Puppets

Puppets have a very long history. They were first used as elements of religious ritual and are referred to in writings of the Greek classical era. Herodotus, in the fifth century BC, mentions the use of puppets controlled by strings in the context of ritual. As far as he is concerned, it was the Egyptians who invented string puppets:

“The rest of the festival of Dionysus is ordered by the Egyptians much as it is by the Greeks, except for the dances … [T]hey have invented the use of puppets a cubit long moved by strings, which are carried about the villages by women, the male member moving and near as big as the rest of the body.”

Puppets may be even older than this, though. We know animal figures were operated by strings in the Indus Valley civilization, in what is now Pakistan, as early as 2400BC.

Small figurines of humans crop up in archaeological records even before cave paintings. At some stage in prehistory, it occurred to their creators to find ways of making them move.

It is likely that puppet performances represent the earliest form of theatre, pre-dating the development of written drama in ancient Greece. They survived into the heyday of the classical theatre because they were much cheaper to stage than employing actors. Plays were often quite subversive, allowing the performers to comment on important people and events of the day.

A lithograph of Punchinello, by Edouard Manet
© TopFoto.co.uk / © Collection Roger-Viollet

Origins of Punch and Judy

The roots of Punch and Judy lie in the Italian commedia dell’arte, a form of popular entertainment that emerged in around the 16th century. Commedia performances were loosely improvised comic plays with a cast of regular characters and plenty of knockabout humour. An essential prop was a wooden baton known as a slapstick that was split at one end, so that it made a slapping noise when it struck another character. (This is the origin of the term “slapstick” to describe a form of highly anarchic, visual comedy.)

One of the main characters of the Neapolitan branch of commedia was Pulcinella, a hook-nosed, mischievous buffoon. The name comes from the Italian word pulcino (“chicken”), because of the character’s beak-like nose and squawking voice. When commedia spread to France and England, it merged with other forms of popular entertainment but the established comic characters remained.

In England, the Pulcinella character became Punchinello, who rapidly became a favourite with audiences wherever he appeared. Although there was a tradition of glove puppetry in England, Punchinello and his playmates were originally string-operated marionettes. Performances appealed to all social classes: they were technically refined enough for the educated and rowdy enough for the uneducated.

Around the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, Mr Punch himself became a glove puppet, which meant one operator could put on the whole show from a small booth. Another benefit of being a hand-held puppet is that you can hold things – such as a big stick. As Mr Punch left the elegant surroundings of the theatre and became a street entertainer, his long-suffering wife, originally known as Joan, became Judy.