The performances, in which the actor was left to his own talents and discretion in furnishing the dialogue, were once extremely popular throughout Italy; but from the very nature of the representation, it unluckily happens that not a single specimen has been handed down to our time.
However, to pursue this topic would lead us away from the object of our present inquiry. We take it for granted that Silvio Fiorillo invented Pulcinella, and first introduced him as a variety in the list of buffoons required to represent the impromptu comedies of Naples: but, although he may date his separate existence from about the year 1600, it is a matter of much doubt whether he was not, in fact, only a branch of a family of far greater antiquity. The discovery, in the year 1727, of a bronze statue of a mime, called by the Romans Maccus, has indeed led some antiquaries to the conclusion that he was, in fact, Pulcinella under a different name, but with the same attributes, and among them a hump-back and a large nose.
The dress, too, corresponds very much with the motley or parti-colored habit of the clowns of our old dramatic poets. It is true that the different hues have been arranged with greater regularity, and the patches are of smaller size. The ordinary habiliments of Punch at the present day, preserved by ancient usage, with his pointed fool’s-cap, bear a much nearer resemblance; and this is one circumstance that evidences the strong family likeness between the Vice, Harlequin and Pulcinella. Riccoboni represents the ancient Harlequin in a dress composed of patches, as if his ragged clothes had been often mended, and Goldoni speaks of him as originally a poor, foolish dolt.
According to Quadrio, in his “Storia d’ogni Poesia,” the name of our hero has relation to the length of his nose: he would spell it Pullicinello from Pulliceno, which Mr. D’Israeli translates “turkey-cock,” an allusion to the beak of that bird. Baretti has it Pulcinella, because that word in Italian means a hen-chicken, whose cry the voice of Punch is said to resemble. Pollicenello, as it has also been written, in its etymology from pollice, “the thumb,” goes upon the mistaken presumption that his size was always diminutive, like that of our English worthy, of cow-swallowing memory. The French Ponche has been fancifully derived from no less a personage than Pontius Pilate of the old Mysteries, whom, in barbarous times, the Christians wished to abuse and ridicule. If we cannot settle the disputed point, it is very evident that, in future, ingenuity and learning will be thrown away in attempting further elucidation.
[CHAPTER II.]
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF PUPPET-PLAYS IN ENGLAND.
Before we proceed farther, it will be necessary to consider, briefly, the antiquity and nature of puppet-plays in the old country. It is the more proper to do so, because they form a branch of our drama which has never been examined by the historians of our stage with as much interest and industry as the subject deserves. When we mention that no less a man than Dr. Johnson was of opinion that puppets were so capable of representing even the plays of Shakspeare, that Macbeth might be performed by them as well as by living actors, it will be evident from such a fact only, that the inquiry is far from unimportant. In connection with this opinion, and confirmatory of it, we may add, that a person of the name of Henry Rowe, shortly before the year 1797, did actually, by wooden figures, for a series of years, go through the action of the whole of that tragedy, while he himself repeated the dialogue which belongs to each of the characters.
Puppet-plays are of very ancient date in England; and, if they were not contemporary with our Mysteries, they probably immediately succeeded them.
The formidable rivalship of puppet-plays to the regular drama is established by the fact that the proprietors of the theatres in Drury Lane, and near Lincoln’s Inn Fields, formerly petitioned Charles II. that a puppet-show stationed on the present site of Cecil Street in the Strand, might not be allowed to exhibit, or might be removed to a greater distance, as its attractiveness materially interfered with the prosperity of their concerns. It is not unlikely that burlesque and ridicule were sometimes aimed at the productions of the regular stage by the exhibitors of “motions.”
Powell’s show was set up in Covent Garden, opposite to St. Paul’s Church; and the “Spectator” (No. 14) contains the letter of the sexton, who complained that the performances of Punch thinned the congregation in the church, and that, as Powell exhibited during the time of prayers, the tolling of the bell was taken, by all who heard it, for notice of the intended commencement of the exhibition. The writer of the paper then proceeds, in another epistle, to establish that the puppet-show was much superior to the opera of “Rinaldo and Armida,” represented at the Haymarket, and to observe that “too much encouragement could not be given to Mr. Powell’s skill in motions.” A regular parallel is drawn between the two, which ends most decidedly in favor of Powell in every respect but the inferior point of the moral.