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“Lazzi,” says Riccoboni, “is a term corrupted from the old Tuscan Lacci, which signifies a knot, or something which connects. These pleasantries called Lazzi are certain actions by which the performer breaks into the scene, to paint to the eye his emotions of panic or jocularity; but as such gestures are foreign to the business going on, the nicety of the art consists in not interrupting the scene, and connecting the Lazzi with it; thus to tie the whole together.” Lazzi, then, seems a kind of mimicry and gesture, corresponding with the passing scene; and we may translate the term by one in our green-room dialect, side-play. Riccoboni has ventured to describe some Lazzi. When Harlequin and Scapin represent two famished servants of a poor young mistress, among the arts by which they express the state of starvation, Harlequin having murmured, Scapin exhorts him to groan, a music which brings out their young mistress, Scapin explains Harlequin’s impatience, and begins a proposal to her which might extricate them all from their misery. While Scapin is talking, Harlequin performs his Lazzi–imagining he holds a hatful of cherries, he seems eating them, and gaily flinging the stones at Scapin; or with a rueful countenance he is trying to catch a fly, and with his hand, in comical despair, would chop off the wings before he swallows the chameleon game. These, with similar Lazzi, harmonise with the remonstrance of Scapin, and re-animate it; and thus these “Lazzi, although they seem to interrupt the progress of the action, yet in cutting it they slide back into it, and connect or tie the whole.” These Lazzi are in great danger of degenerating into puerile mimicry or gross buffoonery, unless fancifully conceived and vividly gesticulated. But the Italians seem to possess the arts of gesture before that of speech; and this national characteristic is also Roman. Such, indeed, was the powerful expression of their mimetic art, that when the select troop under Riccoboni, on their first introduction into France only spoke in Italian, the audience, who did not understand the words, were made completely masters of the action by their pure and energetic imitations of nature. The Italian theatre has, indeed, recorded some miracles of this sort. A celebrated Scaramouch, without uttering a syllable, kept the audience for a considerable time in a state of suspense by a scene of successive terrors; and exhibited a living picture of a panic-stricken man. Gherardi in his “Theatre Italien,” conveys some idea of the scene. Scaramouch, a character usually represented in a fright, is waiting for his master Harlequin in his apartment; having put everything in order, according to his confused notions, he takes the guitar, seats himself in an arm-chair, and plays. Pasquariel comes gently behind him, and taps time on his shoulders–this throws Scaramouch into a panic. “It was then that incomparable model of our most eminent actors,” says Gherardi, “displayed the miracles of his art; that art which paints the passions in the face, throws them into every gesture, and through a whole scene of frights upon frights, conveys the most powerful expression of ludicrous terror. This man moved all hearts by the simplicity of nature, more than skilful orators can with all the charms of persuasive rhetoric.” On this memorable scene a great prince observed that “Scaramuccia non parla, e dica gran cosa:” “He speaks not, but he says many great things.”

In gesticulation and humour our Rich[16] appears to have been a complete Mime: his genius was entirely confined to Pantomime; and he had the glory of introducing Harlequin on the English stage, which he played under the feigned name of Lun. He could describe to the audience by his signs and gestures as intelligibly as others could express by words. There is a large caricature print of the triumph which Rich had obtained over the severe Muses of Tragedy and Comedy, which lasted too long not to excite jealousy and opposition from the corps dramatique.