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Yet the real strength of Venice was almost spent, and nothing remained but outward insolence and prestige. Everything was gay about Goldoni in his earliest childhood. Puppet-shows were built to amuse him by his grandfather. 'My mother, he says, 'took charge of my education, and my father of my amusements. Let us turn to the opening scene in Alfieri's life, and mark the difference.
John's Day, to wash the disciples' feet on Holy Thursday, to preside at the Michaelmas horse-races and puppet-shows, and to marry for the sake of increasing the brilliancy of the court and perpetuating the Wittelsbach dynasty, he is denounced alike by devotees and worldlings, who judge him, not by what he does that is good and useful, but by what he does not do to gratify them.
Then there is a whole museum of wigs, and masks, and lace-coats, and gold-sticks, and grimaces, and phrases, which we laugh at honestly, without affectation, that are still used in the Old-World puppet-shows. I don't think we on our part ever understand the Englishman's concentrated loyalty and specialized reverence. Our reverence is a great deal wider, if it is less intense.
Vulgar delight is too naturally portrayed; the part of the Puritan, however, is deserving of distinction: his casuistical consultation, whether he ought to eat a sucking-pig according to the custom of the fair, and his lecture afterwards against puppet-shows as a heathen idolatry, are inimitable, and full of the most biting salt of comedy.
* An antiquated word in use for puppet-shows. "Ha! ha! ha!" cried Tarleton, "Mr. Powell is not the first man who has wrested things holy to serve a carnal purpose, and made use of church bells in order to ring money to the wide pouch of the church's enemies.
To these are to be added all individuals of either sex who by the law are obliged to obtain from the police licenses to exercise their trade, as pedlars, tinkers, masters of puppet-shows, wild beasts, etc. These, on receiving their passes, inscribe themselves, and take the oaths as spies; and are forced to send in their regular reports of what they hear or see.
"Wasting your time in looking at puppet-shows. How dare you, sir; how dare you? Get you gone, sirrah!" and he gave him a kick which considerably accelerated the speed with which he disappeared below.
The master was so highly elated with these encomiums, that he could not refrain from adding some more of his own. He said, "The present age was not improved in anything so much as in their puppet-shows; which, by throwing out Punch and his wife Joan, and such idle trumpery, were at last brought to be a rational entertainment.
The cause, I think, is in the character of the people. I never saw a population so totally divested of gaiety; there is no trace of this feeling from one end of the Union to the other. They have no fetes, no fairs, no merry makings, no music in the streets, no Punch, no puppet-shows.
Angelo the Corso begins to clear, and in five minutes you would look in vain for a carriage or a masker. The crowd disperses amongst the neighbouring streets, and fills the opera houses, the theatres, the rope-dancers' exhibitions, and even the puppet-shows.
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