sign in sign up
<<
Home , A Small Boy and Others, Columbina, Harlequinade, Henry James, Innamorati, Italian Hours

No.

THE COMMEDIA DELL*ARTE TRADITION AND THREE LATER NOVELS OF

Jack Helder

A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF

March 197^

Approved by $oc£opal Committee Advisor

BOWLING GREEN S' -_ UHIVERSIïïUBRAit: cì 1974

JACK HELDER

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED IX ABSTRACT

What Maisie Knew, , and form a sequential pattern that manifests Henry James’s subtle adaptation of theatrical conventions derived from the commedia dell'arte tradition. Recognition of this adapta­ tion adds a further dimension to conceptions of James as a dramatic novelist» one that not only comments on his method, but which also contributes to interpretation of his thematic intentions. This study commenced with a description of the essen­ tial , relevant conventions, and general intentions which characterized the commedia dell'arte tradition. The term "commedia dell’arte tradition" was used in deference to the dynamically evolutionary , spontaneous personality, and assimilation into Western culture of the various forms of Italian Popular Comedy since the Renaissance. A theatrical species utilized by Scala, Goldoni, Gozzi, and Moliere can only inclusively and accurately be viewed in terms of a general tradition. Moreover, during James’s formative years, that tradition suffered a relative eclipse which precluded his direct experience with purer forms. Autobiographical, biographical, critical, and his­ torical resources document James’s appreciative familiarity with remnants of that tradition. His acquaintance was initiated through story books and the "earliest aesthetic seeds" sown at Niblo's Gardens. Europe later provided him with the English Harlequinade, , and puppetry. James was undoubtedly aware of the fin de siecle revival of interest in the tradition that involved Maurice Sand, J. A. Symonds, Aubrey Beardsley, Shaw, and even Howells. A lengthy textual analysis of , The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl delineated and examined the elements of James's adaptation. His later method of impro­ vising from a scenario was an appropriate step in his crea­ tion of the "fools" surrounding his ingenues, fools drawn from Pantalone. Gapitano. the meddlesome , and a variety of and parasites. Such types determined the nature and direction of the fundamental sexual intrigues which animate the plots of these novels, and provided a grimly satirical comedy which, as George Sand said of the commedia dell’arte, revealed "the spiritual poverty of man­ kind." James accompanied these types and their resultant plots with sexual humor and figurative elements drawn from the dramatic circus and ironic fairy-tale. These adapted materials were marshalled to create a pattern which approaches James's theory of "The Figure in the Carpet," a concept of form that was developed within a few months of the fullest scenarii for What Maisie Knew. The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl. Ill ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Questions of authorship often involve indebtedness, and this study is no exception. Dr. Alma J. Payne has given her constant guidance, sound judgment, and generous under­ standing, Dr. J. Robert Bashore his positive reinforcement and thoughtful response, and Dr. Robert Meyers his critical acumen. My gratitude for their respect and valued friend­ ship cannot be measured. Dr. Charles R. Boughton’s knowledgeable contribution to this study has been greatly appreciated, as has the gracious and informative correspond­ ence of Dr. Adeline R. Tintner. For his inspiration, friend­ ship, and during my own awkward age, I gratefully acknowledge Dr. Clyde E. Henson of Michigan State University. To Ann Carol Helder, for her too frequently thankless sup­ port and patience, I am eternally grateful. To persons such as these, the world owes its gratitude that the "spiritual poverty of mankind" is not . iv

TABLE OP CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION ...... 1

THE COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE...... 16

JAMES'S ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE TRADITION ...... 70

THE COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE AND THREE LATER NOVELS OF HENRY JAMES...... 108

BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 226 CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION -

The dramatic form seems to me the most beautiful thing possible» the misery of the thing is that the baseness of the English-speaking stage affords no setting for it. Henry James , 1882

Henry James’s aversion to the English-speaking stage not only affected his ill-fsited theatrical efforts of the early 1890's, but also influenced his choice of methods and materials for three of his finest later novels. The ensuing study has grown out of an appreciation for James's dramatic method of representation in the novel, particularly as it is manifest in What Maisie Knew (1897)» The Awkward Age (1898), and The Golden Bowl (1904). In these works, James's dramatic method is combined with other pecularities of form and con­ tent to produce a grimly humorous set of novels unlike any others in the canon. These three novels are usually con­ sidered as general contributions to the overall achievement of James’s post-dramatic years. What Maisie Knew and The Awkward Age, even when viewed more particularly, have most often been regarded as "experiments in form,"1 or somewhat

■^Walter Isle, Experiments in Form» Henry James's Novels. 1896-1901 (Cambridge, Mass.» Press, 1968). 2 o self-indulgent exercises, which serve as examples of a second apprenticeship that prepared James for the full- fledged achievement of "the major phase".This study- attempts to demonstrate that What Maisie Knew. The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl are not isolated productions in the canon of Henry James, nor are they simply representations of the general theory and practice of his later years. These works comprise a three part sequence that evinces the novel- istic application and adaptation of a theatre tradition most clearly described in terms of conventions derived from the commedia dell'arte. The recognition of this shared pattern of method in these novels adds another fruitful dimension to the conception of James as a dramatic novelist.

2 The Awkward Age has borne the brunt of the greatest critical outrage in terms of its "experimental" nature. , in The Method of Henry James (Philadel­ phia: Alfred Saifer, 1918), termed the novel a mere "technical exercise" because he viewed it as an attempt to adopt the method of Gyp (Sibylle Gabrielle Marie Antoinette de Riquetti de Mirabeau, Countess de Martel de Janville). Beach stated: " author overlooked the enormous difference between his own material and that of his French model, who is a mere witty parrot of external 'manners.'" (p. 243) Carl Van Doren found that the novel strains "the most loyal attention to irritation if not disgust," The American Novel (New York: Macmillan, 1940), p. 211. In Henry James: Man and Author (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1927), concluded that James "achieved the physical impossibility of making something, and a great deal of something, out of nothing . . . with the most facile ease in spite of the self- imposed rigours of method to which he subjected himself." (p. 131) ^F. 0. Matthiessen, Henry James: The Major Phase (New York: Oxford University Press, 19£>3). Hereafter noted as, Matthiessen. 3 Criticism of Henry James's later method generally 4 takes its cue from Joseph Warren Beach's early study. Beach found that James’s novels became increasingly dramatic during the course of his long and productive creative life, and Beach further attempted to synthesize James's aesthetic of the dramatic novel from the Notebooks, Prefaces, and critical essays. Following his guidelines, later critics of James's theory and technique have usually defined the term "dramatic" very much as Beach did. They note that James's fiction gradually exhibits a greater distinction between "showing" dramatically and "telling" narratively. This sense of the dramatic novel draws attention to three basic ingredients of the later novels—an increased quantity of quick and witty dialogue and reparte, a deliberate "blocking" of characters as if they were on the stage,and the self-conscious avoid­ ance of authorial intrusion. Beach's groundwork was most significantly continued by Joseph Wiesenfarth, who telescoped James's theory and practice of the dramatic novel down to & three essential terms—Intensity, Economy, and . According to these principles, Wiesenfarth examined the major

^The Method of Henry James (Philadelphia» Alfred Saifer, 19187^ Hereafter noted as, Beach. ^Eban Bass, "Dramatic Scene and the Awkward Age," PMLA. LXXIX (March 1964), 148-157. ¿Henry James and the Dramatic Analogy (New York« Fordham University Press, 1963). 4

novels of what he calls the middle period. From Beach to Wiesenfarth, the dominant consideration of James as a ­ tic novelist has been within the context of a novel's quality of "performance”, as if the novel should aspire to the stage. This was, in fact, a motivating factor in James's theory. Yet, such an approach does not, for all its value, deal with other dimensions of James's dramatic method. It does not attempt to deal with questions of how the dramatic method reflects James's attitudes toward the social vista he repre­ sented, nor does it significantly reveal how the dramatic developed and captured James's literary imagination. It is usually assumed that James's dramatic novels were the natural outgrowth of his disastrous flirtation with the English stage, which in turn was the result of his avid devotion to the French pièce bien faite throughout his middle years. No one has undertaken to state explicitly and demon­ strate the precise relation between the pièce bien faite and James’s later work. In general, it is believed that the pièce bien faite and the later novels share (1) the intention of social satire founded on a portrayal of manners» (2) the treatment of sexual mores as indicative of deeper social foibles» (3) a tendency to epigrammatic humor» (4) a quick­ ness of physical movement» and (5) the presence of funda­ mental devices to produce suspense and melodrama. R. P. Blackmur further contended that three major novels of the later period—. , and 5 The Golden Bowl—are based on the pièce bien faite because they adhere to a structure involving a "classic recognition" followed by a reversal of roles.? On the other hand, Black- mur unconsciously wrote his own disclaimer for such a connec­ tion when he later granted that such a structure is charac- Q teristic of "most great European novels." The fact that critics have contented themselves with general statements of comparison between the pièce bien faite and James’s later novels is understandable. While the immedi­ acy of James's experience with the French theatre is highly suggestive, as are his own comments on the Scribe tradition, such a relation is questionable. Stephan S. Stanton, in his introduction to Camille and other plays, defined the clearly discernible formula of the pièce bien faite. True examples of such drama display seven structural features» (1) a plot based on a secret known to the audience but withheld from certain characters (who have long been engaged in a battle of wits) until its revelation (or the direct consequence thereof) in the climactic scene serves to unmask a fraudulent character and restore to fortune the suffering , with whom the audience has been made to sympathize» (2) a pattern of increasingly intense action and suspense, prepared by exposition (this pattern assisted by con­ trived entrances and exits, letters, and other devices)» (3) a series of ups and downs in the hero’s fortunes, caused by his conflict with an adversary, (4) the counterpunch or peripeteia and scene a falre. marking, respectively, the lowest and the highest point in the hero's adventures, and brought by the disclosure of

?The Lion and the Honeycomb (New York» Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1955), PP. 274-75. 8Ibid.. p. 276. 6 secrets to the opposite side» (5) a central misunder­ standing or quiproquo. made obvious to but withheld from the participants; (6) a logical and credible denouement; and (7) the reproduction of the overall action pattern in the individual acts.9 James's often follow the plot strictures that Stanton describes, but his novels obviously do not. Furthermore, as Stanton suggested, the French pièce bien faite was generally motivated by a two-fold purpose. First, it attempted to coat a rather severe didactic message with a "sugar-sweet ," and secondly, it exhibited a semi-religious devotion to a particularly strict dramatic formula. James was not a didactic writer, and while he was a votary to the ideal of formal control, the pièce bien faite was simply too excessively formulaic and restrictive for his personal vision and applied novelistic method. His avowed appreciation for, and professed mastery of, the French model, and his utilization of its formula in the creation of his own theatricals, should be noted, but the degree of its influence on his fiction has been overemphasized. provided the most judicial note on the debt of James’s novels to his theatrical years. Edel contended that James's "divine prin­ ciple of the Scenario" was the one great contribution of the "whole tragic experience" to the later novelistic method.

^Camille and other plays, ed. Stephan S. Stanton (New York: Hill and Wang, 1957), PP. xii-xiii. Hereafter, Stanton. ^The Complete Plays of Henry James (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1949), PP. 59-&5T Hereafter, Complete Plays. 7 Even the scenario, however, is the product of earlier thea­ trical conventions derived from the commedia dell'arte tradi­ tion. Despite this fact, it is true that James's method of preparation during the theatrical period did carry over to the practice of some of his later novels. Other such connec­ tions are doubtful. While James's later novels may have some elements of comic form that are also evident in the pièce bien faite. it should be remembered that the high priest of that restrictive model, Augustin-Eugene Scribe, deliberately set out to create a comic formula that would combine the comic conventions and devices of a dramatic tradition that stretched back to Ter­ ence. In the process, however, Scribe chose to leave out many comic elements of that tradition which are evidenced later in James's comic method. As James wrote to his brother William in 1878, "I have thoroughly mastered Dumas, Augier, and Sardou . . . and I know all they know and a great deal more besides. The "great deal more" that James knew about the dra­ matic tradition was utilized in his fictional practice, and cannot, as some critics imply, simply be attributed to James’s acquaintanceship with the French, or even the Eng­ lish, dramatic tradition. For example, some critics suggest

l^May 1, 1878. The Letters of Henry James, ed. Percy Lubbock (New York» Scribner's, 192077 I» P» Hereafter, Letters. 8 that Congreve served as James’s model for the social comedy of the later novels, but this ignores James’s expressed aversion to Congreve and his fellow Restoration dramatists. 12 The portrayal of sexual mores was too lightheartedly dealt with in their social viewpoint.The dramatic influence on Henry James is more comprehensive, as his experience was both continuous and broad. A few critics have been more cir­ cumspect in noting James’s adaptation of theatre tradition, suggesting that his sense of drama goes deeper into the essen­ tial core of dramatic presentation. As Leo Levy contended, in reference to the later dramatic method« A plurality of dramatic resources permits James to ' escape the monodrama or well-made play. Masque and pantomime, with their symbolic allegorical configura­ tions, establish a new intimacy between technique and intention. The drama of the late James is the drama of masquerade . . .1* Levy approached James's later fiction as melodrama, which is somewhat justified, but he did not explore his own provocative allusions to the commedia dell’arte theatre tradition. Nor did Austen Warren, who drew brief attention to the atmosphere of the dramatic circus in The Golden Bowl.

19For instance, in a letter to Stevenson in 1888 James wrote« " has sent me his clever little life of Congreve, just out, and I have read it, but it isn’t so good as his Raleigh. But no more is the insufferable subject." Letters, p. 138. ^Helen Leyburn, Strange Alloy (Durham, N.C.« Univers­ ity of North Carolina Press, 1968), p. llln. Hereafter, Leyburn. ^Versions of Melodrama (Berkeley» University of Cali­ fornia Press, 195777 P. 115. Hereafter, Levy. 9 while ignoring that same atmosphere in What Maisie Knew and The Awkward Age. Warren found that the characters of the later novel "summon up recollections of ballet dancers, show people, brave ritualists who perform, upon exhibition, feats of persistence and agility» figures more proper to Goya, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec."15 Warren might well have added a

host of graphic artists to his list who often found their subjects in the traditions growing out of the commedia dell'arte, such as Watteau and Picasso. He unconsciously indicated that James dealt with such a tradition, though applied such representation to the novel. Womble Quay Grigg was even more explicit in acknowledging James’s affinity with that tradition. "His sympathetic image of innocent Maisie, surrounded by farce and buffoonery, is an accomplish­ ment that denotes a new era in James’s artistic life."^

Grigg imagined Maisie’s situation most accurately, and it is this novel that initiates the commedia dell’arte sequence. He did not simply indulge in figurative description, but recognized that The Awkward Age is also indebted to long­ standing theatrical conventions which epitomize the commedia dell'arte tradition. He found that the novel "is never far from that comic vein that had persisted through many ages, perhaps having made its first appearance as early as the

15Rage for Ordert Essays in Criticism (Chicago» Uni­ versity of Chicago Press, 1946), p. 153. l^The Molds of Form» Comedy and Conscience,in the Novels of Henry James, 1895-1901. (Diss. University of Pennsylvania, 1961), p. 112. Hereafter, Grigg. 10 fifth century in Sicily in the works of Epicharmus, who also treated such traditional comic types, used later by James, as the parasite like Lord Petherton and the swaggering, 17 braggart soldier." ' Grigg did not continue to explore the dramatic con­ ventions that James derived from comic tradition. He was primarily concerned with the evil effects of comedy in the later novels, but he seemed to be groping for answers to questions first posed by Richard Poirier in The Comic Sense in Henry James. Poirier’s study dealt with the early novels, but in the conclusion to his analysis he speculated that the comic method of the later novels was drawn from a conception •J Q of character types adapted from dramatic tradition. Neither Grigg or Poirier explored his implications. Like Levy and Warren, however, they suggested elements of James’s later theory and practice which led to the commedia dell'arte tradition. These critics recognized that the later novels manifest a demarcation from the earlier method, a change which was marked by the usage of dramatic conventions. There may have been recurring buffoons and clownish types—comic confidants and fools—in the early work, but the context in which they appear does not reveal any sustained comic

^Grigg, p. 162. 18 The Comic Sense of Henry James» A Study of the Early Novels (New York» Oxford University Press, i960). Poirier's suggestive comments are more completely dealt with in Chapter IV. Hereafter, Poirier. 11 intention in relation to comic traditions. As Levy insisted, ’’the renewed sense of life and the greater richness of tex­ ture of the late novels have their origin in the discovery that" the moral suppositions and the dramatic techniques of James's last great creative period demand "consistently theatrical expression. Melodrama becomes the persuasive device of a supreme rhetorician of moral life, a style of dramatization evident in language, image, and scene, through which a high sense of moral excitement is communicated." 197 In James's search for a medium by which to render theatrical melodrama, he mined the theatrical traditions evolving out of the commedia dell’arte tradition. The recognition that this tradition contributes its substance to the dramatic tex­ ture of What Maisie Knew. The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl, provides a new dimension to the sense in which Henry James was a dramatic novelist, and supports Grigg’s-conten­ tion that What Maisie Knew "denotes a new era in James's artistic life." It is an era that has produced considerable negative commentary from literary criticism, which is in many ways the result of an almost failure to perceive the cohesive pattern and moral intention that permeate the three novels in question. Without a recognition of the commedia dell’arte tradition's influence on James, character criticism

^Levy, p. 115. 12 has found James’s creations to be "false" and "shallow," as ’s hyperbolic condemnation of the later char­ acterizations demonstrates» . . . their sole passion is inquisitiveness. Magnifi­ cent pretentions, petty performancesJ—the fruits of an irresponsible imagination, of a deranged sense of values, of a working in the void, uncorrected by any clear of human cause and effect.20 Brooks failed to note that the mechanical patterns of human life in these novels are essential to the conventions of farce which underly their structure and ironically assist in the delineation of moral vitality. In these novels, James asserted that there are patterns which dominate human life, patterns which are determined by character. The fundamental sexual intrigues which animate the plots of these novels, and which result from the utilization of character types derived from the commedia dell'arte tradi­ tion, have generally served to raise the moral hackles of critics who obviously take issue with Brooks's statement that "inquisitiveness" is the only passion of James's later characters. Henry Seidel Canby typified such criticism when he bristled. As a result of the new society he is representing, adultery, sexual irregularity, passion as an overt

20The Pilgrimage of Henry James (New York» E. P. Dutton, 1925), p. 134. Hereafter, Brooks. 21Griggp has touched on this in Molds of Form, pp. 129- 130. He insists, however, that character is consequently sacrified to plot, which is hardly true. In these novels, plot is the almost inevitable outgrowth of character, some­ times with a vengeance. 13 motive, decadence, all aspects of life which did not interest the earlier James because they did not much concern his characters except in their results, now enter the immediate action. He describes his treat­ ment of these fragile Edwardian morals as "ironic", but that is not true. It is flippant. Henry is not at home in these stories, even when he is an observer. He strains, like a serious man telling a dirty story . . .22 There is little doubt that Canby failed to discern the in James’s rendering of sexual intrigues, nor that he was unable to appreciate the moral lives that those intrigues activate and accent. There has also been a tendency to demean the comic imagery of the later novels, which is generally considered to be haphazard and pointless. Alexander Holder-Bareli exemplified this position when he stated that "whereas there is a certain consistency in the introduction of comic images in the early novels, especially in , there is none in the late works, where it is obvious that such images are used at random.This was a careless estimate, for there is a distinct sub-pattern of comic imagery, highly ironic and tragic in overall impact, that is shared by What Maisie Knew. The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl. At the same time, it is an imagery that fits the more general pattern of the commedia dell’arte tradition running through these

22Turn West. Turn East (Boston» Houghton Mifflin, 1951)» p. 212. Hereafter, Canby. 2^The Development of Imagery and Its Functional Signi­ ficance in Henry James's Novels (Bern» Francke, 1959)» p. 31. Hereafter, Holder-Bareli. 14 novels. Therefore, while a novel such as The Golden Bowl may he profitably viewed within Leavis’s "Great Tradition" and also Matthiessen’s less inclusive "Major Phase," and while narrower viewpoints of James’s experimental efforts are valu­ able as well, it is also fruitful to recognize that it is the final novel in a pattern begun with What Maisie Knew. Even more significantly than the way in which The Princess Casamassima somewhat continues the , motifs, and methods that had first flowered in the story of young Roderick Hudson, The Golden Bowl is in many ways the working out of James’s imaginatively dramatic method first engendered in What Maisie Knew and The Awkward Age. The key to the pattern which con­ nects these novels is grounded in an awareness of James's adaptation of the commedia dell’arte tradition. The phrase "commedia dell’arte tradition" requires some definition and clarification. The drama of Henry James’s What Maisie Knew. The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl is not pure Flaminio Scala, or Carlo Gozzi, nor even as adaptive as that of Moliere. James's sense of the old comedy and the uses he could make of it is more inclusive and general, capturing the essence of a long-standing and mutable tradition by means of a few selective conventions and motifs. Chapter II will attempt to describe that tradition within a generic historical perspective, from its birth to its decline, and articulate the necessity for amending the term "commedia 15 dell'arte" with the word "tradition", especially as it applies to Henry James. The chapter concludes with a summary review of possible precedents for adaptations of the commedia dell'arte tradition, adaptations that contribute to the sense in which the commedia dell'arte is most comprehensively viewed as a tradition. Chapter III will provide a study of James's acquaint­ anceship with that tradition. With recourse to his auto­ biographical works, critical materials, and biographical notation of his probable involvement with fin de siecle recon­ siderations of the tradition, it will be demonstrated that Henry James was not only knowledgeable, but highly apprecia­ tive of those elements of the commedia dell'arte that he either sought or encountered by fortunate chance. The final chapter will attempt to demonstrate further the effect of that and appreciation on What Maisie Knew, The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl. Following a critical rationale justifying James's adaptation and the approach of this study, a textual analysis will deal with the manifestation and thematic consequences of his adapta­ tion in terms of the method, verbal humor, skeletal plots, character types and their relations, and the figurative sub­ patterns of the three novels. The textual analysis will con­ clude with still another possible interpretation of the germinal for "The Figure in the Carpet." CHAPTER II

THE COMMEDIA DELL’ARTE

An effort to examine the commedia dell’arte in the space of one chapter may seem to reflect a strong measure of hubris, but is a necessary prelude to a discussion of the animating design shared by Henry James’s What Maisie Knew. The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl. This overview does not intend to accomplish in so brief a span what others have undertaken in volumes, but attempts to synthesize commedia dell’arte scholarship and criticism in order to facilitate an understanding of the commedia dell’arte's essential nature and conventions in so far as they relate to this overall study of three kindred novels of Henry James. This study conceives of the commedia dell’arte as an evolving and finally dispersed tradition, not as a precise and immut­ able form confined to a particular spatial-temporal dimension of theatrical history, nor as a strictly standardized set of conventions. Such an approach is predicated upon the flex­ ible nature of the commedia dell'arte. by the dynamics of its development, and by the degree and kind of familiarity with that tradition available to a nineteenth-century figure like Henry James. Though there will of necessity be some overlap, this description of the commedia dell’arte tradition briefly sketches the historical evolution of its conventions, 17 defines its most characteristic elements, reviews its most significant character typologies, and touches on its influ­ ence in Western literature. In the interests of brevity and focus, certain aspects of the tradition may be too sum­ marily dismissed for the comfort of some commedia dell’arte scholars, but it is hoped that accuracy is not sacrificed to economy. Most scholars of the Italian drama admit to the diffi­ culty of explaining the commedia dell'arte and confess that the tradition defies brief or precise definition. Indeed, many betray a feeling that the commedia dell'arte is to them what Conrad's Russian first appeared to Marlow— "inexplicable, and altogether bewildering." This can be attributed to its amorphous character through the centuries of its rise to popularity throughout Europe, its decline, and its quiet resurgence. Moreover, because much of the tradi­ tion was grounded in other mimetic forms of , or assimi­ lated into other such forms, its character is even more illusive. Called by many names during its lifetime, the tradi­ tion has come to be somewhat inaccurately distinguished by its eighteenth-century title, the "commedia dell’arte". The eighteenth-century form, while substantially similar, dif­ fered from what had gone before and from what again material­ ized near the end of the nineteenth century. Critics and scholars often disagree as to the essential characteristics 18 of the tradition because they focus on different stages in its evolutionary process or isolate one or another of its numerous conventions as most important. For example, any statement regarding the origins of the commedia dell'arte tradition is likely to be subjected to argument. One scholar might emphasize the miles gloriosus of Plautus as the proto­ type for the Oapitano of the commedia dell'arte and insist that such a figure was the father of the Italian type. Another will counter that Pantalone is an obviously Venetian caricature and therefore demand that we recognize the generic Italian personality of the tradition. Still another will offer evidence that the commedia dell'arte owes much of its inception to the popular farces, parodies, and political satires of the Greek Atellanae. Whatever the debts of the commedia dell'arte to Greek and Latin influences, it is most generally conceived as an improvised dramatic form of comedy that flourished in Renais­ sance and gradually diminished in popularity until it breathed its last at the close of the eighteenth century. If indeed it was a "rebirth" of the Greek and Latin comic forms, it nevertheless remains true that it was the mid­ sixteenth century paternity in Italy that spawned a dramatic tradition which was to spread rapidly through nearly every European country—establishing a permanent Theatre Italian in Paris and reaching the courts and coteries of intelli­ gentsia in Russia. For well over two centuries this tradition 19 endured as a popular entertainment and potent cultural force. Even thereafter the commedia dell’arte tradition continued a less glamorous course in Italy and in a few European cultural centers from to London, for a further hundred and fifty years. While it flourished, its actors were adored and honored. From the rich and powerful they received servants, carriages, villas, valuable patents and favored governmental appointments. They were cultivated by the learned and cul­ tured, who often expressed amazement that the commedia dell’­ arte performers possessed broad knowledge and literary excel­ lence as well as humorous and spectacular vitality. The diversity of their acclaim is reflected in their influence, as that suggested by Duchartre« "For three centuries or more the commedia dell’arte had an enormous influence throughout Europe, not only on literature, as exemplified by Lope de Vega, Shakespeare, and Moliere, but in music and painting as well."1 The tradition was also well received by the populace, and it is questionable whether the commedia dell’arte conven­ tions and materials filtered down to the market place and festivals from the sophisticated performances, or originated in the more popular . It is likely that both contributed, because the commedia dell’arte tradition very much resulted from a compromise between popular desire for *

^Pierre Louis Duchartre, The Italian Comedy (New York» Dover, 1966), p. 23. Hereafter noted as Duchartre. 20 humorous spontaneity and an academic demand for classical culture.2 The surviving records of the commedia dell'arte are naturally indebted to the most literate performers and observers. It therefore follows that scholars are better informed about the more sophisticated and erudite forms of the tradition than they are about the cruder forms viewed by the populace. While this imbalance may somewhat distort modern conceptions of the tradition, it is likely that the erudite form exerted the most direct influence on Western culture. This influence was multifarious» threading its way throughout our culture even into the twentieth century. Dis­ tinguished playwrights other than Shakespeare and Moliere were touched by the tradition, as even George Bernard Shaw claimed his debt to it. The canvasses and sketches of Watteau, Tiepolo, Brunelleschi, Severini, Claude-Levy, Derain, Degas, Cezanne, Gris, Picasso, and many others, manifest its continual influence on the graphic . Its slightest reverberations provided the spirit and title for James's beloved Punch, and it made significant contributions to the spectacle and movement of the ballet as well as to the baroque innovations in the opera. Over the years it has offered timeless material for puppet-shows and children's

2Douglas Radcliffe-Umstead, The Birth of Modern Comedy in Renaissance Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), P. 295. 21 storybooks.The commedia dell'arte's most enduring figure, Arleechino. reappears in a multitude of contexts throughout Western civilization. He may adorne a deck of cards, the facade of a nightclub, the literary logotype of a magazine literary section, a simple bookplate, or a theatrical play­ bill, or even be the free-spirited hero in an Orwellian -fiction tale. 4 While we do not generally recognize the source of the figure, we have become accustomed to his connotations of fun, frolic, and wit. Pierre Duchartre advances a theoretical explanation for the commedia dell'arte's generous acceptance in that coincides with our conception of Arlecchino. and that might provide a more general motive for the tradition's general popularity as well. Though the Italian players did not incorporate the French language into their productions until 1668, they were immensely popular, Duchartre says, because "it is evident that the brought into France a fresh element of sparkle, exuberance, and salient expres­ sion at a time when the French theatre was wasting away in vain subtleties, insipid , and ticklish points of honour, as inflated as bladders and quite as empty.While

^k recent example, Remy Charlip and Burton Supree, Harlequin and The Gift of Many Colors (New York, Parents' Magazine Press, 1973). 4 Harlan Ellison, "'Repent, Harlequin:* Said the Tick- tockman," Science Fiction, The Future, ed. Dick Allen (New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1971)» PP. 215-224. ^Duchartre, p. 22. 22 Duchartre is excessively hyperbolic, it is true that the commedia dell’arte tradition did provide an impetus to excite­ ment and passion in any of the arts, as the romantics noted, though the dramatic arts were the most obviously effected. The tradition was inherently hostile to the merely academic, the dogmatic, and the pedantic. As Joseph Spencer Kennard writes: "It is the theatre of all people, of all arts, of all moments when life wings up out of drab . It is a theatre of music and dance, of song, colour and light. . . . diverting, ludicrous, facetious, sometimes grimly, often gro­ tesquely, the Commedia dell’Arte portrays incongruous human­ ity. with this spirited intention and energetic conception of theatre, the commedia dell’arte rose to prominence. The vitality of the commedia dell’arte tradition pro­ duced a rather protean character founded on a general prin­ ciple of spontaneity. While certain direct features of that spontaneity—such as extemporaneous dialogue and pantomime— gradually ceased to be the major ingredients of a performance, that dynamic principle still permeated the personality of the tradition, preserving a capacity for adjustment and adapta­ tion to changing circumstances that also perpetuated an elu­ sive quality. Roving companies depended on popular demand or governmental approval, and gradually and subtly acquiesced to nearly all contemporaneous conditions. If the courts, for

z Masks and Marionettes (New York: Macmillan, 1935), p. 3. Hereafter, Kennard. 23 instance, ruling in favor of a rival native theatre, would attempt to suppress the commedia dell'arte performers by forbidding them to speak dialogue, then the actors would rely more completely on pantomime and extended monologue. If a duke happened to favor a particular actor or actress, then a new scenario would be written with a view towards securing the overall position of the company, or perhaps obtaining a special grant from the noble personage. An actor might occa­ sionally attain nobility by such means. When foreign audi­ ences grew weary of performances in Italian, then scenarii and dialogues would be rewritten to accomodate other languages. Popular taste, laws, and an influx of material from the cul­ tural milieu continually affected the nature of the tradition. Even the most consistently recognizable element of the commedia dell'arte tradition, its stylized character types, was founded on the dynamic principle of spontaneous adjust­ ment to circumstances. If we view a Renaissance woodcut of Arlecchino. an eighteenth-century water-color of Garrick in the same role, and a portrait of Arlecchino by Picasso in our own century, we will recognize conventional similarities in aspect, but we should also note subtle differences in that aspect which denote differences in essence. This reflects the mutable conventionality of the commedia dell'arte tradi­ tion as a whole. Therefore, "tradition" becomes the most accurate sense in which to conceive of the commedia dell'arte over an extended period of time. 24 This is particularly apparent in the context of this study—the comparison of certain elements of the commedia dell’arte heritage to three novels of Henry James—for it was as a dispersed, even dissipated, tradition that the commedia dell’arte was encountered by James and captured his interest. He was afforded almost no opportunity to experi­ ence at first hand the purer forms of the commedia dell’arte proper. The years of James's birth and maturation marked the lowest point in the fortunes of the commedia dell’arte tradi­ tion since its inception. This low ebb ironically resulted from the very characteristics of the commedia dell’arte that had formerly contributed to its growth and popularity—its exuberant rendering of human incongruities through spontan­ eity and extravagance. Such a spirit was largely incompatible with realistic trends that were gathering momentum. For the most part, the tradition reacted by indulging itself in excesses. With a proliferation of extravagant staging effects, increasing licentiousness, crude devices, and an overall neglect of acting artistry and inventiveness of lang­ uage, the commedia dell’arte destroyed itself. What was intended to be an antidote killed the patient. Only a few dramatists recognized the folly of continuing in a direction opposed to contemporary trends. Carlo Goldoni was a dramatist who recognized that the commedia dell’arte must change. His mid-eighteenth-century attempt to compromise commedia dell’arte conventions with somewhat helped to preserve the tradition, though 25 his efforts also contributed to the dispersal of the commedia dell'arte elements into less clearly recognizable forms. His conflict with Carlo Gozzi dramatizes the two strategies for preserving the tradition. Goldoni was drawn to the tradition because of its universal validity, its medium for acting vitality, and because he was a patriot. At the same time, Goldoni wanted to bring realistic individuality of character, social criticism, and a moral purpose to the theatre. Gozzi was diametrically opposed to Goldoni and his theatrical reforms. In fact, his efforts to maintain the old tradition and masks by generating even more energy and fantasy were also part of a personal hostility to Goldoni. While his strategy for preserving the commedia dell'arte met with initial suc­ cesses, it was a matter of his personal artistry, not the form itself. Once Gozzi no longer provided his creative energies, the method was a failure. With lesser artists, extravagance became its own dead-end. On the other hand, Goldoni's efforts, by reforming the tradition itself, did preserve elements of the tradition and influenced later drama­ tists. As a pure form, the commedia dell'arte could not sur­ vive in a climate of realism. Only in Goldoni's altered form could the tradition cope with contemporary trends. In 1780, suffering from ill-advised equivocation, solopsism, profes­ sional jealousies, and religio-political pressure, the Comédie Italienne was suppressed in Paris. This sounded the temporary death knell for the commedia dell'arte. 26 Nearly a century later, Maurice Sand, son of the French novelist, published his two-volume historical sketch of the commedia dell'arte tradition, Masques et Bouffons.r During the eighty year interim the tradition had suffered an almost total eclipse. Its logotypes of the reborning Phoenix and the Janus had been adopted by other dramatic forms, as had a number of its conventions, but it was largely dead or widely diffused. There were exceptions, such as the English pantomime and harlequinade—pale comparisons of the original, often composed of mere farcical interludes, but with a wisp of the genuine that reached even to America. There was also the Pulcinello tradition preserved largely in its native , or as a puppet variation, Punch. This tradition was quite far removed from the original invented by Silvio Fiorello in seventeenth-century Naples. While sustaining the memory, the nineteenth-century Pulcinello had lost his capacity for the erudite satire that had graced earlier stage Q performances. The aerobatic and choreographic qualities of the commedia dell'arte had gone in two distinct directions—the strength and humor into the circus, the grace and into the ballet. Also into the circus went the informal

^Masques et Bouffons (Paris, I860). ®K. M. Lea, Italian Popular Comedy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934), I, pp. 91-92. Hereafter, Lea. 27 spectacle of the "parade". As Randolph Weaver/ the transla­ tor of Duchartre, notes: "in most countries the parade is most often seen nowadays at fairs as a prelude or 'ballyhoo’ to a ’side-show’ or circus.The exotic excitement and hec­ tic movement remained, but the dramatic quality was lost, as it was with most of the commedia dell’arte tradition that managed to survive. For the most part, then, until the advent of Sand’s romantically conceived and sentimentalized study, the commedia dell’arte tradition had undergone nearly a century of darkness It was the romantic movement’s quest for the exotic, mutable, and spontaneous that caused the commedia dell’arte to be rediscovered, as Sand’s work demonstrates. In the interven­ ing years between the publication of Masques et Bouffons and World War I, the fortunes of the commedia dell’arte tradition again rose, though hardly to its previous heights. Research on the commedia dell’arte quite suddenly bloomed and resulted in a number of critical articles. Collections of scenarii were discovered and published, memoirs of famous performers and companies came into print. In a number of languages and countries, studies appeared of the influence exerted by the commedia dell'arte on drama and culture in general. Commedia dell’arte theatres were re-established in Russia, France, Germany, and Italy, the most notable was the Piccolo Teatro della Citta di Milano, which still performs.

q ^Duchartre, pp. 22-23, n. 3. 28 James’s acquaintanceship with elements of the corn- media dell'arte tradition that filtered down to him is explored in the next chapter, but one point deserves mention at this juncture. Not only did James have an early cogni­ zance of the tradition, but his work most clearly evidences his appreciative awareness of it during the same period that the commedia dell'arte was deeply in the midst of its fin de siecle scholarly and critical revival. It should also be noted that a few of those who were instrumental in that revival, such as Sand and , were acquaintances of James and it is unlikely that he remained ignorant of their contributions. It would not serve the purpose of this study to review completely the commedia dell'arte's historical evolution, its finest actors, and famous groups. A definition of certain essential characteristics and fundamental qualities of the tradition is relevant to James's adaptation of some such materials in the creation of What Maisie Knew. The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl. In terms of the commedia dell'arte itself, one thing hopefully will be accomplished—the dis­ pelling of the all too common assumption that the commedia dell'arte was a drama of obscene farce and pure slapstick comedy, with a rigid adherence to convention, whose only real contribution to the arts was pantomime. As Kennard notes, "the Commedia dell'Arte is Art and it is Psychology."^*0 It

10Kennard, p. 3 29 is within the context of these two realms that the commedia dell'arte generally will be considered, particularly as these were also the central motivations behind the art of Henry James. Perhaps the keynote for a study of the commedia dell'arte. and for this study as well, is supplied by an artist whom James greatly respected, George Sand« The commedia dell'arte is not only a study of the gro­ tesque and the facetious . . . but also a portrayal of real character traced from remote antiquity down to the present day, in an uninterrupted tradition of fan­ tastic humour which is in essence quite serious and, one might almost say, even sad, like every satire which lays bare the spiritual poverty of mankind.^ Those who associate the commedia dell'arte tradition only with the lowest elements common to the comedians of the wagon stages and street festivals fail to do justice to the literary aspects of the tradition, and the depth and signifi­ cance of its material as discerned by George Sand. Part of the difficulty lies in the application of the term "popular comedy" as generally descriptive of the commedia dell'arte. Like film in our own time, the commedia dell'arte was a vehicle for a broad range of modes and variants in quality that depended on multiple collaborators for production. The finest companies were not above utilizing obscene humor and crudely comic devices to entertain a more cultured audience— rich and poor alike enjoyed the prospect of a peeking under 's skirts—it was a matter of resources and

11Quoted from Duchartre, p. 17 30 emphasis. Such incidents were often the foundation of mater­ ial for second and third-rate companies. With the best com­ panies, however, these were but part of a broad repertoire, not their stock and trade. This wide range of effect con­ tributed to the breadth of their appeal. Richness, elegance, and subtlety were not evident in the market-place productions as they were in the most esteemed performances. The commedia dell’arte tradition was truly an actor's medium, and depended on the quality of its actors more than most dramatic forms. Productions of poor quality were the natural outgrowth of uneducated and unsophisticated audiences of course, hut also resulted from actors who were dependent upon low comic devices to compensate for meagerness of talent, training, and education. If an acting troupe did possess qualities of excellence, it was still difficult to gain access to the best audiences. These were jealously guarded and cultivated by the most professional groups as a matter of simple economic necessity as well as artistic pride. Occasionally a professional company would derive a device or role conception from the lesser players, but for the most part the market-place productions were insipid imi­ tations of those viewed by the wealthy, powerful, and well- educated. The inventiveness of the professional companies was always challenged to present poignant, fresh, and well- rendered comedies, sensitive romances, intelligent and pointed satire, all full of learned and literary content as 31 well as general gymnastic excellence, in order to maintain their favored social positions. Because of this multi­ faceted dramatic facility, perhaps the best translation of the term "commedia dell'arte" is "comedy of skill”. Allardyce Nicoll explains, in The World of Harlequin. that the skill involved in a commedia dell'arte performance was not, as is too often supposed, largely physical, like the pantomimic genius of Marcel Marceau in the present day, or that of the circus performer. 12 Acrobatics and panto­ mime did serve important functions—whether requisite for a classically tragic battle scene or a humorously desperate chase—but they are too often exaggerated in accounting for the popularity of the commedia dell'arte tradition. That tradition achieved its acceptance in court and among uni­ versity intelligentsia throughout Europe by being more than a wonder of physical dexterity. To be sure, the pantomime has depths of and , as the performances of Marceau still attest to, and a commedia dell'arte performer had to be athletic and physically imaginative. Another art that the commedia dell'arte performer sought and nourished might be seen at the opposite end of the dramatic spectrum, an art based on the exhibition of knowledge and wit through language skills. For example, in 1699 Andrea Perrucci set

^■2Allardyce Nicoll, The World of Harlequin (Cambridge England» Cambridge University Press, 1963), pp. 26-23. Here­ after, Nicoll. 32 down exacting literary criteria for aspirants to the commedia dell’arte. He required that they study all good books written in perfect Tuscan—including all matter of philosophy, his­ tory, poetry, and scientific investigation. Commedia dell’arte actors were expected to master "all figures of speech and tropes used in rhetoric.During the same period Niccolo Barbiéri noted that "the actors of today are such that there is not a good book they have not read, a witty conceit they have not appropriated, a fine piece of description they have not imitated, deep thought they have not made their own, they are always reading, gathering beauties from books." 14 These are rigorous, and perhaps exaggerated, standards, yet they indicate a perception of the commedia dell’arte tradition which is often ignored in a romantic emphasis on extravagance and spontaneity, or a dramatic concern with physical buf­ foonery. , diplomatists, theologians, English tra­ velers, and other learned men of the time have recorded their impressed reactions to the erudite material and subtle method of the commedia dell’arte performers, some of whom were uni­ versity graduates or had been extensively tutored themselves. Many of the actors in the renowned companies were probably of rather careless educations, but they taught themselves in

^Quoted from Nicoll, p. 33« 14lbld.. pp. 32-33. 33 order to maintain the standards expected of them. In general it was the literary quality of the commedia dell'arte. not the low farce and buffoonery, that captured the imagination of those who made their responses the legacy of scholarship, though they may have been less than honest by omitting that a good smutty jest could also catch their fancy. While the lower elements were obviously a great attraction, it was inventiveness and quickness of dialogue, the rendering of subtle effects, allusiveness, the pointed wit of satirical discourse and monologue, and the overall ingenious use of language that most amused the literate and moved them to praise and make historical record. The physical energy of the commedia dell'arte may have been its most characteristic feature, but it was not the exclusive appeal, especially for the intelligentsia. Overall, the demands on a successful commedia dell'arte performer were stringent. Duchartre says that "there is no explaining the immense vitality of the Italian comedy except by the fact that these improvisators possessed the genius and mastery of their art to a degree rarely equalled in the history of the theatre.Not only must the commedia dell'arte performer be learned in the classics and possess a great fund of general knowledge, but he must often master the contemporary milieu and incorporate its materials into plot, character, and dialogue, which is the feature that most

l^Duchartre, p. 22. 34 appealed to some realists, like . More­ over, the commedia dell'arte actor had to accomplish all this within the context of his own conventional character type before his performance would be successful. Within the limitations of such professional standards and audience expectations, the commedia dell'arte performers presented a variety of theatrical wares. They might perform anywhere along the continuum of dramatic modes, from almost Lear-like tragedy to the broad comedy of the Marx Brothers. Of course the balance of their repertoire was far below the tragic mode, as the following list by Sand illustrates, "the repertory of the Italian comedy falls into two groups--buf- foonery, parades, parodies and satiric comedies filled with penetrating and caustic comment; comedies mid-way between the character comedies of Molière and the delicate and subtle plays, full of nuances, by Marivaux. it Was the modes of romance and comedy—logically the most popular throughout time—which were the objects of concentration. The commedia dell'arte writers and actors showed remarkable ingenuity in combining the two—much as Shakespeare did—in order to double the pleasure of an audience, and the probability of profit as well. In addition, however, the commedia dell'arte strongly seasoned the fare with sex and mating matters. It

16 Maurice Sand, The History of the Harlequinade (London, 1915)» I» p. 10Ô. Hereafter, Sand. 35 was also likely to include a good measure of satire, as Sand notes. In the context of romantic-comedy it was not satire in the strictest, didactic sense of the term, any more than such comedies would have been as morally strident as those of Ben Jonson. This would hardly have been good business, and the commedia dell'arte was dependent on a public that appreciated the lack of restraint exhibited by the players. The satiric materials were drawn most generally from the social foibles and manners of the day, as well as from the stock of conventional human psychology imbedded in its own character types and plots. The satire may have been politi­ cal upon occasion, but was most often quite mild, particu­ larly that of companies tenuously established in foreign lands. Part of an actor's talent for improvisation depended on the use of contemporary materials, as "the players drew freely from upon the life of the day for their material, making use of the customs and frailties of all classes.” 17 Much of this social material was probably as innocuous as the faux pas, which was a constant source of small tricks and devices, humorous bits and twists of plot. Such material was usually popularly received no matter what the language or country of the audience. Even a foreign speaker could under­ stand the physical representation of a faux pas, while the intelligentsia could appreciate the verbal as well.

17Duchartre, p. 18. 36 The plots of the commedia dell’arte were also quite simple: lovers with designs on the wife or daughter of a prominent man or neighbor, a series of infidelities within a social circle, a vast array of sexual intrigues often aided or crossed by of many kinds. Sometimes the irony resulted from simple misunderstandings, misdirected letters, or it might surround an object such as a gift or favor inopportunely discovered or finally understood. Chance meet­ ings, embarrassing confrontations, and compromising situa­ tions were stock plot devices in the commedia dell’arte’s comedies of intrigue and error. Such plots could be treated with complete coarseness by companies at fairs, or they could be a means of poignant humor and mixed modes, full of sexual fun and literary excellence. It would depend on the quality of the actors, and of course on audience expectations and requirements. Where the pragmatic commedia dell’arte was concerned, the public got the art that it deserved. For the troupe it was a matter of simple economics, the scenario was simply a thread upon which to string appropriate comic inci­ dent and characteristics of type. The commedia dell’arte tradition is recognized most easily by means of those types—particularly those of its four central characters, or masks. As has been noted previ­ ously, even these were subject to the dynamic principle governing the tradition, but the four masks remained quite discernible in spite of changes. Of the four, Pantalone is 37 the one type that appears with most consistency throughout the development of the commedia dell'arte tradition. One of the first references to a performance of the commedia dell'arte alludes to Magnifichi e zanni—"Pantalone and serving men." 18 By the eighteenth century Goldoni acknowledged Pantalone. Dottore. and the two zanni—Brighella and Arlecchino—as the four major masks of the tradition. Though the zanni will concern us least in this study as a clearly defined type, they do serve to illustrate something of the dynamic nature of the character typologies in the commedia dell'arte tradition. When one considers the frenetic evolutionary changes in the zanni and their conventional roles, Pantalone * s longevity and consistency of convention is even more remarkable. At the same time it is possible to see something of the unusual amalgam of qualities that made up Arlecchino*s type and made him so versatile and adaptable a character. The zanni were conceived as conniving and meddlesome serving-men for the greater part of their careers, though they experienced a protean history of frequent transitions in character and function. The rather strained rhymes of Giovan Maria Raparini's L'Arlichino illustrates the variant character types which assumed the role over the centuries« Arlecchino, Truffaldino, sia Pasquino, Tabarrino, Tortellino, Naccherino,

18'Nicoll, p. 40 38 Grade11ino, Mezzettino, Polpettino, Nespolino, Bertolino, Pagiolino, Trappolino, Zaccagnino, Trivellino, Taccagnino, Passerino, Bagattino, Bagolino, Temellino, Fagotino, Pedrolino, Fritellino, Tabaechino. y The variations in the name were indicative of innova­ tions and transitions in the essential type. Raparini’s octo-syllabic listing is hardly complete, but it shows that there were a number of aspirants to the role of zanni which grew out of the creativity of the commedia dell'arte's actors as well as ethnic and dialect distinctions. Of those in Raparini’s verse, only Arlecchino was to achieve significant immortality, but even he experienced many alterations in basic character. These changes are hopelessly confused and complex, seldom adhering to a clearly traceable progression or chronological sequence. The many books and monographs devoted to Arlecchino reflect his elusive character over the centuries. It is generally conceded that Arlecchino was origin­ ally conceived as a foolish ploy in someone else’s intrigue. In this early form he was no real intriguer himself, but simply wonderfully adept at extricating himself from whatever situations into which his own avarice, gullibility, or play­ fulness had led him. In more serious productions he was

^Giacomo Oreglia, The Commedia dell'Arte (New York« Hill and Wang, 1963), p. 64. Hereafter, Oreglia. 39 sometimes used for comic relief, pulling off a piece of often irrelevant buffoonery before fading out of the play. Like most fools, his blunders seldom had tragic consequences, and he survived by divine providence or his own divine ignor­ ance. During the course of his development, he became gradu­ ally more intelligent, and his innate ability to survive was increasingly brought to bear on intrigues of his own. He became less and less the dupe and the dullard. Even when his proneness to intrigue became more marked, he retained some­ thing of his innocence. Arlecchino was seldom malicious and generally wove his complications in order to profit another, more sympathetic, character. With his increased capacity for intelligent thought and artful intrigue, Arlecchino also became more sophisticated and refined as fools go, and his former gullibility and buffoonery transferred to PulcinellQ,?. a consistently stupid and pugnacious clown. Where Arlecchino is concerned, clothes did affect per­ sonality, or perhaps his spiritual changes were manifested in changes of outward aspect. Early in commedia dell'arte his­ tory, Arlecchino*s dress was a rather tattered and "motley" combination of haphazard patches, random streaks of color, and bits of fur and feathers. As time passed this rather careless disarray slowly gathered itself into a costume of more delicate neatness, often more sharply colorful than previously, in which the patches formed into organized pat­ terns of brightly colored lozenges and geometric figures. 40 This represented Arlecchino*s movement toward sophistication and civilized order, while at the same time it recognized his capacity for disorder and bestiality which is always inherent in human nature. 20 Pushed to the extreme of his potential for civilization, a no longer foolish Arlecchino could grace the ballet with poignancy and beauty. On the other hand, such a figure could also tap the other side of the human self, degenerating into intrigue in a tragi-comedy or the empty-headed buffoonery of a farce. This bestial side was seldom the result of a truly immoral nature, and Arlec­ chino generally remained a morally ambivalent figure» much as his costume symbolized an ambivalence between civilized order and chaotic primitiveness. Perhaps he owed his genius for survival to this moral ambivalence. Surrounded as he so often was by lechery and infidelity, by intrigue and parasit­ ism, it may be that he was simply pragmatic. He was funda­ mentally decent, after all, and in later years he could even be respectable. Besides his acquisition of more realistic and sophisti­ cated qualities, Arlecchino also developed a propensity that became fairly characteristic in certain kinds of comedy— magical powers. This was not the sort of ability generally expected of buffoons, even sophisticated ones, but there are

20William Willeford, The and His Scepter (Evanston« Northwestern University Press, 1969), chapters two and six. Hereafter, Willeford. 41 three probable sources for such an addition to his personal repertoire: (1) the magician of romance and legend, (2) the fairy-godmother of fairy-tale, and (3) the sleight of hand trickery inherited from the mountebank tradition at fairs and circuses. Romance and legend combined to create the commedia dell’arte*s comic-pastoral. According to Lea, dramatic inter­ est in the comic-pastorals of the commedia dell’arte arose from three most appealing elements—the love-affairs of the Arcadian natives (frequently inhabiting an enchanted isle), the power of the magicians, and the horse-play of the ship- wrecked buffoons. 21 Shakespeare’s The Tempest and A Mid­ summer Night’s Dream are the best-known relatives of the commedia dell’arte comic-pastoral tradition. Arlecchino sometimes carried over vestiges of that tradition into the other sub-genres of the commedia dell’arte. The second source of Arlecchino’s lately developed magical powers involves the commedia dell*arte*s capacity to assimilate elements from other art and entertainment forms. Over the years it often added conventions and characteristics of the popular fairy-tale and folk-tale to its repertoire. This was a gradual process which had been underway even before Carlo Goldoni wrote his extravagant fiabe. or dramatic fairy-tales, in the middle eighteenth century. Gozzi, after all, used his fiabe as a vehicle for anti-Goldoni satire and

21Lea, p. 201. 42 to emphasize his direct opposition to Goldoni’s realistic methods. The pre-Gozzi influx of fairy-tale motifs into the commedia dell'arte tradition resulted in some changes in that tradition, not the least of which was still another con­ ception of the role and function of Arlecchino. Previously, his bat had been a rather aggressive phallic symbol. It was a club for pummelling enemies, even a sword, or was simply a device for a number of obscene phallic tricks and jokes. When the fairy-tale element caused changes in subject-matter and spectacle, it also sometimes transformed Arlecchino's bat into an instrument of magical power—a wand, as it were. It was occasionally a central device in magical "transforma­ tion-scenes" that came to reside most prevalently in the Eng­ lish harlequinade. These were the scenes of surprising plot reversal that Henry James noted were absent from the American harlequinade. The term "transformation-scene" also applied to the extravagant scene changes in the harlequinade, which Harlequin may well have introduced with a wave of his bat. Because of such changes it was not uncommon for Arlecchino to appear as a rather comic fairy-godmother whose bumbling, well- intended intrigues somehow redirected the worst turns of plot to pleasant ends. If Arlecchino could play a fairy-godmother, he could

pp Henry James: Autobiography, ed. Prederisck W. Dupee (New York: Criterion Books, Inc., 1956), pp. 97-98. Hereafter, Autob iography. 43 also be played by a female, and it is erroneous to apply solely the masculine gender to commedia dell’arte types. Italian drama was always noted—sometimes with abhorance by English onlookers—for quite freely admitting women to the stage in a variety of acting capacities. As a rule, of course, such archetypally masculine roles as that of the Gapitano were confined to male actors, except in the case of disguises. Other roles, however, were frequently played by women, particularly in the later stages of the commedia dell’arte tradition’s development. This access of women to the stage was not limited to the traditional female roles of servette, innamorate, or amorose—serving-maids, seductresses, and female lovers. At times scenarii were composed with the explicit intention of presenting Arlecchino as a woman—as Claude Santelli’s La Famille Arlequin demonstrates, which was performed as late as 1955-Eventually an Arlecchina evolved, as did a Puleinello. Part of the potential for the development of Arlecchina and Puleinella was grounded in the similarity between the roles of zanni and servette. Like her male counterpart, Arlecchina became very much an intriguer, in later years, and in other ways paralleled Arlecchino. As Nicoll writes« "In spirit she draws close to the Harlequin of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, her adopting of his diversely coloured triangles

^Nicoll, p. 220. 44 and lozenges seems eminently appropriate." The female intriguer of this tradition is a curious mixture of ballerina grace, bar-maid coarseness, and the bumbling benevolence of a fairy-godmother» she is a most interesting product of the commedia dell'arte's tradition of assimilation. A discussion of Arlecchino as one of the zanni gener­ ally serves to explain a good deal about his compatriot zanni as well. Brighella and PuleineIlo, who gradually became the primary second zanni, differ somewhat from their more soph­ isticated and immortalized cohort, but are very much of his type and history. The purposes of this study would not be served by remarking the distinctions, other than to note that Brighella possessed a more definite tendency towards sinister and malicious behavior, while Pule ineIlo concentrated on the stupid and pugnacious, like his off-spring, Punch. Together, then, Arlecchino, Pulcinello. and even Brighella, are zanni, and differ noticeably from the more severely conventional masks of Pantalone and the Capitano. Before proceeding with a description of the latter two masks, it might be advisable to briefly review the idea of the mask proper. Each of the commedia dell'arte types had his own distinctive physical mask in order to render him immediately recognizable and to preserve the type over the individuality of a particular actor. Whether this was a full mask or a half mask, it imposed strict limitations on an

24Nicoll, p. 97. ^5 actor as his facial features could not be utilized to any great degree. His speech and action must therefore be refined. In later years the commedia dell’arte tradition did not always depend on the physical mask, and Goldoni’s reforms served to debilitate their use. He found them unnecessary, as had Moliere. They both felt that specific physical repre­ sentation of the commedia dell'arte types could be adequately presented through their fundamental psychology and conven­ tional behavior and did not need concrete masks for the pur­ pose. Moreover, in so far as realism made itself felt in the area of comedy, individual personalities became increasingly important. Because their conventional essence was so particularly defined, Pantalone and the Capitano might be cited as support ing evidence for the theories of Moliere and Goldoni. Panta­ lone figures as an important model for characters in some of James’s later work, and is one of the most easily identifi­ able elements of the commedia dell'arte tradition that James threaded throughout What Maisie Knew. The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl. Like Arlecchino and the other conventional figures from the tradition, Pantalone underwent a number of transformations over the centuries, and he could also func­ tion in a variety of ways from scenario to scenario. Even his name could vary, though never so frequently or for such long periods of time as did those of the zanni. Basically, however, his is a clearer type and maintained a more 46 accessible consistency. Frequently referred to as Magnifico, he is most known for two fundamental qualities—his advanced age and his wealth. He is the most significant of the vechii, the "old men" that provided the motive for many commedia dell’arte plots and comic devices. In a most general sense he symbolized the perennial conflict between the old and the new—the "generation gap”— in a way that was subject to a variety of treatments. Panta­ lone might be portrayed as a sympathetic figure, pitiable in his alienation, lost in a shifting panorama of social and moral values. On the other hand, he might be representative of the outworn and obsolete beliefs and values of a twilight civilization, in which case he could be played as a sinister authoritarian figure or an out-of-step old codger, usually humorous, but perhaps as poignantly out of time as Rip Van Winkle. Frequently he was representative of all these facets of his symbolic nature, encompassing within a single scene all the manifestations of the age-youth conflict. He could be a misunderstood parental figure and a lecherous old man at one time. In a monologue expressing his unbearable loneliness he could evoke sympathy for a widower, then turn to his ser­ vant in order to confide his passion for a neighbor’s daughter, demanding a plan by which he might thwart his own son as a rival for her affections.2 While he could be poignant, Pantalone is generally

2->La Ruffina. described by Lea, p. 21. *7 full of ludicrous and even grotesque comedy. Lea writes that he could be "sometimes pathetic, but dignified never," 26 and it is seldom that Pantalone was an object of sympathy. He was a "blocking figure" for the most part, an obstacle for the comic society to overcome.2? Therefore, as Nicoll notes, "good actors were specifically warned not to make him a pg figure of laughter merely." He could be a threatening figure in midst of all his ludicrousness and folly, as he endangered the new order and its comic revels. The role, insisted one commedia dell'arte actor and teacher, "is always a serious part, although it is connected with the comic roles because of the speech and dress," and he cautions that "the actor interpreting this character must preserve that element of seriousness which was an integral part of the character in reproving, persuading, commanding, counselling and doing many other things fitting a keen-witted man."2^ More often than not, in consideration of this, Pantalone was a highly respected member of the community—which undoubtedly was a derivation from his early caricature of the Venetian merchant—though he was often a means of parody and satire.

26 Lea, P. 20. 2?Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (New York« Atheneura, 1967). See "The Mythos of Spring» Comedy," pp. 163- 186. Hereafter, Frye. 28Nicoll, p. 48. 2^Pier Mia Cechinni, Frutti, quoted from Nicoll, p. 48 48 His age should not always be viewed as producing senility, as it was often simply a realistic fact in the rendering of one so learned, experienced, and powerful. More­ over, much of the conventional behavior expected of Pantalone required considerable agility and grace. He was likely to be a remarkable physical speciman for his age—necessary for his frequent indulgences with courtesans and the diligent pursuit of vice in general, for he may have been a "blocking figure” to comic revels, but was a fine hypocrite as well. On the other hand, his efforts in vice were often aspects of "wish­ ful thinking", because he was generally impotent. In some cases he may have placed horns on other men's heads, but they largely crowned his own. He was also generally wealthy, though a few versions of the type portray him as impoverished and reduced from former grandeur. It was the prospect of inheriting Panta­ lone 's fortune that gave impetus to many a designing woman or suitor for the hand of his daughter. At times his wealth enabled him to win the hand of a girl much younger than him­ self. As a parody of the Venetian merchant he was often depicted as having spent the greater part of his life in the successful accumulation of wealth, with the result that he devoted his later years to the pursuit of previously fore­ gone pleasures. In later years, a "maturer" Pantalone spent his old age in less frivolous attempts to make up for the past, and often tried to atone for deeds regretted or more 49 meaningful things missed. Sometimes he would devote his time and wealth to benevolent philanthropy and unselfish enterprises. Of course, having spent a lifetime in which "he has become so sensitive to the value of money that he is an abject slave to it,"30 3he seldom had a complete change of heart. Though he may retire to altruistic concerns, affairs of state, cultivation of the arts or spiritual values, he never quite loses the egotism and greed that had marked his early type. The sense of property is always paramount in his nature, and his efforts to preserve it frequently cause him to suffer rebuffs from the comic society, or its hero. Of the rebuffs to this somewhat repentant entrepren­ eur, the most prevalent and harsh concern his difficulties with the opposite sex—whether they be with his young wife or daughter. He is not often married, but when this is the case it is likely that he will be cuckolded. As Duchartre says, "If Pantalone is married, his wife is generally young and pretty, and, unaware of the honour of being the wife of 31 a reputable merchant, she deceives him at every turn." Daughters are hardly more appreciative, and within this construct "the father who exists to be wheedled and cheated is indispensible."32 Whatever the situation, Pantalone

3°Duchartre, p. 181. 3lIbld.. pp. 181-82. 32Lea, p. 19. 50 could be subject to a relatively sensitive treatment befit­ ting a wronged old man, 33 but it Was far mOre likely that he would be relegated to the comic condition of a besotted and foolish old man, or, as was most often the case, he would be viewed as a threatening authoritarian figure in a lively, socially pragmatic, comic society. The mode of romantic- comedy pervades the scenarii, however, and even Pantalone is usually well-disposed to the round of weddings that fre­ quently conclude the action of comedy. It may seem that the amalgamation of potentialities and symbolic variants that compose the nature of Pantalone are hopelessly paradoxical. Yet it is this complexity that makes Pantalone so rich in possibilities and undoubtedly accounts for his longevity. Moreover, of all the masks, Pantalone also most closely approaches the universal human experience. While other types reflect aspects of the human personality, his is a roundness within type that comically, sometimes painfully, reminds us of our own , our own fears. By playing down the ludicrous and grotesque in Panta­ lone *s nature, while tapping his universality and more poig­ nant possibilities, Henry James turned the type to fictional purposes in some of his later work.

33por example: "Li tre fidi amici" (Scala, 19), and "Li quattro finti spiritati" (Scala, 33). Scala‘s works have been collected and translated by Henry F. Salerno, Scenarios of the Commedia dell'Arte; Flaminio Scala*s II Teatro delle favole rappresentative (New York; New York Uni­ versity Press, 1967). 51 Another of the commedia dell'arte types which James was to adapt to his art of the novel was the Capitano. Of course James’s version of the miles gloriosus does not attain the same significance in his work as Pantalone. but the Capi- tano does appear obviously and with sufficient frequency to attest that James consciously adapted the type as a further ingredient in the social and moral climate infused into some later novels. Even in the commedia dell'arte tradition, the Capitano was hardly so rich and complex a type as Pantalone. but he does represent a human phenomenon that caught the socially critical eye of the commedia dell'arte. Begun around the start of the seventeenth century— probably as a satire on the Spanish mercenary soldiers—the Capitano rose quickly to popularity, only to diminish gradu­ ally as a lack of relevance blunted his satiric thrust. By the eighteenth century only a few companies retained the role in any way approaching the original. He did appear irregu­ larly in later commedia dell'arte productions, though most of his characteristics were assumed by the immensely popular Scaramouche, or Scaramuccio. The Capitano's most clearly pronounced trait was his hyperbolic manner of speech. He had a propensity to fanta­ size, particularly about his own exploits, both past and future, and had a complete stock of idle promises and empty boasts. Affairs of combat were the dominant subject of his soldierly discourse, just as cowardice was his fundamental failing. It can be said of him more than any other character 52 in the commedia dell’arte. that he deserved the Italian term buffone in its figurative sense, an "unreliable person". When difficult situations arose, sometimes as a result of his own clumsy manipulations, the Gapitano was totally ineffec­ tual, if he bothered to remain in the troubled vicinity at all. His most frequent capacities in the scenarii were as a blustering soldier of fortune or as a more gentlemanly, but inconstant, lover. The first of these was a necessary out­ growth of his usual impecunious straits, but he seldom engaged in anything sufficiently adventurous to ease this pennilessness. It was much more pleasant and a good deal less risky to pursue women of both beauty and means. In such pursuits, however, he might be portrayed with some variety. Paintings and etchings sometimes represent the Capitano as a pitiable old soldier, while others depict a red-nosed sot in the finest Falstaffian manner. He could also be played as a promising, though foppish, young gallant. He could there­ fore be treated with extreme pathos or highly seasoned with humor—he could arouse laughter and contempt as an object of satire, pity as a garrulous old has-been, sympathy as a lover, or mixed emotions as an aspiring, seventeenth-century, "90- day wonder." In the long run, however, he lacked the adapta­ bility and overall versatility that the commedia dell,* arte demanded of even conventionalized types. Over the years the hyperbole became set pieces, and the commedia dell’arte generally scorned this tendency in all but its lovers. As 53 a lover, however, his manner of speech seemed to metamor- phize the the Capitano*s fantasizing into actuality and make it palatable, even admirable,^ and it was as one of the lovers that the Capitano survived long after his satiric potential had been much depleted. As a figure mainly to laugh at or to even be contemptuous of, the Capitano had only moderate success outside of Italy. The French Theatre Italien never introduced the role as such, though Scaramouche did have tremendous success. Whenever a company did find the climate of its audience responsive to military satire, it could and did resurrect the type. In addition to the Capitano. Pantalone. and the meddle­ some zanni. there were other standard characters in the commedia dell'arte tradition. The pedantic Dottore—comic philosopher, medical quack, tedious scholar and scientist— was a garden of material for satire aimed at the intelligent­ sia, which has always enjoyed laughing at itself. He was another of the four central masks that endured longest, but he does not figure in the surviving scenarii to nearly the degree as his fellow masks, nor does he apply to Henry James's adaptation of the commedia dell'arte theatre tradition except in a very minor capacity. The Dottore*s type was rendered by his long-winded and circumlutory disquisitions on points of theory and learning that interested no one, not even Henry James. Some critics of "the Great Pretender" may feel that

34Nicoll, p. 103. & his own "loose and baggy " exemplify that James him­ self was the Dottore of his novels, but such a type had little function in his created social order. The servette of the commedia dell *arte tradition also fail to be of concern in James's works, other than in so far as they relate to the zanni tradition of Arlecchino and Arleechina. On the other hand, both Henry James and the commedia dell'arte tradition depended upon a host of charac­ ters that might generally be classified as lovers and para­ sites. The specific names and conventional lazzi (tricks) were infinitely variable even though their essential roles are universally recognizable and most clearly defined by their classifications. Their contribution to the novels of Henry James will be discussed in a later chapter, and at that point an analysis of their functions will necessarily include a description of their universal type. Most attempts to describe the commedia dell'arte tradi­ tion also endeavor, in varying degrees, to delineate its absorption into other forms of Western literature and art. Such theories as result are usually met with scepticism. This is largely a product of the assumption that the commedia dell'arte was governed by pure slapstick and smutty humor; that it was a purely spontaneous dramatic form; that it lacked any sophistication of technique and solid philosophical basis. With such a conception of the tradition it would be difficult to perceive connections between the commedia dell'arte and literature. Yet such connections have been made, and with 55 validity. A brief overview of two fairly pronounced examples may serve to illustrate that James had sufficient precedent for his own adaptation, regardless of the fact that his par­ ticular literary genre superficially differs from the dra­ matic and theatric. Sceptics even refuse to acknowledge that there were commedia dell’arte ingredients in the sophisticated comic works of Moliere. There is, however, excellent record of Moliere"s intimate association with the commedia dell’arte tradition that serves to demonstrate the validity of those theories which draw connections between the two. He studied the commedia dell’arte. wrote it, acted within it, performed, alongside it, and found a number of his friends and acquaint­ ances among performers of the commedia dell’arte in and around Paris. Beneath a portrait of Scaramouche by Ver­ meulen there are these often quoted lines: Il fut le maître de Molière Et la Nature fut le sien.35 There is no doubt that Moliere had other masters as well, nor was he confined to Italian resources alone, yet it would be foolish to deny that the commedia dell’arte tradi­ tion contributed much to the making of Moliere as actor and playwright. It would be strange if it had not been of some influence, for under the reign of Charles IX the commedia dell’arte had replaced French farce and continued its popu-

35«He was of Moliere, and Nature was his teacher 56 laxity into Moliere's youth. Of course the so-called "literary theatre" remained important for the middle class and the ladies, but the Italian players were the vogue for the majority of the theatre-going public, as they had been intermittently since the reign of Henry III. Moreover, Moliere sought his roots in the common people and cultivated them just as he did the friendship and art of the commedia dell'arte players and their French emulators. The theatre of the middle class was not his model, just as its members were not those whom he sought to amuse. Of all the evidence of fact and anecdote that deals with Moliere's studious approach to the commedia dell'arte tradition, perhaps the most intriguing and amusing is an account rendered by Le Boulanger de Chalussay's comedy, "Elomire, ou les Médecins venges"» Par exemple Elomire Veut se rendre parfait dans l'art de faire rire» Que fait-il, le matois, dans ce hardy dessein? Chez le grand Scaramouche, il va, soir et matin. Là, le miroir en main, et ce grand homme en face, Il n'est contorsion, posture ny grimace, Que ce grand écolier du plus grand des bouffons Ne fasse et ne refasse en cent et cent façons.3° Molière's contemporaries often noted that the Italian actors were almost constantly dining with him, a practice

36«For instance, Elomire desired to perfect himself in the art of making people laugh. How did the sly fellow accomplish this bold plan? He went to see Scaramouche night and morning, and stood, mirror in hand, before the great manj nor was there a posture or grimace that this great pupil of the greatest of buffoons did not perform in a hundred differ­ ent ways." Quoted from Duchartre, p. 247. 57 his countrymen did not always view with approbation. In spite of Moliere's enthusiasm for the tradition, many of his fellows felt the Italian players had outworn their welcome. By the middle of the seventeenth century, farce had nearly vanished from the theatre of Paris. Literary comedy had very much absorbed it, as the Italians, always pandering to popular demands, had suffered their productions to be greatly transformed. Farce was simply out of fashion, and only a few companies preserved its traditions. These were largely found in the provinces, and it was by way of these country perform­ ances that Moliere made his earliest acquaintance with the tradition. When Moliere's company arrived in Paris he initially performed alongside the commedia dell'arte players who still remained, sharing the same theatre, sometimes act­ ing with them. He later added commedia dell'arte elements to his company's repertoire, even in performances before Louis XIV, and finally was instrumental in bringing further Italian companies back to Paris from the provinces. Before long, farce was again in favor, particularly the brand marketed by the commedia dell'arte. Moliere obviously respected the commedia dell'arte tradition and drew from it for his resources as an actor. This was bound to carry over to his practice as a playwright, for the actor and poet within him could hardly have existed in disinterested separation. Such a suspicion is substanti­ ated by his early work and the inevitable perpetuation of many of his early materials in his later, more refined, 58 comedies like Tartuffe and The Misanthrope. Gustave Lanson found Molière*s early works as a playwright were taken directly from the tradition, with "characters straight out of the commedia dell’arte. already presented to the public with their names and comic faces."3? Lanson stated that it was the principle of character types found in the commedia dell’arte that most appealed to Moliere. At first it was Moliere's practice to use the literal masks of his actors so that "the French spectator saw and could see only general expressions of foolishness and deceit, of lasciviousness and avariee—all humanity gracefully individualized by the imagina tion and personal observation of the actor."3® Through the mask, then, Moliere sought the universal and abstract in human nature, while the actors were free to present the indi­ vidual and particular aspects of character through the quality of their speech and action. Lanson justified Moliere*s use of the commedia dell’arte masks as a learning experience whereby the masks helped him "to simplify life, to delineate moral aspects in the physical," and went on to point out that "when he acquired the method, he rejected the mask."77 By gradually phasing out the masks themselves, Moliere demon­ strated his theory that the universality of type could be * 38 39

3?Gustave Lanson, "Moliere and Farce," Tulane Drama Review, v. 8, n. 2 (Winter, 1963), PP. 141-42. Hereafter, Lanson. 38Ibid.. p. 149. 39Ibid., p. 150. 59 sufficiently represented by dialogue and action within par­ ticular plots, just as Goldoni was to later theorize and practice. Moliere had no theoretical quarrel with the commedia dell'arte. like Goldoni. Realism was not a consideration in his art, though it was a result of his adaptation and alteration of commedia dell'arte elements. Moliere felt perfectly compatible with the commedia dell'arte. while Goldoni and Gozzi were in definite conflict. While their art did not have the same philosophical foundation, Moliere and Goldoni did share a method of adaptation, as Moliere came to drop even the conventional names of the commedia dell'arte types that he adapted. By doing so "he revealed no less of their basis in good common sense and fearful credulity. . . . But he did not allow the abstract, the general type to domin­ ate. He permitted himself to individualize that type, to give it characteristics that renewed it. Thus he came closer to life."^0 It is no wonder that Goldoni viewed Moliere as a model. They both wanted to gradually work away from the abstract toward realistic character, but avoided extremely individual characters in order to render the authentic human natures found in commedia dell'arte conventional types and plots. Many of Henry James's characters share this founda­ tion, though James certainly did not invest direct typology in his early characters as did Moliere and Goldoni.

40Lanson, p. 150 60 Molière borrowed more than character typology from the commedia dell'arte. Lanson described further elements that Molière mined from his Italian contemporaries, as did Louis Moland in Moli*e re et la Com*e die Italienne. 41 Duchartre adequately summarized Molière*s borrowings from the tradition by stating that "Molière was indebted to the commedia dell'arte not only for the 'movement' with which he imbued his plays, but also for various plots, scenes, episodes, stage 'business', intrigues, and characters." 42 Moli*ere was a product of a theatrical milieu which was often dominated by the commedia dell'arte tradition. At the same time he professed a deep aversion to the completely "literary" theatre. It is no wonder that he founded his acting and playwriting arts on the lively Italian model, gradually adapting it to suit the requirements of his own imagination and his own conception of comedy. The case for commedia dell'arte influence on Shake­ speare is not nearly so concrete, though it is generally acknowledged that the tradition exerted some force on the form and direction of English theatre. It was a form familiar to English playwrights and audiences even prior to Shake­ speare's successes. Lea extensively documents that familiar­ ity from literary, biographical, and officials records of the

^Molière et la Comedie Italianne (Paris, 186?). 42 Duchartre, p. 99. 61 time. 43J We also have Shakespeare's own references to the tradition in his works, e.g. "the old Pantaloon," the "lean and slippered Pantaloon," and "the old Magnifico." 44 A good deal of scholarship has been devoted to ascertaining Shake­ speare's debt to the commedia dell'arte tradition, and still more to his foundations in classical comedy, or even native comedy. Scholars frequently argue as to which of the three sources constitutes the material of derivation and adaptation. Lea's comment in regard to Plautus’s Menaechmi as a probable source for A Comedy of Errors is enlightening: "it is obvi­ ous that while classical comedy was Shakespeare's ultimate 4 5 it was not his immediate model." J The proximity of the commedia dell'arte to Shakespeare and his contemporaries should not be dismissed, as Lea almost reluctantly points out. Winifred Smith's The Commedia Dell'Arte makes an even stronger case for the tradition's influence on Elizabethan theatre, as 46 does her article "Italian and Elizabethan Comedy." In spite of such scholarship, there are many who are reluctant to attribute the commedia dell'arte with signifi­ cant influence on Shakespeare because we know so little in terms of direct and concrete evidence. Unlike Moliere,

43Lea, pp. 374-390. Ilk, Taming of the Shrew. Ill, 1, 1. 37. As You Like It, II, 7, 1. 156. Othello. I, 2, 1. 12. 45Lea, p. 435. ^Winifred Smith, The Commedia Dell'Arte (New York; Columbia University Press, 1912). Hereafter, Smith. Also, "Italian and Elizabethan Comedy," MP 5 (1908). 62 Shakespeare left little trace of his life and tastes and we have no viable non-literary record of his predilections toward the Italian comedy. Furthermore, the commedia dell’arte never achieved the national prominence and respectability in England that it did in France, so that some scholars believe its influence on English theatre was negligible. They also point out that the aspect of the tradition which did finally become firmly established in England turned to the extempor­ aneous and pantomimic for its major tools and would therefore have had small effect on one whose distinctive abilities were those of a poet. It is quite true that the English tradition growing out of the commedia dell’arte generally depended on the extemporaneous qualities of gesture and improvised speech, as is evidenced by the vogues of masque and pantomime in Eng­ lish theatrical history. David Mayer and V. C. Clinton- Baddeley document the pantomimic element of the commedia dell’arte in England. r Yet Shakespeare was, like Moliere, an actor-dramatist, and it is certain that he was quite sensi­ tive to all forms of drama that were at all popularly received. We can also presume that the unliterary crudeness of many commedia dell’arte devices would have appealed at least as much to the English audience as they did to the French. We often altogether overestimate the sophistication and urbanity

^?David Mayer, III, Harlequin in His Element» The Eng­ lish Pantomime. 1806-1832 (Cambridge, Mass.* Harvard University Press, 1969). Hereafter, Mayer. V. C. Clinton-Baddeley, Some Pantomime Pedigrees (Londons Society for Theatre Research, 1963). Hereafter, Clinton-Baddeley. 63 of the assumed English theatre-goer, viewing Shakespeare as a consummate poet alone, not as a dramatist with a sense of the cruder effects that might appeal to his audience. As Evert Sprinchorn suggests, the commedia dell'arte tradition and Shakespeare's plays may have had a closer intimacy in terms of production than is generally believed, "there was much more improvisation in the performance of Shakespeare's plays than those who hold his scripts sacrosanct and who believe in the existence of a definitive text would care to admit." 48 Of course this was also an English theatrical heritage, but it does indicate that the commedia dell'arte form was not as alien to the English tradition as one might expect. Moreover, Shakespeare was perhaps the most imaginative and creative plagiarist, of all literary history. This goes far in explaining why many textual features of his work parallel commedia dell'arte productions and conventions of the time. While these features do not obviously draw on the extemporaneous nature of the Italianate productions, or pre­ cisely adhere to the practice and plots of those works, there are sometimes striking similarities. One can hardly expect the poetic adaptations to fit the more purely theatrical originals, whether that adaptation be a play or other liter­ ary artifact. It is also likely that some of Shakespeare's adaptations were taken from works which were in turn

48Introduction to Oreglia, p. xiv 64 adaptations of Italian originals. For example, Lea suggests that Merry Wives of Windsor was adapted from Dekker’s Treplisitle Cuckowelles. which was derived itself from the Italian scenario of Lie Tre Becchl.^9 Scholars often admit that the inspiration—whether direct or indirect—for such plays as The Merchant of . The Tempest. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Twelfth Night, and A Comedy of Errors could very well have some from commedia dell’arte sources. Depending on the play and the particular focus of the reader, some of these plays can be more directly related to the tradition than others. If one focuses on character type he might find Shylock in Merchant, or even Brabantio of Othello, to be in the Pantalone tradition, though they don’t consciously admit to it as Corvino does in Jonson's Volpone. One might with justice feel that the Capitano of the commedia dell’arte is translated into the characters of Captain Parolles in All's Well and Don Adriano de Armado of Love*s Labours Lost. The Dottore reappears in Shakespeare as Holofemes and even more obviously as Gratiano, "who speaks an infinite deal of nothing" in Merchant. Sprinchorn advises that we read Scala’s Arcadia Incantata before The Tempest to appreciate Shakespeare’s use of the commedia dell’arte model, and he might have added La Pazzia di Felandro. Il Gran Mago. La Nave. Li Tre Satiri and L*Arbore Incantato as well. All are comic pastorals very

^9Lea, p. 434. 65 much like The Tempest and even have some elements in sym­ pathy with A Midsummer Night's Dream. Shakespeare was obvi­ ously writing in a long tradition, for all his originality of language and plot. The Tempest is a most instructive example of adapta­ tion, particularly in regard to L'Arbore Incantato. The latter takes place on an island, called Happy Isle. It has the intriguing, bumbling fools, Arlecchino. Pedrolino. and Burattino, which foreshadow Caliban and the Neapolitan duo, Trinculo and Stephano. There is the sudden appearance and vanishing of summoned spirits, and the enchanted circle in which the are trapped at the end. Lea provides an interesting discussion of Caliban, Trinculo, and Stephano as traditional zanni, complete with conventional lazzi, and also points out that Alonzo and Gonzalo are respectively drawn from Pantalone and the Dottore of commedia dell'arte origin.She also presents an argument that Shakespeare knew the comic pastoral tradition of the commedia dell'arte and applied it in The Tempest. She concludes that "it seems more reasonable to suppose that Shakespeare worked within the framework of a scenario, elaborating parts by literary borrowings, than that, plotting independently of the commedia dell'arte. he should have devised a play which in its main appeal and many subordinate effects coincides so remarkably

5°Lea, pp. 447-451. 66 with the contemporary Italian tradition."-5'1 While Moliere's acknowledgement of his debt to the commedia dell'arte indicates its significant influence on his work, we can make no absolute descriptions and evalua­ tions of Shakespeare's debt to the tradition. His virtuosity was more plentiful and diverse. The commedia dell'arte is a relatively minor strain in the overall scope and volume of Shakespeare's work. Whether one chooses to ascribe a greater or lesser degree of influence to commedia dell'arte materials and conventions, it is doubtful that anyone can confidently deny that the Italian drama was in some measure a factor in Shakespeare's art, and a further reflection of his genius for adaptation. Some of his contemporaries, most notably Ben Jonson, made more obvious attempts to utilize the tradition, but Shakespeare's work also contains its elements. Appreciation and adaptation of the commedia dell'arte tradition was not confined solely to pre-eighteenth century literary figures, though immediacy does present the strongest probability. George Bernard Shaw, a late contemporary of Henry James, was an admitted advocate and adaptor of the tradition. He once wrote» "My stories are the old stories» my characters are the familiar harlequin and columbine, clown and pantaloon ... my stage tricks and suspenses and thrills and jests are the ones in vogue when I was a boy, by which time my grandfather was tired of them. . . . the unex­

5^Lea, p. 445 67 pectedness of my attempt to substitute natural history for conventional and romantic may so transform the external stage puppets and their inevitable dilemmas as to make their identification impossible for the moment . . . 52 Shaw's description of his own adaptation might serve, if more subdued, as an accurate description of Henry James's What Maisie Knew. The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl. James of course applied his own pragmatic realism to the "conven­ tional ethics and romantic logic" of these novels, but he has a fundamental kinship with Shaw. Shaw's reference to his types as "puppets" is reminis­ cent of another adaptive use of the commedia dell'arte tradi­ tion with which James was undoubtedly familiar, and one which is not confined to the theatre. His much loved and respected friend, Thackeray, used puppets and pantomime—the English harlequinade—as a consistent in some of his work— from the fictional Vanity Fair to the historical The Four Georges. It is possible, as David Mayer suggests in regard to the latter, that Thackeray was attempting to advocate the tradition of the harlequinade "to establish the initial level of his own satire, which quickly became more aggressive than that of the pantomime."$$ Moreover, James's most intimate 3

32Quoted from; Stephan Stanton, "English Drama and the French Well-Made Play," Diss. Columbia University, 1955» p. vi. ^^Mayer, pp. 14-15. 68 friend, William Dean Howells, was a student of the commedia dell'arte tradition, and conducted a long flirtation with writing farces reflecting its influence. Howells's fiction does not exhibit the same influence, however. The next chapter will deal more particularly with Howells's relation to the commedia dell'arte tradition. Suffice it to note at this juncture that, in the words of one of his biographers, "the doctrinaire realist felt that knowledge of Goldoni had been the beginning of his revolt from the ideal of 'romantic glamor* and hinted that the fountainhead of his realism might be the Venetian comedian. Novelists of the twentieth century have also dabbled in the tradition. The elements of the masque in Hemingway's Across the River and Into the Trees have yet to be explored- which might not be the case if the novel had been entitled A Moveable Feast. Nor has Updike's Couples, with its ele­ ments of masque and anti-masque, been treated in the same tradition. There are other works that have been conceived with an eye to the commedia dell'arte tradition, and as we learn more of the tradition, discoveries are likely to be made. However, this study does not pretend to examine the warp and woof of the commedia dell'arte tradition throughout Western literature. It has undertaken in this chapter to

5%sdwin H. Cady, The Road to Realism (New York» Syracuse University Press, 1956), P. 109. 69 define briefly and describe that tradition, and to demon­ strate the viability of adaptation. While generally con­ fined to domestic comedy, the commedia dell’arte tradition contains within it the materials that can make it a vehicle for the pastoral, tragi-comedy, romantic comedy, and satire as well. The commedia dell’arte tradition assumes a world rich in irony and incongruity, one that is rich in comedy as well as permeated by the sinister, and it in general portrays, in George Sand’s words, "the spiritual poverty of mankind." If any simple phrase can be said to comprise the overall thematic intention of the commedia dell’arte—and Henry James as well—it is Madame Sand's. It describes the world view possessed by Henry James, which formed his later imagination, and which is manifest in three fin de siecle novels—What Maisie Knew. The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl. Before examining the spiritual poverty immanent in ■the commedia dell’arte society of these novels, it may be instructive as well as interesting to take note of James's acquaintanceship with the commedia dell’arte tradition, and his appreciation of its heritage. CHAPTER III

JAMES'S ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE COMMEDIA DELL’ARTE TRADITION

There is no conspicuous evidence that Henry James studied the commedia dell'arte tradition as overtly, or with such devotion and design—"like a Ph. D. preparing a thesis”1—as he did the French pièce bien faite. Be that as it may, the tradition was a persistent and appealing stimulus to James's aesthetic imagination from a very early age, before the years of his prolonged European sojourns and long before the Prench drama became an object of his intense scru­ tiny. Seeds of the commedia dell'arte tradition had been implanted in Western culture, literature, and stage drama, as the previous chapter has indicated, which a germinating liter­ ary aspirant and devote of the arts such as James would cer­ tainly have encountered in various forms. This is particu­ larly true of a budding aesthetician with such a broad and deep appreciation for theatre of all kinds—from simple pan­ tomime sketches viewed at home and abroad to more profound tragedies like Shakespeare's. As a matter of fact, the case for James's utilization of the commedia dell'arte tradition might at first seem as difficult to ascertain as that sur­ rounding suppositions of Shakespeare’s adaptation of the

^anby, p. 201. 71 tradition. However, we know much more about James's life and predilections than we do of Shakespeare’s, and when we amass such biographical materials as James chose not to destroy, the case for James's adaptation of the commedia dell'arte tradition approaches that of Moliere. Though James was never to candidly state, as did Moliere, that he did adapt the commedia dell'arte tradition to his own works, there is a considerable body of biographical material and critical commentary which gives credence to such a claim, par­ ticularly when combined with textual evidence from James's practice in the novel. A number of critics and biographers have drawn graphic portraits of young Henry James as a shy "small boy" standing quietly among more active "others," just off-stage in the exuberant life of the James family; taking in all that sur­ rounded him with a reticent but absolutely attentive and accumulative mind. Thus was born, they postulate, the prototype of the ubiquitous Jamesian observer. It cannot be argued that;James was not his own model in the creation of his rigorous and unique point-of-view, but having granted

2The most notable and useful are; Leon Edel, Henry James» The Untried Years. 1843 to 1870 (New York» J. B. Lippincott Co., 1953). Hereafter, The Untried Years. Van Wyck Brooks, The Pilgrimage of Henry James (New York» E. P. Dutton and Co., 1925). Hereafter, Brooks. Robert C. LeClair, Young Henry James. 1843-1870 (New York» Bookman Associates, 1955). Hereafter, LeClair. 72 that, it is essential to become aware of other ways in which the impressionable young boy prefigured the mature artist. James’s autobiographical record of his youthful impressions demonstrates that the formative years figured more to his imaginative growth than merely the creation of a proto­ typical narrative device. The impressions themselves, and the things which stimulated them, are of tremendous import to his later fiction. Not the least significant of these impressions by far are those drawn from his bountiful youthful theatre experi­ ences. A Small Bov and Others, retrospectively written in 1911, pays clear tribute to those experiences at the theatre as well as attesting to the impressionability of the young observer. They are often the most specific remembrances that James records, and are treated with an appreciation that is almost hyperbolic. James’s most acclaimed biographer, Leon Edel, noted that James was an inveterate theatre-goer from the age of eight. He also noted, quite disingenuously, that James also viewed pantomime as a boy.^ For the most part, however, Edel overlooked the importance of these theatre-going experiences on James’s imagination. Robert C. LeClair more justly treated these early theatre years as a pervasive influence on James. LeClair drew upon James's auto­ biographical writings, theatrical of the time, and various theatrical archives in order to recreate abundantly

^The Untried Years, p. 100. 73 the nature of those theatrical years. However, dealing as he did only with James’s youth and apprenticeship, LeClair did not proceed to examine that theatrical influence on his later work. Over one-eighth of , which spans only the first fourteen years of James’s life, is a devoted recounting of those impressionable days and nights spent at the theatre. They must have been sharp stimuli indeed to have had such a momentous effect half a century later. Per­ haps it was because the theatre seemed to function for the James family very much as television does for children today, except that theatrical experiences, ideas, and theories also were the subject of intense intellectual discussion around the table and in the drawing room at the James home. It is probable that this environment of intelligent commentary upon all experience produced James’s remarkable memory for those early years. Of all the memories that James summoned up from that early peripatetic education, his theatrical experiences seem to have made the most indilable mark and are most gratefully recalled. This is not surprising when one considers the duration, frequency, and variety of that experience. It is likely that James began "taking in" the theatre as early as the 1849-1850 season in New York, though 4 his regular attendance no doubt began somewhat later. Often with his parents, but more frequently with the older William,

4 LeClair, p, 91. 74 James received exposure to theatre of all kinds. As in most aspects of his admittedly "polyglot" education, James's theatre-going ventures were remarkably free from parental authority and censure. The elder Jameses were of the opin­ ion that whatever was good for themselves was also good for their children. This is evident from a small sampling of the theatrical productions which James was permitted to attend. He was perfectly free to view vulgar theatre which might broach the obscene—of the kind similar to that which grew from the commedia dell'arte popular theatre—in the belief that the theatrical representation of vice and immoral­ ity would keep the boys from personal vulgar contacts. James mentions in A Small Boy and Others that he viewed Thomas Tay­ lor's Still Waters Run Deep with great interest. Allardyce Nicoll describes this 1856 production in such a way as to give one pause to wonder at the liberality of the senior Jameses. "In this play the most important thing is not the plot or technique» it is the frankness with which the affairs of sex are discussed."5 The fact that the twelve-year-old Henry James was given access to such plays demonstrates the fallibility of those who would emphasize the genteel nature of James's youth, and should serve notice on any who feel that the commedia dell'arte tradition was simply too vulgar to have been encountered by James, or to have had any influence

^Aliardyee Nicoll, History of Late Nineteenth Century Drama (Cambridge« Harvard University Press, 1946), p. 101. 75 on him. Many of James’s earliest experiences were gained at Burton’s Theatre on Chambers Street in New York. Though he recalls in A Small Boy and Others a general sense and tone of previous productions viewed there, it is not until the production of A Comedy of Errors in 1856 is vividly called forth that his memories become specific. As the previous chapter has noted, this is one of Shakespeare’s plays that is often cited as having been influenced by the commedia dell’arte tradition as well as by classic comedy. With its similarities of movement and various conventions to the commedia dell’arte tradition, A Comedy of Errors is a signi­ ficant first memory for Henry James. It may well have set the stage, as it were, for his later predilection for produc­ tions more obviously drawn from that tradition. Burton himself may have contributed to that predilec­ tion, for there was a strong flavor of the commedia dell’arte tradition in his comedy. He usually acted in his own produc­ tions and freely transformed plays from their original in order to suit them to his own designs. James particularly remembered an adaptation of The Toodles in which Burton wrote up the character of Toodles and cut the play considerably in order to extract the maximum of comic effect. Taking the part of Toodles himself, he "embellished it with outrageously vulgar gags and inventions of his own.”^ He also performed

^LeClair, p. 94. ?6 as the harlequinesque Anabab Sleek in The Serious Family, 7 which James was likely to have seen. No one has undertaken to describe Burton in terms of any theatre tradition, but from descriptions of his repertoire to be gleaned from vari­ ous theatrical histories dealing with his period on the New York stage, Burton can be seen as an Americanized performer out of the commedia dell’arte tradition. His humorous vul­ garity, acrobatic comedy, and strong dependence on the pan­ tomime were the prime factors in affording him an immense popularity on the New York stage during the 1850's. "Burton was thoughtful and saturnine . . . one of the funniest crea­ tures that ever lived. ... As an actor of the old broad farce-comedy Mr. Burton had no equal in his day. . . . his face was a huge map on which was written every emotion that 8 he ever felt." Burton was one of a small number of American comedians who carried on the principles of comic humor and performance paralleling the commedia dell’arte tradition. His art was much closer to that tradition than, for example, that of Charlie Chaplin, who is often cited as a modern pur­ veyor of the commedia dell’arte tradition. LeClair notes that Henry James also viewed a transla­ tion of Theaulon’s Le Pere de la Debutante, which included

^Joseph N. Ireland, Records of the New York Stage. from 1750-1860. v. II (New York« T. H. MorrellT“T566-67), p • 2 • 80. S. Coad and Edwin Mims, Jr., The American Stage (New Haven« Yale University Press, 1929), p. 186. 77 among its dramatis personae the titular pathetic old Mr. Placide, a derivation of the Pantalone figure of commedia o dell'arte development. In A Small Boy and Others James's remarks on this character illustrate an initial sensitivity to the type that might have foreshadowed his own subtle por­ traits of Adam Verver and Mr. Longdon« "Greater flights . . . the more delicate shades of pathetic comedy was at that time held not to achieve." 10 In fact, during the course of his life, James was always deeply attached to the Pantalone character, mentioning the role of the old merchant nearly as often as his beloved Harlequin. James also recounts the early enjoyment of Julia Ben­ nett's acting in a role which he somewhat ambiguously recalled as that of "a brilliant adventuress. . . . the innocent victim of licentious design."1^ LeClair supposes that the play in question was most probably Belphanger, or The Mountebank and 12 His Wife, performed at the Old Broadway Theatre in 1851. This production was one of the many plays appearing in America during the nineteenth century that was adapted from a French original. It shows some influence from the commedia dell'arte mountebank tradition, though it is likely that the "licentious

^LeClair, p. 97. 10Autobiography, p. 106. UIbid.. p. 64. 12LeClair, p. 98. 78 design" was considerably toned down for its American audience. James's early familiarity with theatre also encom­ passed the opera, another disseminator of the commedia dell'arte tradition throughout the world. He viewed operatic performances as a child, and continued his interest during the years spent in Italy and France. Opera is likely to have contributed to his sense of melodrama, and it did present material for allusions in his later work. Such reflections on past theatrical experiences are certainly not conclusive evidence of James's acquaintance with the commedia dell'arte tradition. Nor do they reflect his deep appreciation sufficiently to suspect that his imagina­ tion was profoundly affected by that tradition. They do sug­ gest the sense of a rather enthusiastic and sensitive young boy being willingly and happily assaulted by the sights and sounds of the theatre. Elements of that theatre were probably sometimes of commedia dell'arte origin, as theatre is usually accumulative of past movements and conventions. However, there is more conclusive evidence that James was familiar with the commedia dell'arte tradition, evidence taken from James's own commentary on his early theatrical experiences with the New York stage. The source of this commentary is not found in his reactions to the conventional stage presented at Bur­ ton's or the Old Broadway Theatre, but rather in his fond recollections of a theatre form of a different sort. It may be surprising for many to learn that it was the enchantment surrounding supposedly less aesthetic and literary traditions 79 which most stirred James’s imagination and tapped his pro­ clivity to hyperbolic reflection. The remembrances of most significance are those which center around his evenings so delightfully spent at Niblo’s Gardens. Niblo’s Gardens holds a rather obscure place in American cultural history—particu­ larly theatrical history--where James viewed what was probably the closest approximation to the commedia dell’arte tradition appearing in America. Perhaps it is the superficial non- literary aspect of the extravaganzas James viewed at Niblo's which has caused critics and scholars to ignore his account of those evenings. Yet it is the nights at Niblo’s and at Fran- coni’s, and the days at Barnum’s, which deeply influenced James’s literary aesthetic and novelistic practice in later years. The manner in which this element of James’s formative years has been ignored is hardly justified, for James pre­ faced his reflections on these experiences with popular theatre by acknowledging that he was following his "instinct to grope for our earliest aesthetic seeds."13 Anyone familiar with James’s own "germ" theory?—the manner in which his method and ideas were dlerived from small "seeds"—should note that James was perhaps hinting at something of significance in his development. After having thus stated his own sense of the significance of what then follows in his reflections, James concludes his account of the early theatrical years with

1 Autobiography. p. 95« 80 a tribute to those "earliest aesthetic seeds." During the frequent and long periods in which their father was disenchanted with all manner of formal education, William and Henry James divided much of their time between Niblo’s and Barnum’s American Museum, with occasional excur­ sions to Franconi’s Circus. Barnum's extravagant museum was flushed with a continual round of exhibits and performances specializing in the bizarre--which were more often than not simply ludicrous hoaxes—menageries, Biblical panoramas, dis­ plays of new gadgetry and inventions, educated fleas, dioramas and a wide variety of freaks. The museum also contained a theatre which was called a "Lecture Room" out of deference to popular mistrust of the corrupting theatre. It was the scene for what Barnum called "refined amusements and moral ." 14 What this really amounted to was the presentation of broad farce, vaudeville, and small circus attractions. All in all it was a rather polyglot affair and a vehicle for whatever appealed to Barnum's sense of the public taste and his object of turning a profit under any circumstances. James recalled The Great American Museum as having been "for the most part of the last meanness» the Barnumjpicture above all ignoble and awful, its blatant face or frame stuck out with innumerable flags that waved, poor vulgar-sized ensigns, over spurious relics and catchpenny monsters in effigy, to

^John and Alice Durant, Pictorial History of the American Circus (New York» A. S. Barnes and Co., 1957), P. 53. 81 say nothing of the promise within of the still more mon­ strous and abnormal . . ."^5 As pejorative as these comments may seem, James then proceeds to explain "from the total impression of which things we plucked somehow the flower of the ideal." 16 Without pausing to enlighten his reader as to what "the flower of the ideal" may be, he then says» It grew, I must in justice proceed, much more sweetly and naturally at Niblo’s, which represented in our scheme the ideal evening, while Barnum figured the ideal day» so that I ask myself, with that sense of our resorting there under the rich cover of night ... how it comes that this larger memory hasn't swallowed up all others. For here, absolutely was the flower at its finest and grown as nowhere else—grown in the /great garden of the Ravel Family and offered again and again to our deep inhalation. I see the Ravels, French acrobats, dancers and pantomimists, as repre­ senting, for our culture, pure grace and charm and civility» so that one doubts whether any candid com­ munity was ever so much in debt to a race of enter­ tainers or had so happy and prolonged, so personal and grateful a relation with them.l? This "flower of the ideal" that James attributed to his "earliest aesthetic seeds" was the circus-like atmosphere at Niblo's. Yet it was not precisely the circus alone that captured James's imagination, because Franconi's was the source for this type of entertainment and receives but little notice or appreciation in James's recollections. The descrip­ tion of the Ravels should help us to recognize that James's "flower of the ideal" was more strongly allied to the

•^Autobiography, p. 95. 16Ibid. 17Ibid., pp. 95-96. 82 theatrical tradition within the circus atmosphere—that which indirectly grew out of the commedia dell’arte. Niblo's presented a more ancient entertainment than the usual New York fare. It was not simply the gulling of Barnum, which gave birth to the three-ring confusion now pervading the circus. At Niblo’s there was neither the lure of "some­ thing for nothing”, nor the grotesque publicity of a single personality, or even the haphazard mixture of various extra­ vagant appeals and effects which had degenerated the commedia dell’arte tradition. As James said, "the world of pure poetry opened out to us at Niblo's, a temple of illusion, of tragedy ■JO and comedy and pathos" in the midst of vulgarity. In James's time, with the exception of Barnum's travel­ ing tent shows, the circus tradition was more a vehicle for performers than the present tendency to three-ring produc­ tions allows. This necessitated a greater versatility on the part of those performers, a versatility grounded in the commedia dell’arte tradition. The Ravel Family was a company in such a tradition. James recalls their portrayal of a pastoral tragi-comedy about a French family wrecked on the coast of Brazil, as well as a number of acrobatic tricks and dramas they performed. A playbill of the time illustrates the spectrum of abilities within the company which indicate the commedia dell’arte element in the repertoire they offered. It introduces "THE RAVEL FAMILY . . . just arrived

18Autobiography. p. 96. 83 from Paris. . . . The spectacle consists of ROPE DANCING, HERCULEAN FEATS, and PANTOMIME BALLETS."19 20S *u c22h a mixture of the circus and the dramatic places the Ravel Family quite near the commedia dell'arte tradition. One is reminded of Everet Sprinchorn's comment that the commedia dell'arte "was a circus with a plot." 20 The Ravels are included among the clearest recollec­ tions recounted in James's autobiographical writings, but other performers were recalled with appreciation that also have affinity with the commedia dell'arte tradition. In par­ ticular James remembered the performance of a certain "Signor Leon Javelli, in whom the French and Italian charm appear to have met." James even more securely placed Javelli in the commedia dell'arte tradition, recalling that his performances "connect him with that revelation of the ballet, the senti­ mental-pastoral, of other years, which, in The Four Lovers for example, a pantomimic lesson as in words of one syllable, but all quick and gay and droll, would have affected us as classic . . . had we then had at our disposal that term of appreciation." Javelli appeared in New York at Niblo's Gardens in 1854. He obviously made a marked impression on

19Ireland, p. 12. 200reglia, p. xiii. 71Autobiography, p. 97. 22Ibid. 84 ten-year-old Henry James. It is from such expressly pleasant recollections of his early experience with performers out of the commedia dell'arte tradition that we can be assured of James's forma­ tive acquaintanceship with that tradition. Moreover, from such expressions of aesthetic gratitude it would be false to assume a mere acquaintance, particularly with the pantomime aspect, for the quality and texture of his remembrances attests to a relationship that goes beyond a simple proximity. Even a mind of such recollective power as James's must have had more than a mere association with an object to have brought it so vividly forward fifty-seven years later, let alone with the tone of tribute which he renders. While he admitted that these performers were "in all probability of middling skill and splendour," he still felt compelled to "light this taper to the initiators, so to call them, whom I remembered, when we had left them behind, as if they had given us a silver key to carry off and so to refit, after long years, to sweet names never thought of from then to now."25 From the appreciative manner of these recollections it can be assumed that these performers were the "initiators" of something other than his prodigious memory alone. It was these "initiators" who offered the "flower of the ideal" that contributed to his "earliest aesthetic seeds," and the initia­ tion took place at Niblo's. James was not merely recalling

2^Autob iography. p. 97. 85 youthful anecdotes and adventures. He was making a conscious effort to recall his initial reactions to early experiences with the theatre, and it was in the fertile ground of Niblo’s Gardens, of all the places of his New York past, where he found "the flower at its finest." It was not in Shakespeare, nor even the French adaptations, let alone the impoverished native American theatre, that he found the "germ" of his aesthetic development. This is a unique recognition. If James found that the tradition at Niblo’s constituted the theatrical ideal, then Niblo's must have had some effect on his conception of the dramatic. Of course this was the recognition of a man in his sixties—the product of a life-long devotion to the literary arts and a studious appreciation of Western dramatic tradi­ tion. These were the of a man who long cultivated the drama and theatre and who prided himself on a knowledge of its methods and conventions. It is probable that his evaluation of the commedia dell’arte elements in the theatri­ cal fare at Niblo’s was the fruit of a life-time of cultural assimilation and aesthetic assessment. It is Henry James the artist rather than the small impressionable theatre-goer who formulated the appreciative sense of debt to the tradi­ tion presented at Niblo’s. That sense is the assessment of a mature theorizor on the literary and theatrical arts, and is also manifest in his fiction. The nights expended at Niblo's made their influence felt in the later well-wrought schemes of What Maisie Knew. The Awkward Age, and The Golden 86

Bowl, but there were other influences and later experiences which contributed to that commedia dell'arte element in these novels. \ Perhaps the strongest appeal that the commedia dell'arte tradition had for young Henry James, besides its fundamental theatricality, was its old-world quality. His appreciation of the tradition which filtered down to him was part of his general life-long cultivation of things European. Within the first year of his life he had encountered England and the European continent. In later years he was to claim some sensual recollections of that early confrontation with his destined sphere of residence. The years following this infantile European initiation were preoccupied with a longing to return. Young Henry James accumulated as much of European culture and artistic as he could manage from afar. Niblo's was part of that acquisitive impulse, and he later reflected that the "flower of the ideal” performed at Niblo's was all the more remarkable because it grew "over ground so little native to it." He deeply felt the comparative cul­ tural poverty of America as a youth, and found that per­ formers like the Ravels and Javelli were a cultural gift from Europe. He concludes his recollections of Niblo's with the following statement of approbations When we read in English story books about the pantomime in London, those were the only things that didn't make

24 Autobiography, p. 97 87

us yearn? so much we felt we were masters of the type, and so almost sufficiently was that a stop-gap for London constantly deferred. We hadn't the transforma­ tion-scene, it was true, though what this really seemed to come to was clown and harlequin taking liberties with policemen—these last evidently a sharp note in a pic­ turesqueness that we lacked,/ our own slouchy "officers" saying nothing to us of that sort? but we had at Niblo's harlequin and columbine, albeit of less pure a tradi­ tion, and we knew moreover all about clowns, for we went to circuses too.25 James was therefore fully conscious and appreciative of the commedia dell'arte tradition as it had filtered down to American theatre by the nineteenth century. Moreover, even if the child was not aware of the distinctions between clowns and fools, or of the nature of policemen in the Eng­ lish harlequinade, or generally of the more "pure" tradition derived from the commedia dell'arte, at least the mature artist of the fin de siecle was fully initiated and knowledge­ able. He was to have even closer approximation with the tradition. At long last, in 1855, Europe was no longer "con­ stantly deferred" and the James family embarked on a series of formal and more improvised educational adventures and mis­ adventures throughout what James had always worshipped as a cultural mecca. This European sojourn lasted nearly four years and was spent mainly in Switzerland, England, Prance, and Germany. It was accompanied by a veritable dance of

^Autobiography. pp.997-98. Note that the policemen were a bit of extraordinary buffoonery added to the English harlequinade around the middle of the nineteenth century. They were the forebears of the Keystone Cops of our own cen­ tury. 88 changing governesses, tutors, and schools, with large gaps in between during which the boys fended for themselves as they had in America. Many critics have remarked, taking their cues from Henry and ’s own commentary on this frenetically careless education, that the real schooling was gleaned from an unrestricted access to books, picture galleries, museums, and a somewhat censored attendance at theatres. While William later was to view their peripatetic education as deplorable, the formlessness of it appealed greatly to the more culturally oriented Henry. It played a great part in his future life-style and literary imagination. After an initial brief pause in , the family moved to London and set up housekeeping for the next eight months. During this London habitation James had ample oppor­ tunity to avail himself of the English harlequinade. While the harlequinade had declined after the retirement of in the 1820’s and the theatre legislation of the 1840’s, it still endured as an important feature of English cultural life. David Mayer is somewhat justified in his statement that, after the early part of the century, harle- quin seemed to be "out of place" on the English stage, but it shouldn’t be thought that the commedia dell’arte tradition represented by the harlequinade was dead. It had simply undergone another of its periods of change and assimilation. For the most part the harlequinade had become, by the time

26Mayer, pp. 309-327. 89 of James’s English acquaintanceship, more of an extravagant spectacle, with outlandish and expensive sets and an overall diminishing of the extempore in its repertoire. The basic types remained, howeveri some fundamentally true to their origins in the commedia dell'arte and others invented as cari­ catures of the English social spectrum. Some producers were even overzealous in their preservation and utilization of those types. For example, Edward Blanchard "attempted to save the harlequinade by doubling the number of performers; where formerly there had been a single Clown, Harlequin, Pantaloon, and Columbine, he tried two, in some instances three of each."2? With such innovations as these and the excesses in staging effects, the harlequinade was still very much alive, if a bit overdone, throughout James's various English sojourns. There were fewer productions than there had been during Grimaldi's time, and they were less likely to be the only entertainment of the evening, being often combined with more ordinary productions. The theatres at Drury Lane and Covent Gardens were still the most constant purveyors of the tradition, and the most authentic in per­ formance, while other theatres throughout London would occa­ sionally offer pantomime productions in addition to their normal fare, particularly during the Christmas season. During this first lengthy stay in London the James family frequented the theatre just as they had in their

27Mayer, p. 313 90 native country, perhaps even more so. In A Small Boy and Others James notes that they regularly attended performances at Drury Lane. He also recalled spending many evenings at the Princess’ Theatre. It is likely that they viewed Farley’s long-running Aladdin there. This play had begun as a pure pantomime by O’Keefe in 1788, while the I856 production was a rather odd burlesque production with Aladdin’s mother played as a Pantalone figure. If James did attend this production he does not note it in his recollections of the English theatre. He does mention having pleasurably viewed another production in the commedia dell’arte tradition. "At a remarkable height , . . moved the vivid genius of Robson, a master of intensity, unforgettable for us, we felt that night, in Planche’s extravaganza of The Discreet Princess, a Christmas production preluding to the immemorial harlequinade."2* 9 It is significant that the older Henry

James recalled not only the play, but that it was an extrava­ ganza somewhat unlike the harlequinade of earlier years. He thus demonstrates a knowledge of the tradition that could again make distinctions between "pure" and less pure vestiges of the tradition, and he probably realized that the spec­ tacles and extravaganzas were sometimes far removed from the satiric tradition of Grimaldi. He undoubtedly viewed many more productions "preluding to the immemorial harlequinade"

pp Clinton-Baddeley, p. 31. 29Autobiography, p. 181. 91 while in London, and while the tradition may not have been adequately pure or ancient to satisfy the requirements of commedia dell'arte scholars, it was sufficiently close to the older tradition to have continued Henry James's interest. After this first prolonged English interlude, the James family crossed the channel and installed themselves in Paris. At this juncture the elder Jameses somewhat reversed their early catholic tendency in regard to the boys' attendance at the theatre. This was Paris, after all, the home of questionable literary and artistic morality, and they were New Englanders. While American and English adaptations of French plays were permissible, the French original seemed at first to be quite another thing. In spite of this increase in parental vigilance, James did not suffer from a lack of further opportunity to gather other experiences with the theatre. In fact he freely attended those performances which had so pleased him in his native country, the French cirques, Niblo's had provided him with a fitting introduction to this aspect of European theatrical tradition.5° At the same time he was busily translating La Fon­ taine's charming seventeenth-century fables, which had in their time a significant influence on the commedia dell'arte. While he was involved in his translations he could sometimes happily be distracted by the sounds outside his window at #19 Rue d'Angoulene, where the "charmed circle of Polichinelle

30LeClair, p. 239. 92 and his puppets" performed. 31 In A Small Bov and Others and Notes of A Son and Brother, James recalled other theatrical experiences from his youthful years in New York, London, and Paris. He often described them in terms of being a "brilliant comedietta" or a "comical force" and the like, but does not refer to them in any specific relation to the commedia dell'arte tradition. As the previous chapter has indicated, however, the tradi­ tions and conventions of the commedia dell'arte were very much alive, though in decline, during the period of his Euro­ pean travels and cultural studies. It is difficult to believe that a person of James's temperament, one who had already shown a predilection for the tradition, would have failed to note the manner in which it had been dispersed throughout European culture. It is not surprising that James recalls the pattern and quality of his early education and inter- familial relations with a metaphor taken from the commedia dell'arte tradition. ... we breathed somehow an air in which waste, for us at least, couldn't and didn't live, so certain were aberrations and discussions, adventures, excur­ sions and alarms of whatever sort, to wind up in a "transformation-scene" or . . . happy harlequinade; a figuration of each involved issue and item before the footlights of a familiar idealism, the most ironized, the most amusedly generalized, that possibly could be.32 The commedia dell'arte tradition of the "transformation

3lLeClair, p. 224. ^Autobiography. p. 302. 93 scene" was also the source of imagery that he used in a lov­ ingly ironic reference to his Swedenborgian father's belief that "once we get rid of slavery the new heavens and earth will swim into reality." James’s comment on this unfailing optimism was that "no better example could there be, I think, of my father’s remarkable and constant belief, proof against all confusion, in the imminence of a transformation-scene in human affairs—’spiritually' speaking of course always."33

Henry James jr. also held a belief in spiritual trans- formation-scenes, but just as he evoked a term from the commedia dell’arte tradition rather than Swedenborgian philosophy, his belief had a more realistic basis than his father’s social idealism. His own idealism was limited to the ethical potential of an individual within a social group, not the social group as a whole. This choice of terms per­ haps indicates that evenings spent in dimly lighted theatres exerted an influence on his imagination that outweighed the effect of his father's idtealism. At the very least the choice of a term taken from the harlequinade suggests the indulgent good humor with which he was to look back on his father’s philosophy. While there is no biographical evidence that con­ cretely demonstrates James’s continued appreciation of the commedia dell’arte tradition, there are other sources which

33'Autobiography, p. 362 94

indicate that this was indeed so. In later years his essays and criticism reveal a consciousness of the tradition. It constitutes a rather minor strain in his commentary, allusion, and imagery, but serves to illustrate that the maturing writer maintained a consciousness of what he was later to call his "earliest aesthetic seeds." In an 18?6 review of Francisque Sarcey’s biography of actors and actresses James quotes a passage referring to his childhood acquaintance, the talented but supercilious Coque- lin. He begins by saying, "of Coquelin’s eminence in the old comedies M. Sarcey speaks with a certain pictorial force," and then quotes« No one is better cut out to represent those bold and magnificent rascals of the old repertory, with their brilliant fancy and their superb extravagance, who gives to their buffoonery je ne sais quoi d'épique.34 In his own article on Coquelin written some years later, James was to again place him in the tradition of the "old comedy" and particularly note his "great cumulative tirades" and talent for improvisation. Both Sarcey and James were referring to Coquelin’s virtuosity in the role of Pantalone which had been drawn into the Comédie Française chiefly through the efforts of Moliere. Moliere was of course a life-long favorite of James, as was the particular

34Henry James, The Scenic Art« Notes on Acting and the Drama, 1872-1901, ed. Allan Wade (New York« Hill and Wang, 1957), P. 85. Hereafter, Scenic Art. 35ibid., p. 207. 95 character of Pantalone. In an earlier article on the French stage, this time on the Théâtre Française, James had described M. Talbot, another French actor whose forte was the portrayal of characters in the mold of Pantalone. "This actor’s special line is the buffeted, bemuddled, besotted old fathers, uncles and guardians of classic comedy, and he plays them with his face much more than his tongue. Nature has endowed him with a visage so admirably adapted ... to look like a monument of bewildered senility."3^ As always,

James does not use the word "classic" as a reference to Greek or Roman drama, but as a qualitative term. The only specific use that James ever made of the word "Pantalone" was in "The Jolly Corner", but it is obvious that he knew the Pantalone tradition and greatly appreciated it. The Scenic Art also contains many of James’s articles written about the English stage. One of these, published in 1877, vividly expresses his attitude toward the English derivation from the commedia dell'arte. and also demonstrates that the harlequinade was not the only vestige of the tradi­ tion with which he was familiar. In thinking over the plays that I have listened to, my memory arrests itself with more kindness, perhaps, than elsewhere, at the great, gorgeous pantomime given at Drury Lane, which I went religiously to see in Christmas week. They manage this matter of the pantomime very well in England, and I have always thought Harlequin and Columbine the prettiest invention in the world. (This

•^Scenic Art, p. 79. 96 is an ‘adaptation’ of an Italian original, but it is a case in which the process has been completely suc­ cessful. )37 This statement reveals much more about James’s rela­ tionship with the commedia dell’arte tradition than it would seem at first. It again reflects his life-long appreciation of the tradition as represented by the English harlequinade and pantomime. His familiarity with the Drury Lane version of the tradition is implied by the admitted religious nature of his attendance. There is also an implication that he evaluates the English pantomime by comparison with the pan­ tomime of other countries, and the passage also hints that he is sufficiently familiar with the "Italian original" to judge the success of the English adaptation. In general, there is an attitude toward the commedia dell’arte tradition that was later echoed in his autobiographical recollections of childhood entertainments viewed at Niblo’s. This affirmation of the pantomime tradition contains within it a suggestion of disappointment regarding the Eng­ lish theatre as a whole. James had an enduring dislike for the contemporaneous native English drama throughout his life, As he wrote in his Notebooks in 1882, "The dramatic form seems to me the most beautiful thing possible» the misery of the thing is that the baseness of the English-speaking stage

3?Scenic Art, p. 111. 97 affords no setting for it."„53®8 Even his affection for the English pantomime was sometimes tempered by disapproval. In another article on the stage, he was to decry the deterio­ ration of the English pantomime tradition? to feel that its transitional forms left something to be desired when com­ pared to earlier forms. In writing on Irving’s Little Evolf. he stated« "If the spirit of pantomime pervades in this man­ ner the very streets, I hasten to add theirs is the truest felicity who have school-boys at large to take to the play. The pantomime, it is true, is not the play to the extreme it used to be? but that difference is made up by the fact that the play is more the pantomime . . . „39 He was referring to the fact that drama was more like pantomime in terms of expensively ornate sets, bright colors and movement, and an overall quality of spectacle. At the same time he noted with displeasure that the pantomime had lost its dramatic quality as it sunk to the level of weakly plotted presenta­ tions of slapstick and vaudeville acts. Just as he liked most things European to retain the original richness and manner of their past, so too with the commedia dell'arte tradition. However, as his comments on the English pantomime show, he was grateful for the remnant of the past that it

3 Henry James, The Notebooks, ed. F. 0. Mattiessen and Kenneth B. Murdock (New York« Oxford University Press, I96I), p. 44. Hereafter, Notebooks. 39Scenic Art 286. 98 maintained. As a matter of fact, he was often wont to judge the competence of actors by their abilities in pantomime and improvisation. He had always respected Coquelin’s ability at the latter, and he says of another actor: "Rossi’s speeches are often weak, but when he attempts an acutely studied piece of pantomime, he never misses it."40 There are other references to the commedia dell'arte tradition in James’s essays which are more anecdotal in nature. For instance, while reviewing the play Kean, by Alexandre Dumas, which portrayed the life of the great Eng­ lish tragedian, James drew particular attention to one of Kean's bursts of jealous temper. During the episode, Kean was playing Hamlet before an audience which included a prince who had stolen his mistress. He smouldered with jealousy, about to break into a rage. At last he does so in a magnificently grotesque explosion of wrath at the Prince and sarcastic abuse of himself—"tumbler, clown, vile , Punch­ inello?" He rushes to the footlights and pours out a volley of delirious bravado. "Punchinello?—so be it.'" he cries, and shoulders his princely sword, like Punch's stick, and executes a sort of furious mocking dance. Those writings of Henry James which make reference to the commedia dell'arte tradition—whether they demonstrate his appreciation for it or merely his acquaintance with it-- are precisely that, references to the tradition and not

^°Soenic Art.p. 54. 4lIbid.. p. 41. 99 specifically to the commedia dell’arte. The words "commedia dell’arte" do not appear in James’s works. If we recall the relative eclipse of the commedia dell’arte after Goldoni’s eighteenth-century reforms we should recognize that James could hardly have had a great deal of association with any­ thing but derivative forms. If he did have first-hand acquaintanceship with the commedia dell’arte it was likely to have been the product of his frequent travels and lengthy sojourns in Italy. Regrettably, however, he does not make specific allusion to the commedia dell’arte in his numerous essays on that "dishevelled nymph." He long regarded Italy as the cradle of art and culture, but his essays are largely confined to the genre of . The Italian cities and countryside appealed to him as quaint and pic­ turesque, and he wrote at length on Italian character and history, but when he deals with , it is very much limited to painting and architecture, not literature or theatre. The entire Renaissance fired his imagination, but he seldom discussed its literary or theatrical aspects. In a somewhat altered form the commedia dell’arte was struggling for survival in Italy during his lifetime. Productions would have been available to him in some loca­ tions, particularly in Naples and , just as in the present century during the winter months. James was more apt to divide his Italian sojourns between Venice, , and . Furthermore, he was more fond of riding horses across the campagna or lounging in a gondola than he was of 100 frequenting Italian theatres. If he did view any theatre other than the opera or ballet while in Italy, he failed to record such incidents in his essays or autobiographical writ­ ings. However, given the amount of time that he spent in Italy, his mastery of its language and dialects, and his inveterate love of theatre, it is fair to assume that he added to his knowledge of the commedia dell'arte tradition while in its native land. His Italian essays do contain fre­ quent reference to attendance at festivals or masquerades, which often wound their way through the streets of Rome and Florence, or were housed in the palaces of friends, and there can be no question but that he encountered some vestiges of the tradition in that manner. There is no reference to his beloved Harlequin and Columbine, however. It is entirely possible that the tradition was so well-known to him at the time of his Italian journies, and such a familiar aspect of his social life there, that he felt no compunction to draw pointed attention to it. A passage from his biography of lends credence to such a suspicion, giving the impression that the commedia dell'arte tradition was a charming commonplace of Italian social life and conversation. He describes the Roman life­ style of his friends, and quotes from Mrs. Story's correspond­ ance an incident that refers to domestic entertainment after a day at the markets. "What completes it, however, is the sequal, than which nothing could be more in the right note. 'After which tea at the Cropseys', with a 'Pulchinello 101 representation' by two of the gentlemen present. History 42 has these inventions, which fiction tries for and misses." One wonders what "inventions" James was referring to. Is it the charm of such a social circle that he felt fiction tries to recreate, or the "Pulchinello representation" itself? If the former, then James was being quite hypocritical, because it was the intrusive round of visits he received, and the obligations of social engagements, that he sought most to avoid while in Italy. Such society prevented him from work­ ing and from enjoying his picturesque surroundings. One of the that he never adopted Italy as his home was because it simply was too diverting. The "dishevelled nymph" remained his mistress, however, and played an important part in the formation of his imagination, to the point that three of his later works in some ways resemble a "Pulchinello representation." His sympathy with the "dishevelled nymph" was a char­ acteristic he shared with three other acquaintances and literary figures—, William Dean Howells, and John Addington Symonds. All three wrote extensively about Italy, even more than James himself. While Symonds was not an intimate of his like the others, James did appreciate his Italianate tastes, and recognized him as a genuine fellow Italophile. Symonds and James sometimes exchanged books and

4 9 Henry James, William Wetmore Story and His Friends, vol. I (Boston« Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1903), p. 124. 102 monographs they had published about Italy. There is no actual record that James ever received SymondSls now famous articles on the commedia dell'arte or his translation of the essays and memoirs of Carlo Goldoni, but it is likely that James knew them. Winifred Smith praises Symonds as a commedia dell'arte scholar, calling his essays "brilliant and vivid" and generally views him as one of those who gave rise to the late nineteenth-century resurgence of commedia dell'arte scholarship.^3 Even though James was much closer to men like

Bourget and Howells, one doubts that he was ignorant of Symonds's activities, particularly as Edmund Gosse was to James and Symonds what Howells was to James and Twain. Bourget was also an intimate of Symonds's salon. While continental figures such as Sand and Symonds may have assisted in maintaining James's consciousness of the commedia dell'arte tradition, there were London influences as well. Shaw was of course acknowledging his debt to the tradition, but non-dramatic vestiges of the tradition also appeared in the so-called decadent school involved in the artistic life of the 1890's. Gosse was again more intimate with figures of that school, but James moved on its fringe with a delicate interest. Aubrey Vincent Beardsley, the art editor of and its sequal, The Savoy, utilized the commedia dell'arte tradition in his controversial work. His cover design for the July, 1894, issue of The Yellow Book,

43 -'Smith, p. ix. 103 followed such motifs and was titled "The Comedy Ballet of Marionettes". He frequently included incongruous and gro­ tesque figures in his drawings and illustrations, and finally came to identify himself with the poignant clown. The sixth issue of The Savoy, published in the autumn of 1896, contained a dramatic drawing entitled "Death of Pierrot", which reflected Beardsley's consciousness of his own imminent death. He captioned the pieces "As the dawn broke, Pierrot fell into his last sleep. Then upon tip-toe, silently up the stairs, came the comedians Arlecchino, Pantaleone, il Dottore, and Columbina, who with much love carried away upon their shoulders, the white frocked clown of Bergamo? whither, we know not." 44 Henry James was cautiously familiar with Beardsley and his work. The subject of his own contributions to The Yellow Book was first broached by Harland and Beards­ ley, and he appeared in the magazine alongside the newly popular illustrator. James later purchased some of his work, and they were sufficiently friendly that Beardsley could write to James in Venice of 1894 asking that James look around the local bookstalls for an old copy of Goldoni's plays for him55There can be little doubt that James was familiar with Goldoni,

^Stanley Weintraub, Beardsley (New Yorks George Braziller, Inc., 1967), p. 189. ^Letter to Henry James, April 30, 1894. Harvard Library. Quoted from Weintraub, p. 111. 104 William Dean Howells was of course James's most intimate friend and aesthetic confidant. There has been some study of Howells's knowledge of the commedia dell'arte tradition and his particular debt to Carlo Goldoni. 46 Howells freely acknowledged this debt in his reviews and criticism. He perhaps put it most succinctly in an interview with H. H. Boyesens ... I was an idealist in those days ¿1862/, I was only twenty-four or twenty-five years old, and I knew the world chiefly through literature. I was all the time trying to see things as others had seen them, and I had a notion that, in literature, persons and things should be nobler and better than they are in sordid reality» and this romantic glamour veiled the world to me, and kept me from seeing things as they are. But in the lanes and alleys of Venice I found Goldoni everywhere. Scenes from his plays were enacted before my eyes, with all the charming Southern vividness of speech and gesture, and I seemed at every turn to have stepped unawares into one of his comedies. I believe this was the beginning of my revolt.^7 He reiterated this idea in a great number of his cri­ tical writings and it is evident that Italian drama, and Goldoni in particular, was one of his "literary passions." He admitted to evolving his literary theories from Goldoni's theory and practice, and professed that he "fell instantly and lastingly in love" with him on the first encounter. 48

46The most complete and critical» James L. Woodress, Jr., Howells and Italy (Durham, N.C.» Duke University Press, 1952). See particularly "Goldoni and Realism," pp. 113-150. Hereafter, Woodress. ^?H. H. Boyesen, "Real Conversations—A Dialogue Between.William Dean Howells and Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen," McClure's. I (June, 1893)» P. ?• 48William Dean Howells, My Literary Passions (New York: and Brothers, 189577 p. 155. 105 He also emulated Goldoni's practice in a long series of comedies and farces that never achieved much success. Woodress states that Howells "preferred among all comedies those which followed /the/ pattern adapted from the earlier commedia dell'arte.He adds that Howells "liked the commedia dell'arte so well that in creating his utopian society in Through the Eye of the Needle (1907), p. 161, he patterned the Altrurian theatre after this old Italian comedy."5° There can be no doubt that James was familiar with Howells's essays on the commedia dell'arte tradition, for he and Howells constantly monitored each other's work. It is even more likely that the two realists shared their ideas on the subject in the course of their many aesthetic discus­ sions. They had a number of "literary passions" in common, though James was less apt to make them a matter of public record unless they specifically related to the art of the novel. Their theories of literature coincided as often as their practices differed, and James could hardly have been ignorant of Howells*s attitudes toward Italian drama. They were both incurable Italophiles and had experienced very much the same Italy. Howells was always more concrete in his reflections and pictures of Italy, as he wasj about most things, while James was more inclined to attempt a recreation

^Woodress, p. 147. 5°Ibid. 106 of the sensual aspect of place rather than the factual. James's portraits of Italy are impressionistic and figura­ tive, while Howells's were intended to be informative. How­ ever, knowing as we do that James was enchanted by the commedia dell'arte tradition from an early age, and was later able to recall his initiation with such vividness and grati­ tude, it is safe to assume that this was another element of sympathy between the two men. Howells undoubtedly helped to keep that early initiation part of James's consciousness. A further possible source of commedia dell'arte influ­ ence on James may have grown out of his life-long apprecia­ tion for George Sand. Besides being of a liberated type that appealed to his imagination and an artist of great pas­ sion, George Sand was also a devote of the commedia dell'arte. She frequently professed her respect and admiration for the tradition—even to the point of building an elaborate puppet theatre in her home—and was probably a force in determining that her son, Maurice, devoted much of his life to commedia dell'arte scholarship. Little is known of James's acquaint­ anceship with Maurice Sand, though they did meet when James visited Madame Sand just prior to her death in 1876, It would be strange if James was unfamiliar with his work, or ignorant of the volumes of commedia dell'arte scholarship appearing in the 1890's that resulted from Sand's initial contributions. From his own recollections and essays, and by way of probable assumptions we can draw from evidence of his travels, 107 predilections, and acquaintances, there is no doubt that Henry James was familiar with the commedia dell'arte tradi­ tion. It was a familiarity bred from a pleasant youthful initiation and a cultivated appreciation. It cannot be too emphatically pointed out that James's recollections of youth­ ful experience with the theatre were motivated by his desire to rediscover his "earliest aesthetic seeds." It was in the commedia dell'arte tradition as it then existed in America that he found the dramatic "flower at its finest." CHAPTER IV

THE COMMEDIA DELL’ARTE AND THREE LATER NOVELS OF HENRY JAMES

What Maisie Knew. The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl are not commedia dell'arte scenarii. Henry James adapted traditions growing out of the commedia dell’arte to his own distinctive style and method» he did not recreate the form in the context of the novel. There is certainly no danger of confusing these novels with scenarii by Scala, Gozzi, or even Goldoni. James's novels are much too complex, ironic, and subtle to thus over-simplify them or their author's intentions and method. Though What Maisie Knew. The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl differ considerably in form and content from the twelve novels that James published prior to 1897 and the other six novels which were to follow, they definitely possess characteristic features which identify them as products of Henry James's imagination and technique. Nor are the differences which these novels share solely derived from the commedia dell'arte tradition. What Maisie Knew, The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl are experi­ mental and unique creations in the James canon, but they are experimentally and uniquely Jamesian all the same. Point-of- view, the object of James's innovation in these novels, was always one of his major concerns. What Maisie Knew 109 demonstrates his effort to confine point-of-view to the dawning intelligence of a young ingenue; The Awkward Age is rigorously objective in technique; and The Golden Bowl attempts to balance Amerigo’s point-of-view in volume one with Maggie’s in volume two. While this study attempts to focus on a unique pattern within these novels, it does not ignore the fact that they also share basic Jamesian elements, and are, above all, works of Henry James. This overriding consideration should not deter efforts to distinguish the formal and contextual elements that place What Maisie Knew. The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl distinctly apart from the other novels of the late manner. More than their general experimental nature and certain mannerism of James's late technique, these novels share particular elements which can best be described as the effect of James's adaptation of the commedia dell'arte dramatic tradition. While these novels are not, it should be repeated, commedia dell'arte scenarii or even Moliere-like continuations of that tradition, it is possible to delineate a pattern of method, skeletal plot, character typology and fundamental relationships, world-view and intention, humor and satire, and figurative devices derived from that tradition. By indul­ ging in such delineations, the critic's method sometimes parallels that of the novelist. Just as the latter simpli­ fies the complexity of human experience in order to represent the fundamental pattern and quality of that experience, so 110 such a delineation of the commedia dell'arte tradition within the complexity of Henry James is a naturally selective process. Hopefully, the selectivity provides focus rather than distortion and further confusion. The style of Henry James is one of circumlocution and nuance. This is a matter of fact, not a pejorative evaluation. Such a style somewhat reproduces the complexity, irony, and subtlety of experience, but it also makes the task of interpreting meaning and dis­ cerning structure much more difficult than it is in novels with less convoluted methods of representation and narration. Half a century's worth of critical theories and commentaries on The Ambassadors were published before a graduate student noted that two chapters of the supposed definitive text were reversed. Such an error would have gone unnoticed briefly in the work of almost any other author, except perhaps that of some twentieth-century writers like Joyce, Woolf, or Faulkner, where intentions would not be perverted by such a printing error. Nor did the discovery greatly affect previ­ ous interpretations and theories of The Ambassadors, for critics had been involved in a process of simplification and selectivity. In isolating the various elements with which he wishes to deal, the critic seldom does justice to the com­ plexity of James's work, but ideally does contribute toward an understanding of that complexity with a description of how

^Robert E. Young, "An Error in The Ambassadors," . XXII (November 1950), PP. 245-253. Ill a literary artifact was made and what it means. A delineation of the commedia dell'arte pattern in What Maisie Knew. The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl does contribute toward such an understanding. It does not imply that James was simply a commedia dell'arte scenarist in a novelist's trappings, which would be tantamount to stating that Joyce's Ulysses is merely a rendering of a modern Ulysses myth, and Joyce was obviously doing a great deal more. To continue the comparison, if the pattern and substance of myth and legend can be adapted and ironized into forming the experience of another time and place, then the pattern and substance of a dramatic tradition can certainly be like-wise adapted, as it was in James» the delineation of that pattern and substance does not necessarily deny a complexity in which other factors are also at work. For instance, The Golden Bowl was written during a period in James's develop­ ment that witnessed the highest density of images in his work. The novel contains 1,092 images, more than any other James novel. Of these, only a relatively small number form a sub-pattern that coincides with the more general pattern of the commedia dell'arte tradition in the novel and its two compatriot novels. This minor pattern does appear, however, even though James's figurative language has other purposes

¿Robert L. Gale, The Caught Imaget Figurative Language in the Fiction of Henry James (Chapel Hill« University of North Carolina Press, 1964), p. 251. Hereafter, Gale. 112 as well, such as the overriding scheme of images related to the golden bowl itself. In Joyce, too, a very small number of the images and incidents relate to the Ulysses and Icarus myths. Nevertheless, in either author, such patterns as do exist contribute to our understanding of the intention and the nature of the experience that is represented. For that matter, Henry James's Adam Verver is more closely allied to the archetypal Pantalone figure of the commedia dell'arte than Leopold Bloom is to the Ulysses of legend, just as James's London society more closely approximates the per­ sonality of the commedia dell'arte than Joyce's Dublin does the people and places of Ulysses's voyage. These artists use their respective adaptations to form the fabric of uni­ versal human experience. Joyce's is simply more ironic because the adapted myth is from such a high mimetic plane, James's adapted form is from a lower plane and is therefore a good deal less incongruous and more difficult to discern. Joyce inverts the myth of Ulysses and transplants it; James takes the relative simplicity and comicality of the commedia dell'arte theatre tradition and complicates it with realism and subtlety, at the same time adding more pathos—almost tragic pity and fear—than was native to the tradition. The elements of the commedia dell'arte tradition which form a pattern within What Maisie Knew. The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl do not only exist in the novels themselves. The pattern actually begins during the conception of these 113 novels. The interdependent elements of that pattern—the recurring stylized character types, the underlying conven­ tional plots, the sexual humor, the represented world-view, and the uniquely theatrical description and imagery—are pre­ ceded by two features of James's later method which were also adapted from traditions growing out of the commedia dell'arte. The first of these features of the later method is what he called, in his first major Notebook entry on The Golden Bowl, the "divine principle of the Scenario." This was his later habit of sketching the rudiments of plot and character— planning the direction of his action and characterization— before proceeding. It was the method he had developed in preparing his ill-fated plays of the early 1890’s, but after those "disastrous years" he was to re-discover it as an "exquisite that . . . the divine principle in question is a key that, working in the same general way fits the com- 3 plicated chambers of both the dramatic and the narrative lock."^ After briefly sketching the fundamental plot of the proposed story, The Golden Bowl, James slipped into his concept of the scenario, . . . Everything about it qualifies it for Harper except the subject—or rather, I mean, except the adulterine element in the subject. But may it not be simply a question of handling that? . . . Voyons, Voyons, May I not instantly sit down to a little close, clear, full scenario of it?4

^Notebooks, p. 188. A ibid. 114 Note that this entry was made nine years before The Golden Bowl was published, and it was made in the same year that James developed the basic scenarii of What Maisie Knew and The Awkward Age. Of the three novels, it is What Maisie Knew that is most completely developed according to this "divine principle of the Scenario." James later applied the method to other works as well, but it is the three novels in question which most profit by it. Scenarii were originally, of course, the plot sketches of the commedia dell'arte that actors studied prior to their performances and between scenes, in preparation for their improvised productions. Like an improvisor himself, James used his own basic scenario upon which to elaborate and extemporize, orally, the fully rounded novels of the later period. His extemporaneous narration and dialogue were put down, via his stenographer, in what he alternate called "Remingtonese" and "an embroidered veil of sound."3 Thus,

James was not only a scenarist, but an extemporizing per­ former himself. In his own later criticism and commentary, James continually termed story-tellers "improvisors"—even "imorovisatore" or "improvisatrice". depending of course on their gender. Such was his manner of referring to his own later method, as when he wrote in the 1908 Preface to' "": "Nothing is so easy as improvisation, the

Aeon Edel, Henry Jamest The Treacherous Years» 1895- 1901 (New York» J. B. Lippincott Co., 1969), p. 176. 115 running on and on of invention. ... To improvise with extreme freedom and yet at the same time without the hint of a flood /was my7 absolute business.There is a romantic quality in James that cherished the Fancy—an improvising imagination "working freely, working with extravagance"'— while the craftsman in him required the order and restraint of the well-structured scenario. Therefore, as Wellek and Warren describe James’s method, "though the structure has been thought out in advance, the verbal texture is extempor­ ized."®

The concept of improvisation appealed to James much as it did to nineteenth century romantics who attempted to revive the commedia dell’arte. but it was also a matter of practical necessity when he found himself unable to write for any length of time without dictating. The spirit with which James made this adjustment to new circumstances is somewhat paralleled by the case of the commedia dell'arte. In his extemporized fiction of the later period James exempli­ fied an adjustment forced on the commedia dell'arte players in Paris during the eighteenth century. Attempting to drive out the Italians, rival Parisian companies persuaded the

Art of the Novel, pp. 171-172. 7Ibid., p. 172. ®Rene Wellek and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature (New York; Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 195°), p. 87. Hereafter, Wellek and Warren. 116

French government to pass a law banning dialogue in the Italian productions. The ingenious Italians then developed a narrated drama, wherein one actor would supply narration and dialogue while his compatriots mimed the play. This is another interesting sidenote in the development of the tradi­ tion, and presents a suitable analogy to James’s method. It was this method of a fully plotted scenario followed by his own verbal improvisation that governed the creation of What Maisie Knew. The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl. It shows a sense of dramatic technique and tradition which combines with other elements in these novels to form an underlying commedia dell’arte pattern. That pattern is connected by the sexual intrigues which substantially comprise the scenarii of the three novels. The sexual intrique was usually the soul of theocommedia dell'arte. and in these novels it is the mainspring of the action. What Maisie Knew is rampant with such intrigues— a multiple confusion of shifting sexual alignments that would be the envy of any commedia dell'arte scenario. With less amusing confusion this is carried over to The Awkward Age and finally telescopes down to the small but intense scale of the liaison between Charlotte Verver and Prince Amerigo in The Golden Bowl. The intrigue itself is not foreign to James's other work, and intrigues of all sorts, whether well- intended or not, were always a source of evil in James because they interfered with the freedom of his central characters. 117 Roland Mallet is not without his measure of guilt in The Princess Casamassima. Yet the intrigues in the novels before What Maisie Knew were never overtly sexual, and even that of Gilbert Osmond and Madame Merle in Portrait of A Lady is dis­ covered after the fact. Merton Densher and Kate Groy, after the publication of What Maisie Knew, do have their sexual rendevous in Wings of the Dove but the sexual aspect is not prevalent or significantly consequential. The narrator of The Sacred Fount is preoccupied with the vague possibility of an adulterous relationship, but the fact is never rendered or proved. There are no overtly sexual intrigues until the three novels in question, and it is a contributing factor in forming the pattern of the commedia dell'arte tradition which produces the animating design of What Maisie Knew. The Awk­ ward Age, and The Golden Bowl. In What Maisie Knew. Maisie is confronted with sexual intrigue from all sides. Her mother orchestrates the most obvious and amusingly confusing array of sexual partners. Among them are Sir Claude, the Baron, Mr. Perriam, Lord Eric, the Captain, the Count, and Mr. Tischbein; and, as Sir Claude Q tells Maisie, "There are quantities of others:"7 Beale, we can safely suppose, is successfully competing with his former

o What Maisie Knew, p. 141. All subsequent quotations and references to What Maisie Knew. The Awkward Age. The Golden Bowl, and other James novels, are taken from The of The Novels and Tales of Henry James (New York: Scribner's, 1907-1917). Notations will henceforth be abbrevi­ ated WMK. AA, and GB (Vol. I or Vol. II). 118 wife’s indulgences. We only know of Mrs. Beale (Miss Over- more) and the fantastic American Countess, Mrs. Cuddon, but are given hints as to his preoccupation with pursuit. At one point, when Beale has obviously made his bed elsewhere the previous night, Maisie attempts to defend him from Susan Ashe's accusations: "He was at the club—the Chrysanthumum. Sol" "All night long? Why the flowers shut up at night, you know!" cried Susan Ashe.10 James ironically further indicates the fact of Beale's sexual encounters when he has Mrs. Beale and Maisie witness Beale's infidelity in a later confrontation at the circus in Earl's Court. The incident occurs in front of one of the side-shows, "before the Flowers of the Forest, a large pre­ sentment of bright brown ladies," out of which Beale bounds unawares with a brown "flower" of his own, Mrs. Cuddon. Maisie's innocent nature also receives numerous hints of Sir Claude's relations with Mrs. Beale. Perhaps the most amusing, and the most sinister, takes place in the rooms at Boulogne after Sir Claude's arrival sometime during the night. Maisie enters the salon and Sir Claude says that he hasn't been in Mrs. Beale's room. After some extended denials he suggests that they go out. "You are cleverJ We'll go to a cafe." Maisie was already at the door» he glanced round the room. "A moment—my stick." But there appeared to be no stick. "No matter» I left it—ohi" He remembered with an odd drop and came out.H

10WMK, p. 136. 11Ibid.. p. 321. 119 This is followed by a later embarrassment when he orders some breakfast for Mrs. Wix: "Et bien soigne, n’est-ce-pas?" "Soyez tranquille"—the patronne beamed upon him. "Et pour Madame?" "Madame?" he echoed—it just pulled him up a little. "Rien encore?" "Rien encore. Come Maisie." She hurried along with him, but on the way to the cafe he said nothing.*-2 Part of Sir Claude’s silence results from his recogni­ tion that Maisie quite perceives that he is lying, and his essential good nature also enables him to realize the entirely false position in which Maisie is placed. In a like manner throughout the novel, the sexual intrigues produce humorous situations, but it is a humor which has grim overtones for Maisie. James recognized this blending of tears and laughter, referring in his Notebooks to What Maisie Knew as "the ugly little comedy" and the "melancholy comedy". Helen Leyburn footnotes this treatment of "the surrounding baseness with satiric comedy,"13 but does not deal with the "strange alloy" of comedy and tragedy in What Maisie Knew. While part of Maisie's attainment of consciousness involves her recognition of the sexual relationships that surround her, the sexual intrigues of The Awkward Age are a matter of public record within Mrs. Brook’s circle. There is Carrie Donner’s affair with Mr. Cashmore, then later with

12WMK. p. 323. l^strange Alloy (Durham, N.C., University of North Carolina Press, 19^8), p. 121, n. 4. 120 Harold Brookenham; Fanny Cashmore’s affair with the unseen Captain Dent-Douglasj Lord Petherton has affairs with the Duchess and later with Aggie—there is even a suggestion of his homosexual relation with Mitchyj Tishy Grendon is on the watch for an affair because her husband has supposedly found someone else» and Mrs. Brook carries her own passion for Vanderbank: "How can any one love you," she asked, "without wanting to show it in some way? You know all the ways, dear Van," she breathed, "in which I want to show it."14 The obvious nature of this adulterous dance around Nanda hardly requires the irony or innuendo of What Maisie Knew. Nanda's consciousness of these relations is never in doubt, and only Longmore is momentarily placed in Maisie's ignorant role in regard to sexual intrigues. It frequently has been suggested that Nanda is a portrait of what Maisie would have been like after she did, in fact, know all. Despite the fact that Nanda is so fully initiated into the intrigues of London society, James still offers a good deal of sexual humor for our delectation. A constant source of this amusement—to Mrs. Brook and her circle as well as the reader—is Longdon's incredulous shock resulting from his confrontation with modern London society. The "talk" of Mrs. Brook's circle knows little restraint in discussing the affairs of its members. The tone of that "talk" is demonstrated by the climate of sexual innuendo and immorality that permeates Tishy

^AA, p. 181. 121 Grendon's dinner-party in Book Eighth, which is concentrated in James’s description of Tishy herself; Tishy's figure showed the confidence of objects conse­ crated by publicity; bodily speaking a beautiful human plant, it might have taken the last November gale to account for the completeness with which, in some quar­ ters, she had shed her leaves. Her companions could only emphasise by the direction of their eyes the nature of the responsibility with which a spectator would have seen them saddled—a choice, as to conscious­ ness, between the effect of her being and the effect of her not being dressed.15 The atmosphere of sexuality and humor of the entire Book are obviously compressed in James’s narrative passage, which is supported by the "talk", such as the comment of the sinister parasite, Harold Brookenham, who addresses Tishy« "My dear child, you seem to have lost something, though I’ll say for you that one doesn’t miss it."1^ Of course Longdon has become, by this time, somewhat acclimated to the "talk" of Mrs. Brook’s circle, but when Mrs. Brook pointedly demon­ strates the effect of her circle on Nanda, he leaves the party in obvious disgust. This society, relishing the risque, makes little distinction between what a young girl knows and what she does. Finally, it is Longdon who is capable of such discrimination, just as Nanda's intriguing mother had hoped. Of course there is a plethora of jokes, ironies, and witticisms in the "talk" of The Awkward Age that is not sexual. At an early gathering Carrie Donner's cosmetological aids "instantly created a presumption of the lurking label 'Fresh

15AA. P. 390. 16Ibid., p. 391. 122 paint”’ which evoked an image of her as "retouched from brow to chin like a suburban photograph," and provoked an un- Jamesian epigram: "she should either have left more to nature or taken more from art."^7 The non-sexual humor is not always a fruit of James’s narration, but also is found in the talk itself. For instance, in the very first scene of the novel, Longdon innocently leads Vanderbank to exhibit a bit of his obtuseness: "What did you say is your public office?" /Longdon7 enquired, "The General Audit. I’m Deputy Chairman." "DearJ” Mr. Longdon looked at him as if he had fifty windows. "What a head you must have!" "Oh yes—our head’s Sir Digby Dense."*-® Van’s head is obviously somewhat dense as well, hand­ some and charming as everyone finds him. He’s also not above joking about Mrs. Brook, as when he later remarks that she has been speaking of Nanda as "only sixteen" for a year or two. While the puns, epigrams, and humorous ironies of The Awkward Age are less frequently sexual than the comic innu­ endo running throughout What Maisie Knew, the effect is very much the same. There is an undercurrent of tragedy inherent in the comedy of both novels. The brilliant "talk" of The Awkward Age does make its society the source of "amiability 17 18

17AA, p. 99. 18Ibid.. p. 6. 123 proportion, beauty, wit," 19 but its effect hardly makes that 20 society the hero of the novel as some critics would suggest. The standard bearers of the "moral sense" in both What Maisie Knew and The Awkward Age. Mrs. Wix and Mr. Longdon, recognize the conventional evil that such societies represent, but evil in James is not conventional. The sexual intrigues in each novel are not viewed as wrong in themselves, but in their effects on James's sensitive central characters. Maisie realizes this when she rejects Mrs. Wix's moral standard in favor of something more personal, something which approaches 's definition of evil as a "violation of the human heart." Through the medium of sexual intrigue James blended the comic and tragic, in accordance with his expressed inten­ tion in the Preface to What Maisie Knew» No themes are so human as those that reflect for us, out of the confusion of life, the close connexion of bliss and bale, of the things that help with the things that hurt, so dangling before us for ever that bright hard medal, of so strange an alloy, one face of which is somebody's right and ease and the other somebody’s pain and wrong.21 What amuses the reader, and the represented society in these novels, is all too often that which means "pain and wrong" to those sensitive creatures at James's center. The

19F. W. Dupee, Henry James. American Men of Letters (New York: Sloane, 1951), P. 198. 20Canby, p. 218. 21Art of the Novel, p. 143. 124 sexual intrigues, which produce so much comedy, and which are obviously someone’s "right and ease," wound the central characters. The various kinds of humor which attend those sexual intrigues only ironically emphasize the harm. The Golden Bowl lacks the social humor of the previous novels, though the description and narration of the author sometimes supply comedy, and the dialogue between Fanny Assingham and the Colonel frequently strikes a comic vein. There is, however, a concentrated sexual intrigue that is more explicitly passionate than any other such intrigue in James’s work. This novel, perhaps more than any other, also exhibits the possible ambivalence inherent in a theme wherein someone’s "bliss" is another’s "bale". Many critics have been altogether sympathetic with the bliss of Charlotte Verver and Prince Amerigo. Moreover, there are readings, such as one by Jean Kimball, that find Charlotte and Amerigo completely inno- cent themselves. Such readings are attempts to simplify James’s unconventional morality, just as do those which find the society of The Awkward Age heroic. Since there is disagreement over the precise nature of the Charlotte-Amerigo relation, the initial step in approach­ ing the novel should be to establish the degree of their intimacy. This is also of paramount importance in viewing the fundamental pattern that the novel shares with What Maisie

22"Henry James’s Last Portrait of a Lady« Charlotte Stant in The Golden Bowl," American Literature. XXVIII (January 1957), PP. 449-468. 125 Knew and The Awkward Age. The key scene in any investigation of the novel's sexual intrigue is, of course, the ironic and erotic kiss near the close of volume one. And so for a minute they stood together as strongly held and as closely confronted as any hour of their easier past even had seen them. They were silent at first, only facing and faced, only grasping and grasped, only meeting and met. "It's sacred," he said at last. "It’s sacred," she breathed back to him. They vowed it, gave it out and took it in, drawn, by their intensity, more closely together. Then of a sudden, through this tightened circle, as at the issue of a narrow strait into the sea beyond, everything broke up, broke down, gave way, melted and mingled. Their lips sought their lips, their pressure their response and their response their pressure; with a violence that had righted itself the next moment to the long­ est and deepest of stillnesses they passionately sealed their pledge.23 Their resolution is Platonic, the kiss and their ensu­ ing relationship are not. Charlotte is too aggressively pas­ sionate and the Prince too willingly ammoral to maintain such noble intentions, and the kiss itself is a figurative repre­ sentation of the full sexuality implicit in their intimacy. Henry James was not one to "dot his i's," but this passage vividly indicates the sexual nature of their intrigue. Their former relation is renewed with intensity, as they stand together, "as strongly held and as closely confronted as any hour of their easier past had seen them." The language and rhythm of the passage give an accurate sense of the physical in which they, as well as their resolve, "broke up, broke down, gave way, melted and mingled."

23GB, voi. I, p. 312. 126 A reading of this passage substantiates R. P. Black- mur’s observation that the kiss represents "the act of illicit love . . . the act which can be explained but which cannot be justified." 24 Jean Kimball admits that the scene is ambigu­ ous, but insists that it is necessary to concentrate on the "good faith" of their utterance rather than on their abandoned behavior. She ignores the fact that what we see, in so far as fiction is visual, is what we know—or further, that charac­ ters are what they do, or what their actions indicate they are doing. One of the reasons Hemingway appreciated Henry James was based on James's ability to indicate so much through the smallest revelatory portion of an "iceberg". The kiss of The Golden Bowl is such a significant representation of what lies more fully and completely beneath the surface of Char­ lotte and Amerigo’s relationship. It demands a careful read­ ing, for the affair is rendered with all the obscurity and mystery characteristic of such relationships. As Edward Volpe admits, "I had to reread The Golden Bowl before I was sure that Charlotte and the Prince had committed the ultimate transgression of their marriage vows."*23 * The BBC’s Master­ piece Theatre dramatized The Golden Bowl in 1971 and firmly interpreted the affair as a sexual one. It is difficult to

oh "Introduction" to The Golden Bowl (New York« Grove Press, 1952), p. 312. 23"James’s Theory of Sex in Fiction," Nineteenth- Century Fiction. XIII (June 1958), p. 37. 127 argue with such an interpretation, or with Jacques Barzun's comment« "There is only one kiss in The Golden Bowl, but it is as fully expressive and adulterous as would be a judicial account of the lovers' every assignation.”28

The sexual nature of the intrigue is poetically implied at other junctures in the novel. For example, when Charlotte has contrived to have the Prince and herself stay on at Matchum in order to "chaperone" Lady Castledean and her Mr. Blint, the Prince's pleased agitation is provocatively described« The measure of everything, to all his sense at these moments, was in it—the measure especially of the thought that had been growing with him a positive obsession and that began to throb as never yet under this brush of her having, by perfect parity of imagina­ tion, the match for it. His whole consciousness had by , this time begun to ache with a truth of an exquisite order, at the glow of which she too had unmistakeably then been warming herself—the truth that the occasion constituted by the last few days could n't possibly, save by some poverty of their own, refuse them some still other and still greater beauty.27 The Prince's conception of "some still other and still greater beauty" hardly reflects the mere anticipation of an excursion to Gloucester. The Golden Bowl abounds with suggestive conno­ tations, such as that inherent in Charlotte's remark to the Prince, on the day before his marriage to Maggies "I would pO marry, I think, to have something from you in all freedom. * 27

pZ "James, the Melodramatist," Kenyon Review, V (Autumn 1943), p. 512. 27GB, vol. I, p. 346. 28Ibid.. p. 121. 128 The double entendre implicit in her statement prepares the way for events at Matchum—particularly those at Gloucester later in the day. The Prince’s throbbing obsession is part of the overall nature of life at Matchum, as couples are "matched" in a manner for which Lady Castledean and Mr. Blint provide an example of infidelity. Earlier in the morning of their extended stay, Charlotte and the Prince have made their most conclusive pledge of mutual passion. Charlotte says: "These days, yesterday, last night, this morning, I've wanted everything." The prince responds« "You shall have everything." 29 The sophistication of Charlotte and Amerigo, which is the source of their complicity, also keeps their affair from reflecting any essential vulgarity. Moreover, as many critics have noted, the situation in which they find themselves, and which they have in part created, maintains an aura of inevit­ ability in regard to their affair. That situation results from the fundamental typology of the characters in the novel, which is also apparent in What Maisie Knew and The Awkward Age. This typology and its resulting sexual intrigues are subtly adapted from the commedia dell'arte tradition. In all three novels, there are character types out of that tradition who indulge in, or cause, conventional sexual intrigues. In The Golden Bowl, for example, Adam Verver‘s fundamental

29GB, vol. I, p. 363. 129 Pantalone type is of great consequence to the conventional events of the novel—his reluctance to really "let go" of his daughter, who marries a fortune-hunter» his own marriage to a girl much younger than himself» his impotence, which results in his being made a cuckold by an ammoral Italian— all of which very much result from his being an egotistic, if well-intentioned, wealthy, old merchant. The inexorable­ ness of these various relations is a matter of long-standing dramatic tradition, regardless of James's nineteenth-century realistic guise. For the novelist, such inevitability couched in the dominant movement of a novel is an excellent controlling device, much like the scenario itself, and helps prevent the "possibility of ravage." There can be little straying from a plot so self-designed and directed. Improvisation does of course offer sufficient license to embellish and create a variety of subtleties in plot and character. In such a way, James's hypothesized length for The Golden Bowl—"I seem to see it as a nominal 60,000 words» which may become 75»000"30— grew to 192,000 words. These subtleties, drawn over a skele­ ton of relations derived from the commedia dell'arte tradition, personalize the novel as James's, and allow for varying inten­ tions from novel to novel. Variable intentions and creative improvisation make for individual differences among characters of the same type, and cause content and theme to vary among

3°Notebooks, p. 188. 130 the novels. Fundamentally, however, the typology of the characters and their traditional relations create a skeletal thread of plot and incident which is the underlying principle of order and universality in What Maisie Knew. The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl. The character types and sexual intrigues reveal a pattern of experience derived from the commedia dell’arte tradition which forms the animating design of these novels. Narrative and dramatic literature usually achieve per­ manence through the appeal and validity of characterization. Characterization may acquire longevity through being con­ sistently and ingeniously allegorical, as in or the fiction of Hawthorne, or through a rendered authenticity and verisimilitude of individuality like characters in local color novels or Dickens. For the most part, however, the effective­ ness of literary characterization depends on a successful combination of the particular and the general. Wellek and Warren perhaps overstate the case, but their contention that "the principle of characterization in literature has always been defined as that of combining the ’type’ with the ’indi­ vidual’— showing the type in the individual or the individual in the type," has a general validity." 31 James reflected an awareness of this theory of character in his own criticism, as when he wrote of Turgeniff, Flaubert, and Dickens«

31Wellek and Warren, p. 32 131 I remember Turgeniff’s once saying in regard to Horaais . . . that the great strength of such a por­ trait consisted in its being at once an individual, of the most concrete sort, and a type. This is the great strength of his own representations of charac­ ter; they are so strangely, fascinatingly particular, and yet they are so recognizably general. Such a remark asthat about Homais makes me wonder why it was that Turgeniff should have rated Dickens so high, the weakness of Dickens being in regard to just that point. If Dickens fail to live long, it will be because his figures are particular without being general; because we do not feel their community with the rest of human­ ity—see the matching of the pattern with the piece out of which all the creations of the novelist and the dramatist are cut.32 James himself was concerned with presenting the indi- vidual within the type, without the "peril of caricature."33^ The early novels offer a multitude of characters with par­ ticular as well as general qualities. This is most apparent in those novels dealing with the international theme. Christopher Newman is obviously meant to represent a type of mythic American—an outgrowth of Puritan ethics and Enlighten­ ment practice. His mythic qualities are accompanied by realistic individuality. Critics have written long about James’s mythic, ethical Americans confronting corrupt, aesthetic Europe, and they frequently state that Adam Verver is simply an older version of Christopher Newman. This is true in only a narrow sense, for in The Golden Bowl James

32«Ivan Turgeniff," 1884, Theory of Fiction: Henry James, ed. James E. Miller, Jr. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1972), p. 202. Hereafter, Theory of Fiction. 33«

^Poirier, p. 247. 33Ibid.. p. 166. ^Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism« Four Essays (New York« Atheneum Press, 1967), P. 225. 133 from the theatre, particularly from the Greek and commedia dell’arte traditions. Poirier was correct in his assumptions that James developed a method of characterization that dealt with "predetermined categories of human experience," and that James had a sense of "theatricality and of conventional typologies," but there is room for doubt that such a sense was only "intuitive". Given James’s acquaintanceship with the tradition growing out of the commedialdell'arte. and given the particular similarities with that tradition that the three novels in question manifest, there seems to be a definite quality of intention in the commedia dell’arte pat­ tern of What Maisie Knew. The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl. Such an intention fits James's previously quoted theory of universality in character—"the matching of the pattern with the piece out of which all the creations of the novelist and the dramatist are cut." James did not always use the same types in the same proportion from one of these novels to another. Two novels have a Pantalone type, while the third does not. Each novel has its Capitano. but the figure does not have a like import­ ance in all three novels. All three novels have parasites, lovers, and zanni—or meddlers--some of whom are comic and others simply sinister. All have their respective ingenues who are threatened by a circle of fools. Most characters, except the ingenues, are examples, "in the concrete, of the general truth, for the spectator of life, that the fixed constituents of almost any reproducible action are the fools 134 who minister, at a particular crisis, to the intensity of the free spirit engaged with them."3? These "fixed constitu­ ents", or "fools", are the basis of James's adaption from the commedia dell'arte tradition. With such a tradition in mind, James was able to make an individual character "representative of its type" in What Maisie Knew, The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl. Some of these characters, such as Ida Farange, the Duchess, and Fanny Assingham, betray their theatricality by the manner in which they strut and fume their outlandish way across James's novelistic stage, while others, like the Captain figures, are more particularly drawn from the tradi­ tion. While subtle, the Captains are perhaps the most recog­ nizable of the commedia dell'arte types in the three novels. James's version of the miles gloriosus is not nearly so loud and blustering as the Capitano of the commedia dell'arte. but the conventional seeds are discernible. James's Captain is a more subdued, civilized type, as indeed the Capitano often was in the later stages of his theatrical evolution. Like his later commedia dell'arte model, James's Captain in the two earlier novels is a lover, and in the third, The Golden Bowl, he is the comic spouse of Fanny Assingham. James's consistent utilization of the Captain type began in the plays he wrote exclusively for the stage, not in his adaptations of novels and tales. Of the plays written

3?Art of the Novel, p. 129. 135 between 1890 and 190?, only The Album (1891) does not include a Captain among its dramatis personae. Tenents (1890) has its Captain Lurcher, Disengaged (1892) its Captain Prime, The Reprobate (1891) its Captain Chanter, even the somber Guy Domville (1893) its Lieutenant Round, Summersoft (1895) and The High Bid (190?) their Captain Clement Yule, and the sketched The Chaperon its Captain Jay and Colonel. These characters are not all of precisely the same general personal­ ity. Some are loud and devious, very sinister, but cowardly, in keeping with the tradition derived from the commedia dell'arte. Others are, like Captain Prime, more innocent and naive, in the tradition of a young lover amidst a sinister society. Whatever the individual qualities, the Captain figures exemplify James’s curious preoccupation with the type. This is of paramount interest when one recalls that the Cap­ tain appeared only infrequently in the French well-made play that generally is supposed to have been James’s sole model. Even Moliere, very much the model for the French drama, made scant use of the type except as it related to his favored Scaramouche. Since James was obviously taken with the type, it would seem that he looked elsewhere for his model. The caricature of the soldier is often found in ancient theatre— in the Attic comedy as well as the Latin comedy of Plautus and Terence—but it is nowhere so prevalent and apparent as it is in the commedia dell’arte tradition. For example, of the forty-eight available scenarii written by Flaminio Scala, 136 the Capitano appears in all but four. James undoubtedly knew his Terence, but as the previous chapter has demonstrated, he was decidedly familiar with the commedia dell'arte tradi­ tion as well. The recurring Captain figures of James's theatricals were carried over to What Maisie Knew, The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl. The first of the three actually presents two of these subtle progeny of the commedia dell'arte tradi­ tion—Ida Farange's gentle Captain lover and Sir Claude him­ self. Sir Claude was originally referred to as "Captain So- and-so" in the Notebooks scenario to What Maisie Knew. As his role gradually blossomed in the course of James's extemporized creation, James probably altered his name in order to place him more appropriately in the novel’s ironic fairy-tale con­ text as well. Even then, however, he felt compelled to create another, lesser figure, who became the Captain. Like his earlier commedia dell'arte prototypes, Sir Claude is a fortune-hunter who fancies himself as quite a man with the ladies, and not without some foundation. Despite his good intentions and fundamental good nature, it is this aspect of his character that most defines him and provides his func­ tion in the novel. His relations with the opposite sex reveal at once his great power and his deeply disappointing weakness. He is an instant success with everyone, the result of his "princely" good looks and fine manners. Before long, however, Maisie begins her initiation into the weakness of his character that finally and so deeply disappoints her. Ida is the initial 137 source of information that Sir Claude is "simply not seri­ ous," and Maisie "wept on Mrs. Wix‘s bosom after hearing that Sir Claude was a butterfly."3® she later confirms such

reports by more first-hand evidence. At one point, just after Ida has permanently cast Maisie off, Sir Claude takes her to dine. His concern for her is mitigated by his roving eye, as Maisie notes: "Sir Claude was now looking at a young woman with black hair, a red frock and a tiny terrier tucked under her elbow. . . . leaving an impression of a strong scent ... He had become graver . . . other people brushed by; he was not too grave to notice them."39 Even when he

makes a rare third party to Mrs. Wix and Maisie*s church­ going, he is most taken by the "beguiling back of bonnets." These "roving" tendencies of Sir Claude are most apparent to Maisie at points when she greatly requires Sir Claude’s under­ standing attention, such as at the juncture when Maisie is approaching a decision between going off with Sir Claude or Mrs. Wix. While Maisie anxiously speaks to him about their possible future, Sir Claude "stood there and with a kind of absent gaze—absent, that is, from her affairs—followed the fine stride and shining limbs of a young fish-wife who had just waded out of the sea with a basketful of shrimps. His thought came back to her sooner than his eyes." *40 40

3®wmk. p. 87. 39lbid.. p. 227. 40Ibid., p. 235. 138 This is a manifestation of his Captain-like incon­ stancy, but it does not reflect the fullness of his weakness. His "roving eye" is actually somewhat indicative of his charm­ ing "positive disposition to romp." He may be, as Mrs. Wix reveals to Maisie, "just a poor sunk slave ... to his pas- sions," but his real flaw runs even deeper. When Maisie and Mrs. Wix first met Sir Claude they found him to be unique in their experience, a gentleman, "more of one than anybody else in the world:*’ However, during the course of the novel Maisie comes more and more to the realization that Sir Claude is a "poor plastic and dependent male." He is, put most simply, and most appropriately within his Captain type, a coward. When he at last admits his fear of Mrs. Beale, "it brought back to Maisie his confession of fear of her mother; it made her stepmother then the second lady about whom he failed of the particular virtue that was supposed to mark a 47 gentleman," This "want of valour" is the failing that finally destroys Sir Claude for Maisie, because his good intentions are nothing in view of the fact that he will never be "his own man." The Ida Faranges and Mrs. Beales of whom his world is made will always direct and control him, per­ verting his better nature and his basic sensitivity. True to his type as "Captain So-and-so", Sir Claude is funda­ mentally a coward, despite his promises, pledges, and even

41WMK. p. 313. 2Ibid.. pp. 249-250. 139 his essentially good principles. He has other qualities as well, and other functions in the plot besides that of an adapted and subtlized miles gloriousus and innamorato. but the conventions of a type growing out of the commedia dell'arte tradition very much define him. We know little of the other Captain in What Maisie Knew. Ida's intimate companion in the Kensington Gardens. Maisie's first impression of him is that "he looked somehow brave." He is "sun-burnt and deep-voiced" and smells of cigars, yet is sufficiently comic in aspect to suggest a resemblance to Mrs. Wix. 7 He is as full of kindnesses, pledges, and promises as Sir Claude, though Maisie views him only briefly. She pins a good deal of hope on his expression of love and loyalty to her mother, but when we next hear of him Ida calls him the "biggest cad in London." Given his type, we can suppose that the Captain is simply false, and he is a further source of Maisie's disillusionment. The Captain of The Awkward Age is an even lesser figure who never makes an actual appearance on that novel's less-peopled stage. We know that he is Fanny Cashmore’s lover. Captain Dent-Douglas, who waits in the wings with a "coach and a brace of pistols" to carry her off from an unappreciative and inconstant husband. Captain Dent-Douglas is an alternately comic and romantic figure because of the circumstances and personalities with which he is so

43WMK. p. 148. 140 peripherally involved. Fanny does not "bolt," though the question of whether she will or will not is a favorite topic of Mrs. Brook’s circle. She finally makes a more convenient "arrangement" closer to home, with Nanda‘s parasitic brother, Harold. While Captain Dent-Douglas’s absence from the stage precludes him having a "type" that we can observe in his manner or speech, his function is within that of the tradi­ tional Captain. Sir Claude ("Captain So-and-so"), Ida’s Captain, and Captain Dent-Douglas are all versions of the Capitano tradi­ tion that had gradually developed into a rather undependable lover. The Captain figure of The Golden Bowl. Colonel Bob Assingham, is not of the same stamp. Despite the fact of his marriage, however, and his quiet good humor and comicality, Colonel Bob Assingham is perhaps even more closely associated with the Capitano of the commedia dell’arte tradition than the Captains of the other novels. His military past, and military manner of thought, provide the specific context. He may not be an obvious coward—he’s only moderately timid before his wife—but he is a bit obtuse, for all his kind unobtrusiveness, and he is comic within the conventions of his type. Fanny frequently refers to him as being merely stupid, and it is only as a comic confidant- to her that he ever emerges from his club or from a cloud of tobacco smoke. While James omnisciently calls him "the good dry man," his wife often finds his stupidity to be vulgar. Even James’s 141 authorially objective guard slips somewhat later in the novel when he says that Colonel Assingham "could n’t keep his eyes from resting complacently, resting almost intelligently, on the Princess.By noting how the Colonel "almost intelli­ gently" perceives Maggie, James betrays that his conception of him is closely aligned with Fanny’s. His intelligence aside, we are given a subtle indication of Colonel Assingham’s conventionally warlike braggadocio in James's opening descrip­ tion of him. ... he habitually indulged in extravagant language. His wife had once told him, in relation to his violence of speech, that such excesses on his part made her think of a retired General who she had once seen play­ ing with toy soldiers, fighting and winning battles, carrying on sieges and annihilating enemies with little fortresses of wood and little armies of tin. Her hus­ band's exaggerated emphasis was his box of toy soldiers, his military game. It harmlessly gratified in him, for his declining years, the military instinct» bad words, when sufficiently numerous and arrayed in their might, could represent battalions, squadrons, tremendous can­ nonades and glorious charges of cavalry. It was natural, it was delightful—the romance ... of camp life and of the perpetual booming of guns. It was fighting to the end, to the death, but no one was ever killed.45 This passage figuratively expresses James's intention of drawing his character out of the Capitano tradition. Colonel Assingham has two primary functions in The Golden Bowl. He supplies the necessary ingredient of comedy in the novel's intense moral drama, and serves as his wife's confi­ dant, enabling the reader to see the motives, manipulations,

^GB, vol. I, p. 122. **3Ibid.. p. 64. 142 and general workings of her mind. Col. Assingham never engages in his propensity to extravagant language in the course of the novel, and his character is generally peripheral and shallow, so James’s initial description does yeoman ser­ vice in placing him within the novel’s commedia dell'arte pattern, just as the other Capitani make similar contribu­ tions to their respective novels. Another figure out of the commedia dell’arte tradition, Pantalone. appears in The Awkard Age and The Golden Bowl. Unlike the Captain figure, the Pantalone type never appeared in James’s plays, but it is again obvious that the most prob­ able source for the type was the commedia dell’arte tradition, for Pantalone was not a feature of the French well-made play, except in so far as the pièce bien faite did represent inef­ fectual husbands. Pantalone. and variations of his type, were appreciatively adopted by Molière and had a long history in the Comédie Française, as James’s comments on Moliere and Coquelin demonstrate. 46 Mr. Longdon, of The Awkward Age, is something of a Pantalone figure, though he also functions in the ironic fairy-tale context of the novel, as Sir Claude does in What Maisie Knew. In that fairy-tale context, Mr. Longdon is por­ trayed as an ironic fairy god-mother. Overall, he is a com­ plex version of the Pantalone figure, but he possesses the

46See Chapter II for an analysis of Pantalone's development. 143 fundamental characteristics of his type despite James’s subtle and complex adaptation. Primarily, and most evidently, he serves as a general symbol of the contrast between the old and the younger generation, just as Pantalone did in the commedia dell'arte tradition. As he says of his return to London society: "I belong to a different period of history. There have been things this evening that have made me feel as if I had been disinterred—literally dug up from a long 47 sleep," Much later in the novel Longdon still evokes that same sense of being out of time: "I've slept half the cen- tury—I’m Rip Van Winkle." At first Longdon is simply taken aback by the "tone" of the talk in Mrs. Brook’s circle. As Nanda describes it: "we're cold and sarcastic and cynical, without the soft human spot. '• 49' When Vanderbank presses Longdon for his initial reaction to the circle, Longdon replies: "I think I was rather frightened." After that fright wears off he is merely scandalized, and only his interest, concern, and finally, his affection for Nanda, detains him from retreating again to Beccles. The Duchess leaves him appalled, as does her lover, Lord Petherton, whom he views: . . . with a vague apprehension ... as if quite unable to meet the question of what he would have called for such a personage the social responsibility.

47 rAA, p. 8. 48Ibid., p. 222. ^Ibid.. p. 34. 144

Did this speciman of his class pull the tradition down or did he just take it where he found it—in the very different place from that in which, on ceasing so long ago to "go out." Mr. Longdon had left it? ... if the man did n’t lower the position was it the position that then let down the man?50 Mr. Longdon also has little respect for Mrs. Brook. In fact he notes the possibility of an intrigue between her and Vanderbank—"he was obliged to recognize on the part of the pair an alliance it would have been difficult to explain at Beccles."31 He understands that Mrs. Brook wants Vanderbank for herself, and undertakes to save both Nanda and Vanderbank from her corrupting influence by financing their marriage. His old-fashioned methods are no match for Mrs. Brook’s modern deviousness, and he temporarily surrenders the field after Mrs. Brook has symbolically spoiled Nanda for Vanderbank through her manipulations at Tishy’s party. The corrupting incident centers around Nanda’s having been exposed to a French "blue" novel, and in a symbolic gesture worthy of Pantalone. Longdon later sends Nanda "the most standard Eng­ lish works." In spite of such symbolic functions revolving around the "generation gap" of the novel, Longdon finally exhibits fewer old-fashioned ideals than Vanderbank. Though he first became interested in Nanda because of her resemblance to to things of the past, most particularly her grandmother,

3°AA, P* 242. 51Ibid.. p. 187. 145 Longdon comes to accept and appreciate Nanda for what she is—sensitive, knowledgeable, and generous. He is not put off by her worldly knowledge of the sexually and emotionally corrupt society of Mrs. Brook’s circle. He has come to realize, as Vanderbank has not, that "everything’s different from what it used to be." He does not relinquish his old- fashioned values, but finds them in a-new and modernized incarnation, Nanda Brookenham. For all her supposed "morbid modernity," Nanda shares Longdon’s ideals. Thus, while Long- don’s Pantalone role serves to provide a point from which to observe the excesses of London society, James ironically makes him adjust to that society. He is able to recognize the "finer grain" within that society, while Vanderbank’s "nice­ ness" about superficialities causes him to overlook Nanda's quality of beauty and intelligence. Besides being a symbol of the "generation gap," Panta­ lone was also traditionally wealthy. This wealth could pro­ vide the motif for a number of plots in the commedia dell'arte tradition. Some of these were "cuckold comedies", though such a designation hardly applies to Longdon's situation as it later does to Adam Verver's. Nor does Longdon have an actual daughter, the traditional object of fortune-hunting suitors, even though The Awkward Age does present an ironic inversion of that convention by portraying Longdon's effort to "buy" Nanda's marriage to Vanderbank. Indeed, Nanda does become his ward. Pantalone's attempts to find a suitable marriage for his daughter are nearly as frequent as his 146 efforts to thwart her marriage to an undesirable suitor. Therefore, Longdon's Pantalone type is even more confirmed by his function as "the oncle d’amerique, the eccentric bene­ factor, the fairy-godmother.''52 Pantalone was frequently played as an "eccentric bene­ factor", a characteristic function which developed out of his frequent desire to atone for something done in the past, or as compensation for some past failure. Of course Pantalone *s beneficence was usually directed toward society as a whole, his government, or the arts, but James took remarkably few liberties with the particulars of the Pantalone tradition in making Longdon a rather composite portrait of the type. Long­ don’ s efforts to "bribe"—as Vanderbank suggests—a prospec­ tive husband for Nanda are within the limits of the type. His initial interest in her as a modern version of her grand­ mother, his lost love, calls to mind a Pantalone-like motive behind his generosity. Lady Julia had rejected him because he lacked sufficient means. Having accumulated the means, Longdon attempts compensation for his youthful failure by assuring Nanda and her husband of future financial security. At the close of the novel he is forced to forego "his dream of beneficence," but recovers compensation of another sort. The nature of this other sort of compensation suggests that Longdon fulfills another frequent characteristic of Pantalone. While most critics assume that he will continue

52AA, p. 181. 147 to function as Nanda’s " "—taking her as his complete ward in order to save her from Mrs. Brook’s corrupt­ ing circle—there is a strong suggestion that he takes her with the understanding that she will be something more to him than a mere ward. Nanda says« "I’m glad that I'm anything . . . that’s good for you," and Longdon answers: "it would be easier for me if you did n't, my poor child, so wonderfully love him.">> When she attempts to assure Longdon that she doesn't love Vanderbank, she bursts into revealing tears. After she has calmed, Longdon reminds her of the terms of their new relationship: "You understand clearly, I take it, that this time it’s never again to leave me—or to be left."3^ A stronger note of permanence could hardly be sounded, and it is likely that the two will be married, if not in reality, at least in effect. Such a likelihood is re-enforced through a recognition of Longdon's Pantalone type, for Panta­ lone often married a girl much younger than himself, or at least sought her hand. Of course the commedia dell’arte turned the convention to outrageous humor and satire, but James’s adaptation is treated with a pathetic poignancy. The old man at last attains his image of the lost Lady Julia, and Nanda will undoubtedly receive the kindness her sensitive nature deserves, but both parties have been forced by the selfishness of others to settle for a qualified happiness.

53AA. PP. 539-540. ^Ibid., p. 541. 148 The Awkard Age is a little tragi-comedy of disappointed hopes just like What Maisie Knew. Longdon’s complexities of character are resolved when he is seen in conventional terms. His essential Pantalone type coalesces various factors of his character—the dis­ appointed suitor, the symbol of the generation gap, the fairy godmother, benefactor, his age and wealth, his final quali­ fied success as a "suitor" of Nanda, his overall comic and tragic quality. The commedia dell'arte tradition provides the model, Henry James supplied the irony and coalescing com­ plexity of the type. The same is true of Adam Verver of The Gdlden Bowl, except that Verver is even more completely, and with less complexity, drawn from the commedia dell'arte tradition. Like Longdon, Verver is a wealthy older man with a "dream of beneficence." The motivation behind Verver's dream is very closely that of conventional Pantalone figures. Like the old Venetian, Adam Verver is admittedly, even pride- fully, using his wealth for supposedly public concerns in an attempt to compensate for his philistine, perhaps even ruth­ less, years of accumulation. Like Pantalone, Verver is alternately comic, pathetic, sinister, and even terrible, but is nonetheless more simply defined as a Pantalone figure than the quiet and subtle Longdon. Verver's symbolic function as the common denominator of the difference between the young and the old is not emphasized in The Golden Bowl as Longdon's was in The Awkward 149 Age. Such a distinctive function of his role was still intended in James’s further utilization of the Pantalone type. For example, Verver’s old-fashioned and constant mode of attire is representative of a temperament and want of vitality that is profoundly different from the young and vibrant Charlotte, and therefore, for all its comedy, it demonstrates a "generation gap" which deeply affects events in the novel that are less than comic. He wore every day of the year, whatever the occasion, the same little black'’cutaway’ coat, of the fashion of his younger time; he wore the same cool-looking trousers, chequered in black and white—the proper harmony of which, he inveterately considered, was a white-dotted blue satin necktie; and, over his con­ cave little stomach, quaintly indifferent to climates and seasons, a white duck waistcoat.55 Throughout the novel, James draws constant reference to Verver’s manner of dress, sometimes with the effect of humor, as above, and at others to emphasize his solitude and separation. In terms of his isolation Verver can be seen as pathetic or even sinister. Maggie’s perception of him seems to vacilate between the two, as she sometimes views him as a lonely man walking alone in the garden, while also sensing that his enigmatic solitude may contain depths of knowledge and power that she can only wonder at. Coupled with his attire is his habit of "smoking, smoking, always smoking, in the great Fawns drawing-room as everywhere, the cigars of his youth, rank with associations."5®

55gb, vol. I, p. 171. 5^Ibid.. p. 202. 150 These comic manifestations of his difference from Charlotte accumulate and become even more pronounced as the novel pro­ gresses. We often meet "the figure of a little quiet gentle­ man who mostly wore, as he moved alone across the field of vision, a straw hat, a white waistcoat and a blue necktie, keeping a cigar in his teeth and his hands in his pockets."757 Of course this is not only a result of Verver’s choice, though that is the primary motive. Charlotte is generally occupied elsewhere with the Prince, and the more we see of Verver, the more we may sympathize with her choice. Adam Verver is far removed from Charlotte's cosmopolitanism and passion, and his outward aspect exhibits the habits of a man without compromise. When we view him strolling about in his habitual attire and perpetually puffing his cigars, he is often surveying his rich realm of possessions. His obsession with his "things" becomes more obvious as his character is more completely represented. As Maggie notes: "He had ever of course had his way of walking about to review his possessions and verify their condition: but this was a pastime to which he now struck her as almost extravagantly addicted."3837 Like a Renaissance Pantalone counting his Venetian gold, Adam Verver more and more turns away from the real world. It is the source of his seeming "innocence", which is remarked by most characters in the novel, but "innocence" is too light a word

37GB, vol. II, p. 283. 38Ibid.. p. 286. 151 considering the calamity of its effects. It is rather an ignorance fostered by his consuming desire for accumulating objects of beauty and great price. "He cared that a work of art of price should ‘look like’ the master to whom it might perhaps be deceitfully attributed; but he had ceased on the whole to know any matter of the rest of life by its looks.”39 For all his seeming benevolence, his dream of culture for American City becomes monomaniacal, Like Pantalone. he is simply unable to cast off the greed of his earlier years. He recognizes that his years of accumulation suffered from a want of "variety of imagination" and that his sole concern 60 had been with "getting." He even acknowledges that "he had wrought in devious ways," but feels that "he had reached the place, and what would ever have been straighter in any man’s life than his way of henceforth occupying it?"^1 What he fails to realize is that he still has no "variety of imagina­ tion" and that the straightness with which he conducts his present quest still has a quality of ruthlessness. His dream is selfish. He hopes to be for American City what Leonardo the Magnificent was for Florence, and flatters himself that he would have done more justice by the

59GB, vol. I, pp. 146-147. 60Ibid., p. 128. 6lIbid.. p. 145. 152 Ao great Michael Angelo than even Pope Julius or Leo X. Like his commedia dell’arte forebear, Adam Verver has a monumental ego, which is frequently reflected in his inward self- evaluations. At one point, he says of himself* "He was equal somehow with the great seers, the invokers and encour- agers of beauty—and he did n’t after all perhaps dangle so very far below the great producers and creators.it is this inflated self-evaluation in regard to his artistic intelligence that causes him to think that "no man in Europe or in America, he privately believed, was for such estimates less capable of vulgar mistakes. ... he had in him the 64 spirit of the connoisseur." Perhaps if this egotistical self-estimate of his own discriminating tastes were confined to art, Verver would make few mistakes, but his inability "to know any matter of life by its looks" causes him to confuse life and art, and to treat human beings as objects d’art. as things to be possessed and displayed. His Pantalone-like passion for things governs his assessment of the Prince* Representative precious objects, great ancient pictures and other works of art, fine eminent ’pieces' in gold, in silver, in enamel, majolica, ivory, bronze, had for a number of years so multiplied themselves round him and, as a general challenge to acquisition and apprecia­ tion, so engaged all the faculties of his mind, that the instinct, the particular sharpened appetite of the

62GB, vol. I, p. 130. 63ibid.. p. 141. ^Ibid., p. 140. 153 collector, had fairly served as a basis for his accept­ ance of the Prince’s suit.65 When Verver examines Charlotte he brings to bear the same habit of mind, and James's intrusive description of the collector's mental processes aptly presides over Verver's distorted values: Nothing perhaps might affect us as queerer, had we time to look into it, than this application of the same mea­ sure of value to such different pieces of property as old Persian carpets, say, and new human acquisitions ... He put into his one little glass everything he raised to his lips, and it was as if he had always carried in his pocket, like a tool of his trade, this receptacle, a little glass cut with a fineness of which the art had long since been lost ... As it had served him to satisfy himself, so to speak, both about Amerigo and about the Bernadino Luini he had happened to come to knowledge of at the same time he was consenting to the announcement of his daughter's betrothal, so it served him at present to satisfy himself about Charlotte Stant and an extraordinary set of oriental tiles of which he had lately got wind ... It was all, at bottom, in him, the aesthetic principle, planted where it could burn with a cold, still flame» where it fed almost wholly on the material directly involved, on the idea (followed by appropriation) of plastic beauty, of the thing visibly perfect in its kind . . ."66 Helen Leyburn has noted that James's use of the word "queer" had increasingly sinister overtones in the course of his work, and that its quality of laughter also contains a tragic element.87 This is certainly true in regard to Ver­ ver's habit of "collection," which was always an indicator of evil in James’s work. Verver outdoes even Gilbert Osmond

¿5GB, vol. I, p. 140. ¿¿Ibid., p. 196-197. ¿7Leyburn, p. 137. 154 and Mrs. Gareth in his egocentric passion for things, his Pater-like burning with artistic devotion. Despite his affec­ tion for Maggie and the Principino, Verver is obviously moved most by a consumptive desire to "satisfy himself" within the context of and appropriation. It is a private passion, an all-pervading one. He does not need anyone to share it, even Maggie, as he admits: "His real friend, in all the business, was to have been his own mind." 68 Haw­ thorne’s "violation of the human heart" is rendered by James’s choice of Verver*s type. Verver's seIf-containment within the context of the "cold still flame" of his only passion, his wealth and confirmed habits of old-age, contribute to making him a prime factor in influencing the direction of The Golden Bowl. Because of his particular Pantalone nature, and the situation resulting from that nature, it is almost inevitable that Verver be the conventional victim of a serious cuckold comedy. He makes a fundamental error in marrying a woman so much younger and more vital than himself, and then fails to bring any passion to the relationship other than his consuming and insensitive collector’s monomania. He offers Charlotte nothing warm and human, and it is suggested by her that he further manifests a Pantalone nature by way of impotence. This fact is the final ingredient in the forces that have been weakening the Prince's good intentions toward his father-

68GB, voi. I, p. 149. 155 in-law, and is revealed to him just prior to the vivid and meaningful kiss. He suggests to Charlotte that a child might have made Verver more responsive as a husband, but Charlotte explains the impossibility of such an option» "Ah if I could have had one—! I hoped and I believed," said Charlotte, "that that would happen. It would have been better. It would have made perhaps some difference. He thought so too, poor duck—that it might have been. I'm sure he hoped and intended so. It's not, at any rate," she went on, "my fault. There it is." She had uttered these statements, one by one, gravely, sadly and responsibly, owing it to her friend to be clear. She paused briefly, but, as if once for all, she made her clearness complete. "And now I'm too sure. It will never be." He waited for a moment. "Never?" "Never."69 While Verver*s marriage to a woman so much younger and more passionate than himself is only superficially a Pantalone-1ike characteristic, the impotence he brings to that marriage is solidly from the commedia dell'arte tradi­ tion, particularly the prevalent cuckold comedies. The irony of Verver's lack of "verve" contributes to the grim humor of the novel, but more importantly, as in the commedia dell'arte tradition, it is a fundamental plot motif that results in the central sexual intrigue of the novel. His Pantalone-like impotence serves as a further figurative manifestation of the coldness in the bargain he makes with Charlotte, and contributes to the moral ambiguity of the novel. Adam Verver must take a large measure of responsi­ bility for what is done to the lives of all the characters

69GB, vol. I, p. 307 156 in the novel. As a Pantalone figure, he stands at the center of The Golden Bowl, and in his quiet way, causes the tragi­ comic sequence of events that shatter his daughter’s golden bowl. Throughout the novel Adam Verver exhibits a sort of youthful dotage which is almost senile, and which is gener­ ally characteristic of Pantalone. His almost comic self- love, his comic eccentricity, his timidity in front of women and reluctance to assume his social responsibilities sure very much Pantalone elements. From the moment that we first view him being almost chased around a billiard table by Mrs. Rance and rescued by Maggie, we recognize that his weaknesses are more than comic? they are also of dreadful consequence to those who attempt to serve him, even Charlotte and the Prince. From her point of observatioh, Fanny Assingham sug­ gests that "he may be stupid," though she admits that he may be "sublime.He hardly seems sublime, though he does finally prove to be formidable, even terrible, for Charlotte. Even his own daughter becomes aware of his terrible power, and relates her awareness in an image that might be a figura­ tive representation of a literal piece of Pantalone business- his leading an errant wife around by a rope. . . . the likeness of their connexion would n’t have been wrongly figured if he had been thought of as holding in one of his pocketed hands the end of a long silken halter looped round her beautiful neck. He did n’t twitch it, yet it was there? he did n’t drag

7°GB, vol. II, p. 135. 157 her, but she came; and these indications that I have described the Princess as finding extraordinary in him were two or three mute facial intimations which his wife’s presence did n’t prevent him addressing his daughter—nor prevent his daughter, as she passed, it was doubtless to be added, from flushing a little at the receipt of it. They amounted perhaps only to a wordless, wordless smile, but the smile was the soft shake of the twisted silken rope, and Maggie’s transla­ tion of it, held in her breast till she got well away, came out only, as if it might have been overheard, when some door was closed behind her. "Yes, you see— I lead her now by the neck, I lead her to her doom . . ."'A This image of Verver leading his wife by a silken rope so catches the essence of their relation, aptly illustrates Verver’s Pantalone-like situation, and fits the overall figurative structure of the golden bowl itself—via an allu­ sion to Ecclesiastes: "... ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken"—that James refers to it on three different occasions. It becomes the central image in Maggie’s perception of the Verver-Charlotte relation later in the novel as it becomes part of Verver’s "queer" costume; The thing that never failed now as an item in the pic­ ture was that gleam of the silken noose, his wife's immaterial tether, so marked to Maggie's sense during her last month in the country. Mrs. Verver's straight neck had certainly not slipped it; nor had the other end of the long cord—oh, quite conveniently long.' — disengaged its smaller loop from the hooked thumb that, with his fingers closed upon it, her husband kept out of sight. To have recognised, for all its tenuity, the play of this gathered lasso might inevitably be. to wonder with what magic it was twisted, to what tension subjected, but could never be in doubt either of.its adequacy to its office or of its perfect durability.72

7lGB, vol. II, p. 287. 72Ibid.. p. 331. 158 Maggie's dreadful sense of Charlotte's situation is contained within her conception of Verver*s powerfully deli­ cate "notose". She realizes that her cuckolded, gently demand­ ing, self-contained and old-fashioned father is choking Char­ lotte with his deceptively powerful control. Maggie has always sensed Charlotte’s rare beauty, her passionate and aggressive nature, and she is a reluctant witness to her mother-in-law's unwilling transformation into a beautiful piece in her father's collection, a votary at his temple of art. She watches as Charlotte becomes, in a more commonplace sense—and James evoked the appropriate Italian description— a beautiful "cicerone". a guide to Verver's magnificent col­ lection. In spite of her guilt, in spite of her violation of Maggie’s trust, Charlotte is being taken "to her doom." The sense of Verver's sinister quality is emphasized by the fact that it is communicated by his daughter, who loves him deeply all the while. Adam Verver's age, wealth, benevolently contrite dream, egotism, dreadful comicality, his young and unfaithful wife, his impotence and resultant "horns"—all contribute to the foundation of his character within the Pantalone type. James embellished the type with an ambiguous, even inscrutible, individuality in order to provide realistic trappings for his portrait. By perceiving his typicality we can pierce the realistic mask and discern his universal, characteristic function within the novel. Unlike Longdon of The Awkward Age, Adam Verver is more of a Pantalone figure than he is an 159 individual character, and the central movement of The Golden Bowl is very much a consequence of his type. The Capitano and Pantalone are the most clearly dis­ cernible of the types that James adapted from the commedia dell’arte tradition., The Dottore. or pedant, another of the major and most long-lived of the commedia dell’arte types, does not appear in What Maisie Knew. He is mentioned only briefly as a somewhat tedious theologian who is a dinner guest at Beccles in The Awkward Age, and receives a small comic mention in The Golden Bowl in the person of Father Mitchell. In this novel he is described as a "prattling, uninformed, but suspicious divine" with an almost parasitic delight in gastronomy as he sits with a "twiddle of thumbs over the satisfied stomach and the full flush, the comical candor, of reference to the hand employed at Fawns for mayonaise of Salmon."73 Another novel of the same period, Wings of the Dove, has its "Great Man", the ineffectual "Doctor of Medicine" who can only prescribe enjoyment to the failing Millie Theale. The pattern of the commedia dell’arte tradition does not animate Wings of the Dove, however, and understandably so. There is little comedy in Millie’s tragic story, and while there is an intrigue with sexual undertones, the novel has none of the major character types shared by What Maisie Knew, The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl. There are other character types out of the commedia

73GB, vol. II, p. 301. 160 dell'arte tradition in these three novels, hut because they are not major masks they are more difficult to define, and certainly more difficult to classify sharply. There are of course the foolish and comic meddlers somewhat in the tradi­ tion of zanni. like Mrs. Wix of What Maisie Knew. Mrs. Brook, Mitchy, and even Longdon of The Awkward Age, and the irre­ pressibly intriguing and sinisterly comic Fanny Assingham of The Golden Bowl. What Maisie Knew has two comic servette— Moddle and Susan Ash. We glimpse the manservant in The Awk­ ward Age, and the Principino's silent and attentive, but fre­ quently preempted, nurse in The Golden Bowl. In the commedia dell'arte tradition these servants would have fulfilled very central functions, both comic and sinister, but James shifted their conventional roles to the meddlesome fools mentioned above. There are also parasites in these novels, such as both Faranges in What Maisie Knew. Harold Brookenham and Lord Petherton of The Awkward Age, the Prince in The Golden Bowl, and lesser figures in all three novels. Lovers also abound in these novels, and hardly require enumeration. None of these types fit into one category alone, though they generally fit into those assigned above. The complication of their adaptive forms results from the fact that James was not writing farce, but complex moral tragi­ comedy and subtle satire, all with an ironic flavor of romance. This multifarious mode disperses and combines vari­ ous types and differing conventional functions, but the commedia dell'arte origin of the fundamental typologies is 161 still discernible. Mrs. Wix is "a figure mainly to laugh at" and is one of the major sources of comic relief in What Maisie Knew, a convenient device in James’s remarkable control of tone in the novel. A "droll dumb figure" with her outlandish and tasteless dress, her "straighteners", and her comic ignorance in the matter of "lessons", she is also a loving fairy-god- mother in the tradition of both the fairy-tale and the female harlequinade. She takes Maisie as her ward, and while she has less and obligation to remain true to her charge, Mrs. Wix is the only parental figure who finally respects her pledge of loyalty. "As droll as a charade or animal," Mrs. Wix is a case "indeed that the quality of her motive sur- passed the sharpness of her angles." Mrs. Beale likens Mrs. Wix’s pledge of loyalty to that of Mrs. Micawber’s, but it loses any comic quality when compared to the falseness of Maisie*s other supposed benefactors. On the other hand, Mrs. Wix might also be viewed as possessing a certain selfishness of motive, like most of the characters who people Maisie’s world. Along with most of the females in the hovel, Mrs. Wix has her designs on Sir Claude. Her "plan" is to have Sir Claude take her and Maisie off. For the most part she is subtle about her design, but she reveals her feelings toward him in a scene that is shockingly comic and pathetic to Maisie and Sir Claude. She is an

^WMK. p. 278. 162 ineffectual schemer, and her approach is vulgar and taste­ less, but like many incidents in the novel, also comic. The scene begins with Sir Claude’s rather innocent query as to why she is so out of humor over the fact that Mrs. Beale has obtained her divorce from Beale and is about to join them. Mrs. Wix met this challenge first with silence, then with a demonstration the most extraordinary, the most unexpected. Maisie could scarcely believe her eyes as she saw the good lady, with whom she had associated no faintest shade of any art of provocation, actually, after an upward grimace, give Sir Claude a great giggling insinuating naughty slap. "You wretch—you know whyi" And she turned away. The face that with this movement she left him to present to Maisie was to abide with his stepdaughter as the very image of stupefaction» but the pair lacked time to communicate either amusement or alarm before their admonisher was upon them again.75 Like one of the commedia dell’arte zanni, Mrs. Wix is capable of pursuit, design, and a great deal of comedy, but she also represents a moral depth in the novel of which the other adult characters fail. Even near the close of the novel, in the highly dramatic tug-of-war between Mrs. Wix and the "evil step-mother," which Sir Claude ineffectually officiates, she is less vulgar than she is heroic. Of the three characters, Mrs. Wix is the least motivated by selfish concerns. While it is pathetic that a child of Maisie’s inherent good sense and sensitivity has been virtually forced to live with such a harlequinesque and grotesquely comic figure, at least Mrs. Wix offers the element of the maternal that everyone else has failed to give. In her own bungling

73wmK, p. 256 163 and awkward way, Mrs. Wix defends Maisie from the evil pre­ sented by Mrs. Beale, the "evil step-mother" and courtesan. The zanni types of The Awkward Age, like Mitchy and Mrs. Brook, are less composite figures. Mitchy is, as he suggests, a figure out of "some Christmas pantomime: The Gnome and the Giant."' He is, as Mrs. Brook says, the one person in her circle most apt "to burst in with music and song." 1 Throughout his appearances in the novel, he engages in comic repartS and comic behavior. Like the Neapolitan Brighella, Mitchy is reported to be the son of a shoemaker, but he is not malicious and Minister. Like Mrs. Wix, he is one of the few characters in the novel to possess a "moral sense," though he never imposes it upon Mrs, Brook's circle. Everything about his aspect is in keeping with his clownish function, as James’s initial description of him shows: Mr. Mitchett had so little intrinsic appearance that an observer would have felt indebted for help in placing him to the rare prominence of his colourless eyes and the positive attention drawn to his chin by the precipi­ tation of its retreat from discovery. Dressed on the other hand not as gentlemen dress in London to pay their respects to the fair, he excited by the exhibition of garments that had nothing in common save the violence and the independence of their pattern a belief that in the desperation of humility he wished to render public his having thrown to the winds the effort to please. It was written all over him that he had judged once for all his personal case and that, as his character, super­ ficially disposed to gaiety, deprived him of the resources of shyness and shade, the effect of comedy might not escape him if secured by a real plunge. There

76AA» P* 361« 77Ibid.. p. 422. 164 was comedy therefore in the form of his pot-hat and the colour of his spotted shirt, in the systematic disagreement, above all, of his waistcoat and trousers. If any character of James could ever be said to wear motley, it is Mitchy. It is part of James’s conscious pains to graphically illustrate Mitchy’s comic effect, just as he had done with Mrs. Wix in What Maisie Knew, and would later do with Fanny Assingham of The Golden Bowl. Mitchy is a clown. He is deterministically forced to assume the role in spite of his inner sadness, morality, sensitivity, and his own personal tragedy. Even Nanda, who most appreciates his essential "exquisite goodness", cannot take him seriously as a suitor. His final declaration of love is treated as the foolish knight-errantry of a clown, and Nanda refers him to the patient pursuit of his unfaithful wife. Like many commedia dell'arte clowns, Mitchy also has a slightly sinister element that he reveals when his final declaration takes the form of a plea for an extra-marital relationship. Nanda looks upon Mitchy's vague suggestion that she join the circle of sexual intrigue with even less favor than she had enter­ tained his early overtures of marriage. Mitchy would have liked to play the fairy-godmother, but Nanda turned to Mr. Longdon instead, then he attempts a more sinister liaison. Longdon’s Pantalone type allows him to fulfill a fairy- godmother function, while such a role can also be played by an Arlecchino. Longdon certainly is not the latter to the degree

78AA, p. 78. 165 that he manifests Pantalone * s dream of benevolence, and he therefore is not a zanni. Mrs. Brook is such a zanni, perhaps more than any other character in the three novels. She is a leader of the comic revels, full of sinister comedy and intrigue, particu­ larly in the tradition of Brighella rather than Arlecchino, Her mechanations are almost malicious as she sacrifices human sympathy for her own amusement and that of her circle. While she does not generally instigate the various intrigues that permeate her circle, she does abet them and cause anguish and disappointment to the central sensitive characters of the novel. Within her role as an intriguer, she is herself an innamorata—through her pursuit of Vanderbank, and a para- site--as she attempts to teach her progeny to live off others. Harold is a much better student of her lessons in parasitism than Nanda, though Nanda is ultimately forced to avail her­ self of Longdon's generosity. It is through Mrs. Brook's manipulations that Nanda's suit for Vanderbank, and Longdon’s benevolent design for her, is thwarted. At the same time she is a constant source of witty tricks and talk, leading some critics to see her as James’s real heroine.79 80James did think Mrs. Brook was "the best thing I’ve ever done," and he did invest her with

79Por instance: Dupee, Henry James, pp. 197-198» and Canby, Turn West. Turn East, p. 218. 80November 12, 1899. Letter to Henrietta Reubell. Letters, vol. I, p. 333. 166 amiability, wit, and courage, but also with pretention, self­ ishness, and a lack of sensitivity. By consciously convinc­ ing Longdon that she and her circle are a corrupting: influ­ ence on her daughter, by taking for herself the one man that Nanda wants--even though she does secure Nanda’s financial future—Mrs. Brook is hardly motivated by the highest maternal values. She does risk losing her precious circle by these manipulations, but we are finally led to suppose that the sinisterly comic society is triumphant. Mrs. Brook is at last rid of the embarassing presence of a sixteen year-old daughter, and a financial liability as well. Her circle will probably sink further into the clammy and grotesque comedy of the London society that it represents. Mrs. Brook is among the most sinister of Jamesian heroines, and while her draw­ ing room wit may charm many readers, it fails to justify the essential shabbiness of her motives and the conventional Jamesian evil that she represents. If ever a James character selfishly used others or committed a "violation of the human heart,” it is Mrs. Brook. Fanny Assingham, of The Golden Bowl, is a more comical representative of this meddlesome evil. Quentin Anderson 81 perhaps exaggerates the scatalogical meaning of her name, but it is most likely that James was very much aware of the derisive and comical implications of his choice. His elaborate

81 Quentin Anderson, The American Henry James (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutger’s University Press, 1957)» p. 289, n. 7. 16? lists of names, and the relish with which he focused on those that appealed, should indicate that "Fanny Assingham" was the product of conscious thought and some degree of contempt for the character he had conceived. Like Mrs. Wix and Mr. Mitchett, Fanny Assingham is a figure of humorous aspect. "Her richness of hue, her gener­ ous nose, her eyebrows marked like those of an actress . . . an added amplitude of person . . . she looked as if her most active effort might be to take up, as she lay back, her mando- 8? lin, or to share a sugared fruit with a pet gazelle." Like an actress from the pantomime she is colorful and exotic, theatrically comic in her quantity of cloth and plentitude of jewels, which brings to mind James’s portrait of Ida Farange, Overall, "it was her theory that nature itself had overdressed her and that her only course was to drown, as it was hopeless to chasten, the overdressing."83

For all her almost tropical lushness and comedy, Fanny Assingham should be noticed for her bungling, if well-intended, manipulation of other characters’ fates. She is Prince Ameri­ go's "original sponsor", his "fairy-godmother" in the tradi­ tion of Arleechina, and is very much responsible for bringing together all the characters and the resultant, almost inevit­ able, consequences of such relations. Given her knowledge of

82GB, vol. I, p. 34. 83lbid. 168 the Ververs, and the Amerigo/Charlotte history, a more pru­ dent "fairy-godmother" would have avoided exercising her meddlesome talents. Yet, given her type, she perhaps simply fits the overall inevitable march of action in the novel. In spite of this novelistic pre-destination, however, she should still be judged for her actions. She judges herself late in the novel, as she says to her Capitano husband: "one was no doubt a meddlesome fools one always is, to think one sees people's lives for them better than they see them 84 for themselves." Her complicity in their affairs finally makes it impossible for her to do anything helpful for them once the course of events is well-established, and she can only amuse and worry herself about the possible consequences of her matchmaking. In her efforts to serve those whom she likes, Fanny Assingham ironically causes considerable diffi­ culty and harm, much as her commedia dell'arte ancestors. James gives this tradition of comic disservice a tragic twist, as Fanny Assingham’s function demonstrates, in order to suit his own ethical sensibility. Mrs. Brook is more consciously evil, and Mrs. Wix is generous and without malice. While all three are quite far removed from the commedia dell'arte in terms of their realism, they represent alternative functions of the Arlecchina type. They are examples of what James described as "the fools who minister,

8/*GB, vol. I, p. 388. 169 at a particular crisis, to the intensity of the free spirit engaged with them."8^ Not only do such fools minister, but as the cases of Mrs. Brook and Fanny Assingham exemplify, they often meddle in the lives of those free spirits, some­ times with tragic consequences. James's character types that are less directly mani­ pulative of the fates of his central characters are perhaps best categorized as parasites. The parasite chiefly derives from Greek Middle Comedy, and James's representations of the type have little to do with the kind of parasitism exhibited by these early predecessors. Only Father Mitchell, of The Golden Bowl, portrays the conventional interest in food. James's parasites are more modern versions, for the most part, largely in search of money rather than of more conven­ tional sustenance. These are the types who live off the generosity or gullibility of others while contributing nothing of value themselves. They are employed by James to represent the general lack of spiritual values in the "philis­ tine vista" of society that he perceived—from the virtual prostitution of Mrs. Beale in What Maisie Knew, through the borrowing and thievery of Harold Brookenham in The Awkward Age, to Prince Amerigo’s fortune hunting and sexual opportun­ ism in The Golden Bowl. Mrs. Beale, the former Miss Overmore, is a charming example of the type, while she also functions in the convention

85'Notebooks, p. 129. 170 of innamorata. Mrs. Wix informs Maisie that Mrs. Beale's 86 method of existence consists of living off other men. This is no small matter in Maisie's education, and she even begins to understand the nature of Mrs. Beale's ability to achieve what she desires» "There was a phrase familiar to Maisie, so often was it used by this lady to express the idea of one's getting what one wanted» one got it—Mrs. Beale always said she at all events always got it or proposed to get it—by 'making love.'"®7 We are given to understand that Beale is governed by a similar standard, particularly when he seems so oblivious to Mrs. Cuddon's grotesqueness because of her wealth. He had squandered what little money Ida had brought to their marriage, then set out in pursuit of more. Miss Overmore’s designing allure momentarily diverted him from his quest, but he finally gains his ends. Harold Brookenham and Lord Petherton of The Awkward Age are obvious versions of the parasitic type. Petherton's "pleasant brutality" enables him to live off the benevolence of Mitchy and to prey upon women. Mr. Longdon’s perception of him as a bestial parasite is captured in his initial description» When the elephant in the show plays the fiddle it must be mainly with the presumption of consequent apples; which was why, doubtless, this personage had half the time the air of assuring you that, really civilized as his type had now become, no apples were required.88

86WMK. p. 299. 87Ibid., p. 300. ®®AA, p. 242. 171 Despite his civilized and "brutal geniality", the "presumption of consequent apples" is still evident in Lord Petherton’s type, and Mitchy supplies them in abundance. His amusing tricks and entertainments are as dependent on reward as were those of his classical ancestors. Harold Brookenham is even more clearly drawn after the conventional parasite, though he may be less successful than Petherton. He lacks Petherton*s pleasant formula, but he is otherwise a tribute to James’s powers of adaptation. Parasites have always been inveterate gate-crashers, and Harold is no exception. Furthermore, he subsists by "borrow­ ing" five-pound notes from members of the circle, such as Cashmore, and even steals them from his mother. He is por­ trayed with a consistent sinister quality that is evident from James’s original description of him» "He was small and had a slight stoop which somehow gave him character—charac­ ter of the insidious sort carried out in the acuteness, difficult to trace to a source, of his smooth fair face, where the lines were all curves and the expression all needles. He had the voice of a man of forty and was dressed— as if markedly not for London--with an air of experience that seemed to match it.”89 He attempts to explain away his theft» "you should have locked it before, don’t you know? It grinned at me there with all its charming brasses, and

89AA, p. 41. 172 on what was I to do?"7 Mrs. Brook acts outraged at this latest evidence of her son's perverted sense of values, but then ironically proceeds to instruct him in the art of wheedling invitations and generally imposing himself upon others. In the space of one short scene we are presented with Harold’s parasitic nature and understand that he is the crowning achievement of his mother's teachings. Harold is the product of his environment and achieves a sort of pathos when we recognize the truth of his state­ ment that "you know you try to make me do things you would n’t at all do yourself.”9^ At the same time he is also comic, and James catches this comedy in his choice of imagery, as Harold feels "one might get a five-pound note as one got a light from a cigarette."7 At the close of the novel Harold seems to have had more success at his "business," and James personifies him as looking as "clear go and crisp and undefiled as a fresh five-pound note."7-7 He is perhaps the most concrete example of the parasitic type in all James's fiction, even more so than the infamous Moreens of "The Pupil." With less superficial sinister qualities than Harold, less brutality than Petherton, and less general coarseness

9°AA, p. 42,• 91Ibid.. P. 44. 92Ibid.. P. 159. 93lbid.. P. 391. 173 than Beale Farange, Prince Amerigo of The Golden Bowl pur­ sues Verver's wealth and receives "favors" from Verver’s wife in the most sophisticated parasitic manner. He may have a finer stock of original intentions than any of the previous figures, because he initially seems to desire a general reformation of his own character. We first view him, and perceive his thoughts, in this light. The young man’s movements . . . betrayed no consistency of attention—not even, for that matter, when one of his arrests had proceeded from the possibilities in faces shaded, as they passed him on the?pavement, by huge beribboned hats, or more delicately tinted still under the tense silk of parasols held at perverse angles in waiting victorias. And the Prince’s undirected thought was not a little symptomatic, since, though the turn of the season had come and the flush of the streets begun to fade, the possibilities of faces, on the August afternoon, were still one of the notes of the scene. He was too restless—that was the fact—for any concentration, and the last idea that would just now have occurred to him in any connection was the idea of pursuit. He had been pursuing for six months as never in his life before, and what had actually unsteadied him, as we join him, was the sense of how he had been justified. Capture had crowned the pursuit—or success, as he would otherwise have put it, had rewarded virtue . . .94 The Prince’s virtue has been assumed in order to achieve success with Verver during the "negotiations", and to more generally express his gratitude to Maggie and her father for the gift of wealth and the good fortune of Maggie’s beauty as well. Most critics agree with Oscar Car­ gill’s interpretation of the Prince, who, as Cargill says, "like his ancestor, Amerigo, too, is a searcher, not for any

94GB. vol. I, pp. 3-4. 174 pristine land in the West, but for the American formula for marital happiness."*9 3 Such an idealized conception of both

Amerigos ignores the overpowering financial lure of their respective quests. It is of paramount importance to the lives of the characters in the novel that Prince Amerigo has rejected love in favor of money. His value system contains no explanation for the Verver’s acceptance of his suit; he can't imagine what he offers them in compensation for their money and general appreciation. Nor can he understand why Fanny Assingham has "made his marriage, quite as truly as his papal ancestor had made his family ... He had neither bribed nor persuaded Q6 her."7 He resolves to attempt self-reformation in order to be worthy of the trust of all three, a resolution that passes with the proximity of Charlotte’s beauty and passion. Thus, the one compensation he hopes to offer the Ververs is fleet­ ing, and he is ultimately a parasite who suffers the father and daughter to be separated. Of course he does offer the Ververs things of which he isn't conscious. Verver enjoys him as a work of art with ancient and beautiful European roots, and Maggie is compensated in a rather shallowly adoles cent fashion, as is demonstrated later in the novel* "she never admired him so much, or so found him heartbreakingly handsome, clever, irresistible, in the very degree in which

930scar Cargill, The Novels of Henry James (New York* Macmillan Co., 1961), p. 390. Hereafter, Cargill. 93GB, vol. I, p. 21. 175 he had originally and fatally dawned upon her, as when she saw other women reduced to the same passive pulp that had 97 then begun, once for all, to constitute her substance." Of course the Prince even views himself as a parasite, but that awareness is handsomely concealed beneath his cosmo­ politanism and overt good nature. Superficially he is the romantic lover, the of the fairy-tale, but he hardly belongs to romance. There are a great number of Lovers in What Maisie Knew. The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl. As one of the general type, Prince Amerigo deserves notice, but there are others also requiring attention. The Lovers of the commedia dell'arte tradition were very often the subject of romantic treatment, and were usually sincere in their highly conven­ tional affection. The Lovers in James are of course less conventionalized, and more apt to be comic or even sinister. They seldom recite dialogue in terms of "set speeches" or strike the conventional poses expected of the commedia dell'arte tradition—most of which were derived from the fairy-tale, the romance, and the pastoral. The pastoral scenes of James's novels are much less romantic interludes than they are blends of the irony, comedy, and tragedy of their respective plots. While the commedia dell'arte tradi­ tion, with its greater episodic structure, freely admitted a pastoral scene, or a broadly farcical and irrelevant piece,

97GB. vol. H, p. 63. 176 in a scenario dominated by a different mode, James’s concep­ tion of the novel required a tightness and consistency of tone and subject. Thus, in the pastoral interlude of the Kensington Gardens scene in What Maisie Knew, the two idyllic lovers perceived by Maisie and Sir Claude ironically material­ ize as the sinister innamorata. Ida Farange, and her Capitano lover. What begins as romantic fairy-tale ends in sinister and ironic comedy. In The Awkward Age, when Vanderbank and Nanda meet in the garden, the fabric of romance deteriorates before our tragic realization, and Nanda’s as well, that Vanderbank will fulfill Mrs. Brook’s prediction and "never come to scratch.” The pastoral scenes of The Golden Bowl are highly ironic in that the participants are seldom conventional lovers, but most generally Verver and his daughter, or Char­ lotte and Maggie. The pairing of the father and daughter ironically presents their intimacy, while their spouses are elsewhere, presumably together, as when they are viewed on the balcony at Fawns after one such interlude between father and daughter. When Charlotte and Maggie are paired in a pas­ toral scene, the idyllic setting heightens the tension of the conflict between the two and also emphasizes the relative isolation of the two from their mutual object of affection, Prince Amerigo. When Charlotte and Amerigo are together at Matchum the pastoral is again fraught with tension and sinister overtones, even though they do have their day of freedom at Gloucester. There are a number of pastoral and romantic settings in the three novels, but the settings are 177 not peopled with conventional lovers. Such scenes are con­ tinually ironized by James’s art, in the sense that those characters who take part are involved in relations of some "queerness"—whether it be as father and daughter, adulterers, young girls and older men (as with Sir Claude and Maisie at various junctures). The few innocent lovers from the romantic tradition are rejected, like Nanda, or deceived, like Maggie. In his presentation of romantic love, James truly cultivated his "imagination of disaster."9® Prince Amerigo is certainly no conventional lover out of the tradition of romance or the fairy-tale, even though he superficially qualifies as a Prince Charming. His para­ sitic nature precludes such a flattering possibility, and his princeliness is simply an ironic device. If any of the conventional masks of the commedia dell’arte tradition could be said to serve as a model for Amerigo, it would perhaps be the sinister Brighella. though this would grossly over­ simplify his origins. The sophisticated Prince is no nine­ teenth century Neapolitan rogue, but for all his beautiful Tuscan manners and art, there can be no doubt that he is an Italian rogue of a more general order. He is an amalgam of the conventional possibilities of the Italian male type, as James perceived it* one part parasite, another part lover, and a third part beautiful Italian artifice. Prince Amerigo

9®J. A. Ward, The Imagination of Disaster* Evil in the Fiction of Henry James (Lincoln. Nebr.* University of Nebraska Press, 1961). 178 is perhaps a fitting figure with which to close this study of the Italian character types in Henry James’s What Maisie Knew, The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl. Amerigo is best described in terms of his three major characteristics—his moral weakness, his concern merely with forms and appearances, and his male chauvinistic, pas­ sive parasitism. He recognizes the first of these failings himself. It has been brought to his consciousness by the immediacy of the Ververs* essential American morality, and he pleads with Fanny Assingham to be his constant measure of moral behavior, his "fairy-godmother." When she asks him why he needs her help, he explains that there is a "flaw" in his composition. "I should be interested," she presently remarked, "to see some sense you don’t possess." Well, he produced one on the spot. "The moral, dear Mrs. Assingham. I mean always as you others consider it. I’ve of course something that in our poor dear backward old Rome sufficiently passes for it."99 As we later learn of Fanny Assingham, however, while she may have the moral sense of her American race, she "cares rather little if people are wicked." Of course that something Amerigo has which "sufficiently passes" for the moral sense is his old-world preoccupation with manners and forms. He is continually aware of appearances, but not at all concerned with the underlying . "He liked all signs that things were well, but he cared rather less why

99GB, vol. I, p. 31. 179 they were."100 His polished and charming exterior manners are very like the golden bowl itself, supplying one of the major implications of the symbol, because they only conceal the flawed crystal beneath the gilt. Because appearances are his prime concern, when the Ververs countenance his con­ tinual "going about" with Charlotte he finds the situation perfectly comfortable, even after Charlotte’s aggressive suggestions and designs begin to weaken his resolve. As long as things seem to be well, he feels no sense of guilt or wrong. Sometimes his concern with forms and appearances is merely a matter of class consciousness and prejudice. James’s Bloomsbury shopkeeper is, as Oscar Cargill notes, a "deliberate effort to combat Anti-Semitism."101 He is charming, cosmopolitan in his own right, and finally honest, but Amerigo’s reaction to him, while it may not be Anti- Semitic, is certainly another measure of his inner character "One kind of shopman was just like another to him ... He took throughout always the meaner sort for granted—the night of their meanness, or whatever name one gave it for him, made all his cats gray. He did n’t, no doubt, want to hurt them, but he imaged them no more than if his eyes acted only for the level of his own high head." 102 For all his

10°SB. vol. 1» pp. 138-139 101Cargill, p. 437, n. 40. 102gb, vol. I, p. 105. 180 own supposed Jacobean tendencies, Henry James was incapable of Amerigo's insensitivity, as is particularly evidenced by The Princess Casamassima. This minor note on the Prince's character almost amounts to an unfavorable Jamesian intru­ sion. It is a small matter, however, when compared to James’s overall pejorative characterization of Amerigo, particularly that aspect dealing with Amerigo’s passive parasitism. Amerigo is not only parasitic in terms of Verver's wealth, but always in terms of his relations with the opposite sex as well. For the most part he views women as objects that can be relegated to the capacity for love* his "notion of recompense to women . . . was more or less to make love to them."103 Maintaining appearances always, he is generally eager to gain what he can from them—whether services or something more intimate. Only his overtly passive manner, which is a studied pose, keeps him from being obviously seen as a rogue and pursuer. From the very first re-encounter with Charlotte at Fanny Assingham's, he is anxious to dis­ cover the degree of her old passion. He endeavors to find out even at the risk of betraying his manners. The Prince was quite aware at this moment that departure, for himself, was indicated? the question of Miss Stant's installation did n't demand his presence; it was a case for one to go away—if one had n’t a reason for staying. He had a reason, however—of that he was equally aware; and had n’t for a good while done anything more conscious and intentional than not quickly to take leave. His visible insistence—for it came to that—demanded of him a certain disagreeable effort, the sort of effort he had

103GB, vol. I, p. 21-22. 181 mostly associated with acting for an idea. His idea was there, his idea was to find out something, something he wanted much to know, and to find out now to-morrow, not at some future time, not in short with waiting and wondering, but if possible before quitting the place. *-°4 He later says that he had simply wanted to know "where he was, safely," but the ramifications of another intention are evident and borne out by the balance of the novel. Even at this early juncture, Amerigo approvingly examines her form and figure, all of which he acknowledges a familiarity with. For the moment he conceals his appreciation, while Charlotte somewhat reveals that hers is unchanged. The Prince's strategy at this point, and throughout the novel, is to maintain an outward passivity and let things come to him as they always have and doubtless always will. Not to be flurried was the kind of consistency he wanted, just as consistency was a kind of dignity. And why could n't he have dignity when he had so much of the good conscience, as it were, on which such advantages rested. He had done nothing he ought n't—he had in fact done nothing at all. Once more, as a man conscious of having known many women, he could assist, as he would have called it, at the recurrent, the predestined phenomenon, the thing always as certain as sunrise or the coming round of saint's days, the doing by the woman of the thing that gave her away. She did it, ever, inevitably, infallibly—she could n't possibly not do it. It was her nature, it was her life, and the man could always expect it without lifting a finger. This was his, the man's, any man's, position and strength— that he had necessarily the advantage, that he only had to wait with a decent patience to be placed, in spite of himself, it might really be said, in the right. ... it produced pity and profit."105

1(%B, vol. I, p. 48. 1Q5ibid.. pp. 49-50. 182 This passage demonstrates the turn of mind which makes Amerigo representative of a kind of passive evil. He does not manipulate people in the manner of conventional Jamesian , but merely allows people to make their mistakes, to his profit. He uses women only in so far as they are willing to be used, but is certain of his success. As he later notes, "he had after all gained much more from women than he had ever lost by them ... a balance in his favor that he could i nA pretty well take for granted." Thus, while he takes the "meaner sort" such as the Bloomsbury shopman for granted in one sense, he also has come to take women for granted, and he will whenever he can avoid abusing appearances. He would help her, would arrange with her—to any point in reason; the only thing was to know what appearance would best be produced and best be preserved. Produced and preserved on her part of course, since on his own there had been luckily no folly to cover up, nothing but a perfect accord between conduct and obligation. While Amerigo reflects on his former relation with Charlotte and attempts to perceive what the future will bring, he absolves himself from responsibility for any liaison. His studied mastery of the passive pose, his self- assurance that whatever "mistakes" made will result from the action of the woman, demonstrates his posture throughout the novel. We can suppose that this behavior governed his former affair with Charlotte as well. While passive, he is inevit­ ably fortunate. It is the confidence of a pursuer. He may

106GB, vol. I, p. 351. 1Q7Ibid.. p. 50. 183 no longer "mark off", as he says, the women to whom he has made love, but he is no bastion of moral restraint and trust. He feels that Charlotte has had her previous "folly", and through his passivity, he allows her to suffer the conse­ quences of a further one during the course of the novel. Even after Maggie has discovered the affair, Prince Amerigo makes no admission of guilt, no acknowledgement of wrong­ doing. He reflects his displacement of responsibility in his statement to Maggie* "She ought to have known you . . . she ought to have understood you better. . . . She’s stupid:"108 109

Charlotte recognizes his nature, and tells him that 109 she is aware of his method* "passive then—not active." Yet she is willing to take her risks, and Prince Amerigo’s supposition of inevitable good fortune, the male "position and strength," proves correct. As he says of his own pas­ sive plan, at the prospect of spending time with Charlotte at the inn in Gloucester* "He had n’t struggled, not snatched; he was taking what had been given him} the pearl dropped itself, with its exquisite quality and rarity straight into his hand."110

After the celebrated kiss scene—and the consummation of their relationship that it represents—Prince Amerigo

108GB, vol. II, pp. >7-348. 109Ibid.. vol. I, p. 302.

110Ibid.. p. 347. 184

indulges in a rationalization in order to allay the guilt he may feel in regard to his violation of Verver and Maggie’s trust. He blames them, as many critics have, for placing him in a situation where he could hardly contradict the natural impulses of a man. What was supremely grotesque in fact was the essential opposition of theories—as if a galantuomo, as he at least constitutionally conceived of galantuomini, could do anything but blush to 'go about' at such a rate with such a person as Mrs. Verver in a state of childlike innocence, the state of our primitive parents before the Fall.Ill Amerigo has little cause to blush because of his primitiveness, for neither he nor Charlotte is innocent, but his rationalizing does reveal a quality of character that is too often ignored. It may be true that his relation with Charlotte is an inevitable consequence of Adam Verver's char­ acter and Maggie's filial devotion, but it also results from his conception of what constitutes a galantuomo and from Charlotte's aggressive sexuality. His affair is a natural outgrowth of his own weaknesses of character, but he rationalizes the blame and justifies his actions in a manner that is reflected in an early judgment of his relations with women: "why should he be ashamed of it?--he knew but one way with the fair. They had to be fair—and he was fastidi­ ous and particular, his standard was high; but when once this was the case what relation with them was conceivable, what relation was decent, rudimentary, properly human, but *

111‘GB. vol. I, p. 335. 185 no that of a plain interest in the fairness?" The Prince is more than a conventional lover, because he is a conventional, chauvinistic rogue. This is further represented by his patronizing treatment of Maggie. He attempts to distract her from her dawning suspicions with his wonderfully effective "hugs", but Maggie’s aroused aware­ ness resists the powerful potion of his embrace, and she temporarily avoids being reduced to a "pulp". She recog­ nizes his intent» "And what her husband’s grasp really meant, as her very bones registered, was that she should give it up» it was exactly for this that he had resorted to unfail ing magic. He knew how to resort to it—he could be on occa­ sion, so munificent a lover."113112 114She has begun to know him at this point, and is to know him even further. His sinister qualities are sometimes very evident to her, though she often remains reducible to a "pulp" and tries to ignore his darker qualities. Her discomfort over Amerigo’s character is evident toward the close of the novel when she begins to sympathize with the manner in which Charlotte has been iso­ lated. She cannot understand how he can refuse Charlotte some succor» "He ought to wish to see her," she says, and wonders how he could so abandon one that he has loved. 114 She is also shocked when Amerigo calls Charlotte stupid»

112GB, vol. I, p. 165. ll3Ibid.. vol. II, p. 56. 114Ibid., p. 331 186 "•O-ohJ’ Maggie protested in a long wail."„111315 She never fully realizes the nature of his sinister chauvinism, how­ ever, as in spite of her recognition of evil, she remains somewhat idealistic and romantic. She fails to understand that Amerigo simply does not love Charlotte and that he has only taken advantage of his good fortune. Fanny Assingham serves as a foil to Maggie’s ultimate failure to understand Amerigo, as she recognizes that he never really loved Char­ lotte» "I mean men don’t, when it has all been too easy. That’s how, in nine cases out of ten, a woman is treated who has risked her life." l_l6 Such a conventional statement also emphasizes Amerigo’s nature as a conventional rogue. Prince Amerigo is, then, a parasitic conventional rogue without moral principle. He is motivated largely by his civilized concern for appearances, and his fundamentally passive hedonism. He is principally designed to "beguile large leisure" of all sorts. Governing all his relationships with others—wife, father-in-law, lover, and friends—is his characteristic manner of taking things for granted. Maggie momentarily checks his good fortune by her triumph over Charlotte, but one wonders if she can ever restore the golden bowl of her marriage now that she has begun to per­ ceive the flaw in Amerigo’s crystal. In short, Prince Amerigo has begun to educate Maggie into the fact that * 6

113GB, vol. II, p. >8. ll6Ibid.. vol. I, p. 399. 187 "everything is terrible" within the heart of man. Even if there is triumph and gain at the close of the novel, there is also this knowledge, and the ambiguity of The Golden Bowl is very much due to Amerigo’s sinister roguishness. Henry James did not rely only on character typology, and the inevitable sexual intrigue which resulted, in creating the underlying pattern that he adapted from the commedia dell’arte tradition. The spectacle of that tradi­ tion also offered a profitable array of conventions, devices, and theatrical off-shoots that could be incorporated figura­ tively into What Maisie Knew. The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl. The large number of the images in these novels that manifest elements of the commedia dell’arte tradition testi­ fies to James’s conscious intention of lending a supporting backdrop to the pattern of character types and sexual intrigues. The commedia dell'arte tradition per se is hardly the sole source of James's imagery in these novels, nor are the images which relate to that tradition used exclusively in only What Maisie Knew. The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl, but there is a significance in the frequency and par­ ticular pattern of such images in these novels that is unlike the figurative scheme in any other James novels. Moreover, this pattern of imagery is not the dominant imagery in each novel. The Golden Bowl is of course dominated by the image of the golden bowl itself, and the entire related series of gold and gilt cups with their various metaphoric and symbolic functions. All three novels have flower imagery, art 188 imagery, architecture, literary, financial, and sea imagery which are usually unrelated in any particular manner to the commedia dell'arte tradition. There is, however, a strong strain of imagery which does form a pattern related to that tradition—imagery taken from the circus, fairy-tale, bestial­ ity, and the broad spectrum of theatre. Some imagery that is not specifically from the tradition, does relate in more indirect ways. For instance, the war imagery of these novels is usually used in the context of the Capitano types, and therefore does contribute to the underlying pattern. This is a fairly minor strain, however, unlike the circus and fairy-tale imagery. Austen Warren was among the first to note that there is a significant pattern of circus imagery in Thé Golden Bowl. but he failed to note a similar pattern in What Maisie Knew and The Awkward Age as well; a pattern which helps to unite these three novels in terms of method and intention. There is other circus imagery in James’s work—one such image is found in (p. 96), another in "" (p. 384), and a few in The Wings of the Dove, but these are not part of a more general pattern. When examining such images in What Maisie Knew. The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl, we should be reminded of the circus element in the commedia dell'arte tradition. As Sprinchorn suggests, the commedia dell'arte was "a circus with a plot." 117 Such was

1170reglia, p. xiii. 189 James's earliest impression of the tradition which he viewed at Niblo's Gardens in his youth, a tradition which formed his "earliest aesthetic seeds." While superficially unlike their commedia dell'arte forebears, James’s characters are frequently as agile and quick, for similar purposes of per­ sonal survival as well as entertainment. The acrobatics of James’s characters, however, are of a different sort—those of the mind and emotions—but daring and perilous all the same. James marshalled much of the later imagery to create this sense of his characters as figurative acrobats. What Maisie Knew contains the least number of circus images of the three novels, but they are among the most sig­ nificant in kind. One of the minor circus images compared Maisie’s situation between Sir Claude and Mrs. Beale to "being perched on a prancing horse." 118 This foreshadows figurative equestrian feats running throughout The Awkward Age and The Golden Bowl. Sir Claude supports the circus context of Maisie’s perilous ride in a later reference to her situation as "a pretty bad circus." This occurs as he and Maisie escape to Kensington Gardens rather than face Mrs Beale's ill temper.111819 The "pretty bad circus" accompanies Maisie wherever she goes, and her six month sojourns with Ida also have their circus element. Maisie senses this in the behavior of her mother’s curious lovers who parade

118WMK, p. 132. 119Ibid.. p. 139. 190 through the school room in order to view evidence of Ida's incongruous maternity—"the visitor's grimace grew more marked as he continued to look, and the conscious little school room felt still more like a cage at a menagerie." 120 In this way Maisie becomes increasingly aware of the sense in which she is indeed a "poor little monkey," a description supplied by a distant relative of Ida's who has witnessed the divorce trial and its strange settlement. As Maisie becomes more conscious of the cage she is placed in, a cage contrived almost equally by Sir Claude and Mrs. Beale as it is by Ida, she begins to recognize how she is being used. The circus element is utilized by James to present Maisie's recognition of evil in others. When she becomes aware of Mrs. Beale's selfish motives, Maisie describes her step-mother's manipulation of others as "a juggler's trick, in the interest of which nothing so much mattered as the new convenience of Mrs. Beale." 122 She encounters evil, and becomes conscious of it as never before, at "the thingumbob at Earl's Court," which coalesces the circus and bestial elements of the novel into a literal circus—"a collection of extraordinary foreign things in tremendous gardens, with illuminations, bands, elephants, switchbacks and side-shows.no incident in the novel so provides

120WMK. p. 93. 121Ibid.. p. 5. 122Ibid., p. 302. 123lbid.. p. 166. 191 Maisie with "illuminations" as this, nor does the "switch- back", or roller coaster, of Maisie's life and the novel’s plot ever take a greater plunge into evil. The confronta­ tion with Beale and his brown lady outrages Mrs. Beale, though her own lover stands at the back of the crowd during this interval, and Maisie’s later reflections begin to pierce the various ironies and strategies in which she has been an unconscious participant. Moreover, while she was drawn to Ida's Capitano in the parallel scene at Kensington Gardens, she is terrified by Mrs. Cuddon’s grotesque brutality and Beale's subjugation. The commedia dell’arte tradition utilized blackface, or black masks, to represent sinister and evil qualities in character, and Mrs. Cuddon's color is conventionally symbolic in the same tradition, rather than having racial overtones. Her bestiality and "plumage" also define her symbolically sinister quality, just as they did in the commedia dell’arte tradition. With Maisie's recogni­ tion of evil in the Countess, comes the further recognition 124 that "Papa's Captain—yes—was the Countess," and the pat­ tern of evil around her becomes more sharply defined. This recognition occurs within the context of the circus imagery, and, as will be demonstrated later, within the imagery derived from the ironic fairy-tale as well. The intensity of Maisie's consciousness of evil within

12%MK. p. 193. 192 the circus context of the novel is nowhere as pronounced as it is in the "thingumbob" scene and the consequential inci­ dents that immediately follow, but it does appear in other scenes as well. Near the close of the novel, when Sir Claude and Maisie go out to breakfast after he has deliberately lied about being with Mrs. Beale during the night, the fabric of the circus again appears to re-enforce Maisie’s consciousness of evil. When they leave the hotel Maisie and Sir Claude hardly speak. Sir Claude is presumably conscious of being found out, and Maisie is embarrassed by his discomfort and pondering her now well-founded suspicions. In the midst of her consciousness that she has been placed in a "wrong rela­ tion," Maisie and Sir Claude breakfast at a restaurant with "a floor sprinkled with bran in a manner that gave it for Maisie something of the added charm of a circus}" and she is struck with "the white-aproned waiter" who performs "as nimbly with plates and saucers as a certain conjurer her friend had in London taken her to a music-hall to see." 125 Beneath the drollery of this atmosphere, Maisie is again becoming conscious of evil. Throughout the interval Maisie recognizes that Sir Claude is attempting to "imitate the old London play-times, to imitate indeed a relation that had wholly changed" with the advent of his deep and sinister involvement with Mrs. Beale. She knows the tone of "his jesting postponing perverting voice," and has a premonition

123WMK, p. 324. 193 of the sacrifice he is going to request of her. It reminds her of the manner in which her mother and her father cast her off, and while Sir Claude’s intention may not be the same, the effect is. She is being forced to align herself with Mrs. Wix and to "give up" Sir Claude, in the midst of a circus atmosphere, just as she had been forced to give up her father and mother earlier. All three scenes relate to the circus element. The first incident with Beale has its definite circus context. Ida's tone change and self-right­ eous abandonment of Maisie result from Maisie's question in regard to the Capitano. and we have seen Maisie's recognition that Ida’s Captain is like Beale's Countess. Finally, Sir Claude's lack of faith is presented in a circus context, and the fabric of Maisie's consciousness of evil is woven. What remains to be dramatized is her action upon that conscious­ ness in the climactic scene between Mrs. Beale and Mrs. Wix. Just as evil in What Maisie Knew is often presented in the figurative context of a circus, Mrs. Brook's brilli­ antly immoral circle in The Awkward Age is also described in terms of a figurative circus. As Mrs. Brook herself visual­ izes the circle and her function within it: "I don’t take in everything, but I take in all I can. That's a great affair in London today, and I often feel as if I were a circus- woman, in pink tights and no particular skirts, riding half a dozen horses at once."128 She is not the only circus 126

126AA. P. *-88. 194 performer of course, and her entire circle is included in the "company." "We're all in the troupe now, I suppose . . . and we must travel with the show."127 128Th 29e troupe is an obvi­ ously immoral manifestation of London society, and the per­ formance is particularly shocking to Longdon’s sensibility, which was formed in a more quiet, less spectacular, less vulgarly public milieu. Harold is a huckster and pick-pocket in the finest "carnie" tradition, and by bringing Nanda into the drawing room, Mrs. Brook is placing her in a position which is hardly irrelevant to Harold's life-style. She will eventually be forced to "live off" Longdon. As Mrs. Brook says of her, "she too has her little place with the circus— 1 po it's the way we earn our living." Even the quiet member of the troupe, Edward Brookenham, rises from his dullness to take a place in the circus. In the scene at Tishy Grendon's party in which Mrs. Brook successfully attempts her decisive blow in the effort to force Nanda on Mr. Longdon, Edward Brookenham is expected to speak on "cue." He misses it, and Mrs. Brook explains that "we had n't time for our usual rehearsal," so Edward had been left to his own devices with his stock "handkerchief tricks and six jokes." 1297 Edward failed to realize that Mrs. Brook's threat to take her daughter back into her circus-like circle so endangers Nanda

127AA, p. 188. 128Ibid.. p. 189. l29Ibid.. pp. 419-420. 195 with further corruption that Longdon is compelled to "rescue" her. It is not only the immediate family that belongs to the troupe of immoral players. Mitchy is, as has been seen, the clown who allows himself to be preyed upon by Lord Petherton and the Duchess, Lord Petherton, as we have also seen, is the parasitic "elephant in the show" who plays the fiddle with a "presumption of consequent apples." Van is a "" in a number of comic routines, and even little Aggie comes out "with a bound—into the arena" after her marriage to Mitchy.130 For all his bewildered outrage, Mr. Longdon demonstrates that Pantalone * s age does not preclude his own acrobatics, for he has a place in the troupe as well. Nanda likens his constant attendance to "his going round and round me as the acrobat on the horse in the circus goes around the clown." 137 1 His parallel role to that of Mrs. Brook places him as a rival of sorts. They represent differ­ ent styles of performance, with Mrs. Brook's "tights and no particular skirts" manifesting the more risque. Actually, of course, Mrs. Brook is as much a sinister ringleader in the circus as she is a performer. In this manner most of the characters in The Awkward Age are rendered in terms of the circus imagery which was first developed in What Maisie Knew. The context of evil * 131

13°AA, p. 386. 131Ibid.. p. 339. 196 within this figurative atmosphere of the circus is even more pronounced in Nanda's case. Therefore, in spite of the fact that The Awkward Age demonstrates James’s experiment with an almost totally objective novelistic form, there is still the conscious rendering of a figurative pattern of evil derived from the circus. While The Golden Bowl is slower-paced and less peopled with circus types, it also shares the figurative scheme of the other two novels and is replete with images that create an atmosphere and setting of the dramatic circus out of the commedia dell'arte tradition. Compared to the vast array of figurative images derived from other sources, the circus imagery of The Golden Bowl is less clearly discernible, but still manifests a conscious intention which relates it to What Maisie Knew and The Awkward Age. The first of such images concerns Fanny Assingham’s sinister meddling, and is ignorantly provided by Colonel Assingham*s "side-show" con­ ception of his wife’s manipulations« "He watched her accord­ ingly in her favorite element very much as he had sometimes watched at the Aquarium the celebrated lady who, in a slight, though tight, bathing suit, turned somersaults and did tricks in the tank of water."132 The brevity of the figurative costume has the same connotations as Mrs. Brook's scanty imagined circus outfit, and Fanny Assingham is also a ring­ leader as well as a performer. The fact that she is not quite *

132GB, vol. I, p. 65. 197 so much the former as Mrs. Brook makes her less sinister. Of course it is highly unlikely that the actual image is derived from the commedia dell'arte tradition in any direct sense, but aquatic acrobatics are only a technological remove from those of the circus element in the tradition. A circus image more clearly derived from the tradi­ tion growing out of the commedia dell'arte, and one which also emphasizes the connection between The Awkward Age and The Golden Bowl, as well as Mrs. Brook and Fanny Assingham, occurs a bit later: "Fanny Assingham might really have been there at all events, like one of the assistants in the ring at the circus, to keep up the pace of the sleek revolving animal on whose back the lady in the short spangled skirts should brilliantly caper and posture."133 This describes Fanny's efforts to support Maggie in her conscious attempt to assume control of the social life surrounding hert taking over, as it were, the position formerly held with such beauti­ ful distinction by her mother-in-law, Charlotte. Fanny recog­ nizes that Maggie is trying to fulfill obligations that had hitherto been left to Charlotte, but her efforts to help Maggie would never have been necessary if her meddlesome, bungling hadn't created the situation. The figuration of Maggie as a circus performer does not serve the same representational function as that of Mrs. Brook in The Awkward Age, of course, for Maggie is not

l33GB, vol. II, p. 71. 198 representative of the social "circus" in the novel. She is merely a member of the troupe, at this juncture, like Nanda Brookenham in the earlier novel. Her role in the circus comes about as a consequence of a recognition that» /she/had forgotten, had neglected, had declined, to be the little Princess on anything like the scale open to her with such alacrity, so that she might skip up into the light even, as seemed to her modest mind, with such a show of pink stocking and such an abbreviation of white petticoat, she could strike herself as per­ ceiving, under arched eyebrows, where her mistake had been.1j4 Her appearance in the arena surprises everyone and pleases herself, but she gradually receives a further recog­ nition—that the circus is an exhausting and sinister occu­ pation for one of her temperament. The lightness of tone that is struck by the early conception of the circus atmos­ phere disintegrates later. For instance, the society at Fawns, while never particularlized in a sharp manner, is characterized by circus full of more shadowy and sinister qualities. The nervous tension that Maggie experi­ ences as a result of her dawning consciousness and social effort is captured by James’s description of Fawns in the circus context» "here they closed all doors carefully behind them—all save the door that connected the place, as by a straight tented corridor, with the outer world, and, encour­ aging thus the irruption of society, imitated the aperture

134GB, vol. II, p. 71. 199 through which the bedizened performers of the circus poured into the ring." These "performers" are the social horde that descend on Verver's magnificent collection. The meta­ phor at once includes the sinister quality of those per­ formers and the slavish obligations of overseeing that col­ lection. Maggie's consciousness of this foretells her sympathy for Charlotte's cicerone role, and the manner in which the collection becomes increasingly representative of something vaguely sinister and threatening. As Verver more and more seems to "fawn" over the artifacts of his monomania, his own sinister qualities emerge. Maggie's sympathy for Charlotte's function at the close of the novel is again presented within the figurative circus, and is fully sensible of the evil element involved. She compares her own new function with the troupe to that of "the kind lady who, happening to linger at the circus while the rest of the spectators pour grossly through the exiti' falls in with the overworked little trapezist girl—the acrobatic support presumably of embarrassed and exacting parents—and gives her, as an obscure and meritorious artist, assurance of charitable interest."1^ Her sense of Char­ lotte's situation seems to recognize the cruelly "exacting" nature of her father's new relation to Charlotte, and reflects a conception of society's insensitivity.

135qb, vol. II, p. 289. 136Ibid., p. 302. 200 Recalling James’s appreciation for the circus-like drama he had viewed at Niblo’s, it may be difficult to com­ prehend how his imagination so transformed that experience into a representation of evil. There is a passage in A Small Boy and Others, however, which reflects the sinister potential of the dramatic circus, and illustrates that the "seed" for such a conception was in James’s consciousness. The passage describes a time that James and William brought some Albany cousins to share the delectations of Niblo’s Gardens: I remember how when one of these visitors, wound up, in honour of New York, to the very fever of perception, broke out one evening while we waited for the curtain to rise, 'Oh don't you hear the cries? They're beating them, I’m sure they are? can’t it be stopped?' we resented the charge as a slur on our very honour} for what our romantic relative had heatedly imagined to reach us, in a hushed up manner from behind, was the sounds attendant on the application of blows to some acrobatic infant who had 'funked' his little job.137 While James recollects that he had resented this violation of the conceived "pure poetry" of Niblo's, it is possible that his romantic cousin had revealed a potential evil in the fare at Niblo's which later was to stir his imagination and figurative method. The passage at least seems to have provided some substance for Maggie's perception of Charlotte's condition in The Golden Bowl. Another major thread of figurative language running throughout What Maisie Knew. The Awkward Age, and The Golden

137Autobiography, p. 96 201 Bowl is grounded in the inverted romance and fairy-tale, which also frequently were utilized as materials for the commedia dell'arte. One of the last and greatest scenarists of that tradition was Carlo Gozzi—Goldoni's rival—who fre­ quently termed his scenarii "children's stories". As Maurice Sand wrote, Gozzi "had a special fondness for fables and fairy-tales, which he embroidered with bits of poetry, bur­ lesque and drama."138 This aspect of the commedia dell'arte tradition is evident in What Maisie Knew. The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl, particularly in terms of the characters' figurative functions. Each novel has its Prince Charming in the person of Sir Claude, Gustavus Vanderbank, and Prince Amerigo. The first two, particularly Sir Claude, frequently are referred to as being "princely" or as even being a "Prince". The function of all three as either prospective or real lovers of the ingénues Maisie, Nanda, and Maggie further defines their princely nature. Of course such a character as Lord Petherton of The Awkward Age is also spoken of as "a young prince" in terms of his "bright familiarity", but he fails to be sufficiently romantic, even in an ironic sense, or sufficiently central. Two of the novels—What Maisie Knew and The Golden Bowl—have their wicked step­ mother, and the third its wicked mother. In all three novels these characters indulge in romance that is inverted by sor­ did realities and immorality.

138Sand, p. 11?. 202 Of course James used the fairy-tale motifs in an ironic manner throughout his career, from to his later works, but the fairy-tale imagery of What Maisie Knew marks the first time that such figurative language is combined with the character typology and overall pattern of the commedia dell'arte tradition, making a contribution to that overall pattern which cannot be ignored. In addition to the pattern of characters mentioned above, What Maisie Knew represents Mrs. Wix as Maisie's fairy- godmother, and Sir Claude is also spoken of as her "good fairy." Those promises and pledges which mark Sir Claude's "fairy" quality are never actualized, such as the always forthcoming "lessons" that never materialize, or his pledges of loyalty. The two "good fairies" of the novel are ironic foils—Sir Claude's "beautiful" smoothness assists in defin­ ing the sharpness of Mrs. Wix's angles, while her fidelity is a marked contrast to Sir Claude's inconstancy. Such irony is the effect of James's method of superimposing the fabric of fairy-tale on the realistic novel, and it also contributes to the point-of-view in terms appropriate to Maisie's per­ ception and classification of those around her. At the same time it is fully consistent with the pattern of the commedia dell'arte tradition woven throughout the novel in terms of character types and intrigues. The finest example of the fairy-tale element within the context of the commedia dell'arte pattern of character types, and relationship between them, is offered by the 203 pivotal Kensington Garden’s scene. Sir Claude and Maisie have escaped from that "pretty bad circus" created by Mrs. Beale’s jealousy, and the scene at first evokes a pastoral interlude that almost romantically unites Maisie and her Prince. A great green glade was before them, and high old trees, and under the shade of these, in the fresh turf, the crooked course of a rural footpath. "It’s the Forest of Arden," Sir Claude as just delightfully observed, "and I’m the banished duke, and you’re—what was the young woman called?—the artless country wench. And there," he went on, "is the other girl—what's her name, Rosalind?—and (don't you know?) the fellow who is making up to her. Upon my word he is making up to her!"139 Sir Claude is referring of course to As You Like It. a romantic comedy with its own fairy-tale element, but the comedy that follows in James's novel is certainly less than romantic. As is usual with James's garden, evil is present, which Maisie soon discovers in spite of her idyllic surround­ ings. His allusion was to a couple who, side by side, at the end of the glade, were moving in the same direction as themselves. These distant figures, in their slow stroll (which kept them so close together that their heads, drooping a little forward, almost touched), presented the back of a lady who looked tall, who was evidently a very fine woman, and that of a gentleman whose left hand appeared to be passed well into her arm while his right, behind him, made jerky motions with the stick that it grasped. Maisie's fancy responded for an instant to her friend's idea that the sight was idyllic? then, stopping short, she brought out with all clearness» "Why mercy—if it is n't Mama."l40

139wmk. p. 139. 140Ibid., p. 139-140. 204 The Fairy-tale setting is thus suddenly ironized into a sinister and threatening representation of evil. It is Maisie's first clear confrontation with marital infidelity, and the sense of the fairy-tale provides a most emphatically ironic contrast to the realities of Maisie‘s situation. She has just escaped from the "pretty bad circus" and the evil it represents in the novel, only to encounter a similar evil represented within the fairy-tale context. The kindness of the Capitano figure somewhat mitigates the tragic overtones inherent in the scene, but Maisie*s consciousness is being assaulted with sinister stimuli. It is only a few days later that she is whisked off in a cab by Beale, after she has again stumbled upon the evil represented by another "pretty bad circus." After alighting from the dab, and indulging Beale's perverted sense of sentiment and justice, she is again confronted with a manifestation of the fairy-tale element—Beale’s American Countess, Mrs. Cuddon. This inci­ dent, composed of the "thingumbob" scene and the encounter with the Countess, is also pivotal, and parallels the Kensing ton Garden’s affair. By the time he had helped her out of the cab, which drove away, and she heard in the door of the house the prompt little click of his key, the Arabian Nights had quite closed around her. From this minute that pitch of the wondrous was in everything, particularly in such an instant "Open Sesame" and in the departure of the cab, a rattling void filled with relinquished step-parents.141

141 XWMK. p. 175. 205 The entire series of events is filled with a sinister dramatic irony, as the circus and the fairy-tale usually are in James. It is noted that Beale has his own key, that he gives a "quick touch" to the light switch, and is generally quite familiar with the Countess’s lodgings. Maisie is at first overwhelmed with the mystery and wealth of the apart­ ment, the entire incident, particularly with her father’s professions of love, and the romance of a Countess, until she finally meets the "brown lady" herself. In the Countess the circus and fairy-tale meet« "She literally struck the child more as an animal than as a ‘real’ lady; she might have been a clever frizzled poodle in a frill or a dreadful human monkey m a spangled petticoat." 142 James’s use of the grotesque Mrs. Cuddon may be a trifle melodramatic, though the commedia dell'arte tradition would have smiled on such usage, because Maisie's conscious­ ness of evil loses its subtlety. Yet it emphasizes Beale's sunken, fortune hunting nature. The confrontation is a literal representation, to Maisie, of the stories Mrs. Wix sometimes told her "about love and beauty and countesses and wickedness."*1^ 3 If her aversion to Beale's Countess lacks subtlety, Maisie's connection of the incident with the previous Kensing­ ton Garden's scene is yet a measure of her intellectual

14,2WMK. p. 193. 1^3Ibid.. p. 27. 206 awareness. It suddenly comes to her that "Papa’s Captain— yes—was the Countess!" In spite of the fact that she feels the Countess "was n’t nearly so nice as the other," the con­ nection is part of her growing consciousness of evil in both cases, and after she has made her discovery, she begs leave to go home. Because she cannot abide the grotesque Countess, Beale has his pretext for casting Maisie off, just as, ironic ally, Maisie’s appreciation for the Captain serves Ida’s self-righteous rejection some time later. The circus/fairy- tale sequence of incidents in the parallel scenes contributes to the sense of evil in What Maisie Knew, figuratively reflecting the nature of Maisie’s immoral environment, and ultimately resulting in her parental abandonment, which is more evil than any of the sexual intrigues in the novel. It is more evil perhaps than even the way in which most of the characters around Maisie are prone to use her for whatever purposes—as a tool of vengeance between separated parties, or as a pretext for bringing others together. The Awkward Age and The Golden Bowl do not manifest evil in the same sequential manner as What Maisie Knew. As has been demonstrated, both utilize the figurative circus to characterize the sinister and threatening nature of society in relation to innocent and reluctant members of the "troupe". At the same time there is evident an overall figuration of the fairy-tale and romantic comedy that is ironized almost to the point of tragedy. In James's applica­ tion of such modes, the "artless country wench" does not get 207 her Prince, or if she does, like Maggie Verver, it is doubt­ ful that they.will live happily ever after. Such a confusion of modes is not unique in literature, as Shakespeare’s Measure For Measure attests, though the fusion seems much more comfortably accomplished in James. Perhaps this is because the commedia dell'arte tradition of presenting the spiritual poverty of mankind so easily resolves the seemingly incongruent in human nature and human existence—the tragic and comic elements—while Shakespeare's superficially strict adherence to classical comic conventions and structure is simply inconsistent with the overall tone of his play. Measure For Measure lacks the improvisational quality, the quickness of movement, lightness of irony, and fairy-tale quality that mark many of his other comedies, particularly those which seem to have been written with an eye toward the commedia dell’arte tradition. James’s blending of tears and laughter profits by having an eye to that tradition, as character type, tone, and plot seem to be more consistent. The mixture of modes was an inherent property of the commedia dell’arte tradition, as James knew. The pattern of the commedia dell'arte tradition in these novels did not exclusively depend on the figurative mixture of modes, and there are other images utilized in What Maisie Knew. The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl that make a significant contribution to that pattern. These are lesser patterns—sub-patterns, if you will—that are usually viewed in isolation, but which reflect further manifestations 208 of James’s adaptive intention in these novels. Among the most consistently rendered of the sub­ patterns is that of bestial imagery. Though the source for this imagery may well have been, like the "earliest aesthetic seeds" of the commedia dell'arte tradition itself, grounded in youthful experiences such as visits to farms, zoos, and circuses, it is a sub-pattern that figuratively manifests commedia dell'arte conventions. Its use may also reflect James's awareness of the naturalistic movement of the 1890's. Robert Gale further suggests the intriguing possibility that as James's "dream of conquering the London stage turned to a nightmare, he unconsciously thought of even his own fic- tional dramatis personae as increasingly bestial." 144 It is much more likely, however, considering the animating design of these novels derived from the commedia dell'arte tradition, that James consciously imagined his characters within that context. The bestiality of a character may simply be implied, as it sometimes is with Mrs. Beale, Mrs. Brook, or Charlotte Stant, by the impersonal, non-human designation of each as a "creature," or more frequently, a "magnificent animal." It may be found in the focus on the particular physical feature of a character, like the half-dozen references in What Maisie Knew to Beale Farange’s "glistening fangs," or more general references to Lord Petherton's "pleasant brutality" in The

^^Gale, p. 60, 209 Awkward Age. The latter, of course, is also described as an "elephant", which is superficially as harmless as Fanny Cash- more's nature as "a beautiful tame tigress." For the most part, however, the bestial qualities of character are more obvious representations of sinister and threatening qualities, like Maisie's impression of the Countess in What Maisie Knew as "a dreadful human monkey in a spangled petticoat." Such images support the sinister circus imagery as well, as they do throughout the three novels. Therefore, such reactions as Maisie's should not be viewed as simply the natural result of the novel's point-of- view, for the bestial imagery is as terrifying from the more mature perspective of Maggie in The Golden Bowl. Charlotte may be an "admirable creature," but her creature qualities make Charlotte a threatening "supple beast” possessed of an energy "like a breaking of bars."143 She is "pictured in a dozen varied images toward the end of the novel as beast (or possibly large bird) of prey, escaping, dangerously large, menacing poor Maggie.”14^ Maggie pictures herself at one point as being "thrown over on her back with her neck from the first half-broken and her helpless face staring up" before the uncaged Charlotte.147* * Of course Maggie herself makes the transition from a "silken-coated spaniel" to a

143GB, vol. II, p. 241 l43Gale, p. 71. l47GB, vol. II, p. 242 210 "timid tigress," but her bestiality is minimized by its defensively vulnerable quality. Both Adam Verver and Prince Amerigo, meanwhile, are ironically figured as "lambs," but each betrays, in his own way, a wolfish quality that is unstated in figurative terms, but implied. The seldom par­ ticularlized social scene of The Golden Bowl also has its bestial quality, as is implied by James's description of the pastoral interlude with Maggie and Verver discussing, in their "sequestered" garden spot, the members of their social circle» "Our couple had finally exhausted however the study of these annals—not to say animals." ° As a whole, the menagerie of characters in What Maisie Knew. The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl contributes to the circus figuration of these novels, but it also relates to the general bestiality which is part of the presentation of characters in the commedia dell'arte tradition. The bestiality of the commedia dell'arte tradition's characters was not always so indicative of evil as it is in James, but he generally had adapted that tradition as a manifestation of sinister universality in the human race, of which our essential bestial natures are a somber and enduring reminder. All of the novels written during James's "Major Phase" utilize theatre imagery of various kinds. In fact one might expect that the stage would have been the most dominant source for James's figurative language throughout his career,

148GB, vol. I, p. 256. 211 considering his life-long devotion to the theatre and his development of the "scenic" method in the novel. Such is not the case, however. Despite his study of the French theatre, for instance, French drama seldom figures in the allusions and metaphors of his novels, and the same is true of Shakespeare.1^9 One would particularly expect such usage in the novels of the 1890's, but What Maisie Knew. The Awk­ ward Age, and The Golden Bowl—with the exception of Sir Claude's reference to As You Like It—do not contain such figurative allusions, though other novels of the period do make some use of them. There are more general theatrical images in these novels, however, as well as some which par­ ticularly refer to the commedia dell'arte tradition. What Maisie Knew demonstrates James's use of a general theatrical tone accompanying character types, and also makes specific reference to the commedia dell'arte tradition. Ida Farange, with "her remarkable appearance, her violent splendour, the wonderful colour of her lips and even the hard stare" of her eyes, is very much a masked and theatrical figure throughout the novel. J Maisie sometimes views her in precisely these theatrical terms, seeing her as an actress, "in some tremendous situation, sweeping down to the footlights as if she would jump them."131 Her husband

lZ|,9Gale, p. 128. 13°WMK. p. 9. 151Ibid.. p. 72. 212 is concealed behind the "fine mask" of his burnished beard and glistening fangs, and the other characters in the novel also leave the impression of being almost "mannered mask figures," as Gale has noted.132 It is no wonder that little Maisie's perceptions of her surroundings are often theatric, with almost the quality of a puppet shows "Her little world was phantasmagoric—strange shadows dancing on a sheet. It was as if the whole performance had been given for her—a mite of a half-scared infant in a great dim theatre."133 Her world of actuality is not far removed from that which she views when Sir Claude takes Mrs, Wix and herself "to the pantomime.”134 * Indeed, her encounter with Beale's Countess,

besides affecting her as a terrifying fairy-tale, also impresses her as having "the manner of some great flashing dazzle in one of the to which Sir Claude had taken her." 15577 As we have seen, the fairy-tale note and that of the circus are attuned to the pattern of the commedia dell'arte tradition. With such figurative effects, tied together by allusion to the pantomime, James creates his sinister sense of the commedia dell'arte tradition, and Maisie gradually recognizes the dance of sexual intrigue which surrounds her. In fact the dance is another source of imagery in these

132Gale, p. 241. 133WMK, p. 9. 134Ibid., p. 72. 133Ibid.. p. 192. 213 three novels which also contributes to the commedia dell'arte pattern they manifest. A number of critics have noted the dance pattern of What Maisie Knew, where partners are con­ tinually changing places with bewildering ease and quickness. It is no wonder that Maisie's pleasant converse with the Cap­ tain in Kensington Gardens strikes her "as the way that at balls, by delightful partners, young ladies must be spoken to in the intervals of dances."13^ In The Awkward Age. Nanda

is also surrounded by a dance of partners, though only Mitchy is literally disposed to "dance about" in the "ludicrous gambols" people have come to expect of him. 157 The comment of the Duchess which describes the talk of Mrs. Brook's circle as a "quadrille" significantly characterizes the structure and movement of the novel.136138 137Bo th of these novels exhibit this dance structure and movement, which contributes to the sense of them as adapted from the commedia dell'arte dramatic tradi­ tion. In the first two novels the dance enters primarily as a matter of structure, but in The Golden Bowl Maggie is her­ self the dancer, as much as she is a tight-rope walker and circus equestrian. Prince Amerigo's impression of her in the first volume describes the initial stage in her development as a dancer. He remarks "her resemblance ... to a little

136WMK. p. 148. 137AA» P. 464. 138Ibid.. p. 255. 214 dancing-girl at rest, ever so light of movement but most often panting gently, even a shade compunctiously, on a bench.h159 Early in the next volume, when she has become conscious of the "queer" relations between the four adults in the family, and has undertaken to attain a more central wifely function, she describes her new state: "Oh she was going, she was going—she could feel it afresh; it was a good deal as if she had sneezed ten times or had suddenly burst into a comic song . . . she was dancing up and down, beneath her propriety, with the thought that she had at l An least begun something." The image of Maggie indulging in comic song and dance is a surprising reminder of Mitchy's function in The Awkward Age, and at this point Maggie feels very much like a performer of some sort, a sort not far removed from the conventions of the commedia dell'arte tradi tion. Of course, like the feelings attendant on her role as a circus performer, those surrounding the dance also have a quality of toil and exhaustion, and a sense of the sinister element around her. Later in the novel she asks herself why her husband fails to be supportive of her newfound capacity to perform. She feels like "the small strained wife of the moments in question . . . some panting dancer of a difficult step who had capered, before the footlights of an empty

159GB, vol. I, p. 322. l6°Ibid., vol. II, p. 51. 215 *| X T_ theatre, to a spectator lounging in a box." The fact that Amerigo does not applaud her efforts furthers her sus­ picion that she is in some way acting counter to her hus­ band's design, a design that she more and more clearly per­ ceives to include Charlotte more than herself. In addition to the dance imagery, the latter two novels include the same general references to the theatre as What Maisie Knew. In The Awkward Age, the overdressing of the Duchess is mindful of Ida Farange’s in the earlier novel, and prefigures Fanny Assingham's comic theatricality of dress as well. The descriptions of Edward, Harold, Mitchy and others have the quality of masks, though perhaps not so obviously as "that glorious mask" of Fanny Cashmore or the facial extravaganza of Carrie Donner, with its figurative sign—"Fresh Paint." Nanda isn't spoken of as watching the novel's masquerade, in the same sense as Maisie, in her own dim theatre, but the Duchess does observe "as from a box at the play, comfortably shut in, as in the old operatic days 1 A 9 at Naples, with a pair of entertainers." Her sense of viewing a masquerade or operatic performance provides the tone of the scene in which Carrie Donner and Fanny Cashmore display their "wares" and exhibit their masks. The "pair of entertainers" with whom she is shut in are Lord Petherton and Mitchy, and the phrase indicates their function as

l6lGB, vol. II, p. 222. l62AA, p. 99. 216 performers in the production as well. The allusion to Naples also provides a suitable italianate note to the commedia dell'arte element of the proceedings, and it is not without significance that Mitchy later refers to himself and Lord Petherton as characters out of the pantomime.1^3 As Prince Amerigo reflects in a moment of candid depression, The Golden Bowl is also an "idiotic masquerade." 164 The second volume of the novel, which centers around Maggie's gradual recognition of that masquerade quality in her life, most clearly draws on theatre imagery. Quite early in the volume Maggie becomes conscious that her "coming out" is in opposition to a scenario co-authored by Charlotte and Amerigo—"She reminded herself of an actress who suddenly, on the stage, before the footlights, had begun to improvise, to speak lines not in the text.3 Her improvisation is an affirmation of her freedom, an act of will directed toward the realignment of the principal figures in her life—her mother-in-law, father, and husband. The inevitability inher­ ent in the relations of these characters, a result of their typical natures, is somewhat averted because she throws off the minor role in which she was cast. By losing her inno­ cence and trust she makes the transition from naive ingenue to designing wife; she becomes a force to be reckoned with.

l63AA» P. 361. l64GB, vol. I, p. 295. l63Ibid. 21? The result of her efforts is the immediate destruction of the illicit affair, which places her father and Charlotte in a new, even terrifying, relation. Amerigo is at least momentarily returned to her—a somewhat tarnished and sinister Prince Charming. This is no easy task, however, and the dif­ ficulty of the improvisation is communicated in another theatre image: "She felt not unlike some young woman of the theatre who, engaged for a minor part in the play and having mastered her cues with anxious effort, should find herself suddenly promoted to leading lady and expected to appear in every act of the five." Some time later, when Maggie quails before Charlotte's efforts to regain control of the "play", she becomes conscious again "of the part she was called on to play in it," and she momentarily falls back into the role "of some poor woman at somebody's proud door."1^7 Such weakness does not last, however, and her resolve is more constant, though fatiguing, for one so con­ stitutionally ill-equipped for the part. She is grateful for relief, such as that offered by a game of bridge among the other "players" at Fawns: "the Princess herself had welcomed the comparatively hushed hour— for the bridge-placers were serious and silent—much in the mood of a tired actress who has the good fortune to be 'off

l66GB, vol. II, p. 208. l67Ibid., pp. 246-247. 218 while her mates were on." 168 As she observes the group of bridge-players she at first remarks her own weariness—the consequence of the part she has chosen to play—but the theatrical analogy then shifts to demonstrate her strong position as the author of new relations. She views the bridge-players as if "they might have been figures rehearsing some play of which she herself was the author."189 When she wanders out to the terrace and peers through the curtained windows, the analogy is continued and blended with the domin­ ant imagery of the novel» Spacious and splendid, like a stage again awaiting a drama, it was a scene she might people, by the press of a spring, either with serenities and dignities and decencies, or with terrors and shames and ruins, things as ugly as those formless fragments of her golden bowl she was trying so hard to pick up.170 As much as she does attempt to maintain "serenities and dig­ nities and decencies," she later comes to recognize Char­ lotte's terror, and the essential "ruin" that characterizes all their relations—even the illicit one. Amid her thought­ ful vacillations she has a change of vision, one which is also described in theatrical terms which particularly relate to the commedia dell'arte tradition, and which could easily apply to her own relationship with Prince Amerigo, or Charlotte’s. Her earlier vision of a state of bliss made insecure by the very intensity of the bliss—this had dropped 68 69 170

l68GB, vol. II, p. 231. l69Ibid., p. 235.

170Ibid.. p. 236. 219 from her; she had ceased to see, as she lost herself, the pair of operatic, of high Wagnerian lovers . . . interlocked in their wood of enchantment, a green glade as romantic as one’s dream of a German forest. The picture was veiled on the contrary with dimness of trouble; behind which she felt indistinguishable the procession of forms that had lost all so pitifully their precious confidence.171 This terror is the outgrowth of her recognition while contemplating the serene masquerade of bridge-players at Fawns. While peering through that revealing window opening into the drawing room, she has become fully conscious of "the horror of finding evil seated, all at its ease, where she had only dreamed of good; the horror of the thing hideously behind, behind so much trusted, so much pretended, nobleness, cleverness, tenderness."117172 In this way the theatrical imagery is utilized, as is that of the circus and fairy-tale, to represent evil. The specific object of Maggie’s perception is ambiguous. It could be Amerigo, cer­ tainly, or Charlotte, or even her father. In a general sense it is the whole series of relations composed by them all, even Fanny Assingham. In spite of her sense of betrayal—in spite of her recognition of evil—Maggie also realizes the consequences of authoring a drama full of "terrors and shames and ruins." The sight, from the window, of the group so constituted, told her why, told her how, named to her, as with hard lips, named straight at her, so that she must take it full in the face, that other possible relation to the

171GB, vol. II, p. 280. 172Ibid.. p. 237. 220 whole fact which alone would bear upon her irresist­ ibly. It was extraordinary; they positively brought home to her that to feel about them in any of the immediate, inevitable, assuaging ways, the ways usually open to innocence outraged and generosity betrayed, would have been to give them up, and that giving them up was, marvellously, not to be thought of.173 She therefore resolves not to reveal her knowledge of evil or sense of outrage, and almost immediately has the opportunity to act on her resolve. After resuming her thoughtful outdoor stroll she passes another room, and through another window sees Charlotte, the "splendid shining supple creature," released from her cage. She knows that Charlotte intends to confront her, and plays the part deter­ mined by her resolve, again resuming the role of an innocent ingènue, but in this instance by design. In those scenes on the terrace at Fawns James created the culminating effect of Maggie’s gradual recognition. It is at this point in the novel that Maggie’s blindness is cured, and the method of figuratively presenting that recog­ nition is another aspect of James's adaptation from the commedia dell'arte tradition. Many scenarii include episodes wherein an actor, having been deceived, is initiated into knowledge and compelled to action by viewing the fact of his deception through windows or from behind curtains, blind­ folds, or veils. Numerous etchings and woodcuts depicting the commedia dell'arte tradition demonstrate this convention.

173GB, voi. II, p. 237 221 James’s figurative language illustrates a more modern use of the convention in terms of Maggie’s blindness to the novel’s surrounding evil. Charlotte and Amerigo of course contribute to that evil, and early in volume two of The Golden Bowl Maggie senses that Charlotte sometimes "had the effect of throwing over their intercourse a kind -of silver tissue of discourse." 174f When she notes, in reference to Charlotte's manner with her father, "the fine tissue of reassurance woven by this lady's hands and flung over her companion as a light muffled veil,”173 Maggie demonstrates a further awareness of something "false." She initially views it with a kind of gratitude, but when she begins to note the same method and power in her husband, the connection between the parallel effects becomes threatening. It marks the beginning of Amerigo's loss of power over her» "Who could say to what making-up might lead, into what consenting 1 7 A or pretending or destroying blindness it might plunge her?" ' Hers is a reluctant recognition of evil, and her initial impulse is to submit to further deception. She acknowledges that "if she could have gone on with bandaged eyes she would have liked that best."177 In a conversation with her confi­ dant husband, Fanny Assingham notes that Maggie is blind with 174 * 176

174GB, vol. II, p. 38. 173Ibid.. p. 138. 176Ibid.. p. 140. 177Ibid., p. 182. 222 a purpose; it is Maggie’s answer to having her Prince and keeping her father as well. She feels that Maggie suffered herself to miss the Prince so she could have an unchanged relation with her father—"She had her reason—she wore her blind."178 179When Maggie becomes increasingly aware of her husband’s affair with Charlotte, but keeps her silence, Fanny Assingham finds her to be "divinely blind." 179 It is this divine blindness that Maggie clings to as her only recourse in order to maximize her effectiveness and avoid a totally destructive division in her father’s marriage and her own. In this sense James supplies a sophisticated version of an ancient convention, a double blindness. Maggie breaks through the veil of deception by peering through the cur­ tained windows at Fawns, but then assumes a blind posture to maintain some semblance of her golden bowl. She thus uses the convention in two ways. First, as an ingenue she per­ ceives evil and casts off her blindfold, but then as an intriguer herself she maintains a blind pose. In What Maisie Knew there is a similar, though much more compact, use of this convention. It commences with James’s representation of Maisie as an innocent child, sensi­ tively and curiously amidst evil, with her nose pressed to a window glass. The convention culminates in her recognition that she has gone "about as sightlessly as if he had been

178GB, vol. I, p. 382. 179Ibid.. p. 396. 223 i ftn leading her blindfold." She is of course referring to Sir Claude, a major figure in her deception. Very early in the novel she had pretended to blind stupidity in order to avoid being a tool in the vengeance of her parents. She gradually finds herself required to act in a similar manner before Sir Claude, as when he demands to know the topic of her conversation with Ida’s Captain. By assuming a mask of blindness, Maisie is better able to perceive the true rela­ tions between those around her, and finally to cast off her mask and escape the dissembling mode of life that has per­ vaded her youth. There are no blindfolds, veils, or curtained windows in The Awkward Age. Nanda Brookenham is not the victim of deceptions, but simply of the weaknesses, designs, and selfish interests of those around her, principally her mother. In fact her awareness, her knowledge of evil, is accepted and central to the novel. It is the core of Vanderbank's failure to care sufficiently for her, and the ironic source of Mr. Longdon's acceptance of her as she is. Nothing is concealed from her, and her awareness is the source of her unusual beauty of character, and of her pathos as well. Such is the freedom allowed by the commedia dell'arte tradition that James was able to adapt many of its historical elements and conventions without impairing his options as a realistic novelist. The utilization of the scenario/

180WMK, p. 343. 224 improvisation method, character types and fundamental plots based on sexual intrigues, risque humor with tragic under­ tones, uniquely theatrical description and imagery, and the representation of evil within the context of spiritual poverty that these elements of the commedia dell'arte tradi­ tion create, is the manifestation of a consummate artist applying his knowledge of a rich literary heritage. The delineation of the pattern adapted from the commedia dell'arte tradition reveals further levels of James's imagination and method. It is interesting to note that during the same per­ iod that James devised his "divine principle of the Scenario" and the fullest scenarii of What Maisie Knew. The Awkward Age. 311(1 The Golden Bowl, he also was inspired with the idea for "The Figure in the Carpet." I seem to see a little subject in this idea: that of the author of certain books who is known to hold—and to declare as much ... to the few with whom he communi­ cates—that his writings contain a very beautiful and valuable, very interesting and remunerative secret, or latent intention, for those who read them with the right intelligence—who see into them, as it were—bring to the perusal of them a certain perceptive sense. ... I should premise that I think I see these books necessarily to be NOVELS? it is in fact essentially as a novelist that the personage se presente a ma pensee. He has such qualities of art and style and skill as may be fine and honourable ones presumably—but he himself holds that they don't know his work who don't know, who haven’t felt, or guessed, or perceived, this interior thought— this special beauty (that is mainly the just word) that pervades and controls and animates them. No reviewer, no 'critic,' has dreamed of it: lovely chance for fine irony on the subject of that fraternity.181

181Notebooks. p. 220. 225 It is tempting to wonder from what "seed" or "germ" James's idea for "The Figure in the Carpet" sprang, and many "critics" have yielded to the temptation. In the context of James’s adaptation from the commedia dell’arte tradition, which germinated at nearly the same time, it is possible to see James’s own "latent intention" in What Maisie Knew. The Awkward Age, and The Golden Bowl. It is not unreasonable to speculate that his own artistic practice may have supplied the idea for Hugh Vereker's conception of the animating design in his work. Whatever the case, it is true that a perception of James's adaptive method reveals a "special beauty" common to the three novels that unites them in terms of form and intention and adds another dimension to James’s dramatic method. It reflects on his use of figurative language, his conception of human nature and the representa­ tion of character in fiction, and illustrates another way in which James adapted the theatre to novelistic art. LIST OF WORKS CONSULTED

PRIMARY:

The Novels and Tales of Henry James. 26 vols. New York: Scribner's, 1907-191?. The Art of the Novel. Ed. R. P. Blackmur. New York: Knopf, ÏW7. The Complete Plays of Henry James. Ed. Leon Edel. Philadel­ phia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1949. Henry James: Autobiography. Ed. Frederick W. Dupee. New York: Criterion, 1956. James, Henry. . New York: Grove Press, 1959. . William Wetmore Story and His Friends. 2 vols. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1903. The Letters of Henry James. Ed. Percy Lubbock. 2 vols. New York: Scribner's, 1920. The . Eds. F. 0. Matthiessen and Kenneth B. Murdock. New York: Oxford University Press, 1947. The Scenic Art: Notes on Acting and the Drama, 1872-1901. Ed. Allan Wade. New York: Hill and Wang, 1957. The Selected Letters of Henry James. Ed. Leon Edel. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, i960. Theory of Fiction: Henry James. Ed. James E. Miller, Jr. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1972.

SECONDARY:

Anderson, Quentin. The American Henry James. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1957. Bass, Eban. "Dramatic Scene and The Awkward Age," PMLA, LXXIX (March 1964), pp. 148-157. Beach, Joseph Warren. The Method of Henry James. Philadel­ phia: Alfred Saifer, 1954^ 227 Blackmur, R. P. "Introduction" to The Golden Bowl. New York» Grove Press, 1952. ______. The Lion and the Honeycomb. New York» Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1955. Boyesen, H. H. "Real Conversations—A Dialogue Between William Dean Howells and Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen," McClure * s, I (June 1893), PP« 3-11.' Brooks, Van Wyck. The Pilgrimage of Henry James. New York» E. P. Dutton, 1925. Cady, Edwin H. The Road to ReaPism. New York» Syracuse Uni­ versity Press, 1956. Canby, Henry Seidel. Turn West, Turn East. Boston» Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1951. Cargill, Oscar. The Novels of Henry James. New York» Mac­ millan Co., 1961. Charlip, Remy and Burton Supree. Harlequin and the Gift of Many Colors. New York» Parents' Magazine Press, 1973» Clinton-Baddeley, V. C. Some Pantomime Pedigrees. Londons The Society for Theatre Research, 19&3. Coad, Oral Sumner and Edwin Mims, Jr. The American Stage. New York» Dodd, Mead and Co., 1903. Crews, Frederick C. The Tragedy of Manners» Moral Drama in the Later Novels of Henry James. New Haven, Conn.» Yale University Press, 1957. Duchartre, Pierre Louis. The Italian Comedy. New York» Dover, 1966. Dupee, F. W. Henry James. American Men of Letters. New York» Sloane, 1951. Durant, John and Alice. Pictorial History of the American Circus. New York» A. S. Barnes and Co,, 1957. Edel, Leon. Henry James» The Untried Years. 1843-1870. (1953)’ The Conquest of London, 1870-1881. (1962)» The Middle Years. 1882-1895. (1962)» The Treacherous Years7~l895-1901. (1969)« The Master, I9OI-I9T8. (1972^ Philadelphia« Lippincott. Edgar, Pelham. Henry James»: Man and Author. Boston» Houghton, Mifflin and Co,, 1927. 228 Ellison, Harlan. "’Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktock- man," rpt. in Science Fiction: The Future, ed. Dick Allen. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Janovich, Inc., 1971, pp. 215-224. Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. New York: Atheneum Press, 19^7^ Gale, Robert L. The Caught Image: Figurative Language in the Fiction of Henry James. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1964. Grigg, Womble Quay. The Molds of Form: Comedy and Conscience in the Novels of Henry James. 1895-1901. Diss. University of Pennsylvania, 1961. Holder-Barell, Alexander. The Development of Imagery and Its Functional Significance in Henry James's Novels. Bern: Francke, 1959. Howells, William Dean. My Literary Passions. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1895. Hornblow, Arthur. A History of Theatre in America. 2 vols. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1919. Ireland, Joseph N. Records of the New York Stage, 1896-1901. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968. Isle, Walter. Experiments in Form: Henry James's Novels. 1896-1901. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968. Kennard, Joseph Spencer. Masks and Marionettes. New York: Macmillan Co., 1935. Kimball, Jean. "Henry James's Last Portrait of a Lady: Charlotte Stant in The Golden Bowl,'* American Literature. XXVIII (Jan. 1957), PP. 449-468. Kossman, R. R. Henry James: Dramatist. Groningen, The Netherlands: Wolter-Noordhoff, 1969. Lanson, Gustave. "Moliere and Farce," Tulane Drama Review, vol. 8, nura, 2 (Winter 1963), pp. 133-154. Lea, K. M. Italian Popular Comedy. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934. LeClair, Robert C. Young Henry James, 1843-1870. New York: Bookman Associates, 1955. Levy, Leo B. Versions of Melodrama. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957. 229 Leyburn, Helen. Strange Alloy. Durham, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1968. Marks, Robert. James's Later Novels« An Interpretation. New York: William-Frederick Press, i960. Matthiessen, F. 0. Henry James: The Ma.ior Phase. New York: Oxford University Press, 1944. Mayer, David III. Harlequin in His Element: The English Pantomime. 1806-1832. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, I969. Nicoll, Allardyce. The World of Harlequin. Cambridge, Eng­ land: Cambridge University Press, 1963. Oreglia, Giacomo. The Commedia Dell'Arte. Tr. Lovett F. Edwards. New York: Hill and Wang, 1963. Radcliff-Umstead, Douglas. The Birth of Modern Comedy in Renaissance Italy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969^ Salerno, Henry F. Scenarios of the Commedia dell'Arte: Flaminio Scala's II Teatro delle favole rappresentative. New York: N, Y. University Press, I967. Sand, Maurice. The History of the Harlequinade. 2 vols. London: M. Seeker, 1915. Smith, Winifred. The Commedia Dell'Arte. New York: Columbia University Press, 1912. . "Italian and Elizabethan Comedy," Modern Philology. TT1908). Stanton, Stephen, ed. Camille and Other Plays. New York: Hill and Wang, i960. ______, "English Drama and the French Well-Made Play," Diss. Columbia University, 1955. Van Doren, Carl. The American Novel. New York: Macmillan Co., 1940. Volpe, Edmond. "James's Theory of Sex in Fiction," Nineteenth- Century Fiction. XIII (June 1958)» PP. 36-47. Ward, J. A. The Imagination of Disaster: Evil in the Fiction of Henry James. Lincoln, Nebr.: University of Nebraska Press, 1961. 230

Warren, Austin. Rage for Order. Chicagos University of Chicago Press, 1961. Wellek, René and Austin Warren. Theory of Literature. New Yorks Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., i960. Wiesenfarth, Joseph. Henry James and the Dramatic Analogy. New Yorks Fordham University Press, 19^3^ Willeford, William. The Fool and His Scepter. Evanstons Northwestern University Press, 1969. Young, Robert E. "An Error in the Ambassadors," American Literature, XXII (Nov. 1950), pp. 245-253.