I
When we consider how cosmopolitan is the population of these United
States, and how freely we have drawn upon all the races of Europe, it is
very curious that the puppet-show does not flourish in our American
cities as it flourishes in many of the towns on the other side of the
Western Ocean. The shrill squeak of Punch is not infrequent in the
streets of London--altho it may not now be heard as often as it was a
score of years ago. In Paris in the gardens of the Tuileries and of the
Luxembourg, and again in the Champs-Elysees where the children
congregate in the afternoon, there are nearly half a dozen enclosures
roped off and provided with cane chairs so that spectators, old and
young, may be gladdened by the vision of Polichinelle, and by the pranks
of Guignol. Yet even in Paris there are not now as many puppet-shows as
there were fifty years ago; and in Italy and in Germany the traveler
fails to find as frequent exhibitions of this sort as he used to meet
with in the years that are gone. Apparently there is everywhere a waning
interest in the plays performed by the little troop of personages
animated by the thumb and fingers of the invisible performer. And
perhaps the declining vogue of this diminutive drama in old Europe is
one reason why it has never achieved a wide popularity in young America.
In France the puppet-show is stationary; it has its fixed habitation and
abode; and its lovers can easily discover where to find it when they
seek the specific pleasure it alone can provide. In England the
spectacle of Punch and Judy is ambulatory; the bloodthirsty hero and the
bereaved heroine roam the streets at large, and their arrival in any one
avenue of traffic can never be predicted with certainty. In the United
States poor Punch has never ventured to show his face in the open
street, seeking the suffrages of the casual throng; he is not
peripatetic but intermittent, and he makes his appearances only in
private houses, and only when he is sent for specially to entertain the
children's party. Here in America Punch is still a stranger to the broad
public; he has an exotic flavor; he suggests Dickens, somehow; and he
must be wholly unknown to countless thousands who would rejoice to make
his acquaintance and to laugh at his terrible deeds.
His terrible deeds!--perhaps there is in these words a possible
explanation for the failure of Punch to win favor among the descendants
of the Puritans, who are always inclined to apply severe moral standards
of conduct. Now, if we apply any moral standard at all to the conduct of
Mr. Punch, the result is simply appalling, for the customary drama of
which he is the sole hero sets before us a story of triumphant
villainy, adequately to be compared only with the dastardly history of
Richard III in Shakspere's melodramatic tragedy. Mr. Punch is an
accessory before the fact in the death of his infant child, and when his
devoted wife very naturally remonstrates with him, he turns upon her
with invective and violence--a violence which culminates in
assassination. Having once seen red and tasted blood, he finds himself
swiftly started upon a career of crime. His total depravity tempts him
to a startling succession of hideous murders. He slays an inoffensive
negro, a harmless clown, and a worthy policeman. Then he succeeds, by a
simple trick, in hanging the hangman himself. By his fatal assaults upon
these two officers of justice, the necessary policeman and the useful
hangman, Mr. Punch exhibits his contempt for the majesty of the law. He
stands forth, without a shred of conscience, as a practical anarchist,
rejecting all authority. His hand is against every man and every man's
hand is against him. And having violated the laws of this world, he
finally discloses his callous contempt for the punishment which ought to
await him in the next world; he has a hand-to-hand fight with the devil
himself--a deadly struggle from which he emerges victorious. And this is
the end, which crowns the work.
[Illustration: Behind the scenes]
[Illustration: Punch throws away the child]
[Illustration: Punch, Judy, and their child]
[Illustration: Punch quiets Judy]
When we consider the several episodes of Mr. Punch's abhorrent history,
we are reluctantly forced to the conclusion that his story is even less
informed with morality than that of Richard III. The crookbacked king
comes to a bad end at last; he meets with the just retribution for his
many misdeeds; and he falls before the sword of Richmond. But Mr. Punch
comes to a good end, and so far as we may know, he lives happy ever
after, like the princes and princesses of the fairytales. He may even
marry again and have another child, to be made away with in its turn.
The more we consider his misdeeds and his misadventures the more
shocking they are to our moral sense. Mr. Punch appears as a monster of
such hideous mien that to be hated he needs but to be seen. This is how
he must appear to every one of us who applies a moral standard to the
drama, and who is willing to hold every character in a play to a strict
accountability for his words and deeds. If we apply this moral standard
to the play of Punch and Judy, then that play must be dismissed as
profoundly and hopelessly immoral, carrying ethical infection to all who
are so unfortunate as to be spectators at its performance. And more
particularly, it is an absolutely unfit piece for the young, whose
immature minds need to be guarded against everything which might tend to
confuse the delicate distinctions between right and wrong.
But, of course, we do not apply a moral standard to the sayings and
doings of Mr. Punch, for the plain and sufficient reason that he is not
a human being. He is not a man and a brother, upon whom we may be
tempted to pattern ourselves. He is but a six-inch puppet, a thing of
shreds and patches, a wooden-headed doll, vitalized for a moment only by
the hand concealed inside his flimsy body with its flaunting colors. He
is too fantastic, too impossible, too unreal, too unrelated to any
possible world, for us to feel called upon to frown upon his misdeeds or
to take them seriously. He is a joke, and we know that he is a joke, and
all the children know that he is only a joke. Even the youngest child is
never tempted to believe in his existence and to be moved to follow his
example or to imitate his dark deeds. The proof of the pudding is in the
eating; and the proof of a play is in the effect it produces upon the
spectators. We may question whether any one of the millions of
performances of the lamentable tragedy of Mr. Punch has suggested to a
single father the fatal neglect of his offspring or to a single husband
the possibility of wife-murder. And we may doubt whether any child,
after witnessing Mr. Punch's murderous combats with the policeman and
the devil, has ever felt any lessening of his respect for those two
time-honored guardians of law and order.
[Illustration: Punch on his steed]
[Illustration: Punch teaches Jack Ketch how to hang a man]
[Illustration: Punch in prison]
[Illustration: Punch kills the Devil]
The plea of confession and avoidance which is here set up for Punch and
Judy is much the same as that set up by Charles Lamb for the frolicsome
Restoration comedies. Lamb admitted that they were degradingly
immoral--if you took them seriously and accepted them as pictures of
life. But he insisted that they were not really amenable to this moral
standard, since they were plainly impossible in any world known to man.
Macaulay had no difficulty in showing that Lamb was judging others by
his clever and sophisticated self. To Lamb the creatures of Wycherley
and Congreve might reveal manners and customs which removed them from
the sphere of recognizable humanity; but the majority of his
fellow-spectators were not so nimble-witted; they saw characters on the
stage personated by living performers, and they beheld these characters
shamelessly doing shameful things. Because the persons in the play were
represented by actual human beings they seemed indisputably human; and
their deeds could not be considered as outside morality. Yet the plea
made by Lamb for the Restoration comedies has a certain validity when it
is put forward in behalf of Mr. Punch. He is not personated by an actual
human being; and even the least sophisticated of juvenile spectators
does not accept him as a fellow-creature strictly amenable to the human
code.