, a farce, and the fragment of an opera performed
by the marionettes at the Costanzi Theatre in Rome, I am inclined to ask
myself why we require the intervention of any less perfect medium
between the meaning of a piece, as the author conceived it, and that
other meaning which it derives from our reception of it. The living
actor, even when he condescends to subordinate himself to the
requirements of pantomime, has always what he is proud to call his
temperament; in other words, so much personal caprice, which for the
most part means wilful misunderstanding; and in seeing his acting you
have to consider this intrusive little personality of his as well as the
author's. The marionette may be relied upon. He will respond to an
indication without reserve or revolt; an error on his part (we are all
human) will certainly be the fault of the author; he can be trained to
perfection. As he is painted, so will he smile; as the wires lift or
lower his hands, so will his gestures be; and he will dance when his
legs are set in motion.

Seen at a distance, the puppets cease to be an amusing piece of
mechanism, imitating real people; there is no difference. I protest that
the Knight who came in with his plumed hat, his shining sword, and flung
back his long cloak with so fine a sweep of the arm, was exactly the
same to me as if he had been a living actor, dressed in the same
clothes, and imitating the gesture of a knight; and that the contrast of
what was real, as we say, under the fiction appears to me less ironical
in the former than in the latter. We have to allow, you will admit, at
least as much to the beneficent heightening of travesty, if we have ever
seen the living actor in the morning, not yet shaved, standing at the
bar, his hat on one side, his mouth spreading in that abandonment to
laughter which has become from the necessity of his profession, a
natural trick; oh, much more, I think, than if we merely come upon an
always decorative, never an obtrusive, costumed figure, leaning against
the wall, nonchalantly enough, in a corner of the coulisses.

To sharpen our sense of what is illusive in the illusion of the puppets,
let us sit not too far from the stage. Choosing our place carefully, we
shall have the satisfaction of always seeing the wires at their work,
while I think we shall lose nothing of what is most savoury in the feast
of the illusion. There is not indeed the appeal to the senses of the
first row of the stalls