survivals of the old style puppet show and occasionally experiments
with marionettes in the new manner. It is said that in Bohemia the
marionette plays are the only form of drama now given in the native
tongue. A very famous showman of Bohemia was Kopecki who travelled
about with his show from town to town. A prominent Bohemian minister
now residing in New York relates that he remembers these puppets and
the terror which clutched his boyish heart whenever the little wooden
devil appeared, opening and closing his horrible mouth and emitting the
most inhuman and frightful noises. He remembers the comic characters
of the shows, a rude peasant and his wife. The peasant always wielded
a stick and there were many threatened beatings, but they never took
place. In 1885 the names of Kopecki and of another showman, Winizki,
were made doubly prominent by the publication of a book of their
old puppet plays taken down in shorthand by two Viennese authors
from performances they witnessed and written finally in wonderful
Hoch-Deutsch.
[Illustration: BOHEMIAN PUPPETS
_Upper_: Devil, Priest, Peasant
_Lower_: Soldier, King and Queen
[Property of the Reverend Vincent Pisek, New York]]
In Hungary the gypsies have always been the puppeteers, travelling
about with their rough little figures and accompaniment of music. From
Moldavia comes a report of gypsy players at Christmas time in the
olden days, one man crying out through the streets, “To the puppets,
to the puppets!” followed by two other gypsies with a little theatre
of marionettes. In these shows at the time of the Turkish wars in 1829
miniature Turks and Cossacks were made to belabor each other.
In Russia religious puppet plays were very common. There used to be
in Moscow a regular mystery performed by marionettes on the Sunday
before Christmas. It represented three Christian martyrs thrown into
a fiery furnace and was performed in front of the great altar of the
Moscow cathedral. Crude popular shows also wandered about and in 1812
Mr. Daniel Clarke discovered in Tartary, among the wandering Cossacks
of the Don, common little dolls made to dance on a board by means of a
string tied to the knees of a boy. These had probably been introduced
and become established back in the remote ages in this out-of-the-way
location.
Mr. Alexander Zelenko, formerly a professor at the University of
Moscow, has written some interesting facts concerning modern Russian
puppets. He says: “There still are travelling comedians who wander
all over the country with their little outfits of dolls and folding
screens. In most cases a so-called hand organ is used, and very often
a monkey or a bird picks out the tickets of happiness. The performer
uses a contrivance in his mouth to alter his voice for the different
impersonations. The principal hero is ‘Petrouchka’ or ‘Diminutive
Peter,’ the same as German ‘Kasperle’ and English ‘Punch.’ The hero
makes much mischief in a horse trade with a gypsy or with a German
doctor, a policeman or a recruiting officer. For such mischief the
devil takes his body into hell.
“Even now, as in the olden times, satires on social endeavor are very
often introduced, but only the common street-class enjoy them. From
time to time the educators take part in this movement and try to raise
the standard and to introduce the puppets into the school festivals.
“Some of these plays came into Russia from the West through Austria
and Poland,--old Christmas beliefs connected with religious or
nationalistic traditions. These Christmas Crib plays are mostly seen
in Southern and Western Russia and Poland. Some of the Russian artists
have been interested in the production and have given very fine
performances. I myself introduced many of this kind of marionettes into
the activities of the Children’s Clubs in Moscow. Very interesting
articles about the ethnographic and folklore value of these plays have
been written in Russian scientific magazines.”
In Poland, until the middle of the eighteenth century, there were
frequent puppet performances given in churches and monasteries around
Christmas time to amuse the people between mass and vespers. In the
play of _Szopka_ (stable) M. Magnin tells us there were little dolls
of wood or cardboard representing Mary, Jesus, Joseph, the angels,
the shepherds, the three Magi on their knees with offerings of gold,
incense and myrrh, not forgetting the ox and the ass and Saint John’s
lamb. There generally followed after this 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 appeared in the
form of a skeleton and cut off Herod’s head with a scythe. Then a
black devil with a red tongue, pointed horns and a long tail, ascended
and picked up the King’s body on his pitchfork and bore it off to
perdition. To this peculiar performance were often added indecorous
variations, despite the holy place in which it was performed. After
being finally expelled from the interior of the churches, it continued
to be popular for over a century, delighting both the rural and
the urban population of Poland from Christmas to Shrove Tuesday.
To this day performances of the Crib, or _Szopka_, are given by
ambulant puppet shows. The text is sung and spoken: the figures,
moving in pairs, represent characters of the old mysteries, also folk
types, heroes, spirits, etc. The stage for these shows appears to
be prescribed by tradition, of a certain structure, with intricate
national architectural details. It is not surprising to learn that
Stanislaw Wyspianski, Poland’s great dramatic and poetic genius, was
strongly interested in and influenced by this national type of puppet
stage which seems to have been the original inspiration for his later
strongly patriotic productions.
In Denmark, the puppets have pushed their way into literature. We find
that Johan Ludvig Heiberg, a prominent Danish dramatist, has written
several satirical marionette plays.
In Holland where _Jan-Classenspiel_ have been long established, the
puppet stage is a favorite diversion. Powel wrote in 1715 of its long
standing popularity with the people and we are told that the cultured
classes also found relaxation in the marionettes. Beyle states that
during his studies at Rotterdam he always left his book at the sound of
the showman’s trumpet.
The little Polichinelle of Belgium is called _Woltje_ which signifies
little Walloon and he has many clownish but harmless tricks with which
to delight his public. The popularity of the _Poechelnellespiel_
in Brussels may be imagined from the fact that, prior to the war,
there were fifteen standing puppet theatres offering every possible
enticement. Two very famous showmen were Toone and Machieltje who for
forty years gave performances to every class of audience, Machieltje
specializing on the popular plays, Toone giving private performances.
The successor of Toone was George Hembauf while the show of Machieltje
descended to Laurent Broeders, who have a wonderfully equipped theatre
in the suburbs. They possess over six hundred marionettes whose elegant
costumes can be changed (there are over eleven hundred of these
elaborate costumes). The Laurent Broeders do all the speaking for
their dolls and the repertoire includes a wide range of subjects from
important events in Flemish history to Dumas, adapted for puppets, and
the old play of _Les Quatre Fils Aymon_. Another large puppet show is
that of Pieter Buelens. He has four hundred puppets consisting chiefly
of officers, chevaliers and kings, each knight so richly dressed that
his robes cost from thirty to forty francs apiece. The dolls are about
a metre high, made of cardboard and carefully articulated so that the
gestures are extremely graceful. The scenery is naïve but picturesque;
eight complete sets including two palace scenes, two wood scenes (one
Winter, one Summer), two rooms, a prison, a rock, etc. The latest and
most modern theatre for marionettes is the _Petit Théâtre_ founded by a
group of æsthetes,--Louis Picard, James Ensor, Thomas Braun, Gregoire
le Roy,--and devoted to a naïvely refined art of puppetry. It was
opened with the pastoral opera of Mozart, _Bastien et Bastienne_, the
poetic version by Gautier-Villars.
In Antwerp the puppet shows are less elaborate and are generally
to be found off in inconspicuous corners around the wharves where
they are frequented chiefly by the laboring classes. There the
drama varies from mockery of local occurrences to tales of Turks,
bandits, kings, shepherds, sailors. One of these shows was the famous
_Poesjenellenkelder_, the cave of the Polichinelles, where in a dark,
gloomy cellar by the glimmer of a few smoking oil lamps the old and
ever moving romantic dramas of the puppet show were performed for an
appreciative and unspoiled audience. Hendrik Conscience, the Flemish
novelist, has described how in his boyhood he often spent his last
penny to witness the sufferings of the patient Genoveva or some
similarly affecting performance. This old underground theatre, we are
told, was open until the outbreak of the war.
_Puppetry in England_
“Triumphant Punch! with joy I follow thee
Through the glad progress of thy wanton course.”
Thus exclaims Lord Byron, and he is but one of the long list of English
poets, dramatists and essayists who have found delight and inspiration
at the puppet booth. “One could hardly name a single poet from Chaucer
to Byron, or a single prose writer from Sir Philip Sidney 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,
the stage of the marionettes.” With this introduction M. Magnin brings
forward a brilliant array of English authors in whose works we may find
traces of the puppets, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher,
Milton, Davenant, Swift, Addison, Steele, Gay, Fielding, Goldsmith,
Sheridan and innumerable others.
In _The Winter’s Tale_ Autolycus remarks: “I know this man well. He
hath been a process server, a bailiff, then he compassed a motion of
_The Prodigal Son_.” Many other dramas of Shakespeare have similar
allusions. Milton’s _Areopagitica_ contains these lines: “When God gave
Adam reason, he gave him freedom to choose: he had else been a mere
artificial Adam, such an Adam as seen in the motions.”
Perhaps the casual mention of a popular diversion in the literature
of a nation is not as impressive as the fact that it has served to
suggest the themes of numberless dramas and poems. Shakespeare is said
to have taken the idea for _Julius Cæsar_ from the puppet play on the
same subject which was performed near the Tower of London in his day;
Ben Jonson’s _Everyman Out of his Humour_, Robert Greene’s _Orlando
Furioso_, Dekker’s best drolleries and certainly _Patient Grissel_
in the composition of which he had a hand, Marlowe’s _The Massacre
at Paris_ and many others may safely be said to have been suggested
by the puppets. There are marionettes in Swift’s _A Tale of a Tub_,
illustrated by Hogarth.
Some authorities claim that Milton drew the argument for his great
poem from an Italian marionette production of _Paradise Lost_ which
he once witnessed. Byron is supposed to have found the model for his
_Don Juan_ in the popular play of Punch’s, _The Libertine Destroyed_.
Hence it cannot be an exaggeration to state that even in England, where
the puppets are not supposed to have attained such prestige as on
the Continent, they were, nevertheless, not wholly insignificant nor
without weight.
As is usually the case, the puppets in England appear to have had a
religious origin. Magnin mentions as an undoubted fact the movement
of head and eyes on the Crucifix in the monastery of Boxley in Kent,
and one hears not only of single articulated images but of passion
plays performed by moving figures within the sacred edifices. E. K.
Chambers has found the record of a Resurrection Play in the sixteenth
century by “certain small puppets, representing the Persons of Christe,
the Watchmen, Marie and others.” This was at Whitney in Oxfordshire,
“in the days of ceremonial religion,” and one of these puppets which
clacked was known as _Jack Snacker of Whitney_. It is certain that
similar motions of sacred dramas and pageants given by mechanical
statuettes were not unusual within the Catholic churches, and that
during the reign of Henry VIII they were destroyed, as idols. Under
Elizabeth and James, religious puppet-shows went wandering about the
kingdom, giving the long drawn out moralities and mysteries, _The
Prodigal Son_, _The Motion of Babylon_ and _Nineveh with Jonah and the
Whale_, a great favorite.
These early motions or drolls were a combination of dumb show, masques
and even shadow play. Flögel explains that the masques were sometimes
connected with the puppets or given sometimes as a separate play.
“These masques,” he writes, “consist of five tableaux or motions which
take place behind a transparent curtain, just as in Chinese shadows.
The showman, a silver-covered wand in his hand and a whistle for
signalling, stands in front of the curtain and briefly informs the
audience of the action of the piece. Thereupon he draws the curtain,
names each personage by name as he appears, points out with his wand
the various important actions of his actors’ deeds, and relates the
story more in detail than formerly. Another masque which Ben Jonson’s
_Bartholomew Fair_ describes is quite different, for here the puppets
themselves speak, that is, through a man hidden behind the scenes, who
like the one standing out in front is called the interpreter.”
As early as 1575 Italian pupazzi appeared in England and established
themselves there. An order of the Lord Mayor of London at the time
authorizes that, “Italian marionettes be allowed to settle in the city
and to carry on their strange motions as in the past and from time
immemorial.” Piccini was a later Italian motion-man, but very famous,
giving shows for fifty years and speaking for his _Punch_ to the last
with a foreign accent.
There is little doubt, despite much discussion, that the boisterous
English Punch is a descendant of the puppet Pulcinello, brought over by
travelling Italian showmen. Isaac d’Israeli writes of his ancestry, in
the second volume of _Curiosities of Literature_, “Even Pullicinella,
whom we familiarly call Punch, may receive like other personages of
not greater importance, all his dignity from antiquity: one of his
Roman ancestors having appeared to an antiquary’s visionary eye in a
bronze statue: more than one erudite dissertation authenticates the
family likeness, the long nose, prominent and hooked; the goggle eyes;
the hump at his back and breast; in a word all the character which so
strongly marks the Punch race, as distinctly as whole dynasties have
been featured by the Austrian lip or the Bourbon nose.”
The origin of the name _Punch_ has given rise to various theories. Some
claim it is an anglicizing of Pulcinello, Pulchinello or Punchinello;
others that it is derived as is Pulcinello from the Italian word
_pulcino_, little chicken, either, some say, because of the squeak
common to Punch and to the chicken or, others aver, because from little
chicken might have come the expression for little boy, hence puppet.
Again, it is maintained that the origin is the English provincialism
_punch_ (short, fat), allied to _Bunch_.
The older Punchinello was far less restricted in his actions and
circumstances than his modern successor. He fought with allegorical
figures representing want and weariness, as well as with his wife
and the police. He was on intimate terms with the Patriarchs and the
champions of Christendom, sat on the lap of the Queen of Sheba, had
kings and lords for his associates, and cheated the Inquisition as well
as the common hangman. After the revolution of 1688, with the coming
of William and Mary, his prestige increased, and Mr. Punch took Mrs.
Judy to wife and to them there came a child. The marionettes became
more elaborate, were manipulated by wires and developed legs and
feet. Queen Mary was often pleased to summon them into her palace.
The young gallant, Punch, however, who had been but a garrulous
roisterer, causing more noise than harm, began to develop into a
merry but thick-skinned fellow, heretical, wicked, always victorious,
overcoming Old Vice himself, the horned, tailed demon of the old
English moralities. A modified Don Juan, when Don Juan was the vogue,
he gradually became a vulgar pugnacious fellow to suit the taste of the
lower classes.
During the reign of Queen Anne he was high in popular favor. _The
Tatler_ mentions him often, also _The Spectator_; Addison and Steele
have both aided in immortalizing him. Famous showmen such as Mr. Powell
included him in every puppet play, for what does an anachronism matter
with the marionettes? He walked with King Solomon, entered into the
affairs of Doctor Faustus, or the Duke of Lorraine or Saint George in
which case he came upon the stage seated on the back of St. George’s
dragon to the delight of the spectators. One of his greatest successes
was scored in _Don Juan or The Libertine Destroyed_ where he was in his
element, and we find him in the drama of Noah, poking his head from
behind the side curtain while the floods were pouring down upon the
Patriarch and his ark to remark, “Hazy weather, Mr. Noah.” In one of
Swift’s satires, the popularity of Punch is declared to be so enormous
that the audiences cared little for the plot of the play, merely
waiting to greet the entrance of their beloved buffoon with shouts of
laughter.
[Illustration: PUNCH HANGS THE HANGMAN
From a Cruikshank illustration of Payne-Collier’s _Tragical Comedy of
Punch and Judy_]
At the beginning of the nineteenth century when Lord Nelson, as the
hero of Abukir, was represented upon every puppet stage, he and Mr.
Punch held the following dialogue:
“Come to my ship, my dear Punch, and help me defeat the French. If you
like I will make you a Captain or a Commodore.”
“Never, never,” answered Punch. “I would not dare for I am afraid of
being drowned in the deep sea.”
“But don’t have such absurd fears,” replied the Admiral. “Remember that
whoever is destined from birth to be hanged will never be drowned.”
Gradually a sort of epic poem of Punch grew up, and there were regular
scenes where the dissolute, hardened fellow beats his wife and child,
defies morality and religion, knocks down the priest, fights the
devil and overcomes him. In 1828 Mr. Payne-Collier arranged a series
of little plays called _The Tragical Comedy of Punch and Judy_. In
this labor he was assisted by the records of the Italian, Piccini,
who, after long years of wandering through England, had established
his Punch and Judy show in London. The series was profusely and
delightfully illustrated by Cruikshank. These pictures and those of
Hogarth have perpetuated for all times the funny features of Punch and
Judy.
“With real conservatism,” writes Maindron, “the English have preserved
the figure and repertory of Punch almost as it was in the oldest days
of Piccini and his predecessors.” And it is thus one might find Punch
on the street corner to-day, maltreating his long-suffering wife,
teasing the dog, hanging the hangman. Mr. W. H. Pollock tells us of
stopping with Robert Louis Stevenson to watch a Punch and Judy show
given by a travelling showman in “bastard English and slang of the
road.” Stevenson delighted in it, and Mr. Pollock himself exclaimed:
“Everybody who loves good, rattling melodrama with plenty of comic
relief must surely love that great performance.”
But to return to the shows and showmen of other times. In the
Elizabethan period the motions were very prominent. The puppets
sometimes took over plays of the day, and satirized them cleverly
upon their own stages, the dolls costumed as nearly as possible like
the prominent actors whom they imitated. Later, when for a time the
Puritans abolished the theatres, the marionettes were allowed to
continue their shows, and thus the entire repertory of the real stage
fell into their hands. Permanent puppet stages grew up all over London:
people thronged to the puppets.
In Ben Jonson’s _Bartholomew Fair_ he allows the showman, Lanthorn
Leatherhead, to describe his fortunes: “Ah,” he said, “I have made
lots of money with _Sodom and Gomorrah_ and with the _City of Norwich_
but _Gunpowder Plot_, that was a veritable gift of God. It was that
that made the pennies rain into the coffers. I only charged eighteen
or twenty pence per head for admission, but I gave sometimes nine or
ten representations a day.” Captain Pod, a seventeenth century showman
mentioned in other writings of Ben Jonson, had a large repertory
including, among other plays, _Man’s Wit_, _Dialogue of Dives_,
_Prodigal Son_, _Resurrection of the Saviour_, _Babylon_, _Jonah and
the Whale_, _Sodom and Gomorrah_, _Destruction of Jerusalem_, _City of
Nineveh_, _Rome and London_, _Destruction of Norwich_, _Massacre of
Paris with the Death of the Duke de Guise_ and _The Gunpowder Plot_.
In 1667 Pepys records in his _Diary_ that he found “my Lady Castlemane
at a puppet play, Patient Grizell.” _The Sorrows of Griselda_, indeed,
was very popular at the time, also _Dick Whittington_, _The Vagaries of
Merry Andrew_ and _The Humours of Bartholomew Fair_. The marionettes,
indeed, grew so much the vogue, and the rivalry was felt so keenly
by the regular theatres, that in 1675 the proprietors of the theatre
in Drury Lane and near Lincoln’s Inn Fields formally petitioned that
the puppets in close proximity be forbidden to exhibit, or be removed
to a greater distance, as they interfered with the success of their
performances.
But not alone the theatres objected to the competition of the puppets.
One may read in _The Spectator, XVI_, that _young Mr. Powell_ made his
show a veritable thorn in the flesh of the clergy. It was stationed in
Covent Garden, opposite the Cathedral of St. Paul, and Powell proceeded
to use the church bell as a summons to his performances, luring away
worshippers from the very door of the church. Finally the sexton was
impelled to remonstrate. “I find my congregation taking the warning
of my bell, morning and evening, to go to a puppet show set forth by
one Powell, under the Piazzas, etc., etc. I desire you would lay this
before the world, that Punchinello may choose an hour less canonical.
As things are now, Mr. Powell has a full congregation while we have a
very thin house.”
This same Powell was the most successful motion maker of his day. He
originated the _Universal Deluge_ in which Noah and his family enter
the ark, accompanied by all the animals, two and two. This show was
given fifty-two consecutive nights, and was repeated two centuries
later by the Prandi brothers in Florence. Powell had booths in
London, Bath and Oxford, and played to most fashionable audiences.
_The Tatler_ and _The Spectator_ mention him frequently. It was his
Punch who sat on the Queen of Sheba’s lap, who danced with Judy on
the Ark, and made the famous remark to Noah concerning the weather.
He gave numerous religious plays, such as the “Opera of Susannah or
Innocence Betrayed,--which will be exhibited next week with a new pair
of Elders.” In 1713 he presented _Venus and Adonis or The Triumphs of
Love_, a mock opera. As another attraction to his shows, the ingenious
marionettist invented a fashion model, the little puppet, _Lady Jane_,
who made a monthly appearance, bringing the latest styles from Paris.
The ladies flocked to the puppets when she was announced on the bills.