THE HISTORY OF THE HARLEQUINADE

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THE HISTORY OF THE HARLEQUINADE

BY MAURICE SAND

VOLUME ONE

LONDON: MARTIN SECKER NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI

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First Published 1915

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

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INTRODUCTION

The first mime, or rather the first comic actor, was he who leapt upon a bench or table to delight the assembly by his singing, his dancing or his relation of an amusing story. Improvisation prompted all such early attempts.

Some of these primitive comedians assemble in Icaria under the direction of Susarion, who gives a form and a sequence to their buffooneries, and they set out to trail their booths and chariots through the cities of Greece (800 B.C.).

They represent a slave with shaven head, a drunkard rubicund of face, brutalised by libations, an obese glutton, who tumbles incessantly. Soon comic poets, such as Magnes, Achæus and Timocreon, conceive for them performances mingled with comic dances (termed cordaces) and pantomimes.

Thespis, born in Icaria, sets up a theatre, assigns rôles to his mimes, dresses them grotesquely, parades them in chariots, their faces smeared with dregs or soot, and sets about presenting little dramas and comedies mingled with music. He detaches from the chorus an individual, assigns to him a rôle and thus creates the corypheus. Æschylus the Athenian (393 B.C.) adds a second one. Thenceforward no comic or tragic performances are given without music.

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In Athens and in Sparta charlatans set up their trestles in public places, and by means of their displays attract a crowd, to whom they then proceed to sell their unguents (400 B.C.). Here we behold among others a thieving rogue, or a foreign doctor who speaks a ridiculous dialect.

Whilst Aristophanes is performing his comedies in the great theatre, the streets of Athens are encumbered by diviners, sorcerers, fortune-tellers, jugglers, equilibrists, rope dancers and prestidigitators, amongst whom are cited Theodorus and Euryclides.

In the theatre we behold equilibrist performances, such as the leap on that earliest of spring-boards, the air-inflated goatskin. From these performances were derived the rope dancers, called by the Greeks schœnobates and acrobates, and later, by the Latins, funambuli.

Among the Greek actors we find several classes, the ethologues, famous in Magna Græcia and in Alexandria, who display the lowest and most corrupt of manners; the biologues, who portray and parody the personages of their day; the cinedologues, also called simodes and lysiodes, from Susim of Magnesia and Lysis, the authors of their pieces, who perform and utter obscenities; the hilarodes, dressed in white, shod with sandals and wearing golden crowns on their heads, who act and sing to the accompaniment of string instruments; and the phallophores, a name fully justified by a part of their costume, as is to be seen in all the monuments that have survived. At Sicyonia, where the phallic choirs and the scenes called episodes are more ancient than in Athens, the actors preserve this name of phallophores.

Later this Sicyonian phallophore, his countenance blackened[11] with soot or concealed under a papyrus mask, is transformed into a planipes in Rome and becomes in the sixteenth century the Bergamese Harlequin.

All these actors performing on the orchestra very close to the spectators found it unnecessary to increase their height by the aid of the buskin with elevated heels. They played without masks, their countenances merely smeared in various colours according to the types which they represented. Women, too, performed on the orchestra, singing, miming and moving in the pieces that did duty as interludes, much after the fashion of our modern actresses.

These female mimes passed from the Doric countries into Sicily and Magna Græcia, and finally found their way to Rome.

The Etruscans were, in the art of the theatre as in many other things, the preceptors of the Romans. Having long been in communication with the Greeks they possessed stone theatres such as that at Tusculum, long before the Romans had so much as wooden booths. In the year 442 the youth of Rome studied Oscan literature, according to Titus Livy, much as in his own time it devoted itself to the study of Greek letters.

Between Naples and Capua, Atella (to-day Aversa) was one of the first ancient cities to possess a theatre, and above all a particular style of comedy; thus she gave the name of Atellanæ to the first comedies performed in Rome, comedies which derived largely from the satirical and buffoon pieces of the Greeks.

These comedies, interlarded with dancing, singing and pantomime, in which the actors improvised upon a scenario, or agreed subject, were full of pleasantries and quips, and[12] they very quickly eclipsed the Saturæ, the indigenous and national comedies of Rome.

The Roman youth appropriated this style of piece and the right to perform it. The actors of the Atellanæ alone enjoyed exemptions and liberties without limit. Later these pieces became licentious and obscene, and the name of Atellanæ was given to all those which were written in a ribald style. They were also called exodiæ from the custom of playing them after other pieces or at the end of the spectacle. They were performed on the orchestra under the proscenium, hence the name of comædiæ planipediæ, because the actors dispensed with buskins. They dispensed also with those enormous masks termed personæ.

The tabernariæ comedies, the subjects for which were drawn from the lower orders and from tavern life, were sometimes played in the same manner as the planipediæ; this was also the case with the togatæ, in which the actors appeared arrayed in the toga.

The other styles of comedy were designated variously as follows:—mixed comedies, partly developed in speech, partly in mimetic action, such as The Eunuch of Terence; Motoriæ comedies, in which all was action, such as The Amphitryon of Plautus; Palliatæ comedies, in which the subject, the characters and the costumes were Greek; Prætextatæ comedies, in which the subject and the characters were drawn from the nobility; Latinæ or comic-lachrymose comedies invented by Rhinthonus, a buffoon of Tarentum; Statariæ comedies, which contained a great deal of dialogue and little pantomime, such as the Asinaria of Plautus and the Hecyra of Terence.

In the performance of some pieces theatrical declamation[13] was shared between two actors, one of whom spoke whilst the other gesticulated. The Abbé du Bos in his critical reflections upon poetry and painting offers the following explanation of this, based upon the writings of Titus Livy:—

“Livius Andronicus, a celebrated poet who lived in Rome some five hundred and fourteen years after its foundation and some sixty years after the opening there of theatres, himself performed in one of his pieces. It was then the custom for dramatic poets to show themselves upon the stage, there to take part in their own works. The people, who took the liberty still taken to-day in France and Italy to demand the repetition of passages with which they were pleased, by dint of crying bis caused the poor Andronicus to recite so long that he grew hoarse. Out of all condition to continue to declaim, he induced his audience to consent that a slave placed in front of the instrumental performer should recite the phrases, and, whilst the slave recited, Andronicus went through the same gestures which he had made when reciting himself. It was observed then that his action was very much more animated because he employed all his energies in gesticulation, whilst another was entrusted with the labour of enunciation; hence, according to Titus Livy, was born the custom of dividing the declamation

between two actors, and of reciting, as it were, to the rhythm of the gestures of the comedian.”

“Of all the Roman spectacles,” says M. Charles Magnin, “none was more appreciated than pantomime; it became even peculiar to this people to whom the masterpieces of the Greek tragedies were foreign.” They required shows, but shows contrived for the eyes. This term pantomime, signifying[14] imitator of all things, suggests that these actors had the art of rendering all manner of subjects by gesture alone. Lucian says that sometimes the subject of the piece performed by the pantomime was sung, and that at other times he performed, in silence, expressing the verses by his mute action.

“This spectacle,” says M. Charles Magnin, “which admitted no words, was better suited than any other to the suspicious politics of the emperors; and it possessed moreover the inappreciable advantage of supplying a sort of language intelligible and common to all those nations so diverse in their idioms and customs that composed the Roman empire.”

And further on he says:

“Observe in what terms Nonnus of Panopolis, a poet of the time of Theodosius, speaks of the pantomime in Book VIII. of his Dionysiaca: ‘there are gestures that have a language, hands that have a mouth, fingers that have a voice.’

“Although the use of the mask permitted the Roman mimes to perform either male or female rôles, nevertheless, female mimes were already in existence in the fourth century. The incredible licence of this epoch rendered the presence of women necessary to the enjoyment of the crowd. They appeared with uncovered heads, and often—incredible statement!—entirely nude. They swam thus before the spectators in a sort of vat or basin placed upon the large orchestra.

“The number of the Roman mimes in the fourth century is hardly credible. Ammianus Marcellinus reports, as a thing shameful to the Romans, that in the reign of Constantius, when the fear of famine compelled the authorities to expel from[15] Rome all strangers practising the liberal arts, six thousand mimes were suffered to remain there undisturbed.”

Already, before the Christian era, the funambuli or rope dancers were a source of sensation in Rome. The Romans preferred their spectacles to all others. Terence himself experienced this; and he laments that during the performance of one of his pieces the appearance of a new funambulus so attracted the notice of the spectators that they could give no thought or attention to anyone else. Ita populus, studio spectaculi cupidus in funambulo animam occupaverat.

The celebrated perfection of the ancient mimes amazes us when we consider the masks they wore, which must have deprived them of all power of expression and even of the natural character of their countenances, unless this superimposed face was contrived with such art and scenic experience as to render it effective at a given distance. These masks, however, were less deformed than those of other actors, since at least they were not equipped with those enormous mouths whose aim was to increase the volume of the voice—a measure necessary in the vast theatres of antiquity.

It may be well to enter into some details of the uses of the ancient mask, with which the mask worn by the actors of the Italian comedy is undoubtedly connected.

We know already that the chief advantage of those ancient scenic masks was to enable men to appear in female rôles. This mask was a kind of great helmet covering the entire head of the actor and representing, in addition to the features of the countenance, the hair, the ears and even the ornaments which women might employ in their headdresses.

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This mask was called persona; it is thus that Phædrus, Horace and other authors have named it in their works. It appears that the earliest were contrived of bark; later they were made of leather, lined with cloth; but as their shapes were liable to distortion it became the custom to make them all of a light wood, and it was conceived, moreover, that they should be constructed in a manner calculated to increase the volume of the actor’s voice; this was accomplished either by lining them with plates of bronze or other sonorous material, or else by fitting to the interior of the mouth a sort of trumpet which was to have the effect of a megaphone. Hence is it that a large number of these masks have mouths of a size and an extent that render them hideous at close quarters; but it should be considered that this deformity was no doubt diminished when they were seen from a distance, the spectator then being able to perceive no more than a very strongly marked expression.

Aulus-Gellius, who wrote under the Emperor Adrian, gives us the following account of the effect of these masks in increasing the voice:—

“The entire head and face of the actor being enclosed within the mask, so that the voice could issue by only one restricted opening, it follows that the voice thus confined must be greatly increased in volume and distinctness. This is why the Latins have given the name of persona to these masks, because they cause the voices of those who wear them to resound and reverberate.”

It was natural to provide different sorts of masks according to the employment for which they were destined. Consequently[17] they were divided into comic, tragic and satiric masks. These last in particular were horribly overcast, and no doubt very much larger than the others, because, being intended to represent fauns, satyrs or cyclops, which poetical imagination depicted as superhuman beings, the actors entrusted with these rôles had to appear as men very much above the natural. Consequently they never failed to increase their stature in proportion to the size of their masks.

Only the masks designed for feminine rôles or those worn by dancers were, far from being deformed, of pleasing and regular features. They were called, according to Lucian, mute or orchestric masks.

We also know that among the Greeks, where the aim of comedy, more free than amongst the Romans, was to depict living citizens, the actors wore masks displaying the features of those persons whom they portrayed. It is thus that Aristophanes in his comedy of the Clouds gave one of his actors a mask which so perfectly resembled Socrates that the spectators thought to behold the man himself upon the stage. The Romans corrected this abuse, and it seems that in the comedies of Terence the masks of the actors expressed the age, the condition, the manners and the nature of the character, but without ever offering to the spectators any features with which they were acquainted.

The name of histrion, which is derived from the Etruscan hister, came from Etruria to Rome together with scenic performances; it became the designation of all actors. These were for the most part slaves or freedmen who did not enjoy the privilege of Roman citizenship. Moreover, any citizen who should have been so ill advised as to appear upon the stage to[18] perform or declaim would thereby have forfeited his civic rights. For the rest, only the law was rigorous with histrions; custom dealt with them tolerantly. We know that an actor could become rich, and free if he were a slave, when by his genius and his talents he attained celebrity.

Quintus Roscius, a famous Roman actor, born 129 B.C., earned from five to six hundred thousand sesterces, and the actor Esopus, his contemporary, left to his son, on his death-bed, a fortune of twenty million sesterces[1] acquired entirely in the theatre.

Sorix and Metrobius were his contemporaries, and shared with him the friendship and favour of Sylla.

The city of Tarentum, in Magna Græcia, was famous for its actors, who came to Rome after the conquest of their city. Cleon performed his mimetics to the sound of the flute; he was the most celebrated actor in all Italy and played without mask, like Nymphodorus, his rival. Istomachus, who, at first a charlatan, followed later in the ways of Cleon, began by performing his farces in the public squares; afterwards, when he had acquired a certain celebrity, he set up a theatre for his shows.

Esopus, according to Quintilian, was considered one of the greatest tragedians of Rome, whilst Roscius excelled as a comic actor; he was the friend of Cicero, and as esteemed for his talents as for his probity. He had brought that art of gesture which the Latins called saltatio to such a point of perfection that Cicero often challenged him as to which of them would render the same thought with the greater eloquence, the one by gesture, or the other by word.

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Pylades and Bathyllus, in the first century, were both famous as pantomime actors, and the former assembled a troupe which enjoyed a wide celebrity. Lentulus, mime and mimographer, lived also in the first century under Domitian and Trajan.

In the third century, Genes or Genest of Rome, a comedian, was martyred.

In addition to the actors subsidised by the State there were itinerant mountebanks, mimes and buffoons—the etymology of which, buffo, is derived from the action of inflating the cheeks so that the smacks which the actor is to receive must make more noise, and induce to greater laughter. All these mountebanks overran Italy, and performed their pieces, which were in the nature of Atellanæ, and written—like those intended for the great theatres—in verse, which was often sung to accompaniments on the flute.

The Romans, like the Greeks, had also their nevrospastes or marionette performers, for we see the actors of the Atellanæ borrowing religious pomps, such as the Manducus, from the ancient marionettes. “Thus was established in Rome,” says M. Charles Magnin, “a sort of interchange between the characters of the Atellanæ and those of the theatre of marionettes, just as much more recently in France the masks of the Italian comedy mingled, and, as it were, duplicated themselves with the actors of the troop of Polichinelle; so that it is not easy to know whether in certain rôles marionettes preceded living actors or living actors preceded marionettes.” The marionettes, or αύτοματα, as Aristotle calls them, were brought from Egypt into Greece.

It is necessary to sketch the history of this theatre, for it is essential to that of certain types of the Italian comedy.

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Herodotus relates that the origin of puppets on wires is of the greatest antiquity; but he claims to have seen the women of Egypt bearing in procession, in the religious festivals of Osiris, whom he calls Bacchus, images which sometimes were veritable statues, certain parts of whose bodies were moved by cords. The Greeks appropriated this mechanism, but they did not confine the uses of it to religious ceremonies; they employed these automata in the theatre.

Similarly in the religious ceremony, which in Rome preceded the games in the circus and the triumphs, wooden statues were carried which were equipped with hidden strings. Amongst them were the African ghouls, known as Lamiæ, and the sharp-toothed Manducus, the eater of children, a monster with a human head (undoubtedly the primitive type of Mâchecroûte and Croquemitaine), which opened, says Rabelais, in Pantagruel, “large and horrific mandibles, armed with teeth, above and below, which by means of the device of the little hidden cord, were made terrifically to clash the one against the other.”

The identical custom of promenading monsters and colossal figures is to be found again in the Middle Ages, with the difference, however, that instead of being paraded in the triumphs of emperors they are now seen in the anniversaries of the holy bishops, canonised for delivering the country of awesome monsters, or just simply for having curbed idolatry; even in the processions of our own day we may behold monsters, whose jaws are armed with horrible teeth, or a giant Goliath and a Saint Christopher moving arms and legs.