Part 9

The celebrated _Marionette Theatre of Munich Artists_, although inspired by the example of Papa Schmidt, was founded upon an altogether different basis and with other aims and ideals. Paul Brann, an author of local fame, was the instigator of it as well as its director. This small but elaborate modern theatre was built by Paul Ludwig Troost, and decorated elegantly but with careful taste, by other artists interested in the enterprise. The stage itself is equipped with every possible device useful to any modern theatre. There is a revolving stage such as that used by Reinhardt, and a complicated electrical apparatus which can produce the most exquisite lighting effects. The expensive furniture is often a product of the _Königlichen Porcellan Manufactur_. The mechanism for operating the figures is very perfect, the dolls themselves as well as the costumes, scenery, curtains, programs, etc., are all designed and executed by well known artists such as Joseph Wackerle and Taschner, Jacob Bradle, Wilhelm Schulz, Julius Dietz and many others. Indeed the scenic effects produced at this little marionette theatre have given it the reputation of a model in modern stagecraft.

The triumphs of these Munich puppets, however, do not depend altogether on pictorial successes. Upon the miniature stage there are presented dramas of the best modern poets as well as the older classic plays and the usual Kasperle comedies. Puppets must remain primitive or they lose their own peculiar charm, but the primitive quality may be ennobled. Brann does not in the least detract from the innate simplicity which the marionettes possess. Indeed, he considers this not a limitation but a distinguishing trait. However, he has added poetic art to the old craft and has expanded the sphere of the puppets. He has proven their poetic possibilities and justified their claim to the consideration of cultured audiences. The repertory has been specially selected to suit his particular dolls, somewhat pantomimic, on the whole, with a great deal of music. Generally the plays deal with incidents unrelated to everyday life and these marionettes convey their audiences with unbelievable magic to arcadian lands of dream and wonder. Graf Pocci’s little Kasperle pieces were not scorned by these artistic marionettes nor the old Faustspiel, Don Juan and the Prodigal Son, nor the folk-plays of Hans Sachs. To these were added a rich variety, including many forgotten operettas of Gluck, Adam, Offenbach, Mozart and others, Schnitzler’s _Der Brave Cassian_, Maeterlinck’s _Death of Tintagiles_, and _Sister Beatrice_, and dramas of Hoffmansthal. The popularity of these puppet productions in Munich, and their success all over the world, where they have been taken travelling into foreign lands, attest the worth and value of the interesting experiment. For art, music and literature a new medium has been discovered, or rather an old one re-adapted to suit the requirements of the modern poetic drama.

Of recent years the shadow play has not been altogether overlooked in Munich. In a 1909 issue of the _Hyperion_, Franz Blei, æsthete and critic, describes two exquisite shadow plays performed in the salon of Victor Mannheimer. The figures and scenery were the work of a young architect, Höne; actors read the text, and Dr. Mannheimer directed. “One thing,” writes Blei, “I believe was clear to all present: that both of the plays thus presented, unhampered by perspiring, laboring and painted living actors, appealed more strongly to the inner ear than they could possibly have done in any other theatre. The author was allowed to express himself, rather than the actor. The stage setting and the outlines of the shadows, very delicately cut in accordance with the essential traits of the characters, presented no more than a delightful resting place for the eye and the imagination of the beholder was unrestricted in supplying the features while lingering on the extreme simplicity of the picture.” Elsewhere too in Germany one finds appreciation of the possibilities of the shadow play, in its simplest form as well as in its sophisticated uses.

Exotic and rare are the dainty marionette figures fashioned by Richard Teschner in Vienna. From a performance of Javanese shadows witnessed in Munich the artist received the first suggestion for these delicate, precious creations. The thin, flexible limbs give us the feeling of the Eastern Wayangs. To this Teschner has gradually added a bit of the German folk spirit, quite noticeable in his society dramas where the little dolls resemble comfortable, bourgoisie Germans and only their fleshlessness reminds us of the Javanese origin. In other plays the Eastern flavor is purposely maintained. There is, for instance, the strange magician with the Assyrian headdress, or the enchantress in gorgeous stiff robes with menacing eyebrows, altogether oriental, and strange and beautiful. The grotesque and curiously misshapen animal forms conceived by Teschner remind us of deep-sea monsters similar to Hauptmann’s Nickelmann and of early Christian conceptions of Infernal frightfulness to be found in the Witches’ Kitchen of Faustus, or in the Temptations of St. Anthony. The smoothly finished, carefully fashioned naked figures have a rather brazen daintiness, permissible on the puppet stage alone. They offend perhaps at first sight by their deliberate daring but they possess a certain precise charm, a rather winning, rather quaint appeal. These precious little marionettes have been exhibited in private circles only.

In Baden-Baden just before the war a quite remarkable and thriving puppet show was to be found, belonging to Ivo Pühony. These clever dolls were carved out of wood and were most adroitly manipulated, marvellously so, we are told. The repertory of the puppets was very extensive and ambitious. At the outbreak of the war Ivo Pühony packed his dolls away in cases and left them in Baden-Baden. In 1914 Ernest Ehlert, actor and manager, and Fräulein E. Weissmann took the neglected little creatures to Berlin where they performed with tremendous success. They produced, among other things, _Doctor Sassafras_, a puppet play by Pocci and no less ambitious a drama than Goethe’s _Faust_. The latter received a real ovation as a serious, artistic interpretation of the masterpiece; many witnesses declared the production more effective than when given upon the larger stage. The _Frankfürter Zeitung_ contained this description of the performance: “The drama had a much purer and stronger emotional effect in this symbolic, miniature presentation with its modest and reliable lighting effects than is possible in the hard reality of the larger stage. The circle of the heavenly army shimmering in magic red reminding one of the pious fantasies of Beato Angelico; the voices of the archangels sounding from above; the gleam of white light when the voice of the Lord was heard; the dark chasm leading to the depths of the earth, out of which the wonderful little figure of Mephistopheles appeared and then, blinded by the radiance of Divinity, turned aside and covered himself with his bat’s wing: all this provided a pure artistic satisfaction which called forth enthusiastic applause.”

Less serious in nature but very remarkable were the famous _Two Dancing Chinamen_ in the troupe of puppet actors. These agile little dolls, like figures from a Russian ballet, danced to the music of a phonograph with perfectly captivating antics. One witness has written: “It is hard to imagine how perfectly the slightly mechanical tone of the phonograph combines with the slightly mechanical motion of the figures to give an expression of what the fashionable philosopher of our day calls the _élan vital_.” The last heard of Pühony’s puppets was a prospective trip they were to take to the front for entertaining the soldiers and the grave problem of whether it would be wise to allow the erstwhile favorite marionette _Caruso_ to go along, considering that, despite his power to amuse, he was after all a representative of the enemy.

Less excellent, crude puppet shows have gone wandering from village to village through Germany and Austria in recent years, but they have become more and more rare. These shows perform generally in the little town halls, with the villagers, high and low, crowding in to see performances of _Faust_ (ever welcome) or Hamlet (with a happy ending), or, favorite of all, the life and death of the famous brigand _Schinder Hannes_. The love of the Germans for puppet entertainment is also constantly expressed in the little private puppet shows and shadow plays given by or for the children in their homes, usually gotten up for Christmas or birthday festivities.

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In most Continental countries there may still be found traces and survivals of the old style puppet show and occasionally experiments with marionettes in the new manner. It is said that in Bohemia the marionette plays are the only form of drama now given in the native tongue. A very famous showman of Bohemia was Kopecki who travelled about with his show from town to town. A prominent Bohemian minister now residing in New York relates that he remembers these puppets and the terror which clutched his boyish heart whenever the little wooden devil appeared, opening and closing his horrible mouth and emitting the most inhuman and frightful noises. He remembers the comic characters of the shows, a rude peasant and his wife. The peasant always wielded a stick and there were many threatened beatings, but they never took place. In 1885 the names of Kopecki and of another showman, Winizki, were made doubly prominent by the publication of a book of their old puppet plays taken down in shorthand by two Viennese authors from performances they witnessed and written finally in wonderful Hoch-Deutsch.

In Hungary the gypsies have always been the puppeteers, travelling about with their rough little figures and accompaniment of music. From Moldavia comes a report of gypsy players at Christmas time in the olden days, one man crying out through the streets, “To the puppets, to the puppets!” followed by two other gypsies with a little theatre of marionettes. In these shows at the time of the Turkish wars in 1829 miniature Turks and Cossacks were made to belabor each other.

In Russia religious puppet plays were very common. There used to be in Moscow a regular mystery performed by marionettes on the Sunday before Christmas. It represented three Christian martyrs thrown into a fiery furnace and was performed in front of the great altar of the Moscow cathedral. Crude popular shows also wandered about and in 1812 Mr. Daniel Clarke discovered in Tartary, among the wandering Cossacks of the Don, common little dolls made to dance on a board by means of a string tied to the knees of a boy. These had probably been introduced and become established back in the remote ages in this out-of-the-way location.

Mr. Alexander Zelenko, formerly a professor at the University of Moscow, has written some interesting facts concerning modern Russian puppets. He says: “There still are travelling comedians who wander all over the country with their little outfits of dolls and folding screens. In most cases a so-called hand organ is used, and very often a monkey or a bird picks out the tickets of happiness. The performer uses a contrivance in his mouth to alter his voice for the different impersonations. The principal hero is ‘Petrouchka’ or ‘Diminutive Peter,’ the same as German ‘Kasperle’ and English ‘Punch.’ The hero makes much mischief in a horse trade with a gypsy or with a German doctor, a policeman or a recruiting officer. For such mischief the devil takes his body into hell.

“Even now, as in the olden times, satires on social endeavor are very often introduced, but only the common street-class enjoy them. From time to time the educators take part in this movement and try to raise the standard and to introduce the puppets into the school festivals.

“Some of these plays came into Russia from the West through Austria and Poland,--old Christmas beliefs connected with religious or nationalistic traditions. These Christmas Crib plays are mostly seen in Southern and Western Russia and Poland. Some of the Russian artists have been interested in the production and have given very fine performances. I myself introduced many of this kind of marionettes into the activities of the Children’s Clubs in Moscow. Very interesting articles about the ethnographic and folklore value of these plays have been written in Russian scientific magazines.”

In Poland, until the middle of the eighteenth century, there were frequent puppet performances given in churches and monasteries around Christmas time to amuse the people between mass and vespers. In the play of _Szopka_ (stable) M. Magnin tells us there were little dolls of wood or cardboard representing Mary, Jesus, Joseph, the angels, the shepherds, the three Magi on their knees with offerings of gold, incense and myrrh, not forgetting the ox and the ass and Saint John’s lamb. There generally followed after this the massacre of the innocents in the midst of which Herod’s own son perished by mistake. The wicked prince, in his despair, called upon Death who soon appeared in the form of a skeleton and cut off Herod’s head with a scythe. Then a black devil with a red tongue, pointed horns and a long tail, ascended and picked up the King’s body on his pitchfork and bore it off to perdition. To this peculiar performance were often added indecorous variations, despite the holy place in which it was performed. After being finally expelled from the interior of the churches, it continued to be popular for over a century, delighting both the rural and the urban population of Poland from Christmas to Shrove Tuesday. To this day performances of the Crib, or _Szopka_, are given by ambulant puppet shows. The text is sung and spoken: the figures, moving in pairs, represent characters of the old mysteries, also folk types, heroes, spirits, etc. The stage for these shows appears to be prescribed by tradition, of a certain structure, with intricate national architectural details. It is not surprising to learn that Stanislaw Wyspianski, Poland’s great dramatic and poetic genius, was strongly interested in and influenced by this national type of puppet stage which seems to have been the original inspiration for his later strongly patriotic productions.

In Denmark, the puppets have pushed their way into literature. We find that Johan Ludvig Heiberg, a prominent Danish dramatist, has written several satirical marionette plays.

In Holland where _Jan-Classenspiel_ have been long established, the puppet stage is a favorite diversion. Powel wrote in 1715 of its long standing popularity with the people and we are told that the cultured classes also found relaxation in the marionettes. Beyle states that during his studies at Rotterdam he always left his book at the sound of the showman’s trumpet.

The little Polichinelle of Belgium is called _Woltje_ which signifies little Walloon and he has many clownish but harmless tricks with which to delight his public. The popularity of the _Poechelnellespiel_ in Brussels may be imagined from the fact that, prior to the war, there were fifteen standing puppet theatres offering every possible enticement. Two very famous showmen were Toone and Machieltje who for forty years gave performances to every class of audience, Machieltje specializing on the popular plays, Toone giving private performances. The successor of Toone was George Hembauf while the show of Machieltje descended to Laurent Broeders, who have a wonderfully equipped theatre in the suburbs. They possess over six hundred marionettes whose elegant costumes can be changed (there are over eleven hundred of these elaborate costumes). The Laurent Broeders do all the speaking for their dolls and the repertoire includes a wide range of subjects from important events in Flemish history to Dumas, adapted for puppets, and the old play of _Les Quatre Fils Aymon_. Another large puppet show is that of Pieter Buelens. He has four hundred puppets consisting chiefly of officers, chevaliers and kings, each knight so richly dressed that his robes cost from thirty to forty francs apiece. The dolls are about a metre high, made of cardboard and carefully articulated so that the gestures are extremely graceful. The scenery is naïve but picturesque; eight complete sets including two palace scenes, two wood scenes (one Winter, one Summer), two rooms, a prison, a rock, etc. The latest and most modern theatre for marionettes is the _Petit Théâtre_ founded by a group of æsthetes,--Louis Picard, James Ensor, Thomas Braun, Gregoire le Roy,--and devoted to a naïvely refined art of puppetry. It was opened with the pastoral opera of Mozart, _Bastien et Bastienne_, the poetic version by Gautier-Villars.

In Antwerp the puppet shows are less elaborate and are generally to be found off in inconspicuous corners around the wharves where they are frequented chiefly by the laboring classes. There the drama varies from mockery of local occurrences to tales of Turks, bandits, kings, shepherds, sailors. One of these shows was the famous _Poesjenellenkelder_, the cave of the Polichinelles, where in a dark, gloomy cellar by the glimmer of a few smoking oil lamps the old and ever moving romantic dramas of the puppet show were performed for an appreciative and unspoiled audience. Hendrik Conscience, the Flemish novelist, has described how in his boyhood he often spent his last penny to witness the sufferings of the patient Genoveva or some similarly affecting performance. This old underground theatre, we are told, was open until the outbreak of the war.

_Puppetry in England_

“Triumphant Punch! with joy I follow thee Through the glad progress of thy wanton course.”

Thus exclaims Lord Byron, and he is but one of the long list of English poets, dramatists and essayists who have found delight and inspiration at the puppet booth. “One could hardly name a single poet from Chaucer to Byron, or a single prose writer from Sir Philip Sidney to Hazlitt in whose works are not to be found abundant information on the subject or frequent allusions to it. The dramatists, above all, beginning with those who are the glory of the reigns of Elizabeth and James I, supply us with the most curious particulars of the repertory, the managers, the stage of the marionettes.” With this introduction M. Magnin brings forward a brilliant array of English authors in whose works we may find traces of the puppets, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Milton, Davenant, Swift, Addison, Steele, Gay, Fielding, Goldsmith, Sheridan and innumerable others.

In _The Winter’s Tale_ Autolycus remarks: “I know this man well. He hath been a process server, a bailiff, then he compassed a motion of _The Prodigal Son_.” Many other dramas of Shakespeare have similar allusions. Milton’s _Areopagitica_ contains these lines: “When God gave Adam reason, he gave him freedom to choose: he had else been a mere artificial Adam, such an Adam as seen in the motions.”

Perhaps the casual mention of a popular diversion in the literature of a nation is not as impressive as the fact that it has served to suggest the themes of numberless dramas and poems. Shakespeare is said to have taken the idea for _Julius Cæsar_ from the puppet play on the same subject which was performed near the Tower of London in his day; Ben Jonson’s _Everyman Out of his Humour_, Robert Greene’s _Orlando Furioso_, Dekker’s best drolleries and certainly _Patient Grissel_ in the composition of which he had a hand, Marlowe’s _The Massacre at Paris_ and many others may safely be said to have been suggested by the puppets. There are marionettes in Swift’s _A Tale of a Tub_, illustrated by Hogarth.

Some authorities claim that Milton drew the argument for his great poem from an Italian marionette production of _Paradise Lost_ which he once witnessed. Byron is supposed to have found the model for his _Don Juan_ in the popular play of Punch’s, _The Libertine Destroyed_. Hence it cannot be an exaggeration to state that even in England, where the puppets are not supposed to have attained such prestige as on the Continent, they were, nevertheless, not wholly insignificant nor without weight.

As is usually the case, the puppets in England appear to have had a religious origin. Magnin mentions as an undoubted fact the movement of head and eyes on the Crucifix in the monastery of Boxley in Kent, and one hears not only of single articulated images but of passion plays performed by moving figures within the sacred edifices. E. K. Chambers has found the record of a Resurrection Play in the sixteenth century by “certain small puppets, representing the Persons of Christe, the Watchmen, Marie and others.” This was at Whitney in Oxfordshire, “in the days of ceremonial religion,” and one of these puppets which clacked was known as _Jack Snacker of Whitney_. It is certain that similar motions of sacred dramas and pageants given by mechanical statuettes were not unusual within the Catholic churches, and that during the reign of Henry VIII they were destroyed, as idols. Under Elizabeth and James, religious puppet-shows went wandering about the kingdom, giving the long drawn out moralities and mysteries, _The Prodigal Son_, _The Motion of Babylon_ and _Nineveh with Jonah and the Whale_, a great favorite.

These early motions or drolls were a combination of dumb show, masques and even shadow play. Flögel explains that the masques were sometimes connected with the puppets or given sometimes as a separate play. “These masques,” he writes, “consist of five tableaux or motions which take place behind a transparent curtain, just as in Chinese shadows. The showman, a silver-covered wand in his hand and a whistle for signalling, stands in front of the curtain and briefly informs the audience of the action of the piece. Thereupon he draws the curtain, names each personage by name as he appears, points out with his wand the various important actions of his actors’ deeds, and relates the story more in detail than formerly. Another masque which Ben Jonson’s _Bartholomew Fair_ describes is quite different, for here the puppets themselves speak, that is, through a man hidden behind the scenes, who like the one standing out in front is called the interpreter.”

As early as 1575 Italian pupazzi appeared in England and established themselves there. An order of the Lord Mayor of London at the time authorizes that, “Italian marionettes be allowed to settle in the city and to carry on their strange motions as in the past and from time immemorial.” Piccini was a later Italian motion-man, but very famous, giving shows for fifty years and speaking for his _Punch_ to the last with a foreign accent.