ever unattractive these wooden females may
have been, it is from the Marie di Legno
that descend, in a straight line, the veritable
Marionetti, who—we will give them so much
pronominal entity—so long figured in the
dramatic representations of Italy, Spain,
France, and England, and who are now again
brought forward in London for popular
applause at the Adelaide Gallery, in the Lowther
Arcade.

These Marys must therefore be regarded
as great-great-great-grandmothers in a direct
line of the present generation of Italian
puppets. Being out-of-door performers, they
were, by more modern tastes, considered
not exactly respectable. Consequently they
yielded to a polite class of performers, who
traversed the stage in houses as legitimate
as Drury Lane or Covent Garden, when both
were national theatres, as the Académie
Française, or the Scala; the price of admission
varying from about three-halfpence to three-
pence. The puppet-show can boast of a
copious literature. The first orthodox account
we have of them is written by Cardan, a
learned physician of Pavia, in a treatise, De
Subtilitate, published in the year 1530, at
Nuremberg, the head-quarters of doll-ism.
In discussing the experimenta minima, which
form the subject of one of his chapters,
Cardan describes two statuettes of wood, with
which a couple of Sicilians accomplished
perfect marvels of art, by making them dance
upon a tight-rope, and perform as many
tours de force as would fill the pockets of a
dozen Acrobats.

The legitimate puppets of the stage of this
higher class are not to be considered sticks.
Their breasts and legs, indeed, are wooden,
but their heads are formed of a more dignified
material, being modelled usually of papier-
maché. Card, stuffed linen, or other flexible
material, is used in the manufacture of their
arms and legs. They are spring-jointed; and
little loads of lead in their hands and feet
enable them to frisk vivaciously, without the
hazard of being seized with unseasonable
somersaults. The Marionetti of Italy are
capable of anything. What mimic man dare,
they dare. Like the actors praised by Polonius,
they shrink not from " tragical, comical,
historical, pastoral, or scene indivisible"; but
they eschew the " poem unlimited";  for they
know what the soul of wit is, and are brief.
Their tragedy, however, during the short time
it lasts, is terrible; their farce irresistible.
They are brilliant in opera, imposing in
military spectacle, overwhelming in ballet.
So seductive is their dancing, that the Roman
Police require all wooden-legged Sylpdides to
be attired in sky-blue inexpressibles—or their
Manager requires it, in deference to the Police
exactions as to Sylphides of flesh and blood.

In the theatres of particular Italian towns,
there is, in general, a star among the puppets,
a leading puppet, peculiar to each town. At
Rome the favourite actor used to be a certain
Cassandrino, a coquettish old man bordering
on sixty; well powdered, very amorous, and,
though a layman, made up with the red stockings
of a Monsignor. At Milan, Girolamo is
the principal performer; a buffoon, who has
a butt provided for his wit in a certain
Piedmontese clown, whose stage business is all in
the passive voice; it being his vocation to suffer.
At Naples, Pulcinella and Scaramuccia are
the well-known favourites. In all these
towns, and throughout Italy, the puppets not
only play in the street and on the stage, but
also in the drawing-room; being—to use an
ancient form of eulogy—as well fitted to
shine in private as in public life.

If we pass now from the Marionetti of
Italy to those of Spain (in which country they
go by the name of Titeres), we find them still
extremely popular out of doors, or in theatres;
and still of clerical descent. Indeed, so large
a proportion of the puppets still wear the
costume of monks, that they are often, for
that reason, called, especially in Portugal,
Good Brothers " (Boni frates). Their
managers in Spain are generally foreigners,
gipsies, or people of low caste. The reader
of "Don Quixote" will remember Master
Peter and his ape, with Don Gayferos and
the fair Melisendra, King Marsilio and the
Emperor Charlemagne, the Christian chivalry
and Moorish rabble; for the rout and ruin
whereof, Sancho paid to Master Peter, as the
value of the puppets, forty reals and three-
quarters. Master Peter, it will not be
forgotten, was a liberated galley-slave, by name
Gines de Passamonte.

One of the first writers who gave an
account of Spanish puppets was a Spaniard,
Francisco de Ubeda, who published in 1608.
His own great-grandfather had kept a
puppet-show; and of him Francisco writes,
that "so complete an establishment as his, or
one so well mounted, had never before been
seen in Seville. My great-grandfather was a
man of the very smallest stature, scarcely
taller than from the elbow to the hand; so
that the only difference between himself and
his puppets, was, that he could speak without
a prompter. But, in the matter of speaking,
he was first-rate, for his tongue was so well
hung, and his mouth was so large, that he
could give utterance to twice as much as
anybody else." This accomplished showman was
the slave of certain frailties, which consumed
his money; then ate up his mules; then forced
him to sell his puppets, and, finally, the very
boards belonging to his show. At last, he fell
sick, and became an inmate of a hospital.
While there, when at the point of death, he
became raving mad, and fancied himself one
of his own puppets, to wit a bull (for bull fights
had been a part of his performance) and that
he, as a bull-puppet, was called upon to fight
with a stone cross in the hospital yard,
which he believed to be a puppet-dog.
Accordingly, he charged it furiously, and died in
the midst of this delirious battle.