FullReads

[Footnote 6:
L’Antiq. Exp. v. 63. ]

[Footnote 7:
Louis Riccoboni, in his curious little treatise, “Du Theatre Italien,” illustrated by seventeen prints of the Italian pantomimic characters, has duly collected the authorities. I give them, in the order quoted above, for the satisfaction of more grave inquirers. Vossius, Instit. Poet, lib. ii. 32, Sec. 4. The Mimi blackened their faces. Diomedes, de Orat. lib. iii. Apuleius, in Apolog. And further, the patched dress was used by the ancient peasants of Italy, as appears by a passage in Varro, De Re Rust, lib. i. c. 8; and Juvenal employs the term centunculus as a diminutive of cento, for a coat made up of patches. This was afterwards applied metaphorically to those well-known poems called centos, composed of shreds and patches of poetry, collected from all quarters. Goldoni considered Harlequin as a poor devil and dolt, whose coat is made up of rags patched together; his hat shows mendicity; and the hare’s tail is still the dress of the peasantry of Bergamo. Quadrio, in his learned Storia d’ogni Poesia, has diffused his erudition on the ancient Mimi and their successors. Dr. Clarke has discovered the light lath sword of Harlequin, which had hitherto baffled my most painful researches, amidst the dark mysteries of the ancient mythology! We read with equal astonishment and novelty, that the prototypes of the modern pantomime are in the Pagan mysteries; that Harlequin is Mercury, with his short sword called herpe, or his rod the caduceus, to render himself invisible, and to transport himself from one end of the earth to the other; that the covering on his head was his petasus, or winged cap; that Columbine is Pysche, or the Soul; the Old Man in our pantomimes is Charon; the Clown is Momus, the buffoon of heaven, whose large gaping mouth is an imitation of the ancient masks. The subject of an ancient vase engraven in the volume represents Harlequin, Columbine, and the Clown, as we see them on the English stage. The dreams of the learned are amusing when we are not put to sleep. Dr. Clarke’s Travels, vol. iv. p. 459. The Italian antiquaries never entertained any doubt of this remote origin. It may, however, be reasonably doubted. The chief appendage of the Vice or buffoon of the ancient moralities was a gilt wooden sword, and this also belonged to the old Clown or Fool, not only in England but abroad. “The wooden sword directly connects Harlequin with the ancient Vice and more modern Fool,” says the author of the letter-press to Cruikshank’s Punch, apparently with the justest derivation. ]

[Footnote 8:
This statue, which is imagined to have thrown so much light on the genealogy of Punch, was discovered in 1727, and is engraved in Ficoroni’s amusing work on Maschere sceniche e le figure coniche d’antichi Romani, p. 48. It is that of a Mime called Maccus by the Romans; the name indicates a simpleton. But the origin of the more modern name has occasioned a little difference, whether it be derived from the nose or its squeak. The learned Quadrio would draw the name Pullicinello from Pulliceno, which Spartianus uses for il pullo gallinaceo (I suppose this to be the turkey-cock) because Punch’s hooked nose resembles its beak. But Baretti, in that strange book the “Tolondron,” gives a derivation admirably descriptive of the peculiar squeaking nasal sound. He says, “Punchinello, or Punch, as you well know, speaks with a squeaking voice that seems to come out at his nose, because the fellow who in a puppet-show manages the puppet called Punchinello, or Punch, as the English folks abbreviate it, speaks with a tin whistle in his mouth, which makes him emit that comical kind of voice. But the English word Punchinello is in Italian Pulcinella, which means a hen-chicken. Chickens’ voices are squeaking and nasal; and they are timid, and powerless, and for this reason my whimsical countrymen have given the name of Pulcinella, or hen-chicken, to that comic character, to convey the idea of a man that speaks with a squeaking voice through his nose, to express a timid and weak fellow, who is always thrashed by the other actors, and always boasts of victory after they are gone.”–Tolondron, p. 324. In Italian, Policinello is a little flea, active and biting and skipping; and his mask puce-colour, the nose imitating in shape the flea’s proboscis. This grotesque etymology was added by Mrs. Thrale. I cannot decide between “the hen-chicken” of the scholar and “the skipping flea” of the lady, who, however, was herself a scholar. ]