I've written in
the past about Mr. Punch, the puppet descendant of the commedia dell'arte character
Punchinello. He first showed up in England in the 17th century, and a plaque
outside of St. Paul's Church in Covent Garden marks the spot of the first recorded
performance of a Punch puppet play, which was mentioned by Samuel Pepys in his
diary in 1662.
At first, Punch
appears to have been a marionette, but later versions tend to be hand puppets.
We have records of puppet shows featuring Punch and his wife Judy throughout
the eighteenth century. Colley Cibber's daughter, Charlotte Charke, was given a
license in 1738 to run a puppet theatre at St. James's that was known as
Punch's Theatre. Unfortunately, no scripts for Punch and Judy plays exist from
this period.
That changed in
1827, when John Payne Collier published a script entitled The Tragical Comedy, or Comical Tragedy, of Punch and Judy. The
dialogue was allegedly related to Collier by the puppeteer Giovanni Piccini,
but given that Collier was later outed as a forger of documents relating to
William Shakespeare, everything he claimed has to be taken with a heavy portion
of salt. He secured the noted artist George Cruikshank to illustrate the book,
though, so the script at least has the advantage of being beautiful.
Collier's script
begins with Punch getting into a fight with his neighbor, Scaramouch, another
figure from the commedia tradition. Scaramouch's dog Toby bites Punch's nose,
and after a fight between the two neighbors, Punch knocks Scaramouch's head
clean off his shoulders. Judy then makes her first appearance, handing the
couple's child over to Punch. After failing to appease the crying baby with a
lullaby, Punch beats his child, then throws the baby out the "window"
of the puppet stage's proscenium and into the audience.
As you might
imagine, Judy is unimpressed. She beats Punch with a stick, but then he snatches
the stick from her and beats her in turn. After at first appearing like he will
relent, Punch beats Judy to death and knocks her body off the side of the
stage, claiming, "To lose a wife is to get a fortune." He soon finds
another woman, though: Pretty Polly. She's actually a character borrowed from
John Gay's play The Beggar's Opera,
and in Collier's script Punch sings an air from that play: "When the heart
of a man is oppress'd with cares."
The second act
opens with a special puppet with an extendable neck. Alluding to hanging, Punch
tells him, "You may get it stretched for you, one of these days, by
somebody else." The comment foreshadows an event later in the play, when
after killing a doctor and a servant and beating a poor blind man, Punch is at
last arrested for multiple murders. The hangman Jack Ketch tries to execute
him, but Punch tricks Ketch into putting his own head in the noose, and Punch
hangs him. Punch's final challenge comes when the devil himself comes for him,
but Punch succeeds in even beating the devil.
A later Punch
and Judy script appeared in Henry Mayhew's London
Labour and the London Poor in 1851. The script Mayhew recorded also
includes a clown named Joey (after Joseph Grimaldi) and a character named Jim
Crow (who originated in minstrel shows). Another innovation in the script is
bringing Judy back from the grave as a ghost. After being terrified by the
ghost, Punch keels over, and a doctor comes on and asks Punch if he's dead.
Punch responds that, yes, he is dead, and becomes quite upset when the doctor
doesn't believe him.
