The humour of Italy

by Unknown

Most plays of this description partook rather of the character of farce than of legitimate comedy. The principal personages—Harlequin, Columbine, Pantaloon, Coviello, Scaramouch, etc.—who make their appearance in every one, had certain fixed traditional costumes and masks, which were never departed from. The familiar figure of Punch, which has been so completely naturalised as to appear one of the most English of all English institutions, was handed down through many generations of Italian players before he reached our shores. As “Pulcinella” or “Polecenella” he is a typically Neapolitan figure; while Stenterello, another favourite mask, is as typically Tuscan. The name is supposed to be derived from “Stentare” (to be in great want)—the Tuscans, and more especially the Florentines, being famous throughout the Peninsula for economy—not to say meanness—which is a prominent feature in Stenterello’s character.

The Commedia dell’ Arte was eminently suited to the Italian national character, with its fluent eloquence and spontaneous drollery, so much of which depends on facial and vocal expression, on ready repartee and apt allusion, that it loses enormously on being written down.

The scenario, or outline of the acts and scenes, while it kept the action in a definite shape and prevented over-much diffuseness, allowed the most unlimited scope for both the tendencies already described, though perhaps that towards broad farce and practical joking is the most prominent. Indeed, the coarseness into which it has ever been apt to degenerate is throughout unpleasantly prominent. Symonds—surely not a very squeamish critic—speaks of these farces in terms to make one think that the oblivion into which they have fallen is not a matter for regret. Moreover, while the coarseness of the story (independent of what might be incidentally introduced into the dialogue) forms part of the groundwork of the play, and would thus be perpetuated, the subtler play of humour is much more easily lost. The numerous comedies and farces of Francesco Cerlone, if not actually coming within the category of the Commedia dell’ Arte, may be regarded as a development of it. They are real plays, with the speeches written out in full, and usually a plot of the kind found in what is called the “comedy of intrigue,” while the characters are bound by no fixed rules. But there is always a more or less farcical underplot, in which some of the above-mentioned stereotyped personages figure, Pulcinella and Columbine being the principal ones. The greater part of these scenes is in the Neapolitan dialect, traditionally assigned to Pulcinella throughout the Commedia dell’ Arte. Each of the “masks,” by-the-bye, speaks some provincial dialect; and a great deal of humour appears to be got out of the device of bringing two or more speakers of different dialects on the stage at once. Molière has to a certain extent done the same thing, notably in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.

Further information concerning these masks may be found in that delightful book, Story’s Roba di Roma.

Another development of the Italian drama which must not be passed over without notice is the comic opera, which came into fashion during the latter half of the eighteenth century. Casti (the author of a somewhat dreary satire, “Gli Animali Parlanti,” the sonnet-cycle, “I Tre Giuli,” a good idea worked to death, and some unspeakably vile Novelle) excelled in this line, producing, among others, La Grotta di Trofonio and Il Re Teodoro, which are something like Gilbert and Sullivan’s librettos in their tripping measures and rattling fun. Other comic operas of the same period are Il Paese di Cuccagna, by Carlo Goldoni, and L’Opera Seria by Ramieri Calsabigi, a parody on the serious operas which were just then becoming fashionable. The poet and the composer are introduced respectively as Don Delirio and Don Sospiro (“Sighing”), and the manager asks them in turn, “What the devil is the good of so many sentences just at the crisis of passion?” and “Who can stand all those cadences in the midst of an aria full of action?” More modern works of this kind have been written by Pananti, Gherardini, Lorenzo del Ponte, and Angelo Anelli (died 1820).

“The Italians are good actors,” says Story, “and entirely without self-consciousness and inflated affectation.... They are simple and natural. Their life, which is public, out of doors, and gregarious, gives them confidence, and by nature they are free from self-consciousness. The same absence of artificiality that marks their manners in life is visible on the stage. One should, however, understand the Italian character, and know their habits and peculiarities in order fitly to relish their acting. It is as different from the French acting as their character is different from that of the French.... In character-parts, comedy and farce, they are admirable; and out of Italy the real buffo does not exist. Their impersonations, without overstepping the truth of natural oddity, exhibit a humour of character and a general susceptibility to the absurd which could hardly be excelled. Their farce is not dry, witty, and sarcastic like the French, but rich, humorous, and droll. The primo comico, who is always rushing from one scrape to another, is so full of chatter and blunder, ingenuity and good-nature, that it is impossible not to laugh with him and wish him well; while the heavy father or irascible old uncle, in the midst of the most grotesque and absurdly natural imitation, without altering in the least his character, will often move you by sudden touches of pathos when you are least prepared. The old man is particularly well represented on the Italian stage. In moments of excitement and emotion, despite his red bandanna handkerchief, his spasmodic taking of snuff, and his blowing of his nose, all of which are given with a truth which, at first, to a stranger, trenches not slightly on the bounds of the ludicrous—look out—by an unexpected and exquisitely natural turn he will bring the tears at once into your eyes. I know nothing so like this suddenness and unexpectedness of pathos in Italian acting as certain passages in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which catch you quite unprepared, and, expecting to laugh, you find yourself crying.

“If one would see the characteristic theatres of the basso popolo, and study their manners, he should go to the Teatro Emiliano in the Piazza Navona, or the Fico, so called from the street in which it is situated. At the former the acting is by respectable puppets; at the latter the plays are performed by actors or personaggi, as they are called. The love for the acting of burattini, or puppets, is universal among the lower classes throughout Italy, and in some cities, especially Genoa, no pains are spared in their costume, construction, and movement to render them life-like. They are made of wood, are generally from two to three feet in height, with very large heads and supernatural, glaring eyes that never wink, and are clad in all the splendour of tinsel, velvet, and steel. Their joints are so flexible that the least weight or strain upon them effects a dislocation, and they are moved by wires attached to their heads and extremities. Though the largest are only about half the height of a man, yet, as the stage and all the appointments and scenery are upon the same scale of proportion, the eye is soon deceived, and accepts them as if life-size. But if by accident a hand or arm of one of the wire-pullers appears from behind the scenes, or descends below the hangings, it startles you by its portentous size, and the audience in the stage-boxes, instead of reducing the burattini to Lilliputians by contrast, as they lean forward, become themselves Brobdingnagians, with elephantine heads and hands.

“Do not allow yourself to suppose that there is anything ludicrous to the audience in the performances of these wooden burattini. Nothing, on the contrary, is more serious. No human being could be so serious. Their countenances are solemn as death, and more unchanging than the face of a clock. Their terrible gravity when, with drooping heads and collapsed arms, they fix on you their great goggle eyes, is at times ghastly. They never descend into the regions of conscious farce. The plays they perform are mostly heroic, romantic, and historical.... The audience listen with grave and profound interest. To them the actors are not fantoccini, but heroes. Their inflated and extravagant discourse is simply grand and noble. They are the mighty x which represents the unknown quantity of boasting which potentially exists in the bosom of every one. Do not laugh when you enter, or the general look of surprise and annoyance will at once recall you to the proprieties of the occasion. You might as well laugh in a church....

“At every theatre there are two performances, or camerate, every evening, one commencing at Ave Maria (sunset), the other at ten o’clock. We arrived at the Teatro Emiliano just too late for the first, as we learned at the ticket-office. ‘What is that great noise of drums inside?’ asked we. ‘Battaglie,’ said the ticket-seller. ‘Shall we see a battle in the next piece?’ ‘Eh, sempre battaglie!’ (Always battles) was the reproving answer....

“The bill pasted outside informed us that the burattini were to play to-night ‘The grandiose opera, entitled, Belisarius, or the Adventures of Orestes, Ersilia, Falsierone, Selenguerro, and the terrible Hunchback.’ In the names themselves there was a sound of horror and fear.”