There is one note to be made upon George Sand's account of the slow development of the puppet-show at Nohant, beginning as early as 1847. If you will look at any set of Punch and Judy figures hung up to-day in the toy store to tempt the eye of Young America, you will discover alongside Mr. Punch and Mrs. Judy, Jack Ketch and the Devil, a strange green figure with huge jaws and double rows of white teeth. This verdant beast has a body like all other Punch and Judy figures, a loose cloth funnel to slip over the sleeve of the operator; but its head suggests the head of an alligator, or of a crocodile, or of a dragon. Now, if you will turn to the classic text of the English play of Punch and Judy, edited with a learned introduction and an abundance of scholarly annotation by John Payne Collier—at least, so it is believed, altho the rare little book is anonymous—you will find no mention of any strange beast of this sort. Collier's text of the play is adorned by two dozen illustrations, etched by George Cruikshank, and in no one of these plates will you discover any crocodile, or alligator, or dragon. You will find Toby, the dog, who still survives in most of the few shows to be seen to-day in the streets of London; and you will find Hector, the gallant steed that Mr. Punch mounts with difficulty—and it is sad to have to record that Hector is no longer in the service of Mr. Punch. In fact, one devoted admirer of puppet-shows, whose memory goes back nearly fifty years, is ready to declare that he has never laid eyes on Hector—except in Cruikshank's illustrations. But Mr. Punch, deprived of the privilege of bestriding Hector, now enjoys the fiercer delight of overcoming the green-eyed alligator.
Here we have a question of profound historic interest. Whence came the strange beast with the wide jaws? And here is where George Sand's pleasant paper is a very present help in time of need. She tells us that her son besought her to make a green monster for one of the earliest pieces he devised for her puppet-figures. She did as she was bid, and she sacrificed a pair of blue velvet slippers to provide the marvelous creature with his gently smiling jaws. She draws attention to the fact that the slippers were blue, and to the further fact that nevertheless the strange beast was always called the Green Monster. And here may be the explanation of the historic mystery. The fame of the puppets of Nohant was borne abroad; they were talked about all thru France; and they were discussed again and again in the Parisian newspapers. What more likely than that one of the professional puppet players should have seen the infinite possibilities of the Green Monster, and should have perceived its novel fascination for children? Thereupon he borrowed it for his own performances. Certainly it is that the Green Monster is a character in at least one of the manuscript plays preserved in the Dramatic Museum of Columbia University, and written out half a century ago. Probably the Green Monster strayed from the puppet-show of the Champs-Elysées sooner or later to one of the toy stores of Paris at the request of some boy who desired it for his own. When the Green Monster had elected domicile in the stores of Paris, he was soon appropriated by the toy-makers of Germany for export to Great Britain and the United States.
(1912.)
XVII
THE PUPPET-PLAY, PAST AND PRESENT
THE PUPPET-PLAY, PAST AND PRESENT
I
In her charming and instructive account of the ingenious puppet-shows with which her son Maurice used to amuse himself and her guests at Nohant half a century ago, George Sand records the fact that the erudite scholar, Magnan, who wrote a learned history of the puppet-show from the remotest antiquity, did not discriminate sharply between the two entirely different kinds of little figures, both of which are carelessly called puppets in English, and marionettes in French. One class comprises these empty and flexible figures which are animated by the thumb and two fingers of the performer who exhibits them by holding his hands above his head, as in the 'Punch and Judy' show. The other contains the larger dolls, suspended on wires (which are supposed to be invisible) and manipulated by one or more performers overhead, who give life to these figures by jerking the various strings as the action of the play may require. These last are the true marionettes; and for the first we have, unfortunately, no distinctive name. It is greatly to be regretted that the two very different types of puppets are not set apart from each other satisfactorily by the contributor of the article on marionettes in the latest edition of the 'Encyclopedia Britannica.'
Each of these two sorts of puppets has an interest of its own; and each of them has its special and peculiar relation to the drama. Both of them have a long and honorable history, and can be traced back in the scanty records of a remote antiquity; altho it seems more likely that the true marionette—the little figure moved by wires from overhead—is the older of the two, antedating by many centuries the Punch and Judy figure, which owes its abrupt and awkward movements to the human thumb and fingers. Both classes are to be found to-day all over the world, not only in the cities of civilization, but in unsuspected nooks and corners on all the shores of all the seven seas. In Turkey, for example, under the name of Karaguez, there is a Punch and Judy of enormous popularity and of doubtful decency, while in Siam there are marionettes which perform religious plays of traditional appeal. Apparently the puppet-show of one type or the other satisfies in its fashion that dramatic instinct which every people possesses in greater or less intensity.
Both kinds of puppet-show flourish in France, and have there been lifted to a more elevated plane of art; and both kinds retain their popularity in Italy, altho in an humbler form. The French are inveterate artists; and they are like the Greeks in desiring to do all things decently and in order. The Italians have, perhaps, a stronger native gift for the drama and they are ready to enjoy a simpler and more primitive puppet-play. It is from Italy that we who speak English have derived our Punch and Judy. Mr. Punch is a direct descendant of that favorite figure of robust Neapolitan farce, Pulcinella; and so is the French Polichinelle. And in Italy to-day the true marionettes have an even broader popularity than the Punch and Judy figures. The Italians who have lately flocked to America in their thousands, until New York now contains more of them than Venice, have imported in the original package the legendary puppet-show setting forth the romantic stories of the Middle Ages and of the early Renascence. We look upon Mr. Punch as comic; but the Italians take their pleasure seriously and the marionettes in their puppet-shows to be seen in New York are truly heroic, and not infrequently highly tragic.