sion of a local habitation and a fixed abode, for in Naples he still has his theatre, where he reigns the hero of the performance. Yet even here, on his native soil, his supremacy has within the last few months been seriously threatened, by the appearance of a rival, who, under the name of Sciosciammocca, has entered upon contest with him for popular favor. At present public opinion seems to have gone over to the innovator, whose wit and smartness are an irresistible attraction. Those, however, who are constant to their former idol believe that he will in the end triumph over the usurper, and as a national type be ultimately preferred to a character embodying a universal one. Fools and blunderers of the stamp of Sciosciammocca, they contend, are to be found all the world over, while the originals of Pulcinella exist nowhere but in Naples, and are there found in somewhat too great abundance.

The Neapolitan buffoon is one of the last of those traditional characters, survivals of the classic inimes, round whom the personages and incidents of Italian comedy down to the last century were inevitably grouped. These stereotyped figures were always invested with the same costume and attributes, and were distinguished by wearing masks; a reminiscence, doubtless, of the primitive votaries of Thespis, who were accustomed to stain their faces with the lees of wine or some other substance, in order to prevent the scenic illusion from being destroyed by the recognition of their individual personality. Of these typical masks, Pulcinella is the sole extant representative, and it would therefore be matter for regret that this remaining link of continuity with the past should be broken by the spirit of modern innovation.

The lineal descendant of the Oscan Punch, or Maccus, has little in common with his British namesake, to whom his relationship seems at first sight rather remote. Pulcinella, in the first place, is not played by a puppet, but by a human actor; neither has he those peculiarities of figure which we are accustomed to associate with the name. His features we do not see, as they are hidden by his black mask, and his dress, consisting of a white smock frock, baggy trousers, and peaked bonnet of the same color, is

somewhat of a surprise to us. His speech, of course, is the broadest Neapolitan dialect, unintelligible to foreign ears, but racy and pungent to those who understand it, and seasoned, be it observed, with wit not always of the most refined. Pulcinella, thus attired, represents a rustic simpleton newly arrived from his native district of Acerra, and his perpetual scrapes and misadventures in the unaccustomed atmosphere of the city are the ordinary subjects of the piece.

He is locked up in a lunatic asylum, and cudgels all the inmates, including the doctor; or, imprisoned by mistake, after effecting his escape, he loses his way and finds himself back in his dungeon. He has prepared himself a breakfast of macaroni swimming in tomato sauce, and is gloating over it in anticipation, when a series of visitors arrive in succession, and, sitting down without ceremony, help themselves to the tempting dish until nothing is left to the lawful owner. His helpless dismay as he assists at the demolition of his repast is irresistibly ludicrous. He is enamored of a pretty young girl, but in proposing for her, to her aunt manages to make his offer in such ambiguous language that the elder lady takes it to herself. She plans her future ménage in high delight, becomes more and more confidential and communicative, until at last by a chance word she betrays to her supposed suitor the misapprehension she is laboring under. He bluntly disclaims the possibility of such an idea, ungallantly informing her that she is much too old, which draws down upon him a storm of Neapolitan Billingsgate, and he has to beat a speedy retreat under a sharp fire of all available projectiles.

In Pulcinella's theatre, the San Carlino, we have in short the most perfect reproduction of the street life of Naples, with its joyous animation, sudden outbursts of violence, and general aspect of jovial good humor. The dialogue has all the verve of improvisation, the action the spontaneous fire of the inspiration of the moment. It is difficult to believe that anything has been rehearsed or studied beforehand. Pulcinella and his companions seem to be living their daily life in our presence, just as their compatriots out of doors appear to enact a perpetual drama for our benefit. In

our memory afterward, the two sets of pictures blend into a single whole, in which the classic mask of the Campanian buffoon seems no anachronism, nor his ludricrous adventures a caricature. Elsewhere indeed he would be out of place, and it is not surprising that he should never have travelled far from Naples without undergoing a total transformation.

In the hero of the puppet drama to which he has given his name, his proper characteristics were speedily obliterated to give place to the more accentuated type required for that class of performance. Even here, however, they were originally retained, for in one of Pnielli's old engravings of Rome a street puppet show appears, with Pulcinella clad in his traditional garb of white blouse and black half-mask.

The origin of his name has long been a puzzle to etymologists, and many ingenious surmises have been hazarded in reference to it. One writer has invented a mythical character called Puccio Aniello; another an equally imaginary Paolo Cinelli; a third an individual of the surname of Polliceno, in order to supply a satisfactory derivative. The most generally accepted interpretation, however, is that which regards Pulcinella as the diminutive of pulcino, a chicken, in allusion either to the squeaky voice or beaklike nose of the personage so named. It is curious, however, that the word in its earlier forms always appears to have had an extra syllable, which would seem to militate against this hypothesis, and is written Polecenella, Policinella, etc. etc. The truth is that in manufacturing names for the typical characters, of which the Italian stage was so prolific, their inventors often attended more to sound than

sense, as in the name of Giangurgolo, the Calabrian buffoon; of Scapino, the original of Molière's celebrated trickster, and a host of similar comic figures.

As regards the English corruption, Punch, it is curious that the same combination of letters should have been introduced into the language over again through a different and totally independent channel. As the name of the beverage, it is derived from the Hindu word, panch, five (short a, pronounced like u), in reference to the five ingredients combined in it, brandy, water, NEW SERIES.-VOL. XXXIV., No. 4

lime-juice, sugar, and spice, the art of brewing which into a refreshing compound we owe to our Indian fellow-subjects. With the word puncheon, again, the name of the puppet hero has no connection, though its application to a short, thickset figure may seem to suggest it. Poinçon, in French, is an instrument for drilling holes, and the winevessel is supposed to have received the same name from having been stamped with a distinctive mark by it, just as "hogshead" is a corruption of "oxhead," the brand by which that measure was formerly distinguished.

But whatever the original associations of the word Pulcinella," it has come to be synonymous with any character provocative of popular mirth, and is now used through the whole of Southern Italy in this wider and more elastic sense. Thus, in Sicily and Calabria, the name is appropriated during carnival time to sets of mummers or masqueraders, whose performances, called Pulcinellate,* Farse di Carnevale, or Carnescialate, are perhaps a closer reproduction of the original Atellan farces than any more regular form of dramatic entertainment. Two or three merry fellows go about masked, playing various instruments, a lute, a cymbal, and a tamborine, singing or reciting a rude dialogue before the shops where different varieties of provisions are sold, and receiving from each a contribution in kind. Thus, they stop first to address their petition to the vendor of paste or macaroni, and Pulcinella No. 1 leads off in the following strain :

Good master dear, a loving friend is here, Come with his lute, an old and faithful crony, To try the flavor of your macaroni.

Pulcinella 2 follows suit.

Friends one and two and three, good master,

here we be,

bell,

The goatherd goes his round his milk to sell ; The night has come, so kindly fare ye well!

In these primitive dialogues, always recited of course in the popular dialect, we are more likely to find the traditional type of Pulcinella than in any set performance. Perhaps, too, they may help to elucidate the origin of his name. Among the ancient Greeks a similar practice prevailed of going about on holidays to solicit gifts in kind, the petition being made in the name of various kinds of birds, and the Crow Song and the Swallow Song, sung on these occasions, are still extant. It is a very strange coincidence that in remote parts of Ireland the same custom still exists in connection with the wren, which is hunted and killed on the 26th of December to be carried through the streets on a furze bush decked with ribbons, while the Wren Song is sung and alms collected from door to door. The animosity to the wren is accounted for in a popular legend that the projected surprise of a Danish camp was frustrated by one of these little creatures, which roused the enemy at the critical moment by pecking on the drums. Now, the widespread association of a bird with this species of holiday-begging, suggests the

Southern Italy, a chicken may have been sometimes adopted as its pretext, hence the name of Pulcinella as applied to the maskers in the performance. It is perhaps a somewhat far-fetched conjecture, but worth hazarding as a speculation, that the modern Italian idiom, a macco, signifying in great profusion, or superabundance, may have been derived from the plenteous gifts with which the classic Maccus was loaded on these occasions.

There is no doubt that we have in these rude dialogues, whether themselves of extreme antiquity or not, specimens of the most primitive form of drama, and that from such simple germ all subsequent elaborations of theatrical art have been developed. In the Farse Carnelivari of Calabria, we find popular drama in a slightly higher stage of advancement, for in them there is a very imperfect attempt at distinction of character. The one we shall describe is played in the streets by a group of actors, Pulcinella, a king, his daughter, a duke, and soldiers. As they take up their position, the prologue, in Calabrian dialect, is recited by Pulcinella, while a guitar or barrel organ supplies the music, always a necessary part of these street shows. Clear, clear a space-in this wide place, Our merry group we will install, For mirth and joy without alloy We bring to glad the carnival. Halt there, good folk, who love a joke, Halt there at Pulcinella's call; Here armed I stand with wooden brand, Who dares approach me, dead shall fall. Here, here I be, armed cap a-pie,

With pistol, bayonet, dirk and all,
And round my waist are pockets placed
Crammed full of cartridges and ball.

I'm Pulcinella, come from Scella,
Hear, hear and tremble, great and small ;
For on your city, without pity,

War's dreadful scourge will I let fall!

The delightful inconsistency of this address, opening with a promise of mirth and joy, and winding up with a declaration of war, will not fail to strike the reader, and is quite of a piece with what follows. The king opens the dialogue, reporaching Pulcinella in good round

terms.

What means this braggart tone?
Vile, miscreant, have done!
My daughter's love is won
By the Duke Saraon.

PULCINELLA.

With this good pistol I Will make you basely fly Full in the city's view.

KING.

And I with my good brand
Will run you through and through ;
Respect I should command,

At least from such as you.

Ho, there, good friend! arrest this ruffian, and carry him to the walls of the city.

SOLDIER.

Down, prostrate on the ground,
Or, by the holy deuce,*
I'll wait for no excuse,
But shoot you like a hound.

This will suffice as a specimen of the dialogue; and in regard to the plots, its extremely unsatisfactory nature may be gathered from a brief sketch. Scarcely has Duke Saraon appeared on the scene and claimed the king's daughter as his bride, than the monarch, who had just ordered Pulcinella intò irons, without any intermediate dialogue to explain his change of mind, proclaims him as his chosen son-in-law, desires his chains to he struck off, summons a notary, and, dispensing with all preliminaries, announces the most generous dispositions as to the young lady's fortune, and bestows her on Pulcinella on the spot.

This utter inconsequence in the action of the piece points to the conclusion that it is either a fragment of a more complete one, in which some attempt was made to furnish a probable motive for the conduct of the personages, or a distorted version of some older fable.

Such as it is, it furnishes an illustration of the different working of popular taste in England and Italy, in developing opposite ideals from the same original type.

The imaginative nature of the Italian peasant seeks a stimulus and outlet for poetic fancy, in themes remote from his own experience, while an English audience, in the lower classes at least, prefers to see on the stage a literal mimicry of its every-day life. The Calabrian Pulcinella, though himself a clown, is the successful rival of a duke in wooing a king's daughter, and is left in a vague region of mythical triumph and bliss, while the British Punch is but a vulgar criminal of the commonest type, who beats his wife, kills his child, and cheats the hangman. It is only in the great cities in Italy that the influence of a similar realism asserts itself in popular drama, and that we see on the boards in Pulcinella and his congeners, the familiar figures of the streets and piazzas. Everywhere on the rustic stage the performance, however rude, aims at heroic dignity of subject, and the illusion, that owes nothing to external aids, is entirely supplied by the minds of the audience. Realism is a product of civilization, and is perhaps a reaction from the tangible wonders with which it surrounds us; while unsophisticated man in a ruder state of society takes refuge from the monotony of his actual existence by creating for himself that dream-world of the marvellous which only through the gate of fancy can he enter into.-Cornhill Magazine.