ABSTRACT
The cabotin is a strolling player; the cabotin is a kinsman to the mime, the histrion,1 and the juggler; the cabotin can work miracles with his technical mastery; the cabotin keeps alive the tradition of the true art of acting. It was with his help that the Western theatre came to full flower in the theatres of Spain and Italy in the seventeenth century. Whilst acknowledging the mystery and welcoming its revival on the Russian stage, Benois2 speaks disparagingly of cabotinage as some sort of evil; yet the mystery-players themselves sought the help of the cabotins. The cabotin was to be found wherever there was any sort of dramatic presentation, and the organizers of mystery-plays relied on them to perform all the most difficult tasks. From the history of the French theatre we know that the mystery-player was incapable of performing without the help of the juggler. During the reign of Philippe le Bel3 farce suddenly made an unexpected appearance amongst the religious subjects in the form of the bawdy adventures of Renart.4 Who but the cabotins were capable of performing this farce? With the gradual development of processional mysteries there appeared more and more new plots which demanded of the performer an ever-widening range of technical accomplishments. The solution of the complex problems posed by the mysteryplays fell on the shoulders of the cabotins. Thus we see that cabotinage was common even in the mystery-plays and the cabotin played a decisive part in their development.
