PREFACE.
The following drama is founded chiefly upon the performance of an old Italian way-faring puppet-showman of the name of Piccini, who has perambulated town and country for the last forty or fifty years. Like the representations of our early stage, it was not by him distinguished into acts and scenes, but the divisions were easily made; and the whole now assumes a shape, in which it may rival most of the theatrical productions of the present era, whether by Poole, popular for his "Paul Pry," Peake for his puns, Planché for his poetry, Peacock for his parodies, or Payne for his plagiarisms.
Piccini lives in the classical vicinity of Drury Lane, and is now infirm; but he still travels about, considering it "no sin to labour in his vocation:" he is thus described by a writer in a discontinued periodical, called the "Literary Speculum," which we quote, because it is the only printed notice we have seen of an individual so generally known. It is to be observed, that the article to which we are indebted, was published many years ago, and the author of it speaks of his own youth, when Piccini's age was "as a lusty winter, frosty but kindly," and before "time, the old clock-setter," had nearly let him run the whole length of his chain without winding him up again." "He (Piccini) was an Italian; a little thick-set man, with a red humourous looking countenance. He had lost one eye, but the other made up for the absence of its fellow by a shrewdness of expression sufficient for both. He always wore an oil-skin hat and a rough great coat. At his back he carried a deal box, containing the dramatis personæ of his little theatre; and in his hand the trumpet, at whose glad summons, hundreds of merry laughter-loving faces flocked round him with gaping
