Puppet show

“ One of the specialties of the sole surviving puppet-show of this sort in the Champs-Elysées is the performance of a juggler who tosses aloft and catches in turn a number of glittering balls. The delicate balancing of the tight-rope walker, with her frequent pirouettes on her toes, and with her surprising summersets, is also one of the exhibitions in which the puppet can defy the rivalry of any living executant, however skilful in the art. At the circus we feel that the tightrope dancer might fall, whereas at the puppet-show we know with certainty that any fatal mishap is impossible. ”

“ In front of a puppet-show exists an equality of all classes, who fraternize for the moment to enjoy the liberty which puppets alone in the peninsula appear to possess. These imitate nature with such perfection as to confer on their constructors the name of artists. In the regular puppet-theatre, where none but wooden actors appear on the stage, [221] the scenery and accessories are in such due proportion with the performers, that the eye yields ready consent to the illusion. Burlettas, sparkling extravaganzas, melodramas, and even grand operas are represented. ”

“ Puppet, pup′et, n. a small doll or image moved by wires in a show: a marionette: one who acts just as another tells him.—ns. Pupp′etry, finery, affectation: a puppet-show; Pupp′et-show, -play, a mock show or drama performed by puppets ”

“ He doth indeed, in this GRAND DRAMA, rather perform the part of the prompter, and doth instruct the well-drest figures, who are strutting in public on the stage, what to say and do. To say the truth, a puppet-show will illustrate our meaning better, where it is the master of the show (the great man) who dances and moves everything, whether it be the king of Muscovy or whatever other potentate alias puppet which we behold on the stage ”

“ He has even ventured to give plays as elaborate as 'Around the World in Eighty Days.' But it may be doubted whether this vaulting ambition has not overleaped itself, and whether a puppet-show does not gain rather than lose by restricting its efforts within narrower limits. After all, nothing so delights us at a puppet-show as the feats which are most characteristic and least difficult of accomplishment. ”

“ Luck. Hast thou been in thy trade so long, and talk of money to a modern author? You might as well have talked Latin or Greek to him. I have brought you paper, sir.
Book. That is not bringing me money, I own. Have you brought me an opera?
Luck. You may call it an opera if you will, but I call it a puppet-show.
Book. A puppet-show!
Luck. Ay, a puppet show; and is to be played this night at Drury-lane playhouse.
Book. A puppet-show in a playhouse!
Luck. Ay, why, what have been all the playhouses a long while but puppet-shows? ”

“ In a hundred small ways a puppet can show life. The point is, there should be no dead puppets on the stage.
132But there is a danger here. Puppets must not divert the attention of the audience from the main character. For example, in Men of Iron in the scene showing the great hall of Devlin Castle, the minstrel is singing before the king and his court. The jester, with his pranks and capers, could easily have taken too much of the attention of the audience to himself and away from the minstrel, but instead, he sat down on the floor near the minstrel and pretended to be playing a lute. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The hero of the famous puppet-show was chosen for the typical presiding genius and sponsor of the novel enterprise. And there is no neater piece of allegorical writing in our language than the introductory article of the first number, wherein is exquisitely shadowed forth "the moral" of the work, "Punch,"—suggestive of that "graver puppetry," the "visual and oral cheats," "by which mankind are cajoled." ”

“ But these explanations which do very well in a puppet-show, are too lengthy on the stage; while the singing is going on, the acting is apt to become wooden, and the interest in the play is saved from flagging only by the beauty of the language and the skill of the singer. ”

“ A puppet show to those in front of the screen, where the gaudily-painted figures are fixed in a piece of banana stem, it is a Chinese lantern to those on the other side, who see the shadows projected on the luminous canvas. According to ancient custom, the men sit in front and see the puppets; the women have their place behind the screen, and look on at the play of the shadows. In fully-equipped wayangs, as many as two hundred of these puppets are found, each with its own particular type and garb, characteristic of the person represented. ”

“ Stravinsky has woven a dramatic plot around the puppet stage. ‘To take us behind the scenes and show the mingled comedy and tragedy of the puppet world, was a true and dramatic inspiration’ of the composer. The scenic effect of Petrouchka is calculated to create a melancholy feeling in the spectator with its bleak gray background and dull frigidity. It gives a striking contrast to the barbaric colors of the crowd on the stage. ”

“ Foote, the Aristophanes of the English drama, who was always on the alert to turn every subject of popular excitement to account, seeing the success of the Fantoccini, gave out that he should produce a Primitive Puppet-show at the Haymarket, to be entitled the Handsome Chambermaid, or Piety in Pattens: intended to burlesque the sentimental comedy which Garrick still maintained at Drury Lane. The idea of a play to be performed in a regular theater by puppets excited the curiosity and talk of the town. “Will your puppets be as large as life, Mr. ”

“ Puppet shows."
"Eh?" says Garvey, gawpin'.
"Sort of Punch and Judy stuff," says I. "Whittles little dummies out of wood, paints their faces, dresses 'em up, and makes 'em act by pullin' a lot of strings. Writes reg'lar plays for 'em. He's got a complete little theatre fitted up over his garage; stage, scenery, footlights, folding chairs and everything. Gives a show every now and then. Swell affairs. Everybody turns out. Course they snicker some in private, but he gets away with it." ”

“ With this view, the puppet-show bequeathed by our grandmother was again brought forth, and arranged in such a way that the spectators sat in my gable room; while the persons managing and performing, as well as the theatre itself as far as the proscenium, found a place in the room adjoining. We were allowed, as a special favour, to invite first one and then another of the neighbours' children as spectators; and thus at the outset I gained many friends, but the restlessness inherent in children did not suffer them to remain long a patient audience. ”

“ Puppet-shows are delightful because they are easily made and quite convincing. Very good ones have been improvised even by tiny children, with a pasteboard suit-box opening to the front, a slit at the top to let down paper-doll actors on a thread, a bit of scenery, outdoors or in, drawn as background, and a showman to talk for all the characters. ”

“ Professor Brander Matthews, in his Book about the Theatre, also insists upon the adaptability of the marionettes for certain types of drama unsatisfactory when performed by living actors. He suggests that a passion play or any form of drama in which Divinity has perforce to appear is relieved in the puppet show of any tincture of irreverence, all personages of the play, whether heavenly or earthly, appearing equally remote from common humanity upon the miniature stage. ”

“ The more interest the public and the dramatist take in human nature—that is to say, the better developed they are as regards dramatic sympathy—the more, rich, vivid, and subtle will be the play of character and passion, in the drama demanded and produced. In a word, the less wooden-pated and wooden-hearted they become, the less mechanical and commonplace will their drama be.
We are slowly emerging from the puppet-show conception of drama. Our dramatists are beginning to do more than refurbish the old puppets, and move them about the stage according to the rules of the "well-made" play. ”

“ Greg and his Protestant company, whose soirées I did not attend; and, at the Abbey Street Theatre, whither I went in order to see, if possible, some specimens of the national humour, I found a company of English people ranting through a melodrama, the tragedy whereof was the only laughable thing to be witnessed.
Humbler popular recreations may be seen by the curious. One night I paid twopence to see a puppet-show—such an entertainment as may have been popular a hundred and thirty years ago, and is described in the Spectator. ”

“ In the present day, the puppet-show man travels about the streets when the weather will permit, and carries his motions, with the theatre itself, upon his back! The exhibition takes place in the open air; and the precarious income of the miserable itinerant depends entirely on the voluntary contributions of the spectators, which, as far as one may judge from the square appearance he usually makes, is very trifling. ”

“ Because, my dear little Marmot, I am a puppet with no sense . . . and with no heart. Ah! if I had had the least heart I should never have left that good Fairy who loved me like a mamma, and who had done so much for me! . . . and I should be no longer a puppet . . . for I should by this time have become a little boy like so many others! But if I meet Candlewick, woe to him! He shall hear what I think of him! . . .'
And he turned to go out. But when he reached the door he remembered his donkey's ears, and feeling ashamed to show them in public, what do you think he did? ”

“ In 1874 the demand for puppets was so great that it became difficult to meet the wants of the many professors that had decided to become performers. Notwithstanding the growing number of actors, in the fall of 1876 not one unemployed Punch and Judy performer could be found in New York city.
As to the puppet-show of “Punch and Judy,” it never is looked at by our people but as a mere joke; and a most effective part of that joke is the ultimate triumph of the hero ”

“ Perhaps the movable scene of this narrative is still peregrinating New England, and may enable the reader to test the accuracy of my description. The spectacle—for I will not use the unworthy term of puppet-show—consisted of a multitude of little people assembled on a miniature stage. Among them were artisans of every kind, in the attitudes of their toil, and a group of fair ladies and gay gentlemen standing ready for the dance ”

“ Even horseplay humor of the Punch and Judy variety is unobjectionable with puppets where the whacking and thwacking is done by and upon jolly, grotesque little beings who are neither pained nor debased by the procedure. With some such idea William Hazlitt has written:
“That popular entertainment, Punch and the Puppet-show, owes part of its irresistible and universal attraction to nearly the same principle of inspiring inanimate and mechanical agents with sense and consciousness. The drollery and wit of a piece of wood213 is doubly droll and farcical. ”

“ Powell's puppet-show."
"You speak as wisely as Solomon himself in the puppet-show. I own that I love that sight: 'tis a pleasure to the littleness of human nature to see great things abased by mimicry ”

“ Indeed so powerful a factor has it been that living actors in the classic drama have accepted the conventions of the puppet stage and are trained to the gesture and manner of the ancient marionette. This does not apply, of course,45 to the innumerable strolling booths of the Chinese linen bag variety, but rather to the renowned and long established stationary theatres for puppets, theatres with exclusive boxes for the select and well-to-do of the audience and ample seating capacity for the common people who visit the show in great numbers.
The dolls are not quite half as tall as a man ”

“ And Sawney will ne’er be my true love agen.
Ravenscroft, in The London Cuckolds (1682) , Act iii, introduces a link-boy singing this verse as he passes down the street.
p. 394 There’s nothing lasting but the Puppets Show. About this time there was a famous Puppet Show in Salisbury Change which was so frequented that the actors were reduced to petition against it. cf. The Epilogue (spoken by Jevon) to Mountfort’s The Injured Lovers (1688) , where the actor tells the audience they must be kind to the poet:—
Else to stand by him, every man has swore. ”

“ The puppet-shows usually made their appearance at great fairs, and especially at those in the vicinity of the metropolis; they still [568] continue to be exhibited in Smithfield at Bartholomew-tide, though with very little traces of their former greatness; indeed, of late years, they have become unpopular, and are frequented only by children. It is, however, certain, that the puppet-shows attracted the notice of the public at the commencement of the last century, and rivalled in some degree the more pompous exhibitions of the larger theatres. ”

“ A puppet sailor danced a hornpipe.
Scene 6. A puppet Indian juggler threw balls.
Scene 7. Before the curtain drew up the collector said, “This is the representation of Billy Waters, Esq.” and a puppet, Billy Waters, appeared with a wooden leg, and danced to the sound of his fiddle for a minute or two when the curtain dropped, and the manager and performers went off with their theatre, leaving the remaining seventeen scenes, if they had them, unrepresented. On the show was painted, “Candler’s Fantoccini, patronised by the Royal Family.” Our old acquaintance, “Punch,” will survive all this. ”