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The Origin of Punch and Judy: A New Clue?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

George Speaight
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Extract

The general opinion, voiced on instinct rather than conclusive evidence, has been that the Punch and Judy show came from Italy. The name Punch is clearly derived, via Punchinello (1667), Polichinello (1666), and Policinella (1664), from Pulcinella, the commedia dell'arte character who originated in Naples about 1600. Prints in abundance show a puppet performance, resembling Punch and Judy, in Naples, Rome and Venice in the eighteenth and the early years of the nineteenth century. And one of the earliest, and perhaps the earliest Punch performer on the streets of London was an Italian, Piccini by name, whose show was immortalized by George Cruikshank's drawings and, to a lesser extent, by Payne Collier's edited text in 1828.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1995 , pp. 200 - 206
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1995

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References

Notes

1. Speaight, George, The History of the English Puppet Theatre (1955, revised second edition 1990).Google Scholar The first eight paragraphs of this article amount to a short recapitulation of the relevant chapters of this book, where full supporting references are provided.

2. See Byrom, Michael, Punch and Judy: Its Origin and Evolution (1972, revised second edition 1988)Google Scholar, and Punch in the Italian Puppet Theatre (1983).Google Scholar Also Purschke, Hans R., Die Entwicklung des Puppenspiels in den klassischen Ursprungsländern Europas (Frankfurt am Main, 1984).Google Scholar

3. An extremely valuable range of illustrations has been reproduced in Pulcinella: maschera del mondo (Naples: Electa, 1990)Google Scholar, the catalogue of an exhibition held in Naples at the Museo Diego Aragona Pignatelli Cortes in that year.

4. From a transcription of a recording (1981). The same tape carries a recording of Pulcinella a Volunteer Soldier, with comic business between Pulcinella and his instructor. According to the catalogue of an exhibition of Teatro per Ragazzi in the Palazzo Gerini, Florence, in 1967, Carlo Piantadosi had begun performing on the Pincio in Rome in 1950 before moving to the Janiculum. His plays were improvised on themes from the Commedia dell'arte and from Neapolitan farces.

5. This, and the two following texts, were performed by Nunzio Zampella in 1979 and 1981, and were printed in Leone, Bruno, La Guarattella: burattini e burattinai a Napoli (Bologna: CLUEB, 1986).Google Scholar Nunzio Zampella is regarded as having maintained the traditions of Neopolitan puppetry more faithfully than any other performer.

6. Scafoglio, Domenico and Satriani, Luini M. Lombardi, Pulcinella: Il mito e la storia (Milan: Leonardo, 1990).Google Scholar

7. “Il casotto del Borgogna”, no. 69 in Pietro Longhi (Milan: Electa 1993)Google Scholar, the catalogue of an exhibition held in the Museo Correr, Venice, in that year.

8. Speaight, History of English Puppet Theatre p. 181.

9. London Scenes, or A Visit to Uncle William in Town, John Harris, (1824), and A Schoolboy's Visit to London and a board game Scenes in London both published by E. Wallis probably in the same year. See also Speaight, George, The History of the English Toy Theatre (1969), p. 81Google Scholar, for what may be a depiction of this in the first decade of the nineteenth century.

10. The Book of Tobit, vi 1.