There are instances on record of long discussions and fierce disputes between provinces or towns for the honour of having been the birthplace of some great hero, poet, or philosopher. In like manner, M. Magnin labours hard, and expends much erudition, to prove that the French Polichinelle, notwithstanding the similarity of name, is neither the son, nor in any way related to the Italian Pulcinella, but is thoroughly French in origin and character. That Harlequin and Pantaloon came from south of the Alps he readily admits; also, that a name has been borrowed from Italy for the French Punch. But he stands up manfully for the originality of this jovial and dissipated puppet, which he maintains to be a thoroughly Gallic type. Whether conclusive or not—a point to the settlement of which we will not give many lines—the arguments and facts he brings forward are ingenious and amusing. After displaying the marked difference that exists in every respect, except in that of the long hooked nose and the name, between the Punchinello of Paris and that of Naples—the latter being a tall straight-backed active fellow, dressed in a black half-mask, a grey pointed hat, a white frock and trousers, and a tight girdle, and altogether of a different character from his more northern namesake—he has the audacity to broach, although with some hesitation, the bold idea that Polichinelle is a portrait of the great Béarnais. “To hide nothing of my thought, I must say that, under the necessary exaggeration of a loyal caricature, Polichinelle exhibits the popular type, I dare not say of Henry IV., but at any rate of the Gascon officer imitating his master’s bearing in the guardroom of the palace of St Germain, or of the old Louvre. As to the hunch, it has been from time immemorial the appendage, in France, of a facetious, witty fellow. In the thirteenth century, Adam de la Halle was called the hunchback of Arras, not that he was deformed, but on account of his humorous vein.
On m’appelle bochu, mais je ne le suis mie.
The second hump, the one in front, conspicuous under his spangled doublet, reminds us of the glittering and protuberant cuirass of men-at-arms, and of the pigeon-breasted dress then in fashion, which imitated the curve of the cuirass.[[6]] The very hat of Polichinelle (I do not refer to his modern three-cornered covering, but to the beaver, with brim turned up, which he still wore in the seventeenth century), was the hat of the gentlemen of that day, the hat à la Henri IV. Finally, certain characteristic features of his face, as well as the bold jovial amorous temper of the jolly fellow, remind us, in caricature, of the qualities and the defects of the Béarnais. In short, notwithstanding his Neapolitan name, Polichinelle appears to me to be a completely national type, and one of the most vivacious and sprightly creations of French fancy.”
The first puppet-showmen in France whose names have been handed down to posterity, were a father and son called Brioché. According to the most authentic of the traditions collected, Jean Brioché exercised, at the beginning of Louis XIV.’s reign, the two professions of tooth-drawer and puppet-player. His station was at the end of the Pont Neuf, near the gate of Nesle, and his comrade was the celebrated monkey Fagotin. With or without his consent, Polichinelle was about this time dragged into politics. Amongst the numerous Mazarinades and political satires that deluged Paris in 1649, there was one entitled Letter from Polichinelle to Jules Mazarin. It was in prose, but ended by these three lines, by way of signature:—
“Je suis Polichinelle,
Qui fait la sentinelle
A la porte de Nesle.”
It is also likely that the letter was the work of Brioché or Briocchi (who was perhaps a countryman and protégé of the cardinal’s), written with a view to attract notice and increase his popularity (a good advertisement, in short), than that it proceeded from the pen of some political partisan. But in any case it serves to show that the French Punch was then a great favourite in Paris. “I may boast,” he is made to say in the letter, “without vanity, Master Jules, that I have always been better liked and more respected by the people than you have; for how many times have I, with my own ears, heard them say: ‘Let us go and see Polichinelle!’ whereas nobody ever heard them say: ‘Let us go and see Mazarin!’” The unfortunate Fagotin came to an untimely end, if we are to put faith in a little book now very rare (although it has gone through several editions), entitled, Combat de Cirano de Bergerac contre le singe de Brioché. This Cirano was a mad duellist of extreme susceptibility. “His nose,” says Ménage, “which was much disfigured, was cause of the death of more than ten persons. He could not endure that any should look at him, and those who did had forthwith to draw and defend themselves.” This lunatic, it is said, one day took Fagotin for a lackey who was making faces at him, and ran him through on the spot. The story may have been a mere skit on Cirano’s quarrelsome humour; but the mistake he is said to have made, appears by no means impossible when we become acquainted with the appearance and dress of the famous monkey. “He was as big as a little man, and a devil of a droll,” says the author of the Combat de Cirano; “his master had put him on an old Spanish hat, whose dilapidations were concealed by a plume; round his neck was a frill à la Scaramouche; he wore a doublet with six movable skirts, trimmed with lace and tags—a garment that gave him rather the look of a lackey—and a shoulder-belt from which hung a pointless blade.” It was this innocent weapon, according to the writer quoted from, that poor Fagotin had the fatal temerity to brandish against the terrible Cirano. Whatever the manner of his death, his fame lived long after him; and even as certain famous French comedians have transmitted their names to the particular class of parts they filled during their lives, so did Fagotin bequeath his to all monkeys attached to puppet-shows. Loret, in his metrical narrative of the wonders of the fair of St Germain’s in the year 1664, talks of “the apes and fagotins;” La Fontaine praises Fagotin’s tricks in his fable of The Lion and his Court, and Molière makes the sprightly and malicious Dorine promise Tartuffe’s intended wife that she shall have, in carnival time,
“Le sal et la grand ’branle, à savoir deux musettes,
Et parfois Fagotin et les marionnettes.”