CHAPTER II
The Marionette—Its Famous Friends
Every person is proud of his famous friends. If we know a great artist, engineer, or traveler, we think we are fortunate. Can you imagine having so many famous friends that you could not count them? This has been the good fortune of marionettes. The names of all their Egyptian friends seem to be lost. But it is not so with their Grecian friends. Archimedes, Socrates, and Plato are the names of three famous friends that have come down to us. Archimedes, the greatest inventor of his time, liked puppets, it is said, because he could devise so many clever ways of making them move and appear human. Socrates probably cared nothing for the mechanism. He enjoyed taking a puppet in his own hands, asking it clever questions, and then furnishing the equally clever answers. These most unusual conversations would soon gather about him a crowd of Athenian men and women, who were greatly interested in his humor, irony, and whimsical paradoxes. The dialogues would probably go on and on until his scolding wife, Xantippe, appeared. Plato also cared little for their mechanism, but like his great master, Socrates, was interested only when they were made to talk about the very serious things of life, or when he saw them representing the gods and heroes in the beautiful scenes of the plays given on the small stages built for them in one part of the great theaters.
Kings and queens were among the famous Roman friends of puppets. You may remember that puppets were found in the tomb of the Empress Marie and that the Emperor Antiochus cared so much for them that he neglected the affairs of his great empire. He had clever puppet makers as part of his royal household, and delighted in planning the plays they were to give. He designed the stage settings, and he sometimes assisted the royal puppeteers.
In India, China, and Japan, the great rulers were greatly interested in puppets, and required their presence at court.
One of the most interesting stories of a royal friend of the marionettes is that of the Emperor Charles V of Spain. This strange ruler’s reason was clouded. His devoted minister tried in many ways to divert his beloved king, and finally succeeded when he found that the king could be interested in puppets. Puppet soldiers, puppet generals, puppet kings caught his imagination. The cleverest hands of Spain made them, by the hundred, for His Majesty, who handled them with such interest and pleasure that his reason was finally restored. Two other great kings could be added to the list of royal friends—they are Saladin and Louis XIV of France.
There is a long list of famous literary friends. Greatest of these is Shakespeare, who not only enjoyed marionettes, but wrote plays for them. Many people are surprised when they learn that Midsummer Night’s Dream and Julius Cæsar were written for marionettes. Shakespeare’s friend, Ben Jonson, wrote a marionette play, Every Man in His Humor. Another great literary friend was Cervantes. Some day you may wish to take his story of Don Quixote and turn some of its wonderful scenes into a play for marionettes. If you do so, you may be sure that their immortal author would approve of your venture.
In France, among their many friends, was the great dramatist Voltaire. At first he disliked marionettes thoroughly. For it happened that they had made fun of him, and, naturally, that was more than this great wit could stand. Finally, the story goes, he was invited to visit a friend who had a little marionette theater and some puppets. When Voltaire took the strings in his own hands, his feeling for them changed. He found they could be made to say witty things, and to make fun of one’s enemies. It ended by his writing short plays for them to act.
George Sand, the famous French novelist, made a very simple but delightful puppet theater for her little boy, Maurice, and set the fashion for puppets among her literary friends. Stories could be told of many other famous French friends, of Molière, Fontaine, Doré, and Rousseau. Great French writers still love marionettes. You probably know two of these: Maurice Maeterlinck and Anatole France.
When we go to Italy, we find other friends, but none greater than Michael Angelo. Picture this artist modeling heads for marionettes. We wonder what they looked like and what became of them. His great patron, Lorenzo de Medici, had a puppet theater built for his palace in Florence.