The German play is freely adapted from the French play Paillasse, by d'Ennery and Fournier; the original French work apparently appeared around 1850. The item is a published copy (Berlin: A. W. Hayn, n.d.; Both's Bühnen-Repertoir des Auslandes No. 146), which has been annotated as a prompt-book. Bound together with the above play is another play: Kean, by Louis Schneider, Both's Bühnen-Repertoir No. 60. Apparently the copies of the two plays were bound together by Bloch. The front fly-leaf--which seems to pertain to the copy of Kean, the first play in the combined volume--is signed "Th. Bloch" (a label "Theodor Bloch" is also pasted to the front cover). Below Bloch's name is lightly visible "Philadelphia" and what appears to be the date "1838." That writing apparently stems from a previous owner of the book, Serges, whose name is also written at the top of the next page (lightly visible). Theodor Bloch was active in German-language theater in Philadelphia from 1873 until at least the mid 1890s, first as an actor and later as a prompter, and also ran a theater lending library. Both titles of the combined volume are listed in Bloch's catalog for his lending library, dated 1886 (see box 34). The copy of Bajazzo evidently dates from a somewhat later period (as compared to the copy of Kean), perhaps the early 1850s. A few names of cast members (barely, if at all, legible) are noted on the page with the list of characters. (The collection's holdings of theater newspapers and playbills contain no reference to this play.)
