“That there is the address, sir,” he continued, “what I always gives to the audience outside before I begins to preform—just to let the respectable company know that I am a working for to get my living by honest industry.
“‘Those ladies and gents,’ he then went on, as if addressing an imaginary crowd, ‘what are a-standing round, a-looking at the preformance, will, I hope, be as willing to give as they is to see. There’s many a lady and gent now at the present moment standing around me, perhaps, whose hearts might be good though not in their power.’ (This is Punch’s patter, yer know, outside; and when you has to say all that yourself, you wants the affluency of a methodist parson to do the talk, I can tell ye.) ‘Now boys, look up yer ha’pence! Who’s got a farden or a ha’penny? and I’ll be the first brown towards it. I ain’t particular if it’s a half-crown. Now, my lads, feel in your pockets and see if you’ve got an odd copper. Here’s one, and who’ll be the next to make it even? We means to show it all through, provising we meets with sufficient encouragement.’ (I always sticks to them words, ‘sufficient encouragement.’) ‘You’ll have the pleasure of seeing Spring-heeled Jack, or the Roosian Bear, and the comical scene with Joey the clown, and the fryingpan of sassages!’ (That’s a kind of gaggery.)
“I’ll now just explain to you, sir, the different parts of the frame. This here’s the letter-cloth, which shows you all what we performs. Sometimes we has wrote on it—
THE DOMINION OF FANCY,
or,
Punch’s Opera:
that fills up a letter-cloth; and Punch is a fancy for every person, you know, whoever may fancy it. I stands inside here on this footboard; and if there’s any one up at the winders in the street, I puts my foot longways, so as to keep my nob out of sight. This here is the stage front, or proceedings (proscenium), and is painted over with flags and banners, or any different things. Sometimes there’s George and the Dragging, and the Rile Queen’s Arms, (we can have them up when we like, cos we are sanctioned, and I’ve played afore the rile princes). But anything for freshness. People’s tired of looking at the Rile Arms, and wants something new to cause attraction, and so on.
“This here’s the playboard, where sits Punch. The scenes behind are representing a garding scene, and the side-scenes is a house and a cottage—they’re for the exaunts, you know, just for convenience. The back scene draws up, and shows the prison, with the winders all cut out, and the bars showing, the same as there is to a gaol; though I never was in one in my life, and I’ll take good care I never shall be.
“Our speaking instrument is an unknown secret, cos it’s an ‘unknown tongue,’ that’s known to none except those in our own purfession. It’s a hinstrument like this which I has in my hand, and it’s tuned to music. We has two or three kinds, one for out-doors, one for in-doors, one for speaking, one for singing, and one that’s good for nothing, except selling on the cheap. They ain’t whistles, but ‘calls,’ or ‘unknown tongues;’ and with them in the mouth we can pronounce each word as plain as a parson, and with as much affluency.
“The great difficulty in preforming Punch consists in speaking with this call in the mouth—cos it’s produced from the lungs: it’s all done from there, and is a great strain, and requires sucktion—and that’s brandy-and-water, or summat to moisten the whistle with.
“We’re bound not to drink water by our purfession, when we can get anything stronger. It weakens the nerves, but we always like to keep in the bounds of propriety, respectability, and decency. I drinks my beer with my call in my mouth, and never takes it out, cos it exposes it, and the boys (hang ’em!) is so inquisitive. They runs after us, and looks up in our face to see how we speaks; but we drives ’em away with civility.
“Punch is a dramatical performance, sir, in two acts, patronised by the nobility and gentry at large. We don’t drop the scene at the end of the first act, the drum and pipes strikes up instead. The first act we consider to end with Punch being took to prison for the murder of his wife and baby. You can pick out a good many Punch preformers, without getting one so well versed as I am in it; they in general makes such a muffing concern of it. A drama, or dramatical preformance, we calls it, of the original preformance of Punch. It ain’t a tragedy; it’s both comic and sentimental, in which way we think proper to preform it. There’s comic parts, as with the Clown and Jim Crow, and cetera—that’s including a deal more, yer know.