Local History
2012 is ……… The Year Of The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, The Olympic Games, And............
there will also be celebrations up and down the country to mark the 350th birthday of our National Puppet: MR. PUNCH !
Happy Birthday Mr. Punch By Professor Dan Bishop
Mr. Punch can rightly claim to be our national puppet. When the Portrait of England project asked the public to nominate their ‘Icons of England’ their list included among others: cricket, English pubs, a cup of tea, Guy Fawkes night, fish and chips, the robin, the FA Cup, and of course Punch and Judy. No mean achievement for Mr. Punchinello, an Italian immigrant, who later shortened his name to Mr. Punch, married Judy, and became the popular hero of the knockabout shows on London street corners and in stripy booths at the seaside. His reputation was further enhanced when the political magazine Punch was named after him.
This year on the 9th May he celebrates his 350th birthday. It was on this day in 1662 that
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Samuel Pepys recorded that he had seen a performance in London’s Covent Garden given by an Italian showman Pietro Gimonde, or Signor Bologna, which featured a marionette figure called Pollicinella, later Punchinello. He described the show as: … an Italian puppet play, that is within the rails there, which is very pretty, the best that I ever saw…
It is believed that the showman
was entertaining crowds gathered for the coronation of King Charles II following the Restoration, and was performed on an elaborate 20ft x 18 ft stage, and built high enough for puppeteers to operate 2ft to 3ft high marionettes from above. The bold step of cutting Punch’s strings and making him
into a glove puppet with a supporting cast of other glove puppets was to prove his making. At a stroke the cumbersome marionette theatre requiring several puppeteers was replaced by a small theatre operated by a single puppeteer, and so simple it could be pushed on a handcart. The first known illustration of a portable Punch street booth, to which we are accustomed, is in a watercolour painted in 1785 depicting George II and Queen Charlotte driving to Deptford Dockyard. This is also the first evidence of the appearance of a gloved puppet. As Punch was now able to hold objects this led to the introduction of the slapstick, a device originated from the Italian commedia dell’arte over four hundred years ago, and consisting of two joined sticks which slap together to make a satisfying thwacking noise. Scaled down to puppet size it became Punch’s trademark as he laid about one and all with anarchic abandon. It was not until the nineteenth century when the railways came and people travelled to the seaside resorts that Punch finally adapted to a family audience. Since then Punch and Judy has been increasingly seen as a children’s show. Punch is always a hunchback with a large nose and chin. Along with Punch, and his wife, Judy, the cast of other characters usually includes the baby, a hungry crocodile, a clown, an officious policeman, and that essential prop, a string of sausages. There is no definite
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