tears, is soon swallowed, whereafter Pedrolino, weeping, turns to Harlequin. “Kiss the Captain’s hands for me,” he says, and goes off. Burattino entrusts Harlequin with a like commission on his own behalf and makes his exit on the other side, also weeping. Harlequin, bursting into fresh sobs, goes off licking the plate.
Pedrolino is utterly the slave of fear. Whilst dining under a tree with Harlequin and the beautiful Dorinda, the repast is interrupted by a gigantic bear which advances upon them. Pedrolino leaps up; the bear does the same; and whilst Harlequin, to hold its attention, throws at it one by one all the apples of the dinner, which the bear very adroitly catches in its jaws, Pedrolino decamps; Harlequin follows him and the bear carries off Dorinda, who lends herself without protest to this abduction.
Arrayed in a long white shirt, wearing a straw hat and carrying a huge staff, Pedrolino is entrusted by his master with a love letter which he is to deliver to Isabella; but as a result of his habitual absent-mindedness he loses the letter; he perceives his loss and, in casting about him for some means of discharging his commission, he is inspired with the happy notion of committing a theft upon a letter-carrier. He purloins from the basket the first letter that comes to his hand and delivers it to Isabella, whence ensues an intrigue of extreme complication.
In another scenario, dressed as a beggar, with a patch over one eye, he meets the Captain and begs alms from him whilst regarding him fixedly with his uncovered eye. The Captain, wearied and rendered impatient by his steadfast glance, demands the reason of it.
“It is,” replies Pedrolino, “that I am a physiognomist and that I perceive from your face that you will shortly be hanged.”
The Captain, to rid himself of such disagreeable prognostications, gives him some money. Another person, for the sake of peace, gives him bread and wine. Pedrolino sits down in a corner to eat and drink, but, finding the bread not clean and the wine not good, he throws one and the other at the legs of him from whom he received them, and goes off to get drunk at the hostelry.
He is mischievous and he plays practical jokes upon everybody. He dons the clothes of Cassandre, his master, and impersonates him; he dresses up as a woman and induces the Captain to abduct him; he gives Harlequin or Burattino filth to drink; he dresses Pantaloon as a woman to lead him to a supposed rendezvous, assuring him that such is the caprice of the lady who awaits him, in her anxiety to save appearances; at the same time he relates some fable to the Doctor, to lure him to the same rendezvous at which he himself is present in hiding. After many amorous proposals between the two cozened old men they finally recognise each other and almost come to blows.
In some pieces he is an intriguer and a lackey in the service of young people. But even then his real nature is preserved and he conforms to his type by his mischievousness and his buffooneries, when, for instance, morion on head and sword at his side, he imitates the roaring furies of Captain Spavento.
Such is the rôle of Pedrolino in the collection of Flaminio Scala. It will be seen therefore that it is quite wrong to attribute to the type of Pierrot a modern and entirely French origin.
“Down to the middle of the seventeenth century,” says M. Édouard Fournier in a recent article on the subject of Molière, “the Italian comedy had but one doltish character, Harlequin: it was always he who was the butt of practical jokes, it was always he who received the beatings. But with the advent of Domenico, all this was changed. As you know, he played Harlequin parts; but he played them like the man of wit that he was; well-read, and the friend of men of letters, he found it impossible, even under a mask, to accommodate himself to a character of imperturbable doltishness. Moreover he recognised, as has been wisely remarked by Léris in his Dramatic Dictionary, the humour of the French public, which insists upon wit in all performances. Therefore he infused wit into the rôle of Harlequin, and from then onward Harlequin was a completely metamorphosed character. Since Domenico justified himself by his success, none interfered with him. Thus Comedy gained a character; but on the other hand it also lost one, and one very much more indispensable than this charming intruder. How, without the necessary fool, was it possible to sustain Comedy’s repertory? Obviously an imbecile was essential to the repertory, to the by-play of the characters and to the lesser pleasures of the public. A fortunate chance, the inspiration of Molière, gave him to the world one fine day in the person of Pierrot.
“It was under these circumstances that Pierrot arrived, it was thus, as has been well said by des Essarts, that this singular character made his appearance, ‘French-born, in the Italian theatre.’”
It was Molière who, first, in his Don Juan, ou le Festin de Pierre, gave a peasant the name of Pierrot. He based this piece upon an Italian scenario entitled, Il Convitato di Pietro (Peter’s Guest), which had already been performed in Paris in 1659 by the Sieur de Villiers, a comedian of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and elsewhere by others.
“Molière was tempted,” says M. Édouard Fournier, “by the success of the Italian piece, to write his Don Juan. The success obtained by his comedy again in its turn tempted the Italians. He was inspired by them, they were inspired by him. In the early part of February, 1673, a bare fortnight before the death of that great author, the Italians performed in their theatre a new plot made up of the best scenes of their old piece, Il Convitato di Pietro, and, particularly, of the most amusing passages appropriated by them from the comedy of Molière. This comic medley, made up like the dress of Harlequin, was entitled Aggiunta al Convitato di Pietro.
“Among the characters transformed and adapted by the Italians in this extraordinary scenic hotch-potch was Pierrot, with his simpleton ways, his naïve love affairs and his unaltered name. Little attention was paid to this new-comer, so that, haphazard and, as it were, out of charity, the part was entrusted to a low-salaried member of the company named Giaratone. He did marvels. The others had the good sense not to be jealous and thus, in one stroke and by the one success, the character and the comedian alike acquired rights of citizenship.
“From this moment Pierrot never again left the Italian Comedy. In spite of his newness, in spite of his French name, he became as much a type as any of the others, as Mezzetin, Lelio, Cassandre, or even Harlequin himself, whose emancipation was justified by his advent, and who very willingly accepted him as the inheritor of his old-time stupidity and the victim of his malice of more recent date. Since there was nothing to show that he was a character of recent importation, so quickly and usefully was he employed in all the pieces as a type now acquired and naturalised for all time, Pierrot had his successes and his actors, who appropriated his flour-covered mask and the doltishness which became traditional.
“Amongst these was Hamoche, who did marvels somewhere about 1712, and for whom I am inclined to think was composed the air Au Clair de la Lune, always attributed, but without the least evidence, to Lulli.
“The costume of Pierrot was already that with which we are acquainted. Molière, in his Don Juan, had given him the white blouse of a French peasant, such as is still worn by Colin, the sleepy boy in the last scenes of Georges Dandin. Upon being turned into an Italian character Pierrot was compelled to change this garment; but he preserved at least the colour. The garb which he then took, and has never since abandoned, was borrowed from the Neapolitan Pulcinella. But in the case of Pulcinella the tunic is shorter, and fits the figure more closely, whilst the pantaloons are not so wide.[6] Finally Pierrot covered his face with flour.”
Notwithstanding these ingenious assertions it is impossible to think that Giaratone should not have possessed the traditions of Pedrolino, since the character which he introduced into the Franco-Italian theatre accords in every particular with that Italian ancestor of his: we discover the same poltroonery, the same gluttony, the same naïveté, so often malicious, the same stupidity mingled with good sense, and the same fundamental honesty and candour. As for the costume, nothing is discoverable to inform us exactly of that which was worn by the Pedrolino of Flaminio Scala. It is stated in a scenario that Pedrolino is dressed in a long shirt and wears a straw hat. Was his face floured like Pagliaccio’s and was he already dressed in white? That is very possible. Caprice has determined far less than is supposed in those costumes of classic fantasy which, however transformed, never absolutely abandon the lines of tradition. Giaratone, informed of the true character of the old Pedrolino, would no doubt be equally informed on the score of his make-up, and his dress; as for his Gallicised appellation, it is beyond doubt the same name, for in the scenarii of Gherardi the characters address him indifferently as Pierrot or Piero.
It would therefore seem that Giaratone did no more than rejuvenate and adapt to the Franco-Italian theatre the character of the old Pedrolino, taking for his performances those shades of character dominant in the greater number of the scenarii of Scala and abandoning the intriguing qualities sometimes, but exceptionally, attributed to him. He approached the type of Bertoldino, a type which, long before his day, had been confounded with that of Pedrolino. He floured his face after the fashion of the old French badins, who themselves—like Pagliaccio with his white mask and his flour, Pulcinella and Harlequin with their black masks, Pantaloon and Brighella with their brown masks, Coviello and the Doctor, each with his mask of a distinctive colour—derive from the ancient mimes with their countenances blackened, browned, reddened or whitened, who are alleged to have been resurrected during the Renaissance, but who in all probability had never disappeared from the Italian boards.
Just as Pedrolino had been the incarnation of the Italian peasant, so Pierrot was that of the French peasant, and he became with the French public the most popular type after Polichinelle.
In the scenarii and theatrical pieces of Gherardi, Pierrot is always a servant of the Doctor, of Brocantin or of Cinthio, just as in French pieces and pantomimes he is always the servant of Cassandre. He is a fellow who always says what he thinks and who recognises no social distinctions. This privilege of speaking his mind, accorded to the finesse and astuteness of the soubrette, is similarly granted to the simplicity and awkwardness of Pierrot. He never fails to lecture his master.