These are the two ancient heroes of pantomime. The other characters are the laughing children of mere modern humour. Each of these chimerical personages, like so many county members, come from different provinces in the gesticulating land of pantomime; in little principalities the rival inhabitants present a contrast in manners and characters which opens a wider field for ridicule and satire than in a kingdom where an uniformity of government will produce an uniformity of manners. An inventor appeared in Ruzzante, an author and actor who flourished about 1530. Till his time they had servilely copied the duped fathers, the wild sons, and the tricking valets, of Plautus and Terence; and, perhaps, not being writers of sufficient skill, but of some invention, were satisfied to sketch the plots of dramas, but boldly trusted to extempore acting and dialogue. Ruzzante peopled the Italian stage with a fresh enlivening crowd of pantomimic characters; the insipid dotards of the ancient comedy were transformed into the Venetian Pantaloon and the Bolognese Doctor; while the hare-brained fellow, the arch knave, and the booby, were furnished from Milan, Bergamo, and Calabria. He gave his newly-created beings new language and a new dress. From Plautus he appears to have taken the hint of introducing all the Italian dialects into one comedy, by making each character use his own; and even the modern Greek, which, it seems, afforded many an unexpected play on words, for the Italian.[[39]] This new kind of pleasure, like the language of Babel, charmed the national ear; every province would have its dialect introduced on the scene, which often served the purpose both of recreation and a little innocent malice. Their masks and dresses were furnished by the grotesque masqueraders of the carnival, which, doubtless, often contributed many scenes and humours to the quick and fanciful genius of Ruzzante. I possess a little book of Scaramouches, &c. by Callot. Their masks and their costume must have been copied from these carnival scenes. We see their strongly-featured masks; their attitudes, pliant as those of a posture-master; the drollery of their figures; while the grotesque creatures seem to leap, and dance, and gesticulate, and move about so fantastically under his sharp graver, that they form as individualised a race as our fairies and witches; mortals, yet like nothing mortal![[40]]
The first Italian actors wore masks—objections have been raised against their use. Signorelli shows the inferiority of the moderns in deviating from the moveable or rather double masks of antiquity, by which the actor could vary the artificial face at pleasure. The mask has had its advocates, for some advantages it possesses over the naked face; a mask aggravates the features, and gives a more determined expression to the comic character; an important effect among this fantastical group.[[41]]
The HARLEQUIN in the Italian theatre has passed through all the vicissitudes of fortune. At first he was a true representative of the ancient Mime, but afterwards degenerated into a booby and a gourmand, the perpetual butt for a sharp-witted fellow, his companion, called Brighella; the knife and the whetstone. Harlequin, under the reforming hand of Goldoni, became a child of nature, the delight of his country; and he has commemorated the historical character of the great Harlequin Sacchi. It may serve the reader to correct his notions of one, from the absurd pretender with us who has usurped the title. "Sacchi possessed a lively and brilliant imagination. While other Harlequins merely repeated themselves, Sacchi, who always adhered to the essence of the play, contrived to give an air of freshness to the piece by his new sallies and unexpected repartees. His comic traits and his jests were neither taken from the language of the lower orders, nor that of the comedians. He levied contributions on comic authors, on poets, orators, and philosophers; and in his impromptus they often discovered the thoughts of Seneca, Cicero, or Montaigne. He possessed the art of appropriating the remains of these great men to himself, and allying them to the simplicity of the blockhead; so that the same proposition which was admired in a serious author, became highly ridiculous in the mouth of this excellent actor."[[42]] In France Harlequin was improved into a wit, and even converted into a moralist; he is the graceful hero of Florian's charming compositions, which please even in the closet. "This imaginary being, invented by the Italians, and adopted by the French," says the ingenious Goldoni, "has the exclusive right of uniting naïveté with finesse, and no one ever surpassed Florian in the delineation of this amphibious character. He has even contrived to impart sentiment, passion, and morality to his pieces."[[43]] Harlequin must be modelled as a national character, the creature of manners; and thus the history of such a Harlequin might be that of the age and of the people, whose genius he ought to represent.
The history of a people is often detected in their popular amusements; one of these Italian pantomimic characters shows this. They had a Capitan, who probably originated in the Miles gloriosus of Plautus; a brother, at least, of our Ancient Pistol and Bobadil. The ludicrous names of this military poltroon were Spavento (Horrid fright), Spezza-fer (Shiver-spear), and a tremendous recreant was Captain Spavento de Val inferno. When Charles V. entered Italy, a Spanish Captain was introduced; a dreadful man he was too, if we are to be frightened by names: Sanqre e Fuego! and Matamoro! His business was to deal in Spanish rhodomontades, to kick out the native Italian Capitan, in compliment to the Spaniards, and then to take a quiet caning from Harlequin, in compliment to themselves. When the Spaniards lost their influence in Italy, the Spanish Captain was turned into Scaramouch, who still wore the Spanish dress, and was perpetually in a panic. The Italians could only avenge themselves on the Spaniards in pantomime! On the same principle the gown of Pantaloon over his red waistcoat and breeches, commemorates a circumstance in Venetian history expressive of the popular feeling; the dress is that of a Venetian citizen, and his speech the dialect; but when the Venetians lost Negropont, they changed their upper dress to black, which before had been red, as a national demonstration of their grief.
The characters of the Italian pantomime became so numerous, that every dramatic subject was easily furnished with the necessary personages of comedy. That loquacious pedant the Dottore was taken from the lawyers and the physicians, babbling false Latin in the dialect of learned Bologna. Scapin was a livery servant who spoke the dialect of Bergamo, a province proverbially abounding with rank intriguing knaves, who, like the slaves in Plautus and Terence, were always on the watch to further any wickedness; while Calabria furnished the booby Giangurgello with his grotesque nose. Molière, it has been ascertained, discovered in the Italian theatre at Paris his "Médecin malgré lui," his "Etourdi," his "L'Avare," and his "Scapin." Milan offered a pimp in the Brighella; Florence an ape of fashion in Gelsomino. These and other pantomimic characters, and some ludicrous ones, as the Tartaglia, a spectacled dotard, a stammerer, and usually in a passion, had been gradually introduced by the inventive powers of an actor of genius, to call forth his own peculiar talents.
The Pantomimes, or, as they have been described, the continual Masquerades, of Ruzzante, with all these diversified personages, talking and acting, formed, in truth, a burlesque comedy. Some of the finest geniuses of Italy became the votaries of Harlequin; and the Italian pantomime may be said to form a school of its own. The invention of Ruzzante was one capable of perpetual novelty. Many of these actors have been chronicled either for the invention of some comic character, or for their true imitation of nature in performing some favourite one. One, already immortalised by having lost his real name in that of Captain Matamoros, by whose inimitable humours he became the most popular man in Italy, invented the Neapolitan Pullicinello; while another, by deeper study, added new graces to another burlesque rival.[[44]] One Constantini invented the character of Mezetin, as the Narcissus of pantomime. He acted without a mask, to charm by the beautiful play of his countenance, and display the graces of his figure; the floating drapery of his fanciful dress could be arranged by the changeable humour of the wearer. Crowds followed him in the streets, and a King of Poland ennobled him. The Wit and Harlequin Dominic sometimes dined at the table of Louis XIV.—Tiberio Fiorillo, who invented the character of Scaramouch, had been the amusing companion of the boyhood of Louis XIV.; and from him Molière learnt much, as appears by the verses under his portrait:—
Cet illustre comédien
De son art traça la carrière:
Il fut le maître de Molière,
Et la Nature fut le sien.
The last lines of an epitaph on one of these pantomimic actors may be applied to many of them during their flourishing period:—
Toute sa vie il a fait rire;
Il a fait pleurer à sa mort.
Several of these admirable actors were literary men, who have written on their art, and shown that it was one. The Harlequin Cecchini composed the most ancient treatise on this subject, and was ennobled by the Emperor Matthias; and Nicholas Barbieri, for his excellent acting called the Beltrame, a Milanese simpleton, in his treatise on comedy, tell us that he was honoured by the conversation of Louis XIII. and rewarded with fortune.