Chapter VII: Part 7

The constituent elements of the variety-show as we know it to-day have existed since a time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary--to use the old legal phrase. The appeal of almost every one of these elements and of the variety-show as a whole is ever to the eye and to the ear, to the senses rather than to the emotions; and to the intellect it appeals even more infrequently. Its primary purpose is to afford a kaleidoscopic succession of contrasted amusements for the benefit of those who are easily satisfied by glitter of spectacle, by incessant movement, and by violent music. It is the ideal entertainment for that redoubtable entity, the Tired Business Man, who checks his brains with his overcoat, and who resents having to witness anything in the theater which might make him think. Not only does the variety-show flourish because it is exactly adjusted to the unintellectual and purely sensational likings of the Tired Business Man and to the similar tastes of his fit mate, who is fatigued because her life is idle and empty, but for his benefit also, and for hers the summer song-show and the alleged "comic opera" and the misnamed "review" have been called into existence. Indeed, it is obvious enough that most of our summer song-shows and many of our "comic operas" and "reviews" are, in reality, only more or less disguised variety-shows.

With facts as they are, there is never any excuse for quarreling. The Tired Business Man is a fact; and it is only fair that what he demands shall be supplied by caterers to the cravings of the populace. But even tho his name is legion, the Tired Business Man is to be accepted only with contemptuous toleration. He is to be endured only so long as he does not insist on imposing his likings upon others who have a more delicate perception, and who are willing to bring their brains with them when they take their places in the theater. Even in the variety-show which seems often to exist only for the pleasure of those who still linger in what one of George Eliot's wise characters aptly called "a puerile state of culture," nevertheless, we can now and again discover signs of a longing for something less void of purpose than mere spectacle. For example, it was in a variety-show that Mr. Belasco's finely imaginative dramatization of Mr. Long's 'Madame Butterfly' was set before the American public several years prior to its being adorned by the pathetic music of Puccini for the benefit of opera-goers.

In fact, it is well to remember that the _opera comique_ of the French had its humble origin in the theater of the Parisian fairs, where also we can discover the rude beginnings of that crude form of melodrama which Victor Hugo lifted into literature in 'Hernani' and 'Ruy Bias,' casting the cloth-of-gold of his splendid lyricism over the arbitrarily articulated skeleton of his violent action. It was an old negro-minstrel act, representing the rehearsal of an amateur band, that the Hanlon-Lees borrowed to amplify into a rough-and-tumble pantomime for performance in a variety-show in Paris; and this knockabout sketch proved to be the stepping-stone which enabled them soon to achieve the fantastic eccentricity of their 'Voyage en Suisse,' performed in real theaters, first in Paris and then in New York, to the joy of all who could appreciate the perfection of their art as pantomimists. And, once again, it was in a variety-show of the lowest class that Denman Thompson first appeared as 'Josh Whitcomb Among the Female Bathers,' a vulgar episode of indelicate humor, wherein, however, was contained the germ of that perennially popular play, the 'Old Homestead,' which gave a pure pleasure to countless thousands of theater-goers, season after season, for at least a quarter of a century.

When we look back over the long annals of the variety-show we cannot escape the conclusion that here is its real opportunity, its true function, and its necessary justification. For the most part, it supplies a purely sensational amusement for the unthinking; and yet it is continually serving as a nursery for the actual theater. It is thus seen to be a proving ground for the seeds of widely different dramatic species--_opera comique_ and melodrama in France, the _ballet d'action_ in England, the rural play in the United States. It is not always conscious of its possibilities, nor does it always improve them to best advantage. Normally it provides an entertainment appealing mainly to the senses, often empty, and often unsatisfying because of its monotony. But on occasion it is capable of grasping at higher things, and of encouraging artists who will sooner or later outgrow its limitations and transfer their activities to the theaters wherein audiences are more eager for veracity of character portrayal.

III

On one side the variety-show intersects the ring of the circus and the curving line of the First Part of negro-minstrelsy, while on the other it impinges on the sphere of the more literary drama. Its existence is evidence that the show business is always the show business, no matter how manifold and dissimilar its manifestations may seem to be. The men and women who have grown up in the regular theaters are a little inclined to be scornfully jealous of the less highly esteemed performers in the variety-show, even if they themselves are occasionally tempted by the lure of high pay for hard work to condescend to vaudeville engagements. No doubt, the bill of fare set before us more often than not in the variety-show justifies this attitude on the part of the high priests of the more legitimate drama; yet they ought to be broad-minded enough to recognize merit wherever it may be found. The late John Gilbert, best of Sir Peter Teazles, and of Sir Anthony Absolutes, was not a little provoked by the praise bestowed upon Harrigan and Hart and their associates by Mr. Howells and by other critics of the acted drama, who relished the peculiar flavor of 'Squatter Sovereignty' and its companion plays. Gilbert was puzzled to discover any reason why any criticism whould be wasted on pieces which pretended to be little more than variety-show sketches. But Joseph Jefferson, a far more versatile comedian than John Gilbert, was swift to discern merit, and he was wholly free from toplofty condescension toward other forms of the histrionic art than that in which he was himself pre-eminent--perhaps, because in his youth he had often appeared as a burlesque actor, an experience which he gladly admitted to have been very valuable to him. After Jefferson had gone to see one of the nondescript pieces at Weber and Fields's music-hall, joyous spectacles commingled of song and dance, of eccentric character and of sheer fun, he was loud in his praise of the histrionic art displayed here and there in the course of the performance, declaring without hesitation that one episode, in which the two managers took part, was simply the finest piece of comic acting he had seen that whole winter. Probably the ordinary playgoers, who had flocked to be amused by this loose-jointed piece, took a somewhat apologetic attitude toward the pleasure they had received; and probably they supposed that their pleasure at the entertainment offered to them was due mainly to the pervading bustle and dazzle of the kaleidoscopic show. But Jefferson had a keener insight into the practise of the art he adorned; and he recognized at once the sheer histrionic skill which lent the illusion of life to the fantastic impossibility of the humorous situation.

Jefferson, one may venture to assert, would not have been surprised if he had learned that an American university professor of dramatic literature, whenever he came to discuss the lyrical-burlesques of Aristophanes, was in the habit of sending his whole class to Weber and Fields that his students might see for themselves the nearest modern analog to the robust fantasies of the great Greek humorist. Aristophanes was a many-sided genius; as a lyric poet of ethereal elevation he must be set by the side of Shelley; as a keen satirist of contemporary fads and foibles he must be compared with Rabelais; and as a fun-maker pure and simple, as a comic playwright, willing and able to evoke unexpected laughter by ludicrous antics, he reveals an undeniable likeness to the adroit devisers of the hodgepodge of humorous episodes represented with contagious humor by Weber and Fields. And the heterogeneous pieces which used to be produced by the two performers who devote themselves to the dislocation of the English language were outgrowths of the variety-show, from which, indeed, the two performers themselves were graduates.

It is this aspect of the variety-show, its supplying of opportunities for artistic development to ambitious performers, and its own spontaneous generation of dramatic forms capable of being lifted into literature--it is this aspect of the variety-show which would be emphasized by any competent writer undertaking to narrate its long and involved history. That no one has yet written a history of the variety-show is as surprising as that no one has yet written a history of negro-minstrelsy. The materials for such a book are accessible and abundant, since there are already richly documented accounts of the fairs of Paris and of London, in which the variety-show flourished centuries ago. There are accounts of the English concert-halls as they now exist and of the French _cafe-concerts_. The historian will also be aided by the various treatises on the ballet, and on the circus, and on the puppet-show, with all of which forms of entertainment the variety-show has always had intimate relations.

It may be that the future historian will be moved to point out the superficial likeness between the variety-show and the Sunday issues of certain American newspapers. These Sunday newspapers are really magazines--that is to say, they occupy a position midway between journalism and literature, just as the variety-show occupies a position midway between the circus and the theater. The magazine pages of these Sunday newspapers set before their readers a very variegated bill of fare; they provide photographs of recent events--which are the equivalent of the moving-pictures of the variety-show; they contain short-stories--which are, in narrative, what the brief plays of the variety-show are in dialog and action; they abound in anecdotes and in comic sayings--which are closely akin to the utterances of the sidewalk conversationalists of the variety-show. And the variety-show itself is like journalism, in that it is a modern combination of elements of the remotest antiquity, for altho the actual newspaper is only two or three centuries old, there were always channels by which news was conveyed to the eager public. The men of Athens nearly two thousand years ago were glad to hear and to tell some new thing, and their wants were supplied, even if there was in classical antiquity and in the Middle Ages no organization faintly anticipating the marvelous machinery for collecting and distributing information possessed by the newspapers of the twentieth century.

(1912.)

XV

THE METHOD OF MODERN MAGIC

THE METHOD OF MODERN MAGIC

I

"Autobiography," said Longfellow--altho the remark does not seem especially characteristic of this gentle poet--"is what biography ought to be." And in the long list of alluring autobiographies, from Cellini's and Cibber's, from Franklin's and Goldoni's, there are few more fascinating than the 'Confidences of a Prestidigitator' of Robert-Houdin. A hostile critic of Robert-Houdin's career has recorded the fact--if it is a fact--that Robert-Houdin once confided to a fellow magician that his autobiography had been written for him by a clever Parisian journalist; and it must be admitted that not a few amusing French autobiographies have not been the children of their putative parents--for instance, the memoirs of Vidocq, the detective. Yet this is not as damaging an admission as it may seem at first sight since the clever Parisian journalist may have been little more than the amanuensis of the prestidigitator, hired only to give literary form to the actual recollections of his employer. Such a proceeding would not deprive Robert-Houdin's autobiography by its authenticity. It remains a classic, beloved by all who joy in the delights of conjuring. Unfortunately the hostile critic has gone further in his attack upon Robert-Houdin's reputation, and he has succeeded in showing that the renowned French conjurer claimed as his own invention not a few illusions which had been already exhibited by his predecessors in the art of deception.

Yet this unjustified boasting does not invalidate Robert-Houdin's title to be considered the father of modern magic. Even if he was treading in the path of those who had gone before, he attained at last to a consistent theory of the art, far in advance of that held by earlier magicians. Many of his marvels, and perhaps more than one of the most striking of them, may have been but improvements upon effects originally contrived by others; yet every succeeding generation can rise only by standing upon the shoulders of the generations that went before, and it is justified in availing itself of all that these earlier generations may have discovered and invented. Robert-Houdin tells us himself that he was greatly indebted to the Comte de Grisy, whose stage-name was Torrini. In fact, Robert-Houdin might be called a pupil of Torrini, as Mr. John S. Sargent is a pupil of Carolus Duran. It was upon Torrini's dignified simplicity as a magician that Robert-Houdin modelled his own unpretending presentation of his feats of magic. Apparently it was a famous conjurer named Frikell, who first discarded the cumbersome and glittering array of apparatus which used to be displayed on the stage to dazzle the eyes of the spectators; but this discarding of obtrusive paraphernalia was not deliberate, being due only to the accidental destruction of Frikell's stage-furniture by fire, whereby the performer was suddenly forced to rely upon the less complicated experiments, which could be exhibited without extraneous aid. The abandoning of overt apparatus, which Frikell was forced into by misfortune, Robert-Houdin adopted as an abiding principle. He kept his stage as unencumbered as possible, altho, of course, he brought forward from time to time the special objects necessary for the illusions he was about to exhibit.

Not only did he perform on a stage which was intended to resemble a drawing-room, he also eschewed any other costume than that appropriate to a drawing-room. Earlier performers had not hesitated to deck themselves in Oriental apparel or in the flowing garb of a medieval magician. Robert-Houdin was always modern and never medieval; and he adopted this attitude deliberately. He was the first to formulate the fundamental principle of the modern art of magic--that a conjurer should be "an actor playing the part of a magician." One of the foremost exponents of modern magic, Mr. Maskelyne, notes that many conjurers strive only to play the part of some other conjurer; and it might be added that there are not a few who fail entirely to see the necessity for playing a part and who content themselves with a purposeless display of their misplaced dexterity. But the masters of the art are men like Robert Heller and Buatier da Kolta, who were accomplished comedians, each in his own fashion, and who presented a succession of little plays--for a truly good experiment in magic is really a diminutive drama.

It may be brief and simple--a play in one act; or it may be prolonged and complicated--a play in three or five acts. But like any other play it ought to possess a central idea and to have a definite plot. It should tend straight toward its single conclusion, which must be the logical development of all that has gone before; that is to say, it must possess what the critics of the drama term Unity of Action. It should have a beginning, a middle, and an end, in accord with Aristotle's requirement for a tragedy. It must work up to its culmination with a steadily increasing intensity of interest. It must contain nothing not directly contributory to the startling climax which is its surprising and satisfying conclusion. It must not digress or dally in by-paths, however entertaining these may be in themselves, but push onward to its inevitable finish. It is only by conceiving of every one of his successive experiments as a play, complete in itself and governed by the inexorable laws of the drama, that the magician can rise to the summit of his art. He is a conjurer and a comedian at the same time, making his dexterity the servant of his drama, and never for a single moment allowing this dexterity to force itself upon the attention of the audience. Indeed, the one thing he ought to conceal is his possession of any special gift in manipulation. He should keep his audience ever guessing as to the method of his apparent miracles.

II

It is because Robert-Houdin was seemingly the first conjurer to adopt these principles as his irrefragable code of procedure that he is to be accepted as the father of modern magic. He never allowed himself to parade his skill in manipulating coins and cards at the risk of distracting the attention of the spectators from the central and culminating effect around which he had constructed his plot. No doubt, he possessed dexterity in abundance, but it was subordinate to his dramatic intent. No doubt, again, some of the devices he used had sometimes been employed by a long succession of his predecessors in conjuring. As a matter of course he availed himself of all sorts of mere tricks, of ingenious sleights, and of artful apparatus that the conjurers who went before him had devised for their own use long before he was born. An experiment in magic--to use the term that Mr. Maskelyne prefers, is not a mere trick--or at least it ought not to be. It is not the exhibition of a device or of a sleight or of an adroit mechanical apparatus. Rather is it a coherent whole, direct in its development, no matter how many subtleties of concealment and deception it may employ in the course of its accomplishment.

Most amateurs in the art of magic, and also only too many professional performers, place their reliance mainly upon the trick itself--the deceptive manipulation or the novel apparatus--and are satisfied to get out of it what they can. They invent new methods of changing a card or of making coins pass into a box, overlooking the fact that these inventions are valueless except as they may be utilized to facilitate the execution of one of those larger feats which only are fairly to be entitled experiments in magic, and which are distinguished always by the direct simplicity and the straightforward unity of their plots. In fact, an experiment in magic must aim at that totality of effect, that perfect subordination of the minor means to the major end, which Poe insisted upon as the dominant characteristic of the true short-story. And this totality of effect can be achieved only by the rigorous exclusion of everything which in any way contradicts that central idea out of which the true short-story must always be developed. Unity and totality, and a rigorous obedience to what Herbert Spencer called the Principle of Economy of Attention--these are the essential elements in the presentation of a worthy experiment in magic.

An intimate friend of the late Alexander Hermann, the last of a long line of Hermanns who have been eminent in the history of the art, has asserted that Alexander Hermann was wont to insist that the conjurer must possess three qualifications for the practise of his profession. The first of these is dexterity; the second is dexterity; and the third is also dexterity. Now, there is a sense in which this assertion is true; but it may be easily misapprehended. A conjurer needs to be dexterous, altho more than one master of modern magic, notably Robert Heller, has not been pre-eminent in the possession of this qualification. A moderate degree of dexterity is essential, and perhaps more than a moderate degree; but dexterity is not the prime requisite, which is rather the dramatic instinct, or, perhaps, it had better be called the dramaturgic imagination, that can hit on a new idea and build it up into a plot, and thus devise an experiment in magic completely satisfactory to the artistic sense.

What the master of the magic art never forgets is that dexterity is not an end in itself; it is only one of the means by the aid of which the marvel may be wrought. There are, to-day, performers of a surpassing skill in the manipulation of cards and coins, capable of feats which would have been the despair of Robert-Houdin and of Robert Heller; and some of them are so enamored of their own dexterity that in their eagerness for its exhibition they lose sight of unity and totality. As a result of this lapse from the loftier standards of their art they present a disconcerting huddle of sleights of hand until the amazed spectators lose all sense of progression, as these bewildering effects tumble over one another without any attempt at climax. Such a performance is an empty display of difficulty conquered for its own sake; it is only a sequence of "stunts"; it is mere vanity and vexation of spirit. It is like the favorite Scotch dish, the haggis, which is said to supply only "confused feeding."

It is always interesting to note how the principles of the arts have a certain relation, and how we can constantly discover parallels in two wholly different fields. This abuse of dexterity in the art of modern magic is closely akin to the abuse of toe-dancing in the art of the ballet. As the conjurer ought to have dexterity at his command to serve when it is needed, so the accomplished ballet-dancer ought to be able to walk on her toes, when this feat will fit into the scheme of the special dance she has undertaken to perform. But for a dancer to confine herself to the executing of a series of difficult steps involving nothing more than toe-dancing is to circumscribe the range of her art and to accept as the end what ought to be only the means. Here again, we have a frank substitution of a single "stunt" for the larger liberty accorded by a more intelligent understanding of the true principles of the art. The excessive toe-work of the dancer, like the excessive dexterity of the conjurer, is at bottom only what boys call "showing off"; and in the long run even boys tire of this. To descend to showing off is equivalent to the blunder common in bad architecture, when we cannot help seeing that the artist has gone afield to construct his ornament, instead of concentrating his effort on ornamenting his construction.

So far from permitting himself ever to show off, or to invite attention to his own skill, the master of modern magic is careful always to conceal as far as possible the method by which he accomplishes his wonders. He utilizes at will and in conjunction ingenious apparatus and manual dexterity, without ever calling the attention of the spectators to either. He refrains even from turning up his sleeves or from passing for special examination any of the objects he is employing, while taking care to let it be seen accidentally that these objects are really above suspicion. Like the playwright constructing a play, the composer of an experiment in magic must ever keep in mind his audience; and he must strive always to foresee the exact impression he is making upon the spectators. Like the playwright, the modern magician must so build up each of his experiments that it seizes the attention of the spectators early, that it arouses their interest, that it holds this interest unrelaxed to the end, and that at last it satisfies while it surprises. This can be achieved only when all the elements of the experiment, the idea itself, the plot, the dexterous devices, and the ingenious apparatus which may be necessary, are all so combined and controlled and harmonized as to leave on the memory of the audience a clear and consistent impression--indeed, an impression so sharp that a majority of those who witnessed the experiment could describe it the next day.

It is the disadvantage of the empty display of dexterity for its own sake that fails to leave this definite deposit in the memory; and the spectators are quite unable to recall the central effect. This is generally because there was, in fact, no central effect for them to seize, the performer having scattered his efforts, as tho he were using a shot-gun instead of hitting the bull's-eye with a single rifle-shot. The master of the art is careful to economize the attention of his audience, to focus it, so to speak, and to arrange his sequence of effects so adroitly that, however multifarious and even complicated may be the means whereby he is achieving his object, the result is attained so directly and so simply that it can be apprehended by the spectators readily and instantly. The experiment has been exhibited as tho it were the easiest thing in the world, even if it is at the same time perceived to be the most impossible to account for. To arrive at this result the performer must preserve an absolute simplicity of manner; he presents himself as a gentleman amusing himself by amusing other gentlemen, who have come together at his invitation to be amused.

III

A gentleman amusing other gentlemen--that should be the ideal; and this ideal not only forbids any foolish clowning and any trivial buffoonery on the part of the performer, but it prohibits also any attempt on his part to incite the gentlemen he is amusing to laugh at any one of their own number who may have been kind enough to lend a hat or a watch, or to come up on the stage as a volunteer assistant by request. Nothing is cheaper, and nothing is in worse taste, than for the performer to make personal remarks about any member of his audience or to hold any one of the spectators up to ridicule. The conjurer is a comedian playing the part of a modern magician, but he is not a low-comedian, ready to get a laugh at any price and at the cost of any one else. He may be as pleasant as he can, and even as humorous, but he can preserve his own self-respect only by having due regard to the self-respect of all those who have gathered to enjoy his performance. Readers of Robert-Houdin's memoirs will remember how one of the old-school performers used to advertise that he would Eat a Man Alive, and how he sprinkled flour and pepper and salt all over the hapless creature who volunteered to be devoured, and then proceeded to bite the finger of the disgusted and unfortunate victim. This is "most tolerable and not to be endured."

If a demand were to be made for a list of the books likely to be the most useful to those who desire to master the principles of the art of modern magic, one would have to begin by recommending the preliminary perusal of the autobiography of Robert-Houdin, from which a host of useful hints may be gleaned. The Frenchman tells us, for instance, how he once showed off before Torrini and exhibited his manipulative skill over a pack of cards, making a needless display of dexterity, designed to dazzle the eyes of the spectators; and how Torrini pointed out the futility and the disadvantage of this. Then it would be well to consult the invaluable series of volumes on modern magic by "Professor Hoffman" wherein the various tricks and sleights and apparatus are described and illustrated. These books contain what may be called the raw material of the art, the processes which the magician can employ at will in building up his larger experiments in magic, each of which should be a complete play in itself. Finally, when the student has found out how tricks can be done, he would do well to turn his attention to 'Our Magic,' by Mr. Maskelyne and his associate, Mr. David Devant. And from this logical treatise he can learn how experiments in magic ought to be composed. It is from this admirable discussion of the basic principles of modern magic that several of the points made in this essay have been borrowed.

Mr. Devant calls attention to the fact that new tricks are common, new manipulative devices, new examples of dexterity, and new applications of science, whereas new plots, new ideas for effective presentation, are rare. He describes a series of experiments of his own, some of which utilize again, but in a novel manner, devices long familiar, while others are new both in idea and in many of the subsidiary methods of execution. One of the most hackneyed and yet one of the most effective illusions in the repertory of the conjurer, is that known as the Rising Cards. The performer brings forward a pack of cards, several of which are drawn by members of the audience and returned to the pack, whereupon at the command of the magician they rise out of the pack, one after the other, in the order in which they were drawn. In the oldest form in which this illusion is described in the books on the art of magic, the pack is placed in a case supported by a rod standing on a base; and the secret of the trick lies in this rod and its base. The rod is really a hollow tube, and the base is really an empty box. The tube is filled with sand, on the top of which rests a leaden weight, to which is attached a thread so arranged over and under certain cards as to cause the chosen cards to rise when it descends down the tube; and in putting the cards into the case the conjurer releases a valve at the bottom of the tube, so that the sand might escape into the box, whereby the weight is lowered, the thread then doing its allotted work, and the cards ascending into view, no matter how far distant from them the performer may be standing when he achieves his miracle.

It seems likely that the invention of this primitive apparatus may have been due to the fact that some eighteenth-century conjurer happened to observe the sand running out of an hour-glass, and set about to find some means whereby this escape of sand could be utilized in his art. The hollow rod, the escaping sand, and the descending weight have long since been discarded; but the illusion of the Rising Cards survives and is now performed in an unending variety of ways. The pack may be held in the hand of the performer, without the use of any case; or it may be placed in a glass goblet; or it may be tied together with a ribbon and thus suspended from cords that swing to and fro almost over the heads of the spectators, and however they may be isolated, the chosen cards rise obediently when they are bidden. The original effect subsists, even tho the devices differ.

It was left for Mr. Devant to give a new twist to this old illusion. For a full pack of playing-cards he substituted ten cards two or three times larger than playing-cards, and with the ten numerals printed or painted in bold black. These pasteboards are given for examination, and so is a case into which they fit. After they have been duly inspected they are put into the case which is hung from chains. A clean slate is also shown, and wrapped up and given to a spectator to hold. Then three members of the audience are invited to write each a number composed of three figures, and these three numbers are added by a fourth spectator. The total is found to be written on the slate; and then at the behest of the performer the cards containing the figures of this total rise in proper sequence out of the case. It may be noted that the writing on the slate is also an old and well-worn device, and so is the method of making sure that the total of the three numbers written by different persons shall agree with that already concealed on the slate. Yet these three familiar effects are here united in a refreshingly novel experiment in magic, being now fitted into a new plot. The devices themselves are old enough, but Mr. Devant is entitled to full credit for the new combination.

IV

The fundamental principles which Robert-Houdin accepted and which he seems to have taken over from Torrini, Messrs. Maskelyne and Devant have elucidated in their philosophic disquisition, and yet in one particular their practise is not yet level with their preaching. Before Robert-Houdin and Frikell, or at least before Torrini, and even after these three artists had set a better example, the majority of conjurers filled the stage with gaudy apparatus and insisted on its blazing with an unnecessary prodigality of lights. One magician in the middle of the nineteenth century came forward on a stage absolutely dark, and suddenly fired a pistol, thereby lighting two hundred candles arranged in pyramids behind him. Another hung his stage with black velvet and adorned it with skulls. Torrini and Robert-Houdin made an approach to the unadorned simplicity of an actual drawing-room, altho Robert-Houdin seems to have permitted himself a long shelf at the back of his stage on which his various automatic figures were assembled awaiting their summons to take part in the program. Even Messrs. Maskelyne and Devant are satisfied with a stage-setting which is frankly only a stage-setting--as stagy, in fact, as the ordinary scenery to be seen in a variety-show.

Now, it may be admitted that a nondescript set of this sort, vaguely Oriental, with arches and curtains, and somewhat suggestive of comic opera, may not be inappropriate when any one of the bolder illusions is to be presented--the Box Trick or the Aerial Suspension, the Mystic Cabinet or the Talking Sphinx. Indeed, a special set of scenery is often actually necessary for the presentation of marvels depending mainly on optics or mechanics. But for the first part of the program, when the performer appears in ordinary evening-dress, and when he is presenting himself as a gentleman in a drawing-room, amusing other gentlemen, by means of experiments in magic, every one of which may be likened to a little play, why should not the stage-set be that of a drawing-room, or of a bachelor's study, as accurately reproduced as similar rooms are reproduced in the modern comedies of Mr. Henry Arthur Jones and Mr. Augustus Thomas? The set accepted by Messrs. Maskelyne and Devant is devoid of the actuality of a real room; it is fantastically stagy, and therefore it lacks both veracity and dignity.

Sooner or later some modern magician, in advance over his rivals, will take this final step, and the curtain will rise on a stage with a box-set realistically reproducing a handsome room, with all its decorations and hangings and furniture in harmony, Jacobean in style, or Chippendale, as the performer's preference may be. There will be chairs and tables in their proper places; there will be book-cases, and window-boxes of flowers; and perhaps there will be a cellaret, where the performer may procure any goblet or decanter he needs. There will be a broad desk in the center, with its writing-pad and its book-rack, and possibly its heap of magazines and weekly papers. This set thus furnished will look like a room that has really been lived in; it will have a door in each of the side walls, and when the curtain rises the stage will be empty. Then the doorbell will ring, and the servant will enter at one door, and, going across the stage to the other, he will admit his master--the master at last of the truly modern art of magic. The magician will give his hat and coat to the servant, who will take them out, and who will never appear on the stage again except in response to the master's pressure on the electric button, ordinarily used to summon a servant. And the magician will present his succession of experiments in magic, utilizing only the objects which he may borrow from the spectators, or which would naturally be found in a gentleman's room. The apparent absence of all apparatus, the naturalness of the environment, the easy simplicity and the convincing reality of the back-ground--all these elements will coalesce to heighten the effect of the marvels to be wrought by a comedian playing the part of a magician.

(1912.)

XVI

THE LAMENTABLE TRAGEDY OF
PUNCH AND JUDY

THE LAMENTABLE TRAGEDY OF PUNCH AND JUDY

I

When we consider how cosmopolitan is the population of these United States, and how freely we have drawn upon all the races of Europe, it is very curious that the puppet-show does not flourish in our American cities as it flourishes in many of the towns on the other side of the Western Ocean. The shrill squeak of Punch is not infrequent in the streets of London--altho it may not now be heard as often as it was a score of years ago. In Paris in the gardens of the Tuileries and of the Luxembourg, and again in the Champs-Elysees where the children congregate in the afternoon, there are nearly half a dozen enclosures roped off and provided with cane chairs so that spectators, old and young, may be gladdened by the vision of Polichinelle, and by the pranks of Guignol. Yet even in Paris there are not now as many puppet-shows as there were fifty years ago; and in Italy and in Germany the traveler fails to find as frequent exhibitions of this sort as he used to meet with in the years that are gone. Apparently there is everywhere a waning interest in the plays performed by the little troop of personages animated by the thumb and fingers of the invisible performer. And perhaps the declining vogue of this diminutive drama in old Europe is one reason why it has never achieved a wide popularity in young America.

In France the puppet-show is stationary; it has its fixed habitation and abode; and its lovers can easily discover where to find it when they seek the specific pleasure it alone can provide. In England the spectacle of Punch and Judy is ambulatory; the bloodthirsty hero and the bereaved heroine roam the streets at large, and their arrival in any one avenue of traffic can never be predicted with certainty. In the United States poor Punch has never ventured to show his face in the open street, seeking the suffrages of the casual throng; he is not peripatetic but intermittent, and he makes his appearances only in private houses, and only when he is sent for specially to entertain the children's party. Here in America Punch is still a stranger to the broad public; he has an exotic flavor; he suggests Dickens, somehow; and he must be wholly unknown to countless thousands who would rejoice to make his acquaintance and to laugh at his terrible deeds.

His terrible deeds!--perhaps there is in these words a possible explanation for the failure of Punch to win favor among the descendants of the Puritans, who are always inclined to apply severe moral standards of conduct. Now, if we apply any moral standard at all to the conduct of Mr. Punch, the result is simply appalling, for the customary drama of which he is the sole hero sets before us a story of triumphant villainy, adequately to be compared only with the dastardly history of Richard III in Shakspere's melodramatic tragedy. Mr. Punch is an accessory before the fact in the death of his infant child, and when his devoted wife very naturally remonstrates with him, he turns upon her with invective and violence--a violence which culminates in assassination. Having once seen red and tasted blood, he finds himself swiftly started upon a career of crime. His total depravity tempts him to a startling succession of hideous murders. He slays an inoffensive negro, a harmless clown, and a worthy policeman. Then he succeeds, by a simple trick, in hanging the hangman himself. By his fatal assaults upon these two officers of justice, the necessary policeman and the useful hangman, Mr. Punch exhibits his contempt for the majesty of the law. He stands forth, without a shred of conscience, as a practical anarchist, rejecting all authority. His hand is against every man and every man's hand is against him. And having violated the laws of this world, he finally discloses his callous contempt for the punishment which ought to await him in the next world; he has a hand-to-hand fight with the devil himself--a deadly struggle from which he emerges victorious. And this is the end, which crowns the work.

When we consider the several episodes of Mr. Punch's abhorrent history, we are reluctantly forced to the conclusion that his story is even less informed with morality than that of Richard III. The crookbacked king comes to a bad end at last; he meets with the just retribution for his many misdeeds; and he falls before the sword of Richmond. But Mr. Punch comes to a good end, and so far as we may know, he lives happy ever after, like the princes and princesses of the fairytales. He may even marry again and have another child, to be made away with in its turn. The more we consider his misdeeds and his misadventures the more shocking they are to our moral sense. Mr. Punch appears as a monster of such hideous mien that to be hated he needs but to be seen. This is how he must appear to every one of us who applies a moral standard to the drama, and who is willing to hold every character in a play to a strict accountability for his words and deeds. If we apply this moral standard to the play of Punch and Judy, then that play must be dismissed as profoundly and hopelessly immoral, carrying ethical infection to all who are so unfortunate as to be spectators at its performance. And more particularly, it is an absolutely unfit piece for the young, whose immature minds need to be guarded against everything which might tend to confuse the delicate distinctions between right and wrong.

But, of course, we do not apply a moral standard to the sayings and doings of Mr. Punch, for the plain and sufficient reason that he is not a human being. He is not a man and a brother, upon whom we may be tempted to pattern ourselves. He is but a six-inch puppet, a thing of shreds and patches, a wooden-headed doll, vitalized for a moment only by the hand concealed inside his flimsy body with its flaunting colors. He is too fantastic, too impossible, too unreal, too unrelated to any possible world, for us to feel called upon to frown upon his misdeeds or to take them seriously. He is a joke, and we know that he is a joke, and all the children know that he is only a joke. Even the youngest child is never tempted to believe in his existence and to be moved to follow his example or to imitate his dark deeds. The proof of the pudding is in the eating; and the proof of a play is in the effect it produces upon the spectators. We may question whether any one of the millions of performances of the lamentable tragedy of Mr. Punch has suggested to a single father the fatal neglect of his offspring or to a single husband the possibility of wife-murder. And we may doubt whether any child, after witnessing Mr. Punch's murderous combats with the policeman and the devil, has ever felt any lessening of his respect for those two time-honored guardians of law and order.

The plea of confession and avoidance which is here set up for Punch and Judy is much the same as that set up by Charles Lamb for the frolicsome Restoration comedies. Lamb admitted that they were degradingly immoral--if you took them seriously and accepted them as pictures of life. But he insisted that they were not really amenable to this moral standard, since they were plainly impossible in any world known to man. Macaulay had no difficulty in showing that Lamb was judging others by his clever and sophisticated self. To Lamb the creatures of Wycherley and Congreve might reveal manners and customs which removed them from the sphere of recognizable humanity; but the majority of his fellow-spectators were not so nimble-witted; they saw characters on the stage personated by living performers, and they beheld these characters shamelessly doing shameful things. Because the persons in the play were represented by actual human beings they seemed indisputably human; and their deeds could not be considered as outside morality. Yet the plea made by Lamb for the Restoration comedies has a certain validity when it is put forward in behalf of Mr. Punch. He is not personated by an actual human being; and even the least sophisticated of juvenile spectators does not accept him as a fellow-creature strictly amenable to the human code.

II

Historians of the Greek drama have often commented on the fact that the Athenian actors wore towering masks, and that thereby they were deprived of all facial expression. In our snug modern theaters, with their well-lighted stages, we follow with our eyes the shifting emotions as these chase each other across the faces of the actors; and this is one of our keenest pleasures in the playhouse. In the huge theater of Dionysius at Athens, with its ten or twenty thousand spectators, seated tier on tier, along the curving hillside of the Acropolis, the actor was too far removed from most of the playgoers for any play of feature to be visible; and critics have commiserated the Attic dramatists on their deprivation of this element of potent appeal. Yet the question arises whether the Greek playwrights were really the losers by this immobility of the actors' faces; and we may be allowed to doubt that they were when we recall the fact that the faces of Mr. Punch and of Mrs. Judy, of the policeman and of the hangman, are also fixed once for all. The expression that Mr. Punch wears when he is fondling the baby is, perforce, the same which illuminates his face when he is engaged in joyful combat with the devil, a foeman worthy of his stick. Here the imagination of the spectator comes to the rescue. The wooden head of Mr. Punch is unchanging, no doubt; but those who gaze entranced upon his marvelous doings never miss the play of feature which they would expect if they were part of the audience in a playhouse for grown-ups. Quite possibly the Athenian spectators did not mind the immobility of the masks their actors wore; indeed, that very immobility may have been an incentive to their imaginations. When the Greeks went to their open-air theater, as when we gather around the tent-like theater of Mr. Punch, they knew in advance, as we also know, that the faces of the performers would be unchanging; therefore they did not expect any variety of expression; and probably they got along as well without it as we do at a puppet-show.

There is another likeness between Attic tragedy and Punch and Judy; there is a limitation in the number of characters we are allowed to see at the same time. As the hidden performer who operates all the figures has only two hands, he can bring before us at any one moment only Mr. Punch and one other of the several characters. The fingers of the right hand animate Mr. Punch, and the fingers of the left hand animate in turn Mrs. Judy and the negro and the clown. At Athens (for reasons which need not here be discussed) the dramatist had the use of only three actors, even tho these might each of them "double" and appear as two or more of the successive characters of the play. So it was that there were never more than three persons taking part in any given episode of an Attic tragedy as there are never more than two persons taking part in any given episode of Punch and Judy. In the thumb-and-finger plays devised in Paris by M. Lemercier de Neuville, he felt so severely the inconvenience of his limitation to two characters that he devised a kind of spiral-spring arrangement inside the costumes of his little figures to hold up their heads; and he prepared invisible supports jutting out just below the flat ledge which forms the base of the proscenium. Thus he was enabled to leave the figure in sight, while he withdrew his hand to animate another character. His _Pupazzi_, as he called them, were clever caricatures of contemporary celebrities; and he was ingenious enough sometimes to maneuver half a dozen of them at once with his single pair of hands, four adjusted into the projecting rests, and two on his fingers.

In the sumptuous puppet-show in the gardens of the Tuileries the same result is achieved by the employment of two or three manipulators, so that four or even six figures may appear at once. This has greatly enlarged the scope of the performance; and the manager of this theater has very ambitious aims. He likes to rearrange for his juvenile audience the most appropriate of the pieces which have won favor in the real theaters, and to present these with all sorts of spectacular adornments. He has even ventured to give plays as elaborate as 'Around the World in Eighty Days.' But it may be doubted whether this vaulting ambition has not overleaped itself, and whether a puppet-show does not gain rather than lose by restricting its efforts within narrower limits. After all, nothing so delights us at a puppet-show as the feats which are most characteristic and least difficult of accomplishment. We joy to behold one tiny figure belaboring another with his solid club or to follow the vicissitudes of a bout at single-stick, when both combatants thwack lustily at each other's wooden heads.

III

Yet this mention of M. Lemercier de Neuville's _Pupazzi_, with their varied repertory of Aristophanic commentaries on current events, and this memory of the spectacular efforts exhibited in the gardens of the Tuileries, suggest a possible explanation for the fact that Punch and Judy have failed to find wide-spread favor here in America and that they seem to be losing their pristine popularity in England. There is a pitiable monotony of program in all English-speaking puppet-shows. They confine their repertory to the single play which sets forth the deeds and misdeeds of Mr. Punch. Now, in the Continent of Europe there is no such monotony. Not only in the gardens of the Tuileries but in the Champs-Elysees a young spectator can sit thru performance after performance without fear of having to witness the same piece. Punch appears in only one drama, whereas his French rival, Guignol, in his time plays many parts, with a host of other characters to be his associates, some in one piece and some in another. And the several plays are adorned with a variety of scenery. Of course, there cannot be a very wide range of subject; and always is the stick a prominent feature in the miniature drama. There are a certain number of traditional Guignol pieces, handed down from generation to generation. Some of these have been printed for the use of devoted students of the drama, and some are to be had in little pamphlets for the benefit of the happy French children who may have had a puppet theater with its dozen or more figures presented to them as a New Year's gift. There is in the Dramatic Museum of Columbia University the manuscript of half a dozen of these little plays, written out (in all the license of his own simplified spelling) by the incomparable performer who was in charge of the leading Guignol in the Champs-Elysees in 1867.

It is rather curious that the English puppet-show should have confined itself for now nearly a hundred years to the unique Punch and Judy, when the puppet-shows of other countries have a changing repertory. It was a puppet performance of a German perversion of Marlowe's 'Doctor Faustus' which first introduced Goethe to the Faust legend. George Sand, unlike the great German poet in most ways, was yet like him in her delight in the puppet-show. In her country place at Nohant, she had a tiny theater of her own for which she dressed all the puppets, while her son Maurice carved the heads, painted the scenery, devised the plays, and improvised the dialog. Maurice Sand it was, sometimes alone, but occasionally with the aid of a friend, who manipulated the little figures and bestowed upon them a momentary vitality. His mother persuaded him to write out a dozen of the more successful of his little plays for puppets and to publish them; and this volume, the 'Theatre des Marionnettes a Nohant,' appeared in 1876. George Sand herself wrote a delightful account of the humble beginnings of this famous puppet-show, and described how there came in time to be all sorts of ingenious improvements for achieving spectacular effects.