Mrs. Behn’s farce is derived from Arlequin Empereur dans la Lune, which was played in Paris by Guiseppe-Domenico Biancolelli, a famous Harlequin and the leading member of the Italian theatre there from 1660 to 1688. The original Italian scenes from which the French farce is taken belonged to that impromptu Comedy, ‘Commedia dell’ Arte all’ Improviso,’ which so far from being printed was but rarely even committed to writing. ‘The development of the intrigue by dialogue and action was left to the native wit of the several players,’ writes J.A. Symonds in his excellent and most scholarly introduction prefacing Carlo Gozzi’s Memoirs. In the case of a new play, or rather a new theme, the choregus or manager would call the company together, read out the plot, sketch the scenario, explain all business, and leave the dialogue to the humour and smartness of the individual performer. Their aptitude was amazing. In Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy we find Heironymo, who wishes to have a subject mounted in a hurry, saying: —
The Italian tragedians were so sharp of wit,
That in one hour’s meditation
They would perform anything in action.
And Lorenzo rejoins: —
I have seen the like
In Paris, among the French tragedians.
Of course much was bound to become stereotyped and fixed, but much was ever fluctuating and new.
When Biancolelli died on 2 August, 1688, of pneumonia, contracted through neglecting to change damp clothes, the loss to the Italian theatre seemed irreparable, but in the following year an equally celebrated Harlequin, finer and wittier if not more popular than he, appeared in the person of Evariste Gherardi. Gherardi was a man of culture, and he collected and edited a number of scenes, written in French, which were on the boards intermingled and played with the Italian farces in order to raise the tone of, and give something more solid and durable to, these entertainments. In 1695 three volumes of these scenes were published at Amsterdam, ‘chez Adrian Braakman,’ under the title Le Théâtre Italien, ou le Recueil de toutes les Comédies et Scènes Françoises qui ont été jouées sur le Théâtre Italien par la Troupe des Comediens du Roy de l’Hôtel de Bourgogne à Paris.
Arlequin Empereur dans la Lune had been published in its entirety eleven years previously (1684), but it was sufficiently popular for Gherardi to include various scenes therefrom in his collection. Accordingly he commences his first volume by giving the ‘Scène de la Fille de Chambre’, where Harlequin, disguised as a woman, pretends to be seeking a place as waiting-maid to the Doctor — Emperor of the Moon, Act ii, v. In the French, Pierrot, dressed as the Doctor’s wife, interviews the applicant. Gherardi also gives a scene between Isabella (Elaria) and Colombine (Mopsophil); a scene where Harlequin arrives tricked out as an Apothecary to win Colombine (in Mrs. Behn it is Scaramouch who thus attempts to gain Mopsophil); and the final scene which differs considerably from the conclusion of the English farce. In Vol. II there are two further extracts ‘obmises dans le premier Tome’, a dialogue between the Doctor and Harlequin, ‘recit que fait Arlequin au Docteur, du Voyage qu’il a fait dans le Monde de la Lune’, and a short passage between Harlequin and Colombine, both of which can be closely paralleled in the English version. Mrs. Behn of course used the edition of 1684. Her statement that she only took ‘a very barren and thin hint of the Plot’ from the Italian, and again that ‘all the Words are wholly new, without one from the Original’ must not be pressed too strictly, although she has undeniably infused a new life, new wit and humour into the alien scenes.
In Maurice Sand’s standard work on Italian comedy, Masques et Bouffons (Paris, 1860) there will be found copious citations from this pantomime, the popularity of which he attributes wholly to Gherardi. It was Biancolelli, however, who first brought it into favour and in whose lifetime it was actually printed, a rare honour, although doubtless it was owing to the great Gherardi that it retained and renewed its success. Gherardi died 31 August, 1700.
As the author himself states in his preface, Harlequin roi dans la Lune, a three act comedy by Bodard de Tézay, produced at the Variétés Amusantes, 17 December, 1785, has nothing to do with the old Italian scenes. An opera by Settle, entitled The World in the Moon, put on at Drury Lane in 1697, is quite different from Mrs. Behn’s farce. Settle has written a comedy which deals with the rehearsal of a new opera, The New World in the Moon. Tom Dawkins, a country lout just arrived in London, is taken to the theatre to see the rehearsal, and ordinary comic scenes intermingled with provision for elaborate sets, as the opera proceeds, form the strangest jumble. The piece takes its name from the first operatic scene, which represents a huge silver moon that gradually wanes, whilst a song, ‘Within this happy world above’, is performed.