THE LAMENTABLE TRAGEDY OF PUNCH AND JUDY
I
When we consider how cosmopolitan is the population of these United States, and how freely we have drawn upon all the races of Europe, it is very curious that the puppet-show does not flourish in our American cities as it flourishes in many of the towns on the other side of the Western Ocean. The shrill squeak of Punch is not infrequent in the streets of London—altho it may not now be heard as often as it was a score of years ago. In Paris in the gardens of the Tuileries and of the Luxembourg, and again in the Champs-Elysées where the children congregate in the afternoon, there are nearly half a dozen enclosures roped off and provided with cane chairs so that spectators, old and young, may be gladdened by the vision of Polichinelle, and by the pranks of Guignol. Yet even in Paris there are not now as many puppet-shows as there were fifty years ago; and in Italy and in Germany the traveler fails to find as frequent exhibitions of this sort as he used to meet with in the years that are gone. Apparently there is everywhere a waning interest in the plays performed by the little troop of personages animated by the thumb and fingers of the invisible performer. And perhaps the declining vogue of this diminutive drama in old Europe is one reason why it has never achieved a wide popularity in young America.
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; he is not peripatetic but intermittent, and he makes his appearances only in private houses, and only when he is sent for specially to entertain the children's party. Here in America Punch is still a stranger to the broad public; he has an exotic flavor; he suggests Dickens, somehow; and he must be wholly unknown to countless thousands who would rejoice to make his acquaintance and to laugh at his terrible deeds.
His terrible deeds!—perhaps there is in these words a possible explanation for the failure of Punch to win favor among the descendants of the Puritans, who are always inclined to apply severe moral standards of conduct. Now, if we apply any moral standard at all to the conduct of Mr. Punch, the result is simply appalling, for the customary drama of which he is the sole hero sets before us a story of triumphant villainy, adequately to be compared only with the dastardly history of Richard III in Shakspere's melodramatic tragedy. Mr. Punch is an accessory before the fact in the death of his infant child, and when his devoted wife very naturally remonstrates with him, he turns upon her with invective and violence—a violence which culminates in assassination. Having once seen red and tasted blood, he finds himself swiftly started upon a career of crime. His total depravity tempts him to a startling succession of hideous murders. He slays an inoffensive negro, a harmless clown, and a worthy policeman. Then he succeeds, by a simple trick, in hanging the hangman himself. By his fatal assaults upon these two officers of justice, the necessary policeman and the useful hangman, Mr. Punch exhibits his contempt for the majesty of the law. He stands forth, without a shred of conscience, as a practical anarchist, rejecting all authority. His hand is against every man and every man's hand is against him. And having violated the laws of this world, he finally discloses his callous contempt for the punishment which ought to await him in the next world; he has a hand-to-hand fight with the devil himself—a deadly struggle from which he emerges victorious. And this is the end, which crowns the work.
When we consider the several episodes of Mr. Punch's abhorrent history, we are reluctantly forced to the conclusion that his story is even less informed with morality than that of Richard III. The crookbacked king comes to a bad end at last; he meets with the just retribution for his many misdeeds; and he falls before the sword of Richmond. But Mr. Punch comes to a good end, and so far as we may know, he lives happy ever after, like the princes and princesses of the fairytales. He may even marry again and have another child, to be made away with in its turn. The more we consider his misdeeds and his misadventures the more shocking they are to our moral sense. Mr. Punch appears as a monster of such hideous mien that to be hated he needs but to be seen. This is how he must appear to every one of us who applies a moral standard to the drama, and who is willing to hold every character in a play to a strict accountability for his words and deeds. If we apply this moral standard to the play of Punch and Judy, then that play must be dismissed as profoundly and hopelessly immoral, carrying ethical infection to all who are so unfortunate as to be spectators at its performance. And more particularly, it is an absolutely unfit piece for the young, whose immature minds need to be guarded against everything which might tend to confuse the delicate distinctions between right and wrong.
But, of course, we do not apply a moral standard to the sayings and doings of Mr. Punch, for the plain and sufficient reason that he is not a human being. He is not a man and a brother, upon whom we may be tempted to pattern ourselves. He is but a six-inch puppet, a thing of shreds and patches, a wooden-headed doll, vitalized for a moment only by the hand concealed inside his flimsy body with its flaunting colors. He is too fantastic, too impossible, too unreal, too unrelated to any possible world, for us to feel called upon to frown upon his misdeeds or to take them seriously. He is a joke, and we know that he is a joke, and all the children know that he is only a joke. Even the youngest child is never tempted to believe in his existence and to be moved to follow his example or to imitate his dark deeds. The proof of the pudding is in the eating; and the proof of a play is in the effect it produces upon the spectators. We may question whether any one of the millions of performances of the lamentable tragedy of Mr. Punch has suggested to a single father the fatal neglect of his offspring or to a single husband the possibility of wife-murder. And we may doubt whether any child, after witnessing Mr. Punch's murderous combats with the policeman and the devil, has ever felt any lessening of his respect for those two time-honored guardians of law and order.
