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Microsoft Visual C# Step by
Step
Tenth Edition

John Sharp
MICROSOFT VISUAL C# STEP BY STEP, TENTH EDITION
Published with the authorization of Microsoft Corporation by:
Pearson Education, Inc.

Copyright © 2022 by Agylia Group Ltd.

All rights reserved. This publication is protected by copyright, and

permission must be obtained from the publisher prior to any
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Pearson Education Global Rights & Permissions Department, please
visit www.pearson.com/permissions.

No patent liability is assumed with respect to the use of the

information contained herein. Although every precaution has been
taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author
assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. Nor is any liability
assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information
contained herein.

ISBN-13: 978-0-13-761983-2
ISBN-10: 0-13-761983-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022930224

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Pearson’s Commitment to Diversity,
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Contents at a Glance
Acknowledgments
About the author
Introduction

PART I INTRODUCING MICROSOFT VISUAL C#

AND MICROSOFT VISUAL STUDIO 2022
CHAPTER 1 Welcome to C#
CHAPTER 2 Working with variables, operators, and expressions
CHAPTER 3 Writing methods and applying scope
CHAPTER 4 Using decision statements
CHAPTER 5 Using compound assignment and iteration statements
CHAPTER 6 Managing errors and exceptions

PART II UNDERSTANDING THE C# OBJECT

MODEL
CHAPTER 7 Creating and managing classes and objects
CHAPTER 8 Understanding values and references
CHAPTER 9 Creating value types with enumerations and structures
CHAPTER 10 Using arrays
CHAPTER 11 Understanding parameter arrays
CHAPTER 12 Working with inheritance
CHAPTER 13 Creating interfaces and defining abstract classes
CHAPTER 14 Using garbage collection and resource management
PART III UNDERSTANDING THE C# OBJECT
MODEL
CHAPTER 15 Implementing properties to access fields
CHAPTER 16 Handling binary data and using indexers
CHAPTER 17 Introducing generics
CHAPTER 18 Using collections
CHAPTER 19 Enumerating collections
CHAPTER 20 Decoupling application logic and handling events
CHAPTER 21 Querying in-memory data by using query expressions
CHAPTER 22 Operator overloading

PART IV BUILDING UNIVERSAL WINDOWS

PLATFORM APPLICATIONS WITH C#
CHAPTER 23 Improving throughput by using tasks
CHAPTER 24 Improving response time by performing asynchronous
operations
CHAPTER 25 Implementing the user interface for a Universal
Windows Platform app
CHAPTER 26 Displaying and searching for data in a Universal
Windows Platform app
CHAPTER 27 Accessing a remote database from a Universal
Windows Platform app

Index
Contents
Acknowledgments
About the author
Introduction

PART I INTRODUCING MICROSOFT VISUAL C#

AND MICROSOFT VISUAL STUDIO 2022

Chapter 1 Welcome to C#
Writing your first C# program
Beginning programming with the Visual Studio 2022
environment
Writing your first program using Visual Studio 2022
Using namespaces
Namespaces and assemblies
Commenting code
Creating a graphical application
Examining the Universal Windows Platform app
Adding code to the graphical application
Summary
Quick Reference

Chapter 2 Working with variables, operators, and

expressions
Understanding statements
 Using identifiers
Identifying keywords
Using variables
Naming variables
Declaring variables
Specifying numeric values
Working with primitive data types
Unassigned local variables
Displaying primitive data type values
Using arithmetic operators
Operators and types
Examining arithmetic operators
Controlling precedence
Using associativity to evaluate expressions
Associativity and the assignment operator
Incrementing and decrementing variables
Prefix and postfix
Declaring implicitly typed local variables
Summary
Quick Reference

Chapter 3 Writing methods and applying scope

Creating methods
Declaring a method
Returning data from a method
Using expression-bodied methods
Calling methods
Specifying the method call syntax
 Returning multiple values from a method
Applying scope
Defining local scope
Defining class scope
Overloading methods
Writing methods
Using the Visual Studio Debugger to step through
methods
Refactoring code
Nesting methods
Using optional parameters and named arguments
Defining optional parameters
Passing named arguments
Resolving ambiguities with optional parameters and
named arguments
Summary
Quick reference

Chapter 4 Using decision statements

Declaring Boolean variables
Using Boolean operators
Understanding equality and relational operators
Understanding conditional logical operators
Short-circuiting
Summarizing operator precedence and associativity
Pattern matching
Using if statements to make decisions
Understanding if statement syntax
Using blocks to group statements
 Cascading if statements
Using switch statements
Understanding switch statement syntax
Following the switch statement rules
Using switch expressions with pattern matching
Summary
Quick reference

Chapter 5 Using compound assignment and iteration

statements
Using compound assignment operators
Writing while statements
Writing for statements
Writing do statements
Summary
Quick reference

Chapter 6 Managing errors and exceptions

Trying code and catching exceptions
Unhandled exceptions
Using multiple catch handlers
Catching multiple exceptions
Filtering exceptions
Propagating exceptions
Using checked and unchecked integer arithmetic
Writing checked statements
Writing checked expressions
Throwing exceptions
Using throw expressions
 Using a finally block
Summary
Quick reference

PART II UNDERSTANDING THE C# OBJECT

MODEL

Chapter 7 Creating and managing classes and objects

Understanding classification
The purpose of encapsulation
Defining and using a class
Controlling accessibility
Working with constructors
Overloading constructors
Deconstructing an object
Understanding static methods and data
Creating a shared field
Creating a static field by using the const keyword
Understanding static classes
Static using statements
Anonymous classes
Summary
Quick reference

Chapter 8 Understanding values and references

Copying value type variables and classes
Understanding null values and nullable types
 The null-conditional and null-coalescing operators
Using nullable types
Understanding the properties of nullable types
Using ref and out parameters
Creating ref parameters
Creating out parameters
How computer memory is organized
Using the stack and the heap
The System.Object class
Boxing
Unboxing
Casting data safely
The is operator
The as operator
The switch statement revisited
Summary
Quick reference

Chapter 9 Creating value types with enumerations and

structures
Working with enumerations
Declaring an enumeration
Using an enumeration
Choosing enumeration literal values
Choosing an enumeration’s underlying type
Working with structures
Declaring a structure
Understanding differences between structures and
classes
Other documents randomly have
different content
ludicrous mishaps; and in a third, entitled Cassandrino dilettante e
impresario, his too great love of music and the fair sex gets him into
quarrels with tenori and bassi, and especially with the prima donna
whom he courts, and with the maestro who is his rival. This maestro
is in the prime of youth; he has light hair and blue eyes, he loves
pleasure and good cheer, his wit is yet more seductive than his
person. All these qualities, and the very style of his dress, remind the
audience of one of the few great men modern Italy has produced.
There is a burst of applause; they recognise and greet Rossini.
Of the performances of marionettes in the houses of the Italian
nobility and middle classes, it is naturally much less easy to obtain
details than of those given in public. It is generally understood,
however, that the private puppets are far from prudish, and allow
themselves tolerable license in respect of politics. At Florence, at the
house of a rich merchant, a party was assembled to witness the
performance of a company of marionettes. M. Beyle was there. “The
theatre was a charming toy, only five feet wide, and which,
nevertheless, was an exact model of a large theatre. Before the play
began, the lights in the apartment were extinguished. A company of
twenty-four marionettes, eight inches in height, with leaden legs, and
which had cost a sequin apiece, performed a rather free comedy,
abridged from Machiavelli’s Mandragora.” At Naples the
performance was satirical, and its hero a secretary of state. In pieces
of this kind, there is generally a speaker for every puppet; and as it
often happens that the speakers are personally acquainted with the
voice, ideas, and peculiarities of the persons intended to be
caricatured, great perfection and point is thus given to the
performance.
When the passion of the Italians for marionettes is found to be so
strong, so general, so persevering, and, we may add, so refined and
ingenious, it is not to be wondered at that most other European
countries are largely indebted to Italy for their progress,
improvement, and, in some cases, almost for the first rudiments of
this minor branch of the drama. Even the Spain of the Middle Ages,
in most things so original and self-relying, was under some
obligations to Italy in this respect. The first name of any mark which
presents itself to the student of the history of Spanish puppet-shows
is that of a skilful mathematician of Cremona, Giovanni Torriani,
surnamed Gianello, of whom the learned critic Covarrubias speaks as
“a second Archimedes;” adding, that this illustrious foreigner
brought titeres to great perfection. That so distinguished a man
should have wasted his time on such frivolities requires some
explanation. The Emperor Charles V.’s love of curious mechanism
induced many of the first mechanicians of Germany and Italy to
apply themselves to the production of extraordinary automatons.
Writers have spoken of an artificial eagle which flew to meet him on
his entrance into Nuremberg, and of a wonderful iron fly, presented
to him by Jean de Montroyal, which, took wing of itself, described
circles in the air, and then settled on his arm—marvels of science
which other authors have treated as mere fables. Gianello won the
emperor’s favour by the construction of an admirable clock, followed
him to Spain, and passed two years with him in his monastic retreat,
striving, by ingenious inventions, to raise the spirits of his
melancholy patron, depressed by unwonted inactivity. “Charles V.,”
says Flaminio Strada, historian of the war in Flanders, “busied
himself, in the solitude of the cloisters of St Just, with the
construction of clocks. He had for his master in that art Gianello
Torriani, the Archimedes of that time, who daily invented new
mechanisms to occupy the mind of Charles, eager and curious of all
those things. Often, after dinner, Gianello displayed upon the
prince’s table little figures of horses and armed men. There were
some that beat the drum, others that sounded the trumpet; some
were seen advancing against each other at a gallop, like enemies, and
assailing each other with lances. Sometimes the ingenious
mechanician let loose in the room small wooden birds, which flew in
all directions, and which were constructed with such marvellous
artifice that one day the superior of the convent, chancing to be
present, appeared to fear that there was magic in the matter.” The
attention of Charles V., even in the decline of his genius, was not,
however, wholly engrossed by such toys as these. He and Torriani
discussed and solved more useful and more serious problems—one,
amongst others, which Gianello realised after the prince’s death, and
which consisted in raising the waters of the Tagus to the heights of
Toledo. The improvements introduced by the skilful mechanician of
Cremona into the construction of marionettes were soon adopted by
the titereros. Puppets were already a common amusement in Spain,
and had right of station on all public places, and at all fairs, and
entrance into most churches. It is to be observed, that Italian
influence can be traced in the Peninsula only in the material and
mechanical departments of the marionette theatres. The characters
and the subjects of the plays have always been strictly national,
notwithstanding that, from the beginning of the seventeenth century
down to the commencement of the nineteenth—and probably even at
the present day—the exhibitors of these shows were principally
foreigners, including many gypsies. Punchinello succeeded in getting
naturalised under the name of Don Cristoval Pulichinela; but he does
not appear ever to have played a prominent part, and probably was
rather a sort of supernumerary to the show, like Master Peter’s ape.
Occupation was perhaps hard to find for him in the class of pieces
preferred by Spanish taste. The nature of these it is not difficult to
conjecture. Spain, superstitious, chivalrous, and semi-Moorish,
hastened to equip its puppets in knightly harness and priestly robes.
“Moors, knights, giants, enchanters, the conquerors of the Indies, the
characters of the Old and the New Testament, and especially saints
and hermits, are,” says M. Magnin, “the usual actors in these shows.
The titeres so frequently wear monkish garb, especially in Portugal,
that the circumstance has had an influence on their name in this
country, where they are more often called bonifrates than titeres.
The composition of bonifrate (although the word is old, perhaps
older than titere) indicates an Italian origin.” Legends of saints and
the book of ballads (Romancero) supplied most of the subjects of the
plays performed by Spanish puppets. Of this we have an example in
the drama selected by Cervantes for performance by Master Peter’s
titeres before Don Quixote. In the course of his researches, M.
Magnin was surprised to find (although he ought, perhaps, to have
expected it) that bull-fights have had their turn of popularity on the
boards of the Spanish puppet-show. He traces this in a curious old
picaresque romance, the memoirs of the picara Justina. This
adventurous heroine gives sundry particulars of the life of her great-
grandfather, who had kept a theatre of titeres at Seville, and who put
such smart discourse into the mouths of his actors that, to hear him,
the women who sold fruit and chestnuts and turrones (cakes of
almonds and honey, still in use in Spain) quitted their goods and
their customers, leaving their hat or their brasero (pan of hot
embers) to keep shop. The popular manager was unfortunately of
irregular habits, and expended his substance in riotous living. His
money went, his mules, his puppets—the very boards of his theatre
were sold, and his health left him with his worldly goods, so that he
became the inmate of an hospital. When upon the eve of giving up
the ghost, his granddaughter relates, he lost his senses, and became
subject to such furious fits of madness, that one day he imagined
himself to be a puppet-show bull (un toro de titeres), and that he was
to fight a stone cross which stood in the court of the hospital.
Accordingly, he attacked it, crying out, “Ah perra! que te ageno!”
(words of defiance), and fell dead. The sister of charity, a good
simple woman, seeing this, exclaimed, “Oh the thrice happy man! he
has died at the foot of the cross, and whilst invoking it!” At a recent
date (1808), a French savant, travelling in Spain, went to the puppet
theatre at Valencia. The Death of Seneca was the title of the piece
performed. In presence of the audience, the celebrated philosopher,
the pride of Cordova, ended historically by opening his veins in a
bath. The streams of blood that flowed from his arms were simulated
cleverly enough by the movement of a red ribbon. An unexpected
miracle, less historical than the mode of death, wound up the drama.
Amidst the noise of fireworks, the pagan sage was taken up into
heaven in a glory, pronouncing, as he ascended, the confession of his
faith in Jesus Christ, to the perfect satisfaction of the audience. The
smell of powder must have been a novelty to Seneca’s nostrils; but
doubtless the rockets contributed greatly to the general effect of the
scene, and Spain, the country of anomalies, is not to be disconcerted
by an anachronism.
Into whatever country we follow the footsteps of the numerous and
motley family of the Puppets, we find that, however exotic their
habits may be on their first arrival in the land, they speedily become
a reflex of the peculiar genius, tastes, and characteristics of its
people. Thus in Italy, the land of song and dance, of strict theatrical
censors, and despotic governments, we find the burattini dealing in
sharp but polished jests at the expense of their rulers, excelling in the
ballet, and performing Rossini’s operas, without suppressions or
curtailment, with an orchestra of five or six instruments and singers
behind the scenes. The Spanish titere couches his lance and rides
forth to meet the Moor and rescue captive maidens, marches with
Cortes to the conquest of Montezuma’s capital, or enacts, with more
or less decorum, a moving incident from Holy Writ. In the Jokken
and Puppen of Germany we recognise the metaphysical and
fantastical tendencies of that country, its broad and rather heavy
humour, its quaint superstitions, domestic sprites, and enchanted
bullets. And in France, where puppet-shows were early cherished,
and encouraged by the aristocracy as well as by the people, we need
not wonder to find them elegant, witty, and frivolous—modelling
themselves, in fact, upon their patrons. M. Magnin dwells long upon
the puppets of his native land, which possess, however, less character
and strongly marked originality than those of some of the other
countries he discourses of. It is here he first traces the etymology of
the word marionette—unmistakably French, although it has been of
late years adopted in Germany and England. He considers it to be
one of the numerous affectionate diminutives of the name of Marie,
which crept into the French language in its infancy, and which soon
came to be applied to those little images of the Virgin that were
exhibited, gaily dressed and tinsel bedecked, to the adoration of the
devout. In a pastoral poem of the 13th century, he finds the pretty
name of Marionette applied by her lover to a young girl called
Marion. “Several streets of old Paris, in which were sold or exposed
images of the Virgin and saints, were called, some Rues des
Marmouzets (there are still two streets of this name in Paris), others
Rues des Mariettes, and somewhat later, Rues des Marionettes. As
irony makes its way everywhere, the amiable or religious sense of the
words Marotte, Mariotte, and Marionette, was soon exchanged for a
jesting and profane one. In the 15th century there was sung, in the
streets and taverns, an unchaste ditty called the Chant Marionnette.
The bauble of a licensed fool was called, and is still called, marotte;
‘by reason,’ says Ménage, ‘of the head of a marionette—that is to say,
of a little girl’—which surmounts it; and at last mountebanks
irreverently called their wooden actors and actresses marmouzets
and mariottes. At the end of the 16th century and commencement of
the 17th, several Protestant or sceptical writers were well pleased to
confound, with an intention of mockery, the religious and the
profane sense of the words marmouzets and marionettes. Henry
Estienne, inveighing, in his Apologie pour Herodote, against the
chastisements inflicted on the Calvinists for the mutilation of
madonnas and images of saints, exclaims: ‘Never did the Egyptians
take such cruel vengeance for the murder of their cats, as has been
seen wreaked, in our days, on those who had mutilated some
marmouzet or marionette.’” It is curious here again to trace the
connection between Roman image-worship and the puppet-show.
The marionette, at first reverently placed in niches, with spangled
robe and burning lamp, is presently found perched at the end of a
jester’s bauble and parading a juggler’s board. The question here is
only of a name, soon abandoned by the sacred images to its
disreputable usurpers. But we have already seen, especially in the
case of Spain, what a scandalous confusion came to pass between
religious ceremonies and popular entertainments, until at times
these could hardly be distinguished from those; and, as far as what
occurred within them went, spectators might often be perplexed to
decide whether they were in a sacred edifice or a showman’s booth.
With respect to the French term marionette, it had yet to undergo,
after its decline and fall from a sacred to a profane application, a still
deeper degradation, before its final confinement to the class of
puppets it at the present day indicates. In the 16th century it came to
be applied not only to mechanical images of all kinds, sacred and
profane, but, by a strange extension of its meaning, to the supposed
supernatural dolls and malignant creatures that sorcerers were
accused of fostering, as familiar imps and as idols. From a huge
quarto printed in Paris in 1622, containing a collection of trials for
magic which took place between 1603 and 1615, M. Magnin extracts a
passage showing how certain poor idiots were accused of “having
kept, close confined and in subjection in their houses, marionettes,
which are little devils, having usually the form of toads, sometimes of
apes, always very hideous.” The rack, the gallows, and the faggot
were the usual lot of the unfortunate supposed possessors of these
unwholesome puppets.
There are instances on record of long discussions and fierce
disputes between provinces or towns for the honour of having been
the birthplace of some great hero, poet, or philosopher. In like
manner, M. Magnin labours hard, and expends much erudition, to
prove that the French Polichinelle, notwithstanding the similarity of
name, is neither the son, nor in any way related to the Italian
Pulcinella, but is thoroughly French in origin and character. That
Harlequin and Pantaloon came from south of the Alps he readily
admits; also, that a name has been borrowed from Italy for the
French Punch. But he stands up manfully for the originality of this
jovial and dissipated puppet, which he maintains to be a thoroughly
Gallic type. Whether conclusive or not—a point to the settlement of
which we will not give many lines—the arguments and facts he brings
forward are ingenious and amusing. After displaying the marked
difference that exists in every respect, except in that of the long
hooked nose and the name, between the Punchinello of Paris and
that of Naples—the latter being a tall straight-backed active fellow,
dressed in a black half-mask, a grey pointed hat, a white frock and
trousers, and a tight girdle, and altogether of a different character
from his more northern namesake—he has the audacity to broach,
although with some hesitation, the bold idea that Polichinelle is a
portrait of the great Béarnais. “To hide nothing of my thought, I
must say that, under the necessary exaggeration of a loyal caricature,
Polichinelle exhibits the popular type, I dare not say of Henry IV.,
but at any rate of the Gascon officer imitating his master’s bearing in
the guardroom of the palace of St Germain, or of the old Louvre. As
to the hunch, it has been from time immemorial the appendage, in
France, of a facetious, witty fellow. In the thirteenth century, Adam
de la Halle was called the hunchback of Arras, not that he was
deformed, but on account of his humorous vein.
On m’appelle bochu, mais je ne le suis mie.

The second hump, the one in front, conspicuous under his

spangled doublet, reminds us of the glittering and protuberant
cuirass of men-at-arms, and of the pigeon-breasted dress then in
fashion, which imitated the curve of the cuirass.[6] The very hat of
Polichinelle (I do not refer to his modern three-cornered covering,
but to the beaver, with brim turned up, which he still wore in the
seventeenth century), was the hat of the gentlemen of that day, the
hat à la Henri IV. Finally, certain characteristic features of his face,
as well as the bold jovial amorous temper of the jolly fellow, remind
us, in caricature, of the qualities and the defects of the Béarnais. In
short, notwithstanding his Neapolitan name, Polichinelle appears to
me to be a completely national type, and one of the most vivacious
and sprightly creations of French fancy.”
The first puppet-showmen in France whose names have been
handed down to posterity, were a father and son called Brioché.
According to the most authentic of the traditions collected, Jean
Brioché exercised, at the beginning of Louis XIV.’s reign, the two
professions of tooth-drawer and puppet-player. His station was at
the end of the Pont Neuf, near the gate of Nesle, and his comrade
was the celebrated monkey Fagotin. With or without his consent,
Polichinelle was about this time dragged into politics. Amongst the
numerous Mazarinades and political satires that deluged Paris in
1649, there was one entitled Letter from Polichinelle to Jules
Mazarin. It was in prose, but ended by these three lines, by way of
signature:—
“Je suis Polichinelle,
Qui fait la sentinelle
A la porte de Nesle.”

It is also likely that the letter was the work of Brioché or Briocchi
(who was perhaps a countryman and protégé of the cardinal’s),
written with a view to attract notice and increase his popularity (a
good advertisement, in short), than that it proceeded from the pen of
some political partisan. But in any case it serves to show that the
French Punch was then a great favourite in Paris. “I may boast,” he is
made to say in the letter, “without vanity, Master Jules, that I have
always been better liked and more respected by the people than you
have; for how many times have I, with my own ears, heard them say:
‘Let us go and see Polichinelle!’ whereas nobody ever heard them
say: ‘Let us go and see Mazarin!’” The unfortunate Fagotin came to
an untimely end, if we are to put faith in a little book now very rare
(although it has gone through several editions), entitled, Combat de
Cirano de Bergerac contre le singe de Brioché. This Cirano was a
mad duellist of extreme susceptibility. “His nose,” says Ménage,
“which was much disfigured, was cause of the death of more than ten
persons. He could not endure that any should look at him, and those
who did had forthwith to draw and defend themselves.” This lunatic,
it is said, one day took Fagotin for a lackey who was making faces at
him, and ran him through on the spot. The story may have been a
mere skit on Cirano’s quarrelsome humour; but the mistake he is
said to have made, appears by no means impossible when we become
acquainted with the appearance and dress of the famous monkey.
“He was as big as a little man, and a devil of a droll,” says the author
of the Combat de Cirano; “his master had put him on an old Spanish
hat, whose dilapidations were concealed by a plume; round his neck
was a frill à la Scaramouche; he wore a doublet with six movable
skirts, trimmed with lace and tags—a garment that gave him rather
the look of a lackey—and a shoulder-belt from which hung a
pointless blade.” It was this innocent weapon, according to the writer
quoted from, that poor Fagotin had the fatal temerity to brandish
against the terrible Cirano. Whatever the manner of his death, his
fame lived long after him; and even as certain famous French
comedians have transmitted their names to the particular class of
parts they filled during their lives, so did Fagotin bequeath his to all
monkeys attached to puppet-shows. Loret, in his metrical narrative
of the wonders of the fair of St Germain’s in the year 1664, talks of
“the apes and fagotins;” La Fontaine praises Fagotin’s tricks in his
fable of The Lion and his Court, and Molière makes the sprightly and
malicious Dorine promise Tartuffe’s intended wife that she shall
have, in carnival time,
“Le sal et la grand ’branle, à savoir deux musettes,
Et parfois Fagotin et les marionnettes.”

Great honour, indeed, for a quadrumane comedian, to obtain even

incidental mention from France’s first fabulist and greatest
dramatist. It was at about the time of Tartuffe’s performance (1669)
that puppet-shows appear to have been at the zenith of their
popularity in France, and in the enjoyment of court favour. In the
accounts of expenditure of the royal treasury is noted a payment of
1365 livres “to Brioché, player of marionettes, for the stay he made at
St Germain-en-Laye during the months of September, October, and
November, to divert the royal children.” Brioché had been preceded
by another puppet-showman, who had remained nearly two months.
The dauphin was then nine years old, and evidently very fond of
Polichinelle—to whose exploits and drolleries, and to the tricks of
Fagotin, it is not, however, to be supposed that the attractions of
Brioché’s performances were confined. He and his brother showman
had doubtless a numerous company of marionettes, performing a
great variety of pieces, since they were able to amuse the dauphin
and his juvenile court for nearly five months without intermission.
Like all distinguished men, Brioché, decidedly one of the celebrities
of his time, and to whom we find constant allusions in the prose and
verse of that day, had his enemies and his rivals. Amongst the former
was to be reckoned no less a personage than Bossuet, who
denounced marionettes (with a severity that might rather have been
expected from some straight-laced Calvinist than from a prelate of
Rome) as a shameful and impure entertainment, calculated to
counteract his laborious efforts for the salvation of his flock. M.
Magnin’s extensive researches in puppet chronicles leave him
convinced that the eloquent bishop must have been in bilious temper
when thus attacking the poor little figures whose worst offences were
a few harmless drolleries. Anthony Hamilton, in a letter, half verse
and half prose, addressed to the daughter of James II. of England,
describes the fête of St Germain-en-Laye, and gives us the measure
of the marionettes’ transgressions. “The famous Polichinelle,” he
says, “the hero of that stage, is a little free in his discourse, but not
sufficiently so to bring a blush to the cheek of the damsel he diverts
by his witticisms.” We would not take Anthony Hamilton’s evidence
in such matters for more than it is worth. There was, no doubt, a fair
share of license in the pieces arranged for these puppets, or in the
jests introduced by their invisible readers; and as regards their
actions, M. Magnin himself tells us of the houzarde, an extremely
gaillarde dance, resembling that called the antiquaile mentioned in
Rabelais. Notwithstanding which, the marionettes were in great
favour with very honest people, and Charles Perrault, one of the most
distinguished members of the old French Academy, praised them in
verse as an agreeable pastime. The jokes Brioché put into the mouths
of his actors were greatly to the taste of the Parisians; so much so
that when an English mechanician exhibited other puppets which he
had contrived to move by springs instead of strings, the public still
preferred Brioché, “on account of the drolleries he made them say.”
That he was not always and everywhere so successful, we learn by a
quaint extract from the Combat de Cirano, already mentioned.
Brioché, says the facetious author, “one day took it into his head to
ramble afar with his little restless wooden Æsop, twisting, turning,
dancing, laughing, chattering, &c. This heteroclite marmouzet, or,
better to speak, this comical hunchback, was called Polichinelle. His
comrade’s name was Voisin. (More likely, suggests M. Magnin, the
voisin, the neighbour or gossip of Polichinelle.) After visiting several
towns and villages, they got on Swiss ground in a canton where
marionettes were unknown. Polichinelle having shown his phiz, as
well as all his gang, in presence of a people given to burn sorcerers,
they accused Brioché to the magistrate. Witnesses declared that they
had heard little figures jabber and talk, and that they must be devils.
Judgment was pronounced against the master of this wooden
company animated by springs. But for the interference of a man of
sense they would have made a roast of Brioché. They contented
themselves with stripping the marionettes naked. O poveretta!” The
same story is told by the Abbé d’Artigny, who lays the scene at
Soleure, and says that Brioché owed his release to a captain of the
French-Swiss regiment then recruiting in the cantons. Punch at that
time had powerful protectors. Brioché’s son and successor, Francis,
whom the Parisians familiarly called Fanchon, having been
offensively interfered with, wrote at once to the king. It would seem
that, without quitting the vicinity of the Pont Neuf, he desired to
transfer his standing to the Faubourg St Germains end, and that the
commissaire of that district prohibited his exhibition. On the 16th
October 1676, the great Colbert wrote to the lieutenant-general of
police, communicating his majesty’s commands that Brioché should
be permitted to exercise his calling, and should have a proper place
assigned to him where he might do so.
The history of the French marionettes, during the first half of the
eighteenth century, is given in considerable detail by M. Magnin, but
does not contain any very striking episodes. It is to be feared their
morals got rather relaxed during the latter years of Louis XIV.’s
reign, and under the Regency, and Bossuet might then have
thundered against them with greater reason than in 1686. Towards
the middle of the century, a great change took place in the character
of their performances: witty jests, and allusions to the scandal of
court and city, were neglected for the sake of mechanical effects and
surprises; the vaudeville and polished farce, for which the French
stage has long been and still is famous, were replaced by showy
dramas and pièces à spectacle, in which the military element seems
to have predominated, judging from the titles of some of them—The
Bombardment of Antwerp, The Taking of Charleroi, The General
Assault of Bergen-op-Zoom. It was the commencement of the decline
of puppet performances in France; the public taste underwent a
change; the eye was to be gratified, wit and satire were in great
measure dispensed with. “Vaucanson’s automatons, the flute-player,
the duck, &c., were imitated in every way, and people ran in crowds
to see Kempel’s chess-player. At the fair of St Germains, in 1744, a
Pole, named Toscani, opened a picturesque and automatical theatre,
which seems to have served as a prelude to M. Pierre’s famous show.
‘Here are to be seen,’ said the bills, ‘mountains, castles, marine
views; also figures that perfectly imitate all natural movements,
without being visibly acted upon by any string; and, which is still
more surprising, here are seen a storm, rain, thunder, vessels
perishing, sailors swimming, &c.’ On all hands such marvels as these
were announced, and also (I blush to write it) combats of wild
animals.” Bull and bear baits, wolf and dog fights, in refined France,
just a century ago, for all the world as in England in the days of
buxom Queen Bess. M. Magnin copies an advertisement of one of
these savage exhibitions, which might pass for a translated placard of
the beast-fighting establishment that complained of the opposition
made to them by Will Shakespeare and his players. Martin was the
name of the man who kept the pit at the barrière de Sèvres; and
after lauding the wickedness of his bull, the tenacity of his dogs, and
the exceeding fierceness of his new wolf, he informs the public that
he has “pure bear oil for sale.” When Paris ran after such coarse
diversions as these, what hope was there for the elves of the puppet-
show? Punch shrugged his hump, and crept moodily into a corner.
Bull-rings and mechanism were too many for him. Twenty years later
we find him again in high favour and feather at the fair of St
Germains, where Audinot, an author and ex-singer at the united
comic and Italian operas, having quarrelled with his comrades and
quitted the theatre, exhibited large marionettes, which he called
bamboches, and which were striking likenesses of the performers at
the Opéra Comique, Laruette, Clairval, Madam Bérard, and himself.
Polichinelle appeared amongst them in the character of a gentleman
of the bedchamber, and found the same sort of popularity that
Cassandrino has since enjoyed at Rome. The monarchy was in its
decline, the follies and vices of the courtiers of the 18th century had
brought them into contempt, and a parody of them was welcome to
the people. The fair over, Audinot installed his puppets in a little
theatre on the boulevard, which he called the Ambigu Comique, to
indicate the variety of the entertainments there given, and there he
brought out several new pieces, one, amongst others, entitled Le
Testament de Polichinelle. It was quite time for Punch to make his
will; his theatre was in a very weakly state. It became the fashion to
replace puppets by children; and one hears little more of marionettes
in France until Seraphin revives them in his Ombres Chinoises. Few
persons who have been in Paris will have failed to notice, when
walking round the Palais Royal between two and three in the
afternoon, or seven and nine in the evening, a shrivelled weary-
looking man, standing just within the railings that separate the
gallery from the garden, and continually repeating, in a tone between
a whine, a chant, and a croak, a monotonous formula, at first not
very intelligible to a foreigner. This man has acquired all the rights
that long occupation can give: the flagstone whereon, day after day,
as long as we can remember—and doubtless for a score or two of
years before—he has stood sentry, is worn hollow by the shuffling
movement by which he endeavours to retain warmth in his feet. He
is identified with the railings against which he stands, and is as much
a part of the Palais Royal as the glass gallery, Chevet’s shop, or the
cannon that daily fires itself off at noon. A little attention enables one
to discover the purport of his unvarying harangue. It begins with
“Les Ombres Chinoises de Seraphin”—this very drawlingly spoken—
and ends with “Prrrrenez vos billets”—a rattle on the r, and the word
billets dying away in a sort of exhausted whine. In 1784, the
ingenious Dominique Seraphin exhibited his Chinese shadows
several times before the royal family at Versailles, was allowed to call
his theatre “Spectacle des Enfans de France,” and took up his
quarters in the Palais Royal, in the very house opposite to whose
door the monotonous and melancholy man above described at the
present day “touts” for an audience. There for seventy years Seraphin
and his descendants have pulled the strings of their puppets. But
here, as M. Magnin observes, it is no longer movable sculpture, but
movable painting—the shadows of figures cut out of sheets of
pasteboard or leather, and placed between a strong light and a
transparent curtain. The shadows, owing doubtless to their
intangible nature, have passed unscathed through the countless
political changes and convulsions that have occurred during the
three quarters of a century that they have inhabited a nook in the
palace which has been alternately Cardinal, Royal, National, Imperial
—all things by turn, and nothing long. They have lasted and thriven,
as far as bodiless shades can thrive, under Republic and Empire,
Directory and Consulate, Restoration and Citizen Monarchy,
Republic, and Empire again. We fear it must be admitted that time-
serving is at the bottom of this long impunity and prosperity. In the
feverish days of the first Revolution, marionettes had sans-culotte
tendencies, with the exception of Polichinelle, who, mindful
doubtless of his descent from Henry IV., played the aristocrat, and
carried his head so high, that at last he lost it. M. Magnin passes
hastily over this affecting phase in the career of his puppet friends,
merely quoting a few lines from Camille Desmoulins, which bear
upon the subject. “This selfish multitude,” exclaims the Vieux
Cordelier, indignant at the apathetic indifference of the Parisians in
presence of daily human hecatombs, “is formed to follow blindly the
impulse of the strongest. There was fighting in the Carrousel and the
Champ de Mars, and the Palais Royal displayed its shepherdesses
and its Arcadia. Close by the guillotine, beneath whose keen edge fell
crowned heads, on the same square, and at the same time, they also
guillotined Polichinelle, who divided the attention of the eager
crowd.” Punch, who had passed his life hanging the hangman, was at
a nonplus in presence of the guillotine. He missed the running noose
he was so skilful in drawing tight, and mournfully laid his neck in the
bloody groove. Some say that he escaped, that his dog was dressed
up, and beheaded in his stead, and that he himself reached a foreign
shore, where he presently regained his freedom of speech and former
jollity of character. M. Magnin himself is clearly of opinion that he is
not dead, but only sleeps. “Would it not be well,” he asks, “to awaken
him here in France? Can it be that the little Æsop has nothing new to
tell us? Above all, do not say that he is dead. Polichinelle never dies.
You doubt it? You do not know then what Polichinelle is? He is the
good sense of the people, the brisk sally, the irrepressible laugh. Yes,
Polichinelle will laugh, sing, and hiss, as long as the world contains
vices, follies, and things to ridicule. You see very well that
Polichinelle is not near his death. Polichinelle is immortal!”
To England M. Magnin allots nearly as many pages as to his own
country, and displays in them a rare acquaintance with our language,
literature, and customs. It would in no way have surprised him, he
says, had the playful and lightsome muse of the puppet-show been
made less welcome by the Germanic races than by nations of Greco-
Roman origin. The grave and more earnest temper generally
attributed to the former would have accounted for their disregard of
a pastime they might deem frivolous, and fail to appreciate. He was
well pleased, then, to find his wooden clients, his well-beloved
marionettes, as popular and as well understood on the banks of the
Thames, the Oder, and the Zuyder Zee, as in Naples, Paris, or Seville.
“In England especially,” he says, “the taste for this kind of spectacle
has been so widely diffused, that one could hardly name a single
poet, from Chaucer to Lord Byron, or a single prose-writer, from Sir
Philip Sydney to Hazlitt, in whose works are not to be found
abundant information on the subject, or frequent allusions to it. The
dramatists, above all, beginning with those who are the glory of the
reigns of Elizabeth and James I., supply us with the most curious
particulars of the repertory, the managers, and the stage of the
marionettes. Shakespeare himself has not disdained to draw from
this singular arsenal ingenious or energetic metaphors, which he
places in the mouths of his most tragic personages at the most
pathetic moments. I can name ten or twelve of his plays in which this
occurs.” (The list follows.) “The cotemporaries and successors of this
great poet—Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Milton, Davenant,
Swift, Addison, Gay, Fielding, Goldsmith, Sheridan—have also
borrowed many moral or satirical sallies from this popular diversion.
Thanks to this singular tendency of the English dramatists to busy
themselves with the proceedings of their little street-corner rivals, I
have found in their writings much assistance—as agreeable as
unexpected—in the task I have undertaken. Deprived, as one
necessarily is in a foreign country, of direct sources and original
pamphlets, having at my disposal only those standard works of great
writers that are to be met with on the shelves of every library, I have
found it sufficient, strange to say! to collate the passages so
abundantly furnished me by these chosen authors to form a
collection of documents concerning English puppets more
circumstantial and more complete, I venture to think, than any that
have hitherto been got together by the best-informed native critics.”
Others, if they please, may controvert the claim here put forward; we
shall content ourselves with saying that the amount of research
manifested in M. Magnin’s long essay on English puppets does as
much credit to his industry as the manner of the compilation does to
his judgment, acumen, and literary talent. It must be observed,
however, that he has not altogether limited himself, when seeking
materials and authorities, to the chosen corps of English dramatists,
poets, and essayists, but has consulted sundry antiquarian
authorities, tracts of the time of the commonwealth, the works of
Hogarth, those of Hone, Payne Collier, Thomas Wright, and other
modern or cotemporary writers. At the same time, this portion of his
book contains much that will be novel to most English readers, and
abounds in curious details and pertinent reflections on old English
character and usages. If we do not dwell upon it at some length, it is
because we desire, whilst room remains, to devote a page or two to
Germany and the Northerns. We must not omit, however, to mention
that M. Magnin joins issue with Mr Payne Collier on the question of
the origin of the English Punch. Mr Collier makes him date from
1688, and brings him over from Holland in the same ship with
William of Orange. M. Magnin takes a different view, and makes out
a very fair case. He begins by remarking that several false derivations
have been assigned to the name of Punch. “Some have imagined I
know not what secret and fantastical connection between Punch’s
name, and even between the fire of Punch’s wit, and the ardent
beverage of which the recipe, it is said, came to us from Persia. It is
going a great deal too far in search of an error. Punch is simply the
name of our friend Pulchinello, a little altered and contracted by the
monosyllabic genius of the English language. In the early period of
his career in England we find the names Punch and Punchinello used
indifferently for each other. Is it quite certain that Punch came to
London from the Hague, in the suite of William III.? I have doubts of
it. His learned biographer admits that there are traces of his presence
in England previous to the abdication of James II.... Certain passages
of Addison’s pretty Latin poem on puppet-shows (Machinæ
Gesticulantes) prove that Punch’s theatre was in great progress on
the old London puppet-shows in the days of Queen Elizabeth.” The
personal appearance, and some of the characteristics of Punch,
certainly induce a belief that he is of French origin; and even though
it be proved that he was imported into England from Holland, may it
not be admitted as highly probable that he went to the latter country
with the refugees, who for several years previously to the Revolution
of 1688 had been flocking thither from France? We risk the question
with all diffidence, and without the slightest intention of
pronouncing judgment on so important a matter. And as we have no
intention or desire to take up the cudgels in behalf of the origin of
that Punch, who, as the unfortunate and much-battered Judy can
testify, himself handles those weapons so efficiently, we refer the
reader to M. Magnin for the pros and cons of the argument, and start
upon a rapid tour through Germany and northern Europe. M.
Magnin accelerates his pace as he approaches the close of his
journey, and pauses there only where his attention is arrested by
some striking novelty or original feature, to omit mention of which
would be to leave a gap in the history he has undertaken to write.
Germany is the native land and head-quarters of wood-cutters. We
mean not hewers of wood for the furnace, but cunning carvers in
smooth-grained beech and delicate deal; artists in timber, we may
truly say, when we contemplate the graceful and beautiful objects for
which we are indebted to the luxuriant forests and skilful knives of
Baden and Bavaria. The Teutonic race also possess, in a very high
degree, the mechanical genius, to be convinced of which we have but
to look at the ingenious clocks, with their astronomical evolutions,
moving figures, crowing cocks, and the like, so constantly met with in
all parts of Germany, in Switzerland, and in Holland. This double
aptitude brought about an early development of anatomical
sculpture in Germany, applied, as usual, to various purposes,
religious and civil, serious and recreative, wonderful images of
saints, figures borne in municipal processions, and dramatic
puppets. These latter are traced by M. Magnin as far back as the 12th
century. Even in a manuscript of the 10th century he finds the word
Tocha or Docha used in the sense of doll or puppet (puppa), and also
in that of mime (mima, mimula). Somewhat later the word Tokke-
spil (puppet-show) occurs in the poems of the Minnesingers. One of
these, Master Sigeher, when stigmatising the Pope’s abuse of his
influence with the Electors of the Empire, writes—
“Als der Tokken spilt der Welche mit Tutschen Vürsten.”

“The Italian plays with the German princes as with puppets.”

There still exists in the library at Strasburg a manuscript dating

from the end of the 12th century, and adorned with a great number
of curious miniatures, one of which, under the strange title of Ludus
Monstrorum, represents a puppet-show. Two little figures, armed
cap-à-pie, are made to move and fight by means of a string, whose
ends two showmen hold. The painting proves not only the existence
of marionettes at that period, but also that they were sufficiently
common to supply a symbol intelligible to all, since it is put as an
illustration to a moral reflection on the vanity of human things. From
the equipment of the figures it may also be inferred that military
subjects were then in favour on the narrow stage of the puppet-show.
And M. Magnin, zealous to track his fox to its very earth, risks the
word Niebelungen, but brings no evidence to support his surmise. In
the 14th and 15th centuries we obtain more positive data as to the
nature of the puppenspiel, and of its performances. Romantic
subjects, historical fables, were then in fashion—the four sons of
Aymon, Genevieve of Brabant, the Lady of Roussillon, to whom her
lover’s heart was given to eat, and who killed herself in her despair.
The history of Joan of Arc was also a favourite subject. That heroine
had an episodical part in a piece performed at Ratisbon in 1430.
“There exists,” says M. Magnin, “a precious testimony to a
performance of marionettes at that period. In a fragment of the poem
of Malagis, written in Germany in the 15th century, after a Flemish
translation of our old romance of Maugis, the fairy Oriande de
Rosefleur, who has been separated for fifteen years from her beloved
pupil, Malagis, arrives, disguised as a juggler, at the castle of
Rigremont, where a wedding is being celebrated. She offers the
company the diversion of a puppet-show; it is accepted; she asks for
a table to serve as a stage, and exhibits upon it two figures, a male
and female magician. Into their mouths she puts stanzas, which tell
her history and cause her to be recognised by Malagis. M. Von der
Hagen has published this fragment from the MS. preserved at
Heidelberg, in Germania, vol. viii., p. 280. The scene in question is
not to be found either in the French poem or the French prose
romance.” The 16th century was an epoch in the annals of German
puppets. Scepticism and sorcery were the order of the day. Faust
stepped upon the stage and held it long.
It appears to have been the custom, rarely deviated from by the
puppet-shows of any nation or time, to have a comic character or
buffoon, who intruded, even in the most tragical pieces, to give by his
jests variety and relief to the performance. There was nothing odd or
startling in this in the Middle Ages, when every great personage—
emperor, king, or prelate—had his licensed jester attached to his
household. M. Magnin is in some doubt as to the name first given to
this character in Germany, unless it was Eulenspiegel (a name which
in modern times has acquired some celebrity as a literary
pseudonyme), or rather Master Hemmerlein, whose caustic sarcasm
partakes at once of the humour of the devil and the hangman. Master
Hemmerlein, according to Frisch, had a face like a frightful mask; he
belonged to the lowest class of marionettes, under whose dress the
showman passes his hand to move them. This author adds that the
name of Hemmerlein was sometimes given to the public executioner,
and that it is applied to the devil in the Breviarium Historicum of
Sebald. This will bear explanation. The word Hämmerlein or
Hämmerling (the latter is now the usual orthography) has three very
distinct meanings—a jack-pudding, a flayer, and a gold-hammer
(bird). The German headsman, in former days, combined with his
terrible duties the occupation of a flayer or knacker, charged to
remove dead horses and other carrion; hence he was commonly
spoken of as Master Hämmerlein.[7]
It is difficult to say by what grim mockery or strange assimilation
his name was applied to the buffoon of the puppet-show. We have
little information, however, concerning Hämmerlein the droll, who
appears to have had but a short reign when he was supplanted by the
famous Hanswurst, to whom out-spoken Martin Luther compared
Duke Henry of Brunswick. “Miserable, choleric spirit” (here Martin
addresses himself to Satan), “you, and your poor possessed creature
Henry, you know, as well as all your poets and writers, that the name
of Hanswurst is not of my invention; others have employed it before
me, to designate those rude and unlucky persons who, desiring to
exhibit finesse, commit but clumsiness and impropriety.” And that
there might be no mistake as to his application of the word, he adds:
“Many persons compare my very gracious lord, Duke Henry of
Brunswick, to Hanswurst, because the said lord is replete and
corpulent.” One of the consequences in Germany of Luther’s
preachings, and of the more fanatical denunciations of some of his
disciples and cotemporaries, was terrible havoc amongst church
pictures and statues, including automatical images and groups, then
very numerous in that country, and an end was at that time put to
dramatic church ceremonies, not only in districts that embraced the
new doctrine, but in many that adhered to Rome. Some of the
performances were of the most grotesque description. They were
particularly frequent in Poland, where, at Christmas time, in many
churches, and especially in those of monasteries, the people were
amused between mass and vespers, by the play of the Szopka or
stable. “In this kind of drama,” says M. Magnin, “lalki (little dolls of
wood or card-board) represented Mary, Jesus, Joseph, the angels,
the shepherds, and the three Magi on their knees, with their offerings
of gold, incense, and myrrh, not forgetting the ox, the ass, and St.
John the Baptist’s lamb. Then came the massacre of the innocents, in
the midst of which Herod’s own son perished by mistake. The wicked
prince, in his despair, called upon death, who soon made his
appearance, in the form of a skeleton, and cut off his head with his
scythe. Then a black devil ascended, with a red tongue, pointed
horns, and a long tail, picked up the king’s body on the end of his
pitchfork, and carried it off to the infernal regions.” This strange
performance was continued in the Polish churches until the middle
of the 18th century, with numerous indecorous variations. Expelled
from consecrated edifices, it is nevertheless preserved to the present
day, as a popular diversion, in all the provinces of the defunct
kingdom of Poland. From Christmas-tide to Shrove Tuesday it is
welcomed by both the rural and the urban population, by the
peasantry, the middle classes, and even in the dwellings of the
nobility.
In Germany, the last twenty years of the seventeenth century
witnessed a violent struggle between the church and the stage, or it
should rather be said a relentless persecution of the latter by the
former, which could oppose only remonstrances to the intolerant
rigour of the consistories. The quarrel had its origin at Hamburg. A
clergyman refused to administer the sacrament to two stage-players.
An ardent controversy ensued; the dispute became envenomed; the
Protestant clergy made common cause; the anti-theatrical movement
spread over all Germany. In vain did several universities, appealed to
by the comedians, prove, from the most respectable authorities, the
innocence of their profession, of which the actors themselves
published sensible and judicious defences; in vain did several princes
endeavour to counterbalance, by marks of esteem and consideration,
the exaggerated severity of the theologians; the majority of the public
sided with its pastors. Players were avoided as dissolute vagabonds;
and although, whilst condemning the performers, people did not
cease to frequent the performances, a great many comedians, feeling
themselves humiliated, abandoned the stage to foreigners and to
marionettes. The regular theatres rapidly decreased in number, and
puppet-shows augmented in a like ratio. “At the end of the 17th
century,” says Flögel, “the Haupt-und-Staatsactionen usurped the
place of the real drama. These pieces were played sometimes by
mechanical dolls, sometimes by actors.” The meaning of the term
Haupt-und-Staatsaction is rather obscure, but it was in fact applied
to almost every kind of piece performed by puppets. It was bound to