larly, who had already had two months of puppet-playing before Brioché came, as is shown by the same registry:-"Paid to François Daitelin, puppet-player, for the fifty-six days he remained at St. Germain, to amuse Monseigneur le Dauphin (July and August, 1669), 820 livres." Bossuet, the Dauphin's tutor, persecuted both puppets and Protestants, which, and especially the latter, were reckoned for a time among the things that were reprobate and abominable. Brioché himself was suppressed; but he had friends at court; and the King, who would execute a Protestant for preaching, signed a decree which authorized the mountebank to continue playing. Due gratitude was shown in return; and among the favourite pieces represented at the famous fairs of St. Germain and St. Laurent, was "The Destruction of the Huguenots.' The puppet-plays at the fairs in Paris were got up with much magnificence, and were wittily written,-but with as much indecency as wit; particularly during the last years of Louis XIV. and the time of the Regent. The puppets alone had full liberty of speech, when every other sort of liberty was extinct. Le Sage and Piron, as I have said, wrote pieces expressly for them. And, while plays in France were acted in puppet-shows, puppet-shows in England were introduced into plays. Of this the 'Bartholomew Fair' of Jonson is a sufficient example. The vogue of the French puppets is proved by the fact that the Regent Duke of Orléans with his company of roués, often remained in the fair till long after midnight, to witness representations where the coarser the wit the more it was enjoyed. 'All the chefs-d'œuvre of the French stage were immediately parodied on the puppet-boards; and saving the license of speech, the parody was often superior to the original. It was so attractive that the regular actors complained, and sought for the suppression of their wooden rivals. But Punch and his brethren pleaded for their ancient privilege, “de parler et de pr." The plea was held good, and the puppets triumphed over the Thespians. The quarrel being a family one, it was of course carried on with undying hostility. The puppet-players took every opportunity of ridiculing the extravagances of the more serious stage. When the custom of calling for "the author" of a successful new piece was established, upon the example set of calling for Voltaire after the first representation of 'Merope,' the puppets availed themselves of the opportunity for caricaturing. "Le compère pressait Polichinelle de lui faire entendre une de ses œuvres; et après avoir reçu une réponse très-incongrue, le compère s'empressait de demander l'auteur! l'auteur! satisfaction que s'empressait de lui donner Polichinelle, aux grands éclats de rire de l'assemblée." The contrast with this will call up but a ghastly smile when we find that while the crowd on the Place Louis XV. was waiting to witness the execution of the King, Punch was being serio-comically guillotined in one corner of the square, to the great delight of the spectators. Indeed the 'Vieux Cordelier' tells us, that Punch daily filled up the intervals of executions; and so varied the pleasures of the humane but impatient multitude. But what neither the Vieux Cordelier,' nor M. Magnin tells us, is the fate of this very Punch, or rather of the man and his wife who exhibited the popular puppet. Their fate is recorded by the Marquis de Custine. Punch, it appears, ventured on some jokes against the Terrorists. His master and mistress were thereupon seized. They bore their brief imprisonment with heroism, and they were executed on the spot whereon had perished their sovereign and queen. The puppets went down in the general hurricane of the Revolution, and they only partially came again to the surface. To their ancient shows on the Boulevard du Temple has succeeded a line of theatres; and the chief resulting difference is, that very awkward men and women now enact the most sacred subjects where puppets once did the same office less revoltingly. If a popular movement finally declared that the puppet dynasty had ceased to reign, it was a despotic will that abolished the use of such effigies in church spectacles. Louis XIV., on witnessing one of those sights at Dieppe, was so shocked thereat that he ordered their general suppression. The French word for puppet, Marionnette, applied originally only to figures of the Virgin Mary; but, like the Catrinette of the Savoyard, it has ceased to have an exclusive application. With regard to puppets in England, those wooden ladies and gentlemen once figured largely in our church-shows, interludes, and pageants. The names of the puppet masters have come down to us, from Pad, Cookley, Powell, and the daughter of Colley Cibber, to no less a man than Curran, who, taking upon himself, in sport, the charge of a show for one night, found it so easy when speaking for the mute actors to maintain both sides of an argument that he was therefore convinced of his excellent aptitude for the law. Pepys, as usual, affords us again illustrations of the fashion which attached to puppets in his day. From his brief journalizing we obtain a world of information on this matter. Thus we find him recording:"12th Nov. 1661. My wife and I to Bartholomew Fayre, with puppets (which I had seen once before, and the play without puppets often); but though I love the play as much as ever I did, yet I do not like the puppets at all, but I think it to be a lessening of it." On the 9th May, in the following year, we find him in Covent Garden," to see an Italian puppet-play, that is within the rayles there,the best that ever I saw, and great resort of gallants." In a fortnight he takes poor Mrs. Pepys to the same play. In October, he says:— "Lord Sandwich is at Whitehall with the King, before whom the puppet-plays I saw this summer in Covent Garden are acted this night." On the 30th August, 1667, being with a merry party at Walthamstow, he left his wife to get home as well as she could: he "to Bartholomew Fayre, to walk up and down, and there, among other things, find my Lady Castlemaine at a puppet-play, 'Patient Grizell,' and the street full of people expecting her coming out. I confess I did wonder at her courage to come abroad, thinking the people would abuse her; but they, silly people, do not know the work she makes; and therefore suf fered her with great respect to take coach, and so away without any trouble at all.” The last allusion made by Pepys on this subject forms an admirable commentary on the approving ecstasy expressed by the royalists at the lashing which the "Precisians" received at the hands of Lantern's puppets in Johnson's comedy. On the 5th September, 1668, Pepys is again on the old ground, " to see the play, 'Bartholomew Faire,' and it is an excellent play; the more I see it, the more I love the wit of it; only" (he adds) "the business of abusing the Puritans begins to grow stale, and of no use, they being the people that at last will be found the wisest." I began this chapter with a quotation from Puysieux-I may end it with that just cited from Pepys: and therewith, lowering the curtain of my little theatre, I beg the indulgence of my audience for the succeeding portions of what I have respectfully to bring before them;-something more especially touching Tailors, and the Man whose making is to tailors due! First, however, to treat the matter reverently, let us inquire what influenced the ancient corporation in their selection of a protecting Saint. |