, che appetter si facea il Capitano
Matamoros_, INVENTO _il Pulcinella Napoletano, e collo studio e grazia
molto_ AGGIUNSE _Andrea Calcese dello Ciuccio por soprannome_."--Gimma,
Italia Letterata, p. 196. There is a very curious engraving by Bosse,
representing the Italian comedians about 1633, as they performed the
various characters on the Parisian stage. The cracked voice and
peculiarities of this "great invention" are declared by Fiorillo and
Signorelli to be imitations of the peculiarities of the peasants of
Acerra, an ancient city in the neighbourhood of Naples. For a curious
dissertation on this popular character, see the volume so admirably
illustrated by Cruikshank, quoted on a previous page.]

[Footnote 45: John Rich was the patentee of Covent Garden Theatre, and
spent large sums over his favourite pantomimes. He was also the
fortunate producer of the "Beggar's Opera," which was facetiously said
to have made Rich _gay_, and Gay _rich_. He took so little interest in
what is termed the "regular drama," that he is reported to have
exclaimed, when peeping through the curtain at a full house to witness a
tragedy--"What, you are _there_, you fools, are you!" He died wealthy,
in 1761; and there is a costly tomb to his memory in Hillingdon
churchyard, Middlesex.]

[Footnote 46: Some of the ancient _Scenarie_ were printed in 1661, by
Flaminius Scala, one of their great actors. These, according to
Riccoboni, consist of nothing more than the skeletons of Comedies; the
_canevas_, as the French technically term a plot and its scenes. He
says, "They are not so short as those we now use to fix at the back of
the scenes, nor so full as to furnish any aid to the dialogue: they only
explain what the actor did on the stage, and the action which forms the
subject, nothing more."]

[Footnote 47: The passage in Livy is, "Juventus, histrionibus fabellarum
actu relicto, ipsa inter se, more antiquo, ridicula intexta versibus
jactitare caepit." Lib. vii. cap. 2.]

[Footnote 48: As these _Atellanae Fabulae_ were never written, they have
not descended to us in any shape. It has, indeed, been conjectured that
Horace, in the fifth Satire of his first Book, v. 51, has preserved a
scene of this nature between two practised buffoons in the "Pugnam
Sarmenti Scurrae," who challenges his brother Cicerrus, equally ludicrous
and scurrilous. But surely these were rather the low humour of the
Mimes, than of the Atellan Farcers.]

[Footnote 49: