Chapter VIII: Part 8

She declared that the puppet-show is not what it is vainly thought, because it demands an art of a special kind, not only in the construction of the little figures themselves, but more especially in the story which these little figures are to interpret. She held that the particular field of the puppet playwright-performer was to be found in the dramatization of protracted fantastic romances, abounding in comic characters and in comic episodes and gratifying the fundamental human liking for long-drawn tales of adventure and for fantastic fairy-stories. She found in her son's acted narratives a rest from reality, a release from the oppression of every-day life, an excursion into a realm of fancy and of legend--even if the legend was itself a fanciful invention of the improvising performer. And she declared that she liked the puppet playhouse in her own home, because it was a domestic and fireside pleasure, which could be enjoyed without the exertion imposed by a visit to a real theater. Obviously she found as much delight in being a spectator--after having been a costumer--as her son did in being the author and operator of the spectacle.

IV

There is one note to be made upon George Sand's account of the slow development of the puppet-show at Nohant, beginning as early as 1847. If you will look at any set of Punch and Judy figures hung up to-day in the toy store to tempt the eye of Young America, you will discover alongside Mr. Punch and Mrs. Judy, Jack Ketch and the Devil, a strange green figure with huge jaws and double rows of white teeth. This verdant beast has a body like all other Punch and Judy figures, a loose cloth funnel to slip over the sleeve of the operator; but its head suggests the head of an alligator, or of a crocodile, or of a dragon. Now, if you will turn to the classic text of the English play of Punch and Judy, edited with a learned introduction and an abundance of scholarly annotation by John Payne Collier--at least, so it is believed, altho the rare little book is anonymous--you will find no mention of any strange beast of this sort. Collier's text of the play is adorned by two dozen illustrations, etched by George Cruikshank, and in no one of these plates will you discover any crocodile, or alligator, or dragon. You will find Toby, the dog, who still survives in most of the few shows to be seen to-day in the streets of London; and you will find Hector, the gallant steed that Mr. Punch mounts with difficulty--and it is sad to have to record that Hector is no longer in the service of Mr. Punch. In fact, one devoted admirer of puppet-shows, whose memory goes back nearly fifty years, is ready to declare that he has never laid eyes on Hector--except in Cruikshank's illustrations. But Mr. Punch, deprived of the privilege of bestriding Hector, now enjoys the fiercer delight of overcoming the green-eyed alligator.

Here we have a question of profound historic interest. Whence came the strange beast with the wide jaws? And here is where George Sand's pleasant paper is a very present help in time of need. She tells us that her son besought her to make a green monster for one of the earliest pieces he devised for her puppet-figures. She did as she was bid, and she sacrificed a pair of blue velvet slippers to provide the marvelous creature with his gently smiling jaws. She draws attention to the fact that the slippers were blue, and to the further fact that nevertheless the strange beast was always called the Green Monster. And here may be the explanation of the historic mystery. The fame of the puppets of Nohant was borne abroad; they were talked about all thru France; and they were discussed again and again in the Parisian newspapers. What more likely than that one of the professional puppet players should have seen the infinite possibilities of the Green Monster, and should have perceived its novel fascination for children? Thereupon he borrowed it for his own performances. Certainly it is that the Green Monster is a character in at least one of the manuscript plays preserved in the Dramatic Museum of Columbia University, and written out half a century ago. Probably the Green Monster strayed from the puppet-show of the Champs-Elysees sooner or later to one of the toy stores of Paris at the request of some boy who desired it for his own. When the Green Monster had elected domicile in the stores of Paris, he was soon appropriated by the toy-makers of Germany for export to Great Britain and the United States.

(1912.)

XVII

THE PUPPET-PLAY, PAST AND PRESENT

THE PUPPET-PLAY, PAST AND PRESENT

I

In her charming and instructive account of the ingenious puppet-shows with which her son Maurice used to amuse himself and her guests at Nohant half a century ago, George Sand records the fact that the erudite scholar, Magnan, who wrote a learned history of the puppet-show from the remotest antiquity, did not discriminate sharply between the two entirely different kinds of little figures, both of which are carelessly called puppets in English, and marionettes in French. One class comprises these empty and flexible figures which are animated by the thumb and two fingers of the performer who exhibits them by holding his hands above his head, as in the 'Punch and Judy' show. The other contains the larger dolls, suspended on wires (which are supposed to be invisible) and manipulated by one or more performers overhead, who give life to these figures by jerking the various strings as the action of the play may require. These last are the true marionettes; and for the first we have, unfortunately, no distinctive name. It is greatly to be regretted that the two very different types of puppets are not set apart from each other satisfactorily by the contributor of the article on marionettes in the latest edition of the 'Encyclopedia Britannica.'

Each of these two sorts of puppets has an interest of its own; and each of them has its special and peculiar relation to the drama. Both of them have a long and honorable history, and can be traced back in the scanty records of a remote antiquity; altho it seems more likely that the true marionette--the little figure moved by wires from overhead--is the older of the two, antedating by many centuries the Punch and Judy figure, which owes its abrupt and awkward movements to the human thumb and fingers. Both classes are to be found to-day all over the world, not only in the cities of civilization, but in unsuspected nooks and corners on all the shores of all the seven seas. In Turkey, for example, under the name of Karaguez, there is a Punch and Judy of enormous popularity and of doubtful decency, while in Siam there are marionettes which perform religious plays of traditional appeal. Apparently the puppet-show of one type or the other satisfies in its fashion that dramatic instinct which every people possesses in greater or less intensity.

Both kinds of puppet-show flourish in France, and have there been lifted to a more elevated plane of art; and both kinds retain their popularity in Italy, altho in an humbler form. The French are inveterate artists; and they are like the Greeks in desiring to do all things decently and in order. The Italians have, perhaps, a stronger native gift for the drama and they are ready to enjoy a simpler and more primitive puppet-play. It is from Italy that we who speak English have derived our Punch and Judy. Mr. Punch is a direct descendant of that favorite figure of robust Neapolitan farce, Pulcinella; and so is the French Polichinelle. And in Italy to-day the true marionettes have an even broader popularity than the Punch and Judy figures. The Italians who have lately flocked to America in their thousands, until New York now contains more of them than Venice, have imported in the original package the legendary puppet-show setting forth the romantic stories of the Middle Ages and of the early Renascence. We look upon Mr. Punch as comic; but the Italians take their pleasure seriously and the marionettes in their puppet-shows to be seen in New York are truly heroic, and not infrequently highly tragic.

In the interesting discussion of 'Medieval Story,' in which Professor W. W. Lawrence of Columbia University has traced the influence of various ideals of the Middle Ages upon our modern social organization, he has a striking description of the marionette performances which the exiles of Italy have brought with them to America. "Any one who walks thru the Italian quarter of New York City in the evening may notice over a doorway an illuminated sign, 'Theater of Marionettes.' If his curiosity tempts him inside, into the low room crowded with enthusiastic spectators, he will see, on a rude stage, a group of puppets almost as large as life, representing knights and ladies, acting out a little drama in response to the jerking of strings fastened to their arms, and of iron rods firmly fixed in their heads. The warriors are gorgeously attired in shining armor and plumed helmets; and the ladies have wonderful costumes of bright colors, with a great deal of embroidery and decoration. An Italian in shirt-sleeves in the wings at the side of the stage speaks their lines for them, with all the elocutionary flourishes which he can command. Fiercely immobile as to expression, but most active as to arms and legs, these manikins march about, soliloquize, make love, and debate in council. But it is their battles which arouse the greatest enthusiasm among the audience; and, indeed, these are fought in a way that is a joy to see. Then it is that heroic deeds are done--tin swords resound upon tin armor, helmets are battered about and knocked off, dust rises from the field, the valiant dead fall in staring heaps. At such moments the spectators can hardly restrain themselves from emotion, yet the story is well known to them--perhaps some one sitting near by will volunteer to explain it, asserting that he has known it ever since he was a boy and that he has read it all in a book which he has at home, called 'Reali di Franci.' It is a version of the old tale of Charlemagne and his knights, which, after traveling far from its native home in France, was taken up by the Italian people many centuries ago, and made so much their own that few heroes have been closer to their hearts than Roland, or as they call him, Orlando. Even in their homes in the New World they still celebrate him, so that the very newsboys in the streets of modern America are keeping alive the heroic traditions of the age of Charlemagne."

II

When we compare the account which Professor Lawrence has here given of the Italian puppet-shows in New York with the description of these same performances in their native land half a century ago, which we find in the 'Roba di Roma' of W. W. Story, the American sculptor-poet, we perceive that there has been little modification of method in the past threescore years. Story studied all sides of the Roman populace, and he maintained that nothing was more characteristically Italian than the marionette theater. He tells us that the love for the acting of _burattini_ [or puppets] is universal among the lower classes thruout Italy, and in some cities, especially in Genoa, no pains are spared "in their costume, construction, and movement to render them lifelike. They are made of wood, generally from two to three feet in height, with very large heads, and supernatural glaring eyes that never wink, and are clad in all the splendor of tinsel, velvet, and steel. Their joints are so flexible that the least weight or strain upon them effects a dislocation, and they are moved by wires attached to their heads and extremities. The largest are only about half the height of a man, yet as the stage and all the appointments and scenery are upon the same scale of proportion, the eye is soon deceived, and accepts them as of life-size. But if by accident a hand or arm of one of the wire-pullers appears from behind the scenes or descends below the hangings, it startles you by its portentous size; and the audience in the stage-boxes instead of reducing the _burattini_ to Lilliputians by contrast, as they lean forward, become themselves Brobdingnagians, with elephantine hands and heads."

Story insisted that there is nothing ludicrous to an Italian audience in the performances of these diminutive men and women. On the contrary, nothing is more serious both to the spectators and to the unforeseen operators. In fact, he declared, no human being could be so serious as these tiny performers. "Their countenances are as solemn as death, and more unchanging than the face of a clock. Their terrible gravity when, with drooping heads and collapsed arms, they fix on you their great goggle-eyes is at times ghastly. The plays they perform are mostly heroic, romantic, and historical. They stoop to nothing which is not startling in incident, imposing in style, and grandiose in movement. And the Italian audience listens with a grave and profound interest, as tho the performers were not mere puppets, but actually the heroes they are supposed to be. The inflated and extravagant discourse of the characters is accepted at its face value; to the spectators it is grand and noble. And the foreign visitor must control any desire he may feel to smile at the extraordinary spectacle he is witnessing, and at the marvelous rodomontade he is hearing. To laugh out loud at one of these heroic puppet-plays would be as indecorous as to indulge in laughter during a church service."

Incidental to the heroic dramas which the puppets play are interludes of ballet-dancing like those which are intercalated, more or less adroitly, into the grand opera performed by full-grown men and women. The Italians are born pantomimists, and they are accomplished dancers. Therefore, there is no reason for surprise that human pantomime and human dancing are imitated in the marionette theaters. There is reason for surprise, however, that Story did not perceive clearly the advantages possessed by the dancing puppets over the dancers of more solid flesh and blood. He found something comic in the pantomime of the puppets, "whose every motion is effected by wires, who imitate the gestures of despair with hands that cannot shut, and, with a wooden gravity of countenance, throw their bodies into terrible contortions to make up for the lack of expression in the face." In mere pantomime it is probable that the puppets would labor under a serious disability, for if a performer cannot use his voice, he needs facial expression to assist the gestures by which only can he then convey his meaning to the other performers and to the spectators. Perhaps it is not too much to assert that the puppet-show is not the proper place for pantomime.

III

We need not wonder that Story admitted their dancing to be superior to their pantomime. Yet he failed to appreciate the true cause of this superiority, and he was inclined to comment upon the dancing of the _burattini_ in a somewhat satiric fashion. He tells us how the principal dancer suddenly appears, "knocks her wooden knees together, and jerking her head about, salutes the audience with a smile quite as artificial as we could see in the best trained of her fleshly rivals." But this artificial smile must have been fixed and permanent on the features of this diminutive dancer--or else the Roman-American essayist merely imagined its presence. "Then, with a masterly ease, after describing air-circles with her toes far higher than her head and poising herself in impossible positions, she bounds or rather flies forward with superhuman lightness, performs feats of choreography to awaken envy in Cerito and drive Elssler to despair, and, poising on her pointed toe that disdains to touch the floor, turns never-ending pirouettes on nothing at all, till at last, throwing both her wooden hands forward, she suddenly comes to a swift stop to receive your applause."

This description is unsympathetic, and it induces the surmise that the operator of the _burattini_ at the performance described was not a master of his art and did not know how to profit by the possibilities of that art. Yet one of Story's phrases serves to explain why the suspended puppet is superbly qualified to excel in ballet-dancing; that phrase is the one which credits the dancing doll with "supernatural lightness." A skilful operator of the wires which bestow life and movement and grace, is able to imitate easily and exquisitely the most difficult feats of the human dancer. If he is sufficiently adroit he robs his suspended figure of all awkwardness, and he dowers her with a floating ethereality surpassing that attainable by any living performer. Now, this floating ethereality is precisely the quality which gives us most pleasure when we are spectators at the performance of a really fine ballet. It is the supreme art of the great dancer to soar lightly aloft, seeming to spurn the stage and to abide in the air. Only very rarely is this illusion possible to the merely human dancer; and when achieved it is but fleeting. Yet this illusion is absolutely within the control of the manipulator of the puppet-dancers. He can make them execute feats of levitation, achievable only by the most marvelously gifted and by the most arduously trained of human dancers.

Of course, the skilful performer must carefully avoid swinging his tiny figures aimlessly thru the air. He must limit the feats that he permits them to accomplish to those which can be actually accomplished by human beings, altho he can do easily what the human beings can achieve only with more or less obvious effort, and he can impart a volatile elasticity a little beyond the power of any human being however favored by Terpsichore. When 'Salome' was, for a season, the sensation of the hour, it was produced by Holden's marionettes; and it afforded a delightful spectacle long to be remembered by all who had the felicity of beholding it. Whatever of vulgarity or of grossness there might be in the play itself, or in the Dance of the Seven Veils, was purged away by the single fact that all the performers were puppets. So dexterous was the manipulation of the unseen operator who controlled the wires and strings which gave life to the seductive Salome as she circled around the stage in most bewitching fashion, and so precise and accurate was the imitation of a human dancer, that the receptive spectator could not but feel that here at last the play of doubtful propriety had found its only fit stage and its only proper performer. The memory of that exhibition is a perennial pleasure to all who possess it. A thing of beauty it was; and it abides in remembrance as a joy forever. It revealed the art of the puppet-show at its summit. And the art itself was eternally justified by that one performance of the highest technical skill and of the utmost delicacy of taste.

If the most marvelous exploits of terpsichorean art, almost inexecutable by the human toes and the human legs of living dancers, are capable of reproduction by puppets skilfully manipulated by the puller of the wires and strings whereby the little figures are suspended, so also are the dexterous feats of the juggler. One of the specialties of the sole surviving puppet-show of this sort in the Champs-Elysees is the performance of a juggler who tosses aloft and catches in turn a number of glittering balls. The delicate balancing of the tight-rope walker, with her frequent pirouettes on her toes, and with her surprising summersets, is also one of the exhibitions in which the puppet can defy the rivalry of any living executant, however skilful in the art. At the circus we feel that the tightrope dancer might fall, whereas at the puppet-show we know with certainty that any fatal mishap is impossible. In Holden's marionette program the miniature mimicry of humanity was carried to the utmost edge of the possible; and no item on his bill of fare was more delectable than the series of scenes in which the traditional Clown and Pantaloon played tricks on the traditional Policeman, and in which they joined forces in belaboring an inoffensive donkey. As the unfortunate quadruped was also a puppet, there was no painful strain on our sympathy.

IV

If a performance by puppets deprived 'Salome' of its vulgar grossness by removing it outside the arena of humanity, so to speak, and by relegating it to an unreal world beyond the strict diocese of the conscience, so a performance by puppets of a passion-play or of any other drama in which the Deity has perforce to appear as a character, is thereby relieved of any tincture of irreverence. We no longer see a divine being interpreted by a human being. We cannot help feeling that all the persons in the play, whether they dwell in heaven or on earth, are equally remote from our common humanity. And therefore we need not be surprised when we discover that the marionette has long been allowed to appear in religious drama. Indeed, it appears probable that the very name _marionette_ is directly derived from the name of the Virgin.

Very early in the history of the Christian Church were the puppets permitted to perform passion-plays and little dramas derived from the stories contained both in the New and the Old Testaments. In England under Elizabeth and James religious puppet-shows of this kind went wandering about the kingdom, taking into the smallest villages an entertainment which would afford to the rural inhabitants the same kind of pleasant instruction which the dwellers in the larger towns had in the more elaborate and long-drawn mysteries performed by the trade-guilds on the Corpus Christi day. That masterly rogue Autolycus in the 'Winter's Tale' tells us that in his time he had been on the road with "a motion of the Prodigal Son"--and a _motion_ was the Elizabethan term for a marionette-exhibition. In like manner one of the characters in Ben Jonson's 'Every Man out of His Humor' speaks of "a new motion of the city of Nineveh, with Jonas and the whale." Of course, the puppet performers, like the grown-up actors, did not long confine themselves to sacred themes; they ventured also into contemporary history. A puppet showman who appears in Ben Jonson's 'Bartholomew Fair' tells us that a certain motion setting forth the mysterious Gunpowder Plot, was "a get-penny."

Story described one puppet-play which he saw in a little village on the main road from Rome to Naples, and which had for its central figure Judas Iscariot. But here again his attitude is unsympathetic, perhaps because the performance was clumsy. "The kiss of Judas, when, after sliding along the stage, he suddenly turned with a sidelong jerk and rapped the other wooden puppet's head with his own, as well as the subsequent scene in which he goes out and hangs himself, beggar description." Yet the expatriated American spectator honestly recorded that the Italian spectators "looked and listened with great gravity, seemed to be highly edified, and certainly showed no signs of seeing anything ludicrous in the performance." We may venture the suggestion that even the sophisticated sculptor-poet himself would have seen nothing ludicrous in this performance if the operator of Judas had been as skilful as the operator of Salome in Holden's marionettes.

A few years ago in Paris one of the younger poets wrote a passion-play which was performed during Lent by a company of dolls, designed and dressed in fit and appropriate costumes by an artist friend familiar with the manners and customs of the Holy Land. While the wires were managed by expert hands, the words of the dialog were spoken by the poet himself, and by two or three other poets who came to his aid. This must have been a seemly spectacle, and it won careful consideration from more than one of the most eminent dramatic critics of France. Here we may find a useful suggestion for those who wish to see certain plays by modern dramatic poets, in which the Deity is a necessary character--Rostand's 'Samaritaine,' for one, and Hauptmann's 'Hannele,' for another. Many of the devout have a natural repugnance to any performance on the stage (with its materialistic environment and its often sordid conditions) which calls for the impersonation of a divine being by an actor of ordinary flesh and blood. Yet if these same plays were reverently performed by marionettes the aroma of irreverence would be removed. It might even be possible to reproduce in the puppet-show not a little of the solemn religious effect which is felt by all visitors to the passion-play at Oberammergau.

(1912.)

XVIII

SHADOW-PANTOMIME WITH ALL THE MODERN IMPROVEMENTS

SHADOW-PANTOMIME WITH ALL THE MODERN IMPROVEMENTS

I

An American; improving on a suggestion of a Frenchman, has declared that "language was given to man to conceal his thoughts--and to woman to express her emotions." Unfortunately, language is so often inexact that even when it is sufficient to express emotion, it is not precise enough even to conceal thought. Sometimes a term is wholly devoid of truth, as when we call a certain solid a "lead-pencil," which contains no lead, and when we label a certain liquid "soda-water," which contains no soda. Sometimes the term is so vague that it may mean all things to all men. Who, for example, would be bold enough to insist on his own definition of "romanticism"? Sometimes again the term covers two or three things which demand a sharper differentiation. This is the case with the compound word "shadow-pantomime." It is the only name for three distinct things.

First, there is the representation by the dark profile of the human hand upon a wall or a screen, of human heads, and of animal figures, either by an adroit arrangement of the fingers alone, or by the aid of adjusted shapes of cardboard, so as to suggest a hat on the head and a pipe in the mouth and other needed accessories; this primitive entertainment is sometimes styled "shadowgraphy."

Second, there is the full-sized silhouette of a human figure, due to the shadow cast by the body standing before a lamp, and magnified or diminished as it approaches or recedes the spectators. This is the familiar parlor amusement which Sir James Barrie cleverly utilized with dramatic effect in the final act of his 'Professor's Love-Story,' when one of the characters, standing outside a house, sees the black profiles of other characters projected clearly on the drawn shade of the window before which he is placed.

Then, thirdly, there is the true shadow-pantomime, called by the French "Chinese shadows," _ombres chinoises_, in which the tiny figures, made either of flat cardboard or of metal, are exhibited behind a translucent screen and before a strong light. This is by far the most interesting and the most important of the three widely different kinds of semi-dramatic entertainment, often carelessly confounded together even in the special treatises devoted to this humble art. In France these Chinese shadows have been popular for more than a hundred years, since it was in the eighteenth century that the performer who took the name of Seraphin established his little theater and won the favor of the younger members of the royal family by his presentation of the alluring spectacle, the rudimentary little piece, still popular with children, and still known by its original title, the 'Broken Bridge.'

It may not be fanciful to infer that the immediate suggestion for this spectacle was derived from the contemporary vogue of the silhouette itself, this portrait in solid black taking its name from the Frenchman who was minister of finance in 1759. At all events, it was in 1770 that Seraphin began to amuse the children of Paris; and it was more than a century thereafter that M. Lemercier de Neuville elaborated his ingeniously articulated _Pupazzi noirs_. It was a little later still that Caran d'Ache delighted the more sophisticated children of a larger growth, who were wont to assemble at the Chat Noir, with the striking series of military silhouettes resuscitating the mighty Napoleonic epic. And it was at the Chat Noir again that Riviere revealed the further possibilities latent in shadow-pantomime, and to be developed by the aid of colored backgrounds supplied by a magic lantern. Restricted as the sphere of the shadow-pantomime necessarily is, the native artistic impulse of the French has been rarely better disclosed than by their surprising elaboration of a form of amusement, seemingly fitted only to charm the infant mind, into an entertainment satisfactory to the richly developed esthetic sense of mature Parisian playgoers. Just as the rustic revels of remote villagers contained the germ out of which the Greeks were able to develop their austere and elevating tragedy, and just as the modern drama was evolved in the course of centuries out of the medieval mysteries, one source of which we may discover in the infant Christ in the cradle still displayed at Christmastide in Christian churches thruout the world, so the simple Chinese shadows of Seraphin supplied the root on which Parisian artists were able to graft their ingenious improvements.

The little spectacle proffered originally by Seraphin was frankly infantile in its appeal, and the 'Broken Bridge' is as plainly adjusted to the simple likings of the child as is the lamentable tragedy of Punch and Judy or the puppet-show in which Polichinelle exhibits his hump and his terpsichorean agility. The two arms of the broken bridge arch over a little stream but fail to meet in the center. A flock of ducks crosses leisurely from one bank to the other. A laborer appears on the left-hand fragment of the bridge and begins to swing his pick to loosen stones at the end, and these fragments are then seen to fall into the water. The figure of the workman is articulated, or at least one arm is on a separate piece and moves on a pivot so that a hidden string can raise the pick and let it fall. The laborer sings at his work; and in France he indulges in the traditional lyric about the Bridge of Avignon, where everybody dances in a circle. Then a traveler appears on the right-hand end of the bridge. He hails the laborer, who is hard of hearing at first, but who finally asks him what he wants. The traveler explains that he wishes to cross and asks how he can do this. The laborer keeps on picking away, and sings that "the ducks and the geese they all swim over." The irritated traveler then asks how far it is across, and the laborer again sings, this time to the effect that "when you're in the middle you're half-way over." Then the traveler inquires how deep the stream may be, and he gets the exasperating response in song, that if he will only throw in a stone, he'll soon find the bottom. This dialog bears an obvious resemblance to that traditionally associated with the tune of the 'Arkansaw Traveler.'

Then a boatman appears, rowing his little skiff, his backbone pivoted so that his body can move to and fro. The traveler makes a bargain with him and is taken across, after many misadventures, one of them with a crocodile, which opens its jaws and threatens to engulf the boat--this amphibious beast having been a recent addition to the original playlet, and probably borrowed from the Green Monster not long ago added to the group of Punch and Judy figures. And the exciting conclusion of this entrancing spectacle displays a most moral application of the principle of poetic justice. The ill-natured laborer advances too far out on his edge of the broken bridge, and detaches a large fragment. As this tumbles into the water he loses his footing and falls forward himself, only to be instantly devoured by the crocodile, which disappears with its unexpected prey, whereupon the placid ducks and geese again swim over--and the curtain falls.

II

There are a score of other little plays like the 'Broken Bridge,' adroitly adjusted to the caliber of the juvenile mind. In a British collection may be found a piece representing a succession of appalling episodes supposed to take place in a 'Haunted House,' and in a French manual for the use of youthful amateurs may be discovered a rudimentary version of Moliere's 'Imaginary Invalid,' to be performed by silhouettes with articulated limbs. Here again we perceive the inaccuracy of the term "shadow-pantomime," since the most of the figures are not articulated, and, being motionless, they are deprived of the freedom of gesture which is the essential element of true pantomime. Moreover, they are all made to take part in various dialogs, and this again is a negation of the fundamental principle of pantomime, which ought to be wordless. Here the French term "Chinese shadows" is more exact and less limiting than the English "shadow-pantomime." It is perhaps a pity that the old-fashioned term "gallanty-show," has not won a wider acceptance in English.

The little pieces due to Seraphin and his humble followers in France and in England, devised to amuse children only, were simple enough in plot, and yet they were sufficient to suggest to admirers of this unpretending form of theatrical art plays of a more imposing proportion. M. Paul Eudel, the art critic, has published an amply illustrated volume in which he collected the fairy-pieces, and the more spectacular melodramas composed by his grandfather in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, in the dark days that preceded Waterloo. And in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, in the dark days that preceded Sedan, M. Lemercier de Neuville, relinquishing for a while the Punch and Judy puppets which he called _Pupazzi_, and which he had exhibited in a succession of gentle caricatures of Parisian personalities with a mildly Aristophanic flavor of contemporary satire, turned to the familiar Chinese shadows of his childhood and devised what he called his _Pupazzi noirs_, animated shadows. He also has issued a collection of these little pieces with a full explanation of the method of performance and with half a hundred illustrations, revealing all the secrets of maneuvering the little figures. Indeed, Lemercier de Neuville's manual is the most ample which has yet appeared; and it is the most interesting in that he was at once his own playwright, his own designer of figures, and his own performer.

As the grandfather of M. Eudel had been more ambitious than Seraphin, so Lemercier de Neuville was more ambitious than the elder Eudel. And yet his procedure was precisely that of his predecessors, and he did not in any way modify the principles of the art. All he did was to elaborate the performance by the use of more scenery, of more spectacular effects, and of more numerous characters. He introduced a company of Spanish dancers, for example, and he did not hesitate to throw on his screen the sable and serrated profile of a long line of ballet dancers. He followed Eudel in arranging a procession of animals, rivaling a circus parade, many of them being articulated so that they could make the appropriate movements of their jaws and their paws. And he paid special attention to his silhouette caricatures of contemporary celebrities, Zola for one, and Sarah-Bernhardt for another.

Then the Franco-Russian draftsman, who called himself Caran d'Ache, made a new departure and started the art of the shadow-pantomime in a new career. He called his figures "French shadows," _ombres francaises_, and he surrendered the privilege of articulating his figures so that they could move. At least, he refrained from this except on rare occasions, preferring the effect of immobility and relying mainly upon a new principle not before employed by any of his predecessors. He made a specialty of long lines and of large masses of troops, not all on the same plane, but presented in perspective. He chose also to forgo the aid of speech and his figures were silent, except when some officer called out a word of command, or when a company of Cossacks rode past singing one of the wailing lyrics of the Caucasus as melancholy as the steppes.

One of the most attractive items on his program was a representation of the return of vehicles and equestrians from the Bois de Boulogne in the afternoon. Some of the figures were merely characteristic types sharply seized and outlined with all the artist's masterly draftsmanship, and some of them were well-known personages easily recognizable by his Parisian spectators--Lesseps on horseback, for example, and Rochefort in an open cab. These successive figures were simply pushed across the screen one after another, each of them as motionless as a statue, the men fixed in one attitude, and the legs of the horses retaining always the same position. This absence of animal movement was, of course, a violation from the facts of life, like that which permits the painter to depict a breaking wave or a sculptor to model a running boy at a single moment of the movement. Yet this artistic conversion was immediately acceptable since the spectator received a simplified impression and his attention was not distracted by the inevitable jerkiness of the limbs of the men and the beasts.

Caran d'Ache's masterpiece, however--and it may honestly be styled a masterpiece--was not the 'Return from the Bois de Boulogne' but his 'Epopee,' his epic evocation of the grand army of Napoleon. Single figures like the Little Corporal on horseback, and like Murat and others of the Emperor's staff, he projected with a fidelity and a veracity of accent worthy of Detaille or even Meissonier. Yet fine as these single figures might be, they were only what had been attempted by earlier exponents of the art--even if they were more impressive than had been achieved by any one of his predecessors. These single figures were necessarily presented all on the same plane, and the startling and successful innovation of the Franco-Russian draftsmanship was his skilful use of perspective, a device which had not occurred to any of those in whose footsteps he was following, even Lemercier de Neuville having presented his ballet dancers in a flat row. What Caran d'Ache did was to bring before us company after company of the Old Guard, and troop after troop of cuirassiers, their profiles diminishing in height as the figures receded from the eye. He thus attained to an effect of solidity and even of immensity, far beyond anything ever before achieved by any earlier exhibitor of shadows. He succeeded in suggesting space, and of maneuvering before the astonished eyes of the entranced spectators a vast mass of men under arms, marching forward resolutely in serried ranks to victory or to death.

The late Jules Lemaitre, the most open-minded of French dramatic critics, and the most hospitable in his attitude toward the minor manifestations of theatric art, has recorded that this Napoleonic epic of Caran d'Ache communicated to him not only an emotion of actual grandeur, but also the thrill of war itself. He declared that "by the exactness of the perspective preserved in his long files of soldiers, Caran d'Ache gives us the illusion of number and of a number immense and indefinite. And by the automatic movement which sets all his troops in action at once, he gives us the illusion of a single soul, of a communal thought animating innumerable bodies--and thereby he evokes in us the impression of measureless power.... His silent poem, with its sliding profiles is, I think, the only epic in all French literature." And those who are familiar with the other French efforts to attain to lyric largeness, and who have had also the unforgetable felicity of beholding Caran d'Ache's marvelous projection of the Napoleonic legend, will be prepared to admit that Lemaitre did not overstate the case.

III

What the Franco-Russian artist had done was to reveal the alluring possibilities placed at the command of the shadow-pantomimist by the ingenious employment of perspective; and there remained only one more step to be taken for the final development of the art to its ultimate capacity. This was the addition of color; and this step was taken by an associate of Caran d'Ache in the exhibitions given at the Chat Noir--Henri Riviere. Color could be added in two ways. In the first place, the outlines of lanterns and of battle-flags could be cut out, and slips of appropriately tinted paper could be inserted in the openings so that the light might shine thru. This relieved the monotony of the uniformity of the sable figures, and added a note of amusing gaiety. But this was an innovation of very limited scope; and it could have been earlier utilized in the flat figures of Lemercier de Neuville, for example, if he had happened to think of it. Far wider in its artistic possibilities was the second of Riviere's improvements. For the ordinary lamp which cast a steady glow on the white screen whereon the profile figures appeared, he substituted a magic lantern, the painted slides of which enabled him to supply an appropriately colored background. Then he went further and employed two magic lanterns, superimposed; and these enabled him to get the effect of "dissolving views" whereby he could vary his background at will. The immediate result of this ingenious improvement was that the artist could bestow upon his shadow-pantomime not a little of the richness of color which delights our eyes in the stained glass of medieval cathedrals.

Riviere was not only an inventor, he was also an artist, richly gifted with imagination; and his imagination suggested to him at once the three or four themes best fitted for treatment by his novel apparatus. One of these was the 'Wandering Jew'; another was the 'Prodigal Son'; and a third was the 'Temptation of Saint Anthony'--all legends of combined dramatic and pictorial appeal. Yet the most effective of all the experiments in this new form was due not to Riviere himself but to the collaboration of two of his disciples, M. Fragerolle and M. Vignola. This was the 'Sphinx,' in which the artists most adroitly combined all the advantages of the original flat profiles, and of the long files of figures in perspective such as Caran d'Ache had employed, with varied backgrounds due to the aid of the magic lantern first utilized by Riviere. Of all human monuments no one has had so marvelous a series of spectacles pass before its sightless eyes as the Sphinx, reclining impassive at the edge of the desert, and at the foot of the pyramids. Race after race has descended into the valley of the Nile, and lingered for a little space, a few centuries more or less, and departed at last. Conqueror after conqueror has come and gone again; and the Sphinx has kept its inscrutable smile.

M. Fragerolle composed the music and the words of the stately chants which accompanied the exhibition of the figures passing before the backgrounds, due to the pencil and the palette of M. Vignola. By the aid of the magic lantern the gigantic visage of the lion with a woman's head towers aloft, permanent and immutable, while the joyous procession of Egyptian dancers and soldiers and priests celebrates the completion of the statue itself. Then we are witnesses of the fierce invasion of the Assyrians, with the charge of their chariots and their horsemen; and we behold the rout of the natives while their capital burns in the distance. Next we gaze at the departure of the Jews, led by Moses and laden with the spoils of the Egyptians. After the Hebrews have gone, Sesostris appears, to be greeted by a glad outpouring of the populace. Yet soon the Persians descend on Egypt, with their castellated elephants and their immense hordes of fighting men. Still the Sphinx looks down, immovable and implacable; and the Greeks in turn take the valley of the Nile for their own. One of their daughters, Cleopatra, floats past in her galley by night; and in the morning she extends her hospitality to the Roman, Caesar or Antony. And while the Latins are the rulers of the land of Egypt, the Virgin and her Son with the patient ass that bears a precious burden, skirt the sandy waste, and go on their way to the Holy Land, leaving the Sphinx behind them as they journey forward in the green moonlight. After long centuries the Arabs break in with their brilliant bands of horsemen, and a little later the Crusaders come to give them battle. More long centuries elapse and suddenly Napoleon emerges at the head of the troops of the French Republic. Then we have the Egypt of to-day, with the British soldiers parading before the feet of the Sphinx; and finally the recumbent statue appears to us once more and for the last time, when the light of the sun is going out, and the world is emptied of its population again, and the ice is settling down on the Sphinx, alone amid freezing desolation. And this last vision is projected by the magic lantern, without the aid of any profile figures, since man has ceased to be.

Here we have a true epic poem, simple yet grandiose, and possible only to the improved shadow-pantomime of France at the end of the nineteenth century--even if this art is only a logical evolution from the gallanty-show of Seraphin. "This humble black profile," said Jules Lemaitre, "which had been thought fit at best of a few comic effects to amuse little children only, has been diversified and colored; it has been made beautiful, serious, tragic; by the multiplication of the devices it has been rendered capable of giving us a powerful impression of collective life, and the artists who have developed it have known how to make it translate to our eyes the great spectacles of history and the sweeping movement of multitudes."

(1912.)

XIX

THE PROBLEM OF DRAMATIC CRITICISM

THE PROBLEM OF DRAMATIC CRITICISM

I

It is now no longer in dispute that there has been in the past score or two of years a striking revival of the drama in the English language, and that there are to-day British and American playwrights who write plays which are worth while--plays which are both actable and readable--plays which often deserve and which sometimes even demand serious critical consideration. This revival has necessarily resulted in calling attention to the present condition of dramatic criticism in Great Britain and in the United States. In a period of dramatic productivity, dramatic criticism has an indisputable function and is charged with an undeniable duty, both to the aspiring play-makers and to the main body of the playgoing public. We cannot help asking ourselves whether our dramatic critics rightly apprehend their function and whether they properly discharge their duty; and to these pressing questions the most conflicting answers are returned.

Some there are who insist that it is hopeless to expect the desired outflowering of dramatic literature in our language to take place so long as our dramatic criticism is as inadequate, as incompetent, and as unsatisfactory as they declare it to be. Others there are who take a more tolerant view, holding the public itself to be at fault for the existing state of things, and who, therefore, believe that we are now getting dramatic criticism quite as good as we deserve. Few there are who venture to deny that there is room for improvement--altho no two of these agree in their suggestions for bringing about a bettering of present conditions. In the multitude of these counsellors there is darkness and confusion.

Perhaps there is a dim possibility of dissipating a little of this dark confusion by an analysis of the exact content, which we discover in the term "dramatic criticism," and then by a further inquiry as to whether our customary use of the term is not misleading. "Dramatic criticism" to most of us connotes the newspaper reviewing of the nightly spectacles in our theaters. Plainly this was the meaning of the term in the mind of Mr. Howells years ago, when he declared that "our dramatic criticism is probably the most remarkable apparatus of our civilization" and that it "surpasses that of other countries as much as our fire-department. A perfectly equipped engine stands in every newspaper office, with the steam always up, which can be manned in nine seconds and rushed to the first theater where there is the slightest danger of drama within five minutes; and the combined efforts of these tremendous machines can pour a concentrated deluge of cold water upon a play which will put out anything of the kind at once."

There is no denying that this use of the term by Mr. Howells is supported by custom. Yet it is distinctly unfortunate, for if the newspaper comment upon the novelties of the stage is to be accepted as "dramatic criticism," then what term have we left to describe the more piercing and the more comprehensive discussion of the first principles of the art of play-making which we find in Francisque Sarcey and in George Henry Lewes, not to go back to Lessing and to Aristotle? It is equally unfortunate that there is an equivalent inaccuracy in bestowing the title of "literary criticism" upon the newspaper comments upon the current books, for if this journalistic summarizing is to be accepted as "literary criticism," then what are we to call the exquisite evaluation of favorite authors which we find in Matthew Arnold and Sainte-Beuve?

Of course, it is always idle to protest against the popular use or misuse of words and terms and phrases. The people as a whole own the language, and have a right to make it over and to modify the original meaning of words. If popular usage chooses not to distinguish between two very different things, and to call both of them "dramatic criticism," there is no redress, and yet it is impossible to discuss the problem of dramatic criticism except by trying to separate the two things thus confounded. Therefore, for the purpose of this inquiry only, and without any hope of changing the accepted usage, I make bold to suggest that "play-reviewing" might be employed to describe the notices written in the office of a newspaper, notices necessarily prepared under pressure and under strict limitations of time and space.

These newspaper notices are sometimes careless, they are sometimes perfunctory, and they are sometimes cruel; and occasionally they are careful, conscientious, and clever, done with a dexterity worthy of high praise when we consider all the conditions under which it is displayed. But even at its best, play-reviewing cannot attain to the level of true dramatic criticism, more leisurely in its composition, larger in its scope, and more discriminating in its choice of topic. The play-reviewing of the daily journal is akin in aim to the book-reviewing, which has for its purpose the swift consideration of the volume in vogue at the moment. In our morning and evening papers the book-reviewing and the play-reviewing are both of them necessarily up-to-date, in fact, up-to-the-last-minute. To be contemporaneous, instantly and necessarily and inexorably, is their special quality and their immediate purpose; it is the reason for their existence and the excuse for their being.

II

Here it may be well to cite again the oft-quoted confession of the late Jules Lemaitre, writer of volume after volume in which he discussed the leading men of letters of his own time and of his own country: "Criticism of our contemporaries is not criticism--it is conversation." Now, conversation may be a very good thing; indeed, when it is as clear and as sparkling as was Lemaitre's, it is an excellent thing; yet he was right in admitting that it is not criticism, since it could not but lack the touchstone of time, the perspective of distance, the assured application of the eternal standards. And play-reviewing, like book-reviewing, cannot be anything but conversation about our contemporaries. It may descend to chaff-like chatter about the writers of the hour and to empty gossip about their sayings and doings; or it may have the sterner merits of brilliant conversation at its best. But it is not really criticism in the finer sense of the word; it cannot be; and one may go further and say that it ought not to be, since true criticism is more or less out of place in a newspaper--because the direct object of a newspaper is to present the news, with only the swiftest of commentaries thereon.