Masks and Marionettes

By Joseph Spencer Kennard

This vintage book is a fascinating and detailed study on the history of masks and marionettes, with information on early development, popularity and influence throughout the ages, notable practitioners, and much more. “Masks And Marionettes” constitutes a fantastic exploration of context and culture surrounding its subject, and will be of considerable utility to those with an interest in the history of Commedia dell'arte. Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new introduction on puppets and marionettes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bradley Press
• Release date: Jun 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781528760430

Book preview

MASKS

Chapter I

Origin of the Commedia dell’Arte

THE Commedia dell’Arte is Art and it is Psychology. It is a theatre of all people, of all arts, of all moments when life wings up out of drab reality. It is a theatre of music and dance; of song, colour and light; of plays on wagon stages; of festivals in streets, in courts, in great squares; on rivers; at weddings and funerals and coronations; of actors with and without masks; sometimes in extraordinary costumes.

Many of these actors are unknown to fame; many more are immortal. Paintings, etchings and engravings have made their faces familiar–diverting, ludicrous, facetious; sometimes grimly, often grotesquely, the Commedia dell’Arte portrays incongruous humanity.

The first comic actor may have stood on a rock, a tree stump or by evening fire in front of his hut. He postured, grimaced, gesticulated, told a funny story, cracked a joke, sang a song, burlesqued a boon companion. The Commedia dell’Arte developed through the ages and includes such plays as Goldoni’s, which will live forever; but always the Commedia dell’Arte depicts human frailties, parodies human foibles.

Eight hundred years before Christ a drivelling, pot-bellied drunkard was represented on the Grecian stage. Centuries later Icarian jesters with trestles and carts gave performances in Grecian cities. Athenian and Spartan charlatans drolled and clowned to attract an audience and sell their medicines.

Roman theatrical art is derived from the Etruscan. Maccus, Bucco, Pappus and Casnar, speaking in Oscan, Greek and Latin, improvised plays called Atellanæ. The Roman Mimi were farceurs who declaimed; the Pantomimi gestured, danced and mimicked–sometimes to the accompaniment of music. The Sanniones resembled modern circus clowns. In their long dresses, shaven heads, painted faces and parti-coloured coats the Planipedes suggest the modern harlequin. The obscene Ithyphalli and Phallophori have disappeared. Oscans from the town of Atella near Naples performed Atellanæ Fabulœ or Ludi Osci; and Maccus, like the modern Pulcinella, from under his mask amused Romans with wit and satire. Pulcinella’s ancestral statues in bronze have been found in Herculaneum; and on the walls of Pompeii his portraits are seen, beak-nose and all.

An enormous helmet made at first of tree bark and later of leather covered the head of the actor. During the reign of the Emperor Adrian, Alulu-gelle wrote: The whole head and face of the actor was enclosed within the mask in such a manner that the voice could escape through only one part which rendered the voice stronger and more distinct. Because of this holding and reverberating of the voice the Latins called these masks personæ. They were comic, tragic or–when representing satyrs or Cyclopes–were ugly and of great size. In the Terence comedies the masks represented the characters but concealed the actor’s personality. Since female parts were always acted by men the mask sometimes represented a woman’s headdress and ornaments.

In Greek and Roman theatres of the fourth and fifth centuries, deceived husbands, philosophers and physicians were ridiculed. This type of play passed directly to the Italian theatre. In 560 A.D. Cassiodorus writes that the pantomime was extremely popular among the Romans; and we know that the Emperor Augustus frequented the performances of the pantomimist Bathyllus. In time of famine the Emperor Constantius expelled the philosophers from Rome but allowed three thousand dancers and as many pantomimists to remain. Seneca relates that twenty thousand gold crowns were given to a favourite female dancer on her marriage.

ITALIAN COMMEDIA DELL’ARTE OR IMPROMPTU COMEDY

Lucian composed a treatise on pantomimes. According to Macrobius, when Hylas danced a Hymn ending with the words the great Agamemnon, he drew himself erect to express the meaning; but pantomimist Pylades said you make him tall but not great. Then Pylades danced the same Hymn and when he came to this passage he assumed the posture of deep meditation. Apuleius describes a performance where the whole story of the Judgment of Paris was told by dance and gesture. Appianus Alexandrinus mentions a pantomime play describing the destruction of Crassus and his army by the Parthians. Suetonius relates that Nero, being ill, vowed that when well he would dance the story of Turnus as told in the Æneid.

Ferrarius asserts that as late as 1719 vestiges of these Roman pantomimes still existed in Italy, and that the Mattaccini of Lombardy gave performances which were survivals of the old pantomimic dances of the Luperci. Clothed in a tight-fitting dress and wearing masks of old men they ran through the streets, dancing, beating people with ecourgees, like the ancient Luperci. They ran before fast-driven carriages, climbed walls, entered windows and engaged in mock combat; one falling and pretending to be dead, his dancing partner would lift him up and carry him away. He relates how a company of masked and dancing Mattaccini visited a young man on his wedding day while surrounded by his friends. When one of the dancers whispered in the bridegroom’s ear he arose and mixed in the masquerade, engaged in a feigned combat with one of the other dancers and according to the custom of this dance dropped down as if dead. The others carried him into a neighbouring chamber swaying to the accompaniment of lugubrious music, as if attending a funeral. After the dancers had left, the guests found the bridegroom on the floor, strangled by his rival who had been one of the dancers.

Callot engraved that famous series of buffoons, mimes and masks of the ancient comedy known as Balli di Sfessania. In ancient times the Sfessania in Piedmont invented a popular verse characterized by improvised pleasantries, postures and scenes resembling the Atellanæ. In Rome these actors were called Mimi Septentrionis, buffoons of the north. Naked or clad only with a waist scarf they accompanied themselves with castanets. Callot’s types were mostly real actors among whom is Covilelo, renowned for his comical faces and manner of speaking. Salvatore Rossa says that Covilelo was one of the seven masks of the ancient Commedia dell’Arte; that he originated in Calabria and had the accent and costume of his country. He resembles the trasone of Terence.

The early Fathers of the Church fulminated against pagan comedies; but the Church victorious, forgetting the simplicity of early Christian worship, gave sanctuary to dramatic art and religious drama became a part of the sacred service. Crusaders from the Holy Land and Constantinople filled all Europe with tales of miracles, marvels and knightly adventures; and this fantastic material was added to the ancient Latin farces, improvisations and lazzi. About 1589 Niccolò Rossi wrote "Nor will I ever name as comedies these that are carried here and there by sordid and mercenary folk, introducing therein Gianni, Bergamasco, Francatrippa, Pantalone and such-like buffoons, did we not wish to resemble them to the Mimes, Atellanæ and Planipedes of the ancients." Vincenzo de Amicis noted the likeness between the Roman and Commedia dell’Arte characters; with their droll voices, gesticulations, somersaults, dances and lazzi. The Zanni is the Latin Sannio. The Doctor is Dossennus. Pantalone is Pappus. Pulcinella, dressed in white, is Maccus or Bucco or Mimus Albus; and bizarre multi-coloured Arlecchino is Mimus Centunculus. The elements of the popular Italian comedy are the oldest, most vital, most national possessions of the race; an Italian comedy of masks and improvisations which flourished before Rome rose upon the Tiber.

It has been said that to connect the Commedia dell’Arte with the ancient Mime would require a continuity of literary texts of the same character through the whole Middle Ages and that no such compositions exist; that Pulcinella and Arlecchino alone even remotely link the Commedia dell’Arte with the Latin theatre; and that to make this association probable it would be necessary to prove that in the second half of the fifteenth century Greek actors emigrated to Italy, and there presented comic plays modelled from the Turko-Byzantine type of Mime, and that these comic figures preserved their character throughout the whole Cinquecento. Lorenzo Stoppato collected many evidences tending to prove this continuity; and Ermano Reich maintains that the Italian Commedia dell’Arte is the natural transformation of the Byzantine Mime–which passed into Italy at the time of the great emigration after the Turks captured Constantinople, together with the remnants of the ancient Latin Mime which had feebly survived through the Middle Ages.

As in the Roman so in the Italian Commedia dell’Arte, dialects were spoken, masks used; and rank realism and obscenity were equally common to the Italian masks of the sixteenth century and to the Roman masks of the fifth century B.C. The conventional characters of Plautus and Terence reappeared. Both in Roman and in Italian plays plots were amorous, indecent–men and women appearing naked on the stage and unmentionable vices being boldly paraded.

Whatever may have been the origin of the Italian Commedia dell’Arte we know that early in the sixteenth century improvised comedies were performed in the courts of princes, in the palaces of lords and in academic halls, by actors each time freshly enrolled and instructed who returned to their ordinary occupations when the festival was over.

In 1502 Isabella Gonzaga, Marchioness of Mantua, returned to the paternal palace at Ferrara to attend the marriage of her brother the Duke with Lucrezia Borgia and was present at a performance of Plautus’ Bacchide. Isabella wrote her husband of the two Moresche dances and pantomimes interposed in the Bacchide. One of these consisted of ten men naked except for a scarf, their heads covered with hair made of tin foil. In their hands they carried cornucopias filled with varnish, with lighted tapers inside, which soon ignited. A terrified maiden ran to the back of the stage; a dragon sought to devour her but a warrior captured the beast, and led him away bound, while the maiden arm in arm with a youth followed him; and round about them went those naked men tossing flames in the air. The second act was of madmen wearing shirts and stockings and on their heads paper fools-caps, having bladders in their hands with which they beat each other. This was true Commedia dell’Arte.

In Florence, the Dramatic Art found in the Cento Novelle abundance of plots, characters, caricatures, jests and repartee. The form of this new material was always Plautinian or Terentian, but the ancient monotony was broken. Thus, the Calandria* is decked with episodes borrowed from the Decameron; and the Mandragola† in its scenic art follows the Latin model. Says the poet in the prologue

Un amante meschino,

Un Dottor poco astuto,

Un Frate mal vissuto,

Un Parassito di malizia il cucco,

Fien questo giorno il vostro badalucco.

An unhappy Lover, a Doctor who is a simpleton, a dissolute Friar, a Sycophant who is the very essence of cunning, provide your pastime for today.

As spectacular scenes grew more popular acting became a profession. Lasca published a popular carnival song referring to professional actors (1559). The Graziana company and also the Compagnia della Flaminia and that of Vincenza Armani recited at Mantua (1567). Comedy or tragedy performances had now become an art. The Commedia with its many masks and dialects and improvised recitation was now called dell’Arte. Florentine pedants distrusted the new fashion. Varchi in his Suocera declared that his play was neither wholly ancient nor wholly modern but partly modern and partly ancient and added, although it is in the Florentine tongue it is adapted from the Latin; adapted, I say, and not translated; unless in the same sense as the Latins translated from the Greeks. And Salviati declaimed in the prologue of the Granchio

Nuova Dûnque è questa Commedia, e a tutto

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