Chapter VI: Part 6

Whether, out of their infinite variety, the puppets please or fail to satisfy us, there is one audience invariably eager for them. Puppet shows for children, toy theatres managed by children, what could be more fitting? Specially adapted, professional performances such as the Guignol and Casperle plays have ever catered to youthful tastes with astonishing and perennial success. The home-made booths for simple dolls worked on the fingers are so quickly contrived. Little stages for marionettes are easy to construct out of ordinary kitchen tables. Mr. Gordon Craig gives explicit directions as well as an excellent drawing in his letter, _The Game of Marionettes_, which is published in _The Mask_, volume five. Shadow plays can be arranged by merely stretching a sheet across a door with a cardboard frame and cardboard figures pressed behind it and a light to illuminate the silhouettes. How much fun to have Red Riding Hood thus portrayed, for a birthday party or the shadow of Santa Claus with his reindeer sailing over the shadow gables and down the shadow of the chimney on Christmas eve!

The _Juvenile Drama_ of Skelt and his successors, Park, Webb, Redington and Pollock, has been immortalized by Stevenson in his little essay, _A Penny Plain and Twopence Colored_. Printed on thin sheets of cardboard to be cut out and colored by the youthful stage manager (unless he bought, oh shame! the _Twopence Colored_), were characters and scenes for the most exciting plays. Special properties for illuminating and coloring could be acquired also, at extra expense. The words of the drama, plus directions, were printed in a pamphlet. They were based upon thrilling old English melodramas; they presented startling and highly theatrical situations.

“In the Leith Walk window all the year round, there stood displayed a theatre in working order, with a _Forest Set_, a _Combat_, and a few _Robbers Carousing_ in the slides; and below and about, dearer tenfold to me! the plays themselves, those budgets of romance, lay tumbled one upon the other. Long and often have I lingered there with empty pockets. One figure, we shall say, was visible in the first plate of characters, bearded, pistol in hand, or drawing to his ear the clothyard arrow. I would spell the name: was it Macaire or Long Tom Coffin, or Grindoff, 2d dress? Oh, how I would long to see the rest! How--if the name by chance were hidden--I would wonder in what play he figured and what immortal legend justified his attitude and strange apparel! And then to go within to announce yourself as an intending purchaser, and, closely watched, be suffered to undo those bundles and to breathlessly devour those pages of gesticulating villains, epileptic combats, bosky forests, palaces and warships, frowning fortresses and prison vaults--it was a giddy joy.”

“And when at length the deed was done, the play selected and the impatient shopman had brushed the rest into the gray portfolio, and the boy was forth again, a little late for dinner, the lamps springing into light in the blue winter’s even, and _The Miller_, or _The Rover_, or some kindred drama clutched against his side, on what gay feet he ran, and how he laughed aloud in exultation!” And Stevenson confesses: “I have, at different times, possessed _Aladdin_, _The Red Rover_, _The Blind Boy_, _The Old Oak Chest_, _The Wood Daemon_, _Jack Shepard_, _The Miller and His Men_, _Der Freischuetz_, _The Smuggler_, _The Forest of Bondy_, _Robin Hood_, _The Waterman_, _Richard I._, _My Poll and my Partner Joe_, _The Inchcape Bell_ (imperfect), and _Three-fingered Jack the Terror of Jamaica_; and I have assisted others in the illumination of the _Maid of the Inn_ and _The Battle of Waterloo_. In this roll-call of stirring names you read the evidences of a happy childhood.”[8]

In Germany, also, toy theaters abound, better equipped possibly, and more carefully constructed, but lacking somewhat the quaint and fiery delightfulness of the English juvenile drama.

There could be no more spontaneous testimonial of the love of children for the puppets than the throngs who crowded into Papa Schmidt’s Kasperle theatre to witness his familiar, jolly little shows of fairy-tale and folklore. In striving to meet the tastes and needs of children, Schmidt earned the reward of becoming the best beloved man in the city. It is interesting to note that when, once, he became discouraged and wished to retire, the city magistrates, urged by the _superintendent of the schools_, unanimously voted to build him a permanent little theatre.

And Goethe, that German genius of most universal appeal, records that he devoted many hours of his childhood to puppet play. Kept at home during the dreary days of the Seven Years’ War when Frankfurt was occupied by the French, he diverted not only himself but his family with the little marionette theatre which he had received as a Christmas gift. It is thus that he describes his introduction to the puppets who were to delight his boyhood, to amuse his youth and to inspire him eventually with the suggestion for his great Faust drama.

“I can still see the moment--how wonderful it seemed--when, after the usual Christmas presents, we were told to sit down before a door which led from one room into another. It opened, but not merely for the usual passing in and out; the entrance was filled with an unexpected festiveness. A portal reared itself into the heights which was covered by a mystic curtain. At first we marvelled from a distance and as our curiosity became greater to see what glittering and rustling things might be concealed behind the half-transparent drapery, a little chair was assigned to each of us and we were told to wait in patience.

“So then we all sat down and were quiet. A whistle gave signal, the curtain rose and disclosed a scene in the Temple, painted bright red. The High Priest Samuel appeared with Jonathan, and their curious dialogue seemed most admirable to me. Shortly thereafter Saul came upon the scene in great distress, over the insolence of the heavy-weight warrior who had challenged him and his followers to combat. How relieved I was when the diminutive son of Jesse sprang forth with shepherd’s crook, wallet and sling and spoke thus: ‘Almighty King and great Lord! Let none despair because of this. If your Majesty will permit me, I will go forth and enter into combat with the mighty giant.’ The first act was ended and the audience extremely desirous to learn what would happen next,” etc., etc.

Designed for use in the home

[Reproduced from _Kind und Kunst_]]

The puppets may indeed boast of having delighted child geniuses of every country and of having inspired their later years. We are told that at the age of eleven Stanislaw Wyspianski, the great poet, painter and dramatist of Poland, built himself a large stage or _Crib_ imitating architecturally the Castle of Wawel. On this stage he produced various dramas based upon the history of that royal burg, with the help of figures which he himself invented. “Perhaps,” his biographer suggests, “already there was germinating in his boyish soul the idea of the Theatre-Wawel which in his manly productiveness brought forth manifold fruits.” (L. de Schildenfeld Schiller.) In Italy, too, we find the great dramatist Goldoni devoted to puppet play as a child and writing dramas for the burattini which he is said to have adapted later, with great success, for the larger stage.

Most famous, perhaps, of all popular puppets for children to-day are the Guignols in Paris. A typical performance might be found in the garden of the Luxembourg, where a little stage has been erected. One has the privilege of standing outside the roped-off space with passing pastry cooks, milliners’ girls and street urchins, or one may pay to enter and sit down on a chair among the children and nurses. Coachmen rein up and watch from their high perches at the curb. Polichinelle first comes upon the stage with his piping voice, or the Director, a doll in evening dress with waxed mustachios, welcomes the audience. Then Guignol and the terrifying family scenes!

Mr. W. Caine has given a very illuminating analysis of the guignols. “But who are all these people? Guignol, Guillaume, the Judge, the Patron, the Nurse? You might know that Guignol is Guillaume’s father, while Guillaume is the son of Guignol. The Gendarme, on the other hand, is the Gendarme, while the Judge, similarly, is the Judge. The Patron is none other than the Patron, and who should the Nurse be, in the name of common sense, but the Nurse? The Gendarme is always killed, always. The Judge expends his wrath impotently, always. The Patron is invariably worsted, the Nurse has no sort of luck. Guignol represents the proletariat. He wears a dark green jacket and a black hat.... His face is large and foolish, for he is what is known as a benet, a simpleton.... He tries to give his own baby its dinner by thrusting it head-first into a stewing pan. Guillaume wears a red hat and pink blouse.... Guillaume is, in one word, a rascal. It is certain when once Guillaume gets hold of a stick, or musket, or a stewing-pan (anything will do) that somebody will bite the dust.”

The enthusiasm of the juvenile audience grows most intense over the exploits of this favorite, and it is not unusual when Guillaume is sore put to it and the Gendarme is about to pounce upon him, to hear a shrill little voice from the audience cry out, ‘Take care, Guillaume, the Gendarme is behind the door!’ When for the first time the adventurous Guillaume ascended in an aeroplane, so great was his success that the price of seats in the Champs Élysées went from 10 centimes to 25!!”

Guignol is often to be found during the season at bathing resorts and at the seashore. Each of the larger shows in Paris has a portable booth belonging to it wherein its little cast can be sent out to perform at private entertainments. It is not uncommon for the play to be sent to the orphans and waifs in this manner as a special treat for fête days.

We find the puppets equally beloved by the children of Italy. In _The Marionette_ there is a sympathetic picture of a juvenile audience at the theatre of the Lupi family in Torina. “On the evenings of ordinary days the auditorium does not differ in aspect from that of the other theatres. To see it in its especial beauty one must go to the Sunday afternoon performance, when hundreds of boys and girls fill the seats and benches, and form, in the _platea_ and the boxes, so many bouquets, garlands of blond heads; and the variety of light bright colors of their clothes give it the appearance of a sala decked with flowers and flags for a fête.

“On the rising of the curtain one may say that two performances begin. It is delightful, during a spectacular scene, to see all those eyes wide open as at an apparition from another world--those expressions of the most supreme amazement, in which life seems suspended--those little mouths open in the form of an O, or of rings and semicircles--those little foreheads corrugated as if in a tremendous effort of philosophic cogitation, which then relax brusquely as on awaking from a dream. Then, all at once, at a comic scene, at a funny reply or action of one of the characters, whole rows of little bodies double up with laughter, lines of heads are thrown back, shaking masses of curls, disclosing little white necks, opening mouths, like little red caskets full of minute pearls; and in the impetus of their delight some embrace their brother or sister, some throw themselves in their mother’s arms, and many of the smallest fling themselves back in their seats with their legs in the air, innocently disclosing their most secret _lingerie_. And then, to see how in the passion of admiration they furiously push aside the importunate handkerchief which seeks their little noses, or deal a blow without preface to whoever hides from them the view of the stage! There are three hundred pairs of hands that applaud with all their might, and that, among them all, do not make as much noise as four men’s hands; one seems to see and to hear the flutter of hundreds of rosy wings, held by so many threads to the seats.

“And the admiring and enthusiastic exclamations are a joy to hear. At the unexpected opening of certain scenes, at the appearance of certain lambs or little donkeys or pigs that seem alive, there are outbursts of ‘Oh!’ and long murmurs of wonder, behind which comes almost always some solitary exclamation of a little voice which resounds in the silence like a sigh in a church, and ... ‘Ah, com’e bello!’ ... that breaks from the depths of the soul, that expresses fulness of content, a celestial beatitude.”

_Upper_: Figures to be cut out for the Juvenile Dramas
_Lower_: Back scene for _Timour the Tartar_

[Courtesy of B. Pollock, 73 Hoxton Street, London]]

When Mr. Tony Sarg brought _The Rose and The Ring_ west it was a rare privilege for the children of Cleveland to see this winsome puppet play and an equal pleasure for those elders who witnessed the performance with them. _What_ was behind the little curtain? A few boys and girls went tiptoe up to peek. Then, listen! there is music and then, oh! the funny little man singing a song, and oh! the long-nosed little King snoring on his throne, and the funny soldier, Hedsoff, saluting so briskly, and the ugly old Lady Gruffanuff! And see the Fairy Blackstick come floating in and do things and say things to people and Princess Angelica playing piano and dancing. How can she, so little and only a dolly? What a fat Prince Bulbo and oh, the armoured men on horseback fighting! (“Why ha’ dey dose knives, Mudda?” questioned one little girl, aloud, all unacquainted with the days of Chivalry). And then the roaring Lion! My four-year-old daughter still calls the lion a bear: but it pleased her notwithstanding, particularly the _roar_ of it. “Oh, I just juve Mr. Sarg’s ma-inette dolls, Mudda,” she exclaimed, a day after the blissful event. “Why don’t we have ma-inette dolls many times?” Why indeed, or, why not?!

Elnora Whitman Curtis, in her book _The Dramatic Instinct in Education_, emphasizes the educational value of puppets. She would have shows in the schools, or better yet, in playgrounds with the advantage of fresh air. Subjects, she claims, could be vivified, literature and history lessons more deeply impressed upon the great number of pupils who never get beyond the grades. And for older children there would be the training in the writing of dialogues, in the declaiming of them, practice in fashioning the puppets, the costumes, the scenery, the properties and in operating and directing. Miss Curtis concludes: “Anyone who has watched a throng of small boys and girls as they sit in the tiny, roped-off square before a little chatelet in Paris on the Champs Élysées, or those that gather in Papa Schmidt’s exquisite little theatre in Munich, or before the tiny booths at fairs and exhibitions anywhere in Italy, must have noticed the rapturous delight of these small people. The tiny stage, its equipment, accessories, the diminutive garments and belongings of the puppets satisfy the childish love of the miniature copies of things in the grown-up world. Their animistic tendencies make it easy to endow the wooden figures with human qualities and bring them into close rapport with their own world of fancy. The voice coming from some unknown region adds the mystery which children dearly love, and before the magic of fairy-tales their eyes grow wide with wonder. The stiff movement of the puppets, their sudden collapses from dignity, are irresistibly funny to the little people and the element of buffoonery is doubly comical in its mechanical presentation.”

Less specifically, but with equal conviction of their deep educational importance, Gordon Craig proclaims: “There is one way in which to assist the world to become young again. It is to allow the young mind to learn nearly all things from the marionette.”

_A Plea for Polichinelle_

I am making a plea for Polichinelle and I hope I shall be pardoned for summoning to my assistance some of his more eloquent and illustrious admirers. We have seen that the past has eminently honored him, but there is also ample testimony that he can adapt himself to our present time and taste, nay more, to the various tastes and tempers of this modern day. For there are divers theories and principles among critics of the puppets, but the puppets are so versatile they can play many parts in many manners. “Chacun a son gout!” quoth Polichinelle with a flourish.

There are those who believe that the grotesque is an inherent, indispensable trait of the marionette; that, as Flögel claims, Kasperle, quintessence of grotesque comedy, belongs inseparably to the marionette stage and that everything else is meaningless, insipid, and merely experimental. Similarly, Professor Wundt asserts that the ministration to the sense of the comic is the chief function of the puppets and perhaps the greatest factor in their popularity. He mentions their mirth-provoking superiority to the situation, the element of the unexpected, heightened enormously by wooden creatures who imperturbably proceed upon occasions to contradict the very law of gravity. These traits, he feels, are essential and distinguishing characteristics of marionettes.

In comparing the merry Kasperle theatre of Munich with the serious puppet theatre established by the young artists of that city, Wilhelm Michel emphasizes this point of view. “Pure tragic effects cannot emanate from the marionette stage because, in the first place, there are no human beings acting upon it but rather ironies of humanity, mockeries of men; suffering cannot be given upon it, only travesties of suffering. If this constitutional irony of the puppet is not handled in an artistic spirit, unbearable dissonances occur.... The working of the marionette stage is pure, unmixed gayety. The dolls are not, as our young poets imagine, representatives and agents of submission, but rather delightful little liberators, amiable, amusing victors over the petty doubts which we all carry about with us in unobserved corners of our souls.”

This opinion is undeniably supported by traditional usage. Humor may vary from the buffoonery of Hanswurst to the satirical subtleties of De Neuville’s pupazzi, but the spirit of comedy has had a representative on the puppet stage in every land. What a long list might be compiled, starting with the hunchback Vidusaka of ancient India, then on through Semar of Javanese comedy, Karagheuz of Turkey, Pahlawan of Persia (squeaking in the same feigned voice as the English Punch), to say nothing of Maccus, the Roman Puppet, and Arlecchino, and Pulcinella with their merry train from all over Italy, even including the later Signor Macaroni. There are the German and Austrian Hanswurst and Kasperle, Jackpudding and Punch in England, Polichinelle, Harlequin, Jean Potage, and even more recently Guignol and Guillaume in France, Paprika, Jancsi of Hungary, Picklehoerring of Holland and ever so many more, rollicking and indispensable humorists of the puppet theatre. M. Charles Magnin, most distinguished historian of the marionette, proclaims his unalterable faith in Polichinelle: “Do you know, then, what Polichinelle is? He is the good sense of the people, the brisk sally, the irrepressible laughter. Yes, Polichinelle will laugh and sing as long as the world contains vices, follies and things to ridicule. You see very well that Polichinelle is not near his death. Polichinelle is immortal!”

Professor Pischel agrees that the puppet play is the favorite child of the people and merely the step-child of the cultured because it owes its origin to the common people and is a clearer mirror of their thoughts and feelings than any more finished poetry. Mr. Howard, too, in the _Boston Transcript_, somewhat resents the marionette performances in the new manner, feeling that the old traditional shows were “more childlike, more simple, more human.”

Innumerable artists of the last few decades, however, esteem the marionette as an excellent medium of serious dramatic expression, possessing a poetic style and a conventionalized, impersonal symbolism. Ernst Ehlert, himself an actor as well as lover of puppets, writes thus of Pühony’s marionettes:

“The object of every work of art, the thing that makes it truly artistic, is the attainment of the greatest possible emotional effect with the simplest possible means. What makes a work of art a real delight is that it does not fully express but merely suggests and excites the imagination of the observer to help in the presentation of the reality. That is why a puppet play is not only more amusing but more artistic than a real one.” He continues: “Puppets, moreover, have style. They are cut out sharply to represent their particular characteristics, and those characteristics are pronounced. The manager of a puppet show has a free hand in the fashioning of such a company as best carries out his creative impulse. But with real actors it is impossible to make them other than they are, to subordinate them entirely to the manager’s will. I have been an actor, both in Germany and in Russia ... so I know.”

Again, Mr. Arthur Symons, after witnessing the fantoccini of the Cortanzi theatre in Rome, expresses the following belief in the art-marionette: “Gesture on the stage is the equivalent of rhythm in verse. In our marionette, then, we get personified gesture, and the gesture, like all forms of emotion, generalized. The appeal in what seems to you these childlike manoeuvers is to a finer because to a more intimately poetic sense of things than the merely rationalistic appeal of our modern plays.” Furthermore, he adds concerning the puppet: “As he is painted so he will smile, as the wires lift or lower his hands so will his gestures be and he will dance when his legs are set in motion. There is not, indeed, the appeal to the senses of the first row in the stalls at a ballet of living dancers. But why leave the ball-room? It is not nature one looks for on the stage in this kind of a spectacle, and our excitement in watching it should remain purely intellectual. This is nothing less than a fantastic and direct return to the masks of the ancient Greeks, that learned artifice by which tragedy and comedy were assisted in speaking to the world in the universal voice by this deliberate generalizing of emotions.”

The marionettes of M. Signoret, as we have seen, from Anatole France’s enthusiastic account, presented the classic drama of all epochs to the satisfaction of the most acutely sensitive critics of Paris. M. Paul Margueritte brilliantly eulogizes them in the following discussion: “They are indefatigable, always ready. And while the name and too familiar face of a living actor imposes upon the public an obsession which renders illusion impossible or very difficult, the puppets being of wood or cardboard possess a droll, mysterious life. Their truthful bearing surprises, even disquiets us. In their essential gestures there is the complete expression of human feelings. We had it proved at the representations of Aristophanes; real actors would not have produced this effect. In them the foreshortening aided the illusion. Their masks in the style of ancient comedy, their few and simple movements, their statuesque poses, gave a singular grace to the spectacle.”

This leads us to the well-known name of Gordon Craig and to his inspired, emphatic utterances concerning the actor and the marionette. No one of late has done as much as he toward reviving the interest in puppets and stimulating curiosity concerning them. His collection of puppets and shadow figures forms a veritable museum of marionettes from all parts of the world. His many articles in _The Mask_ and in a later publication called _The Marionettes_, both published in Florence at the Arena Goldoni, direct attention to the puppet;--more, it must be admitted, as a model or suggestion to the actor, than as a minor art-form in itself. Recognizing its many merits, Mr. Craig would send the modern actor to the school of the burattini to learn virtues of silence, obedience, “to learn how to indicate instead of imitate.” He deems the stage of to-day devoid, in great part, of genuine dramatic value, filled up with much meaningless realistic detail, inartistic and irritating gestures, and prominent players exhibiting their own peculiar personalities more or less attractively in various rôles. He would agree with Anatole France: “The actors spoil the play for me. I mean good actors,--their talent is too great; it covers everything. There is nothing left but them. Their personality effaces the work which they represent.” Indeed, Gordon Craig boldly proclaims: “The actor must go and in his place comes the inanimate figure, the Über-marionette we may call him until he has won for himself a better name.” And in _The Promise of a New Art_ he has written: “What the wires of the Über-marionette shall be, who shall guide him?--The wires which stretch from Divinity to the soul of the poet are wires which might command him.”

These sentiments are familiar to those acquainted with the art and writings of Mr. Craig, but it is indeed interesting to find somewhat similar ideas expressed in the delightful but “different” manner of a most eminent contemporary, Mr. G. Bernard Shaw. In a letter concerning the puppets of his acquaintance, Mr. Shaw has written: “In my youth (say 1865–75) there was a permanent exhibition in Dublin, the proprietor of which was known as Mons Dark, which is Irish for Monsieur d’Arc. From that show I learned that marionettes can produce a much stronger illusion than bad actors can; and I have often suggested that the Academy of Dramatic Art here try to obtain a marionette performance to teach the students that very important part of the art of acting which consists of not acting: that is, allowing the imagination of the spectator to do its lion’s share of the work.”

Aside, however, from this not insignificant value as an example to the actor of the future, the marionette has a positive and individual contribution to make in the field of drama, a contribution which the marionette alone can provide. There seem to be certain types of plays more advantageously presented by puppets or shadows than by human beings. These little creatures of wood or cardboard have naturally that “sense of being beyond reality” which, according to John Balance, “permeates all good art.” There is an article in the _Hyperion, 1909_, by Franz Blei, critic and aesthete. He states: “I believe there will always be certain dramatic poetry whose beauty can be more significantly and effectively revealed by shadows than by living actors. The shadow play will supplement the theatre of living actors on one side as the marionette stage already does on the other, in Paul Brann’s very brilliant productions, for example. With shadows, the forcefulness of the verse and the emotional element is very much heightened in effect; with marionettes the significance of the action is intensified to a far greater degree than is attainable by human beings, a point to which H. V. Kleist has already drawn attention in praise of marionettes. With shadow plays, as with puppet performances, the readers should not be professional actors, for their very way of speaking invariably mimics the mannerisms of the man. The limited movements of the shadows, however, suffer from this and also the gestures of the marionettes which have a wider range but which do not in the least resemble the customary stage gestures. Talented dilettantes with good taste are more apt to strike the right note. I fancy that the shadows and marionettes might please some people who had not visited the theatre for quite a while, because they were unwilling to waste their time on highly lifelike but utterly lifeless theatrical productions.”

Professor Brander Matthews, in his _Book about the Theatre_, also insists upon the adaptability of the marionettes for certain types of drama unsatisfactory when performed by living actors. He suggests that a passion play or any form of drama in which Divinity has perforce to appear is relieved in the puppet show of any tincture of irreverence, all personages of the play, whether heavenly or earthly, appearing equally remote from common humanity upon the miniature stage. The religious plays of Maurice Bouchor, artistic and reverent productions in every detail, beautifully illustrate this point. The atmosphere M. Jules Lemaître describes as “far away in time and space,”--this of the mystery play, _Noël_. Again Professor Matthews maintains that when _Salome_ was performed by Holden’s marionettes and created the sensation of the season, all vulgarity and grossness which might have been offensive either in the play or in the dance of the seven veils was purged away by the fact that the performers were puppets. “So dextrous was the manipulation of the unseen operator who controlled the wires and strings which gave life to the seductive Salome as she circled around the stage in a most bewitching fashion; so precise and accurate was the imitation of a human dancer, that the receptive spectator could not but feel that here at last a play of doubtful propriety has found its only fit stage and its only proper performance. The memory of that exhibition is a perennial delight to all those who possess it. A thing of beauty it was and it abides in remembrance as a joy forever. It revealed the art of the puppet show at its summit. And the art itself was eternally justified by that one performance of the highest technical skill and the utmost delicacy of taste.”

There are other spheres also in which the puppets have an advantage over mere mortal actors. Fairy stories, legends of miraculous adventure, metamorphoses are tremendously heightened by the quality of strangeness inherent in the marionettes. “For puppet plays,” says Professor Pischel, “are fairy-tales and the fairy-tale is nourished by strangeness.” Transformations, animal fables, fairy flittings in scenes of mysterious glamour are obviously more easily presented by fleshless dolls than by heavy, panting and perspiring actors tricked out in unnatural and unearthly raiment.

Even horseplay humor of the Punch and Judy variety is unobjectionable with puppets where the whacking and thwacking is done by and upon jolly, grotesque little beings who are neither pained nor debased by the procedure. With some such idea William Hazlitt has written:

“That popular entertainment, Punch and the Puppet-show, owes part of its irresistible and universal attraction to nearly the same principle of inspiring inanimate and mechanical agents with sense and consciousness. The drollery and wit of a piece of wood is doubly droll and farcical. Punch is not merry in himself, but ‘he is the cause of heartfelt mirth in other men.’ The wires and pulleys that govern his motion are conductors to carry off the spleen, and all ‘that perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart.’ If we see numbers of people turning the corner of a street, ready to burst with secret satisfaction, and with their faces bathed in laughter we know what is the matter--that they are just come from a puppet-show.

“I have heard no bad judge of such matters say that ‘he liked a comedy better than a tragedy, a farce better than a comedy, a pantomime better than a farce, but a peep-show best of all.’ I look upon it that he who invented puppet shows was a greater benefactor to his species than he who invented Operas!”

The marionette has come to America. Some of the more venturesome of this wandering race have crossed the high seas and entered hopefully into our open country. Are we not to welcome these immigrants? Can we not possibly assimilate them into our national life? Might we not benefit by their contribution? I make a plea for Polichinelle in the United States, the pleasant hours, the joyous moments of his bestowing.

How excellent if schools and playrooms might have their puppet booths for the happier exposition of folk and fairy tales or even for patriotic propaganda! I can see innumerable quaint silhouettes of _Pilgrim Fathers_ bending the knee and giving thanks, or of _Indian Chiefs_, all feathery, in solemn conclave, with Pocahontas dashing madly forward to save the life of Captain John Smith. It would be delicious to witness _George Washington_, in shadows, chopping down his father’s little cherry tree: and as for _Lincoln and Slavery_ ... it actually happened that in 1867 Benedict Rivoli produced _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_, with a company of puppets; it has happened in our vaudeville houses often, why not once in a while in our schools? Small groups of grown folks, too, in city or village, might easily build their own marionette stages and attempt to produce dramas of all times; humorous, satirical, poetic or mystical, each to his taste and independent of the whim of a Broadway manager or the peculiarities of a popular star. It is such a naïve and simple pastime and sometimes so delightful. I should like to suggest it as an antidote for the overdose of moving pictures from which an overwhelming number of us are unconsciously suffering atrophy of the imagination, or a similar insidious malady.[9]

One must be quite unsophisticated to enjoy the marionettes, or quite sophisticated. Plain people, children and artists, seem to take pleasure in them. One must have something childlike, or artistic, in one’s nature, perhaps merely a little imagination in an unspoiled, vigorous condition. Of course the stiff little figures, the peculiar conventions of the puppet stage are strange to us in America. There are those who do not _like_ puppets and those who _do_ not _can_ not, I suppose. No one _must_ like them: but none should scorn them. To scorn them is, somehow, to show too great disregard and lack of knowledge. And we, over here, who have not as youngsters laughed aloud at the drolleries of Guignol, who have not learned our folk-tales interspersed with the antics of some local Kasperle, who are not surprised by Punch and Judy at a familiar street corner, now and then, who have not been privileged to witness the spectacular faeries of Italian fantoccini, the exquisite shadows of the Chat Noir, the elaborate modern plays at the Munich art-theatre,--how can we really say _what_ we think of the marionette? If we see more of him first; if we give our puppeteers (professional and amateur) more time to master their craft, perhaps, who knows, something nice may come of it all. There are some great words I should like to quote for little Polichinelle, artificial or strange as he may seem. “And therefore, as a stranger, give him welcome.”

_Behind the Scenes_

FOR THE FUN OF IT

But why prate of benefit or pleasure to past or present audiences of the marionette when the best reason for the pupazzi, the true reason I do believe, for their continuance and longevity is the _fun_ of puppet-playing? I confess it: nay, I proclaim it the foundation for my deep affection. And who shall find a firmer basis for any love than this,--interest, amusement, stimulation? Reverence or even understanding are far less vital, less compelling motives. Of course this applies to puppets. Everything applicable to humanity fits the burattini, for we are all so much the dancing dolls of destiny, satiric or serious, crude or precious puppets, all of us. One should truly have a fellow feeling for Punch and Judy.

As to the fun, however, of making puppets and of tinkering with the mechanical contrivances, the total absorption with such problems and the elation in overcoming absurd but seemingly insurmountable technical difficulties; the delight in carving and cutting, in designing costumes and then in sewing, glueing, painting, patching them into proper semblance of the original design: the art required properly to conceive a setting for dolls, the ingenuity exerted to decorate the stage, the delicious Lilliputian proportions of things, the charming effects contrived out of almost anything or nothing at all; and, in manipulating, the thrill of acquiring after long effort a full control of the doll at the end of the wires, of telegraphing one’s emotions down into the responsive little body; and the whimsical delight in writing for puppets (one dare be so impudent, being so impersonal and unpretentious!)--who shall say that such an aggregate of wholesome, creative enjoyment to an entire group of childlike grown-up folk is not sufficient vindication for Polichinelle and his kind? With so much bubbling enthusiasm behind the scenes, how can a proper audience be altogether bored? If they are bored it is a sure sign they are no proper audience!

WRITING FOR THE PUPPETS

“The life of man to represent
And turn it all to ridicule,
Wit did a puppet-show invent,
Where the chief actor is a fool.”

JONATHAN SWIFT.

No one appreciates how funny people are until he has written a play for puppets. There’s nothing any person has ever said which isn’t amusing, honestly and truly amusing, when transferred to the mouth of a marionette. Try it and see.

Take any conversation you may have overheard. Take as many puppets as there were people talking. Dress them to indicate the characters, try to imitate the most pronounced gestures and postures of your people ... and let them speak, verbatim, the words that have been spoken.

It is simply funny, a sort of unconscious, undeniable criticism of the manners of men. There will always be a _point_, too, a sort of moral at the minimum. No one can fail to see it, either in the words or the gestures or the situations. The puppets will find it and bring it out. Produce the puppets and try it!

I frankly confess I shudder to imagine myself _done in puppet_. What a cure for idiosyncrasies and affectations!

A REHEARSAL OF TINTAGILES

In all the lack-luster of realism we “stood on the bridge at midnight.” Four of us stood on the bridge and we were very weary. It was the bridge of our marionette stage over which we had been bending for hours. From out in front somewhere the director spoke: “Now, once more the third act ... and remember they must lean _against_ the door when it opens as if they were trying desperately to hold it. See that the strings do not catch. Readers, please watch the figures and give them plenty of time.... Ready?” We were, tensely so.

The beautiful, sad voice of Ygraine gave us the mood. “I have been to look at the doors ... there are three of them....” Aglovale (old and tremulous): “I will go seat myself upon the step, my sword upon my knee....”

“Aglovale, lean back farther against the step; don’t perch on the edge.” (This from the front.) Aggie (as we familiarly called him) thereupon proceeded to jerk up and sit down deliberately a couple of times, then followed a twitching, collapsing, stiffening process.... “Sorry, it’s the little hump in his shoulders and the step is so narrow!” wailed a tired unseen operator. During the struggle Belangere flopped inelegantly on the floor, her manipulator resting a weary wrist. Clearing of throats, scraping of chairs from the readers in the wings.

Patient director: “Well, let it go for to-night. You may have to remove the hump. Are we ready?” We were.

The play proceeded. On the miniature stage in dim, high-arched rooms, bare and gloomy, slender, strange little creatures moved with stiff, imposing gestures. It is an ominous world, the atmosphere vibrating with hidden terror, tense emotions and lonely overtones. Princess Ygraine, to the little Tintagiles: “There, you see...? Your big sisters are here ... they are close to you ... we will defend you and no evil can come near.”

Oh, the tenderness, the dauntlessness, the pathos ... high hearts encircled by creeping, inevitable doom.

Then the old man, mumbling at his own bewildered futility: “My soul is heavy to-day.” (A hand is raised, an old hand, tremblingly.) “What is one to do...? Men needs must live and await the unforeseen.... And after that they must still act as if they hoped....” (The arm drops, heavy ... a silence.) “There are sad evenings when our useless lives taste bitter in our mouths ... etc.”

The scene proceeds, on and on in ascending tensity, readers sitting at the wings, puppeteers operating the wires high up, the director off at his desk in the dark, ... and the marionettes animated into vital significance, symbols of supreme and simplified fervor ... dread, love, courage....

“They are shaking the door, listen. Do not breathe. They are whispering.

“They have the key....

“Yes, yes, I was sure of it.... Wait....”

Old Aglovale faces the slowly opening door, his sword outstretched; the others stand rigid with terror.

“Come! Come both....”

They face the door, they hold it. Their watchfulness avails for the time being. The door closes.

“Tintagiles!”

Aglovale, waiting at the door: “I hear nothing now....”

Ygraine, wild with joy. “Tintagiles, look! Look!... He is saved!... Look at his eyes.... You can see the blue.... He is going to speak.... They saw we were watching.... They did not dare.... Kiss us!... Kiss us, I say!... All, all!... Down to the depths of our soul!...”

A silence, a long silence. Then ... the boards creak as the operators stand up to rest their aching backs.

“Well, Belangere mounted the steps pretty well that time. But don’t forget to take a stitch in her left leg; she still has a tendency to pivot.”

“Yes, I’ll do it and I’ll lengthen her back string; I think that’s it ... and take away some of Aggie’s hump.”

From the sublime to the absurd, no doubt. But there are the puppets hung up ... quietly and sternly gazing, each little character.

No, they are not absurd, patiently, almost scornfully awaiting the subtler grasp of some master hand to bring out the rare potentialities sleeping within them. Awkward, silly dolls they may appear in a clumsy hand, but even we amateurs who serve them faithfully sense more than this in them. So, while we pull the strings and move these singular, small creatures in measured gestures we feel that we are handling crude but expressive symbols of large, fine things.

THE MAKING OF A MARIONETTE

The puppets used in the Cleveland Playhouse are neither realistic, humorous, nor clever. They are very simple, somewhat impressionistic and quite adequate and effective for certain types of drama. They appeal to the imagination of the spectator. Under favorable conditions one forgets their diminutive size, their crude construction, even their lack of soul.

These patterns for the marionette body were drawn by the sculptor, Mr. Max Kalish, especially for figures which were shown with little clothing on. If the dolls are to be dressed it is better to make separate upper and lower arms and legs, and to join them flexibly or stiffly, as the action of the particular puppet requires.

The material we have used is soft white woven stuff (stockings from the ten-cent store!), which can be painted with tempera any color desired. The patterns shown allow for a good seam. The front and back are alike, also right and left limbs. Each marionette will need some adjusting which one discovers as one works along. We have used a narrow tape to join the arms and legs.

The dolls are stuffed with soft rags or cotton. The limbs must be stiffly filled out and firm, the chest also. The lower part of the torso should be left softer. In the hands we insert cardboard to stiffen the wrists.

We use lead to weight the dolls. Small shot is good for filling up the hands and feet. Larger pieces of lead are used for the torso, lower arm and lower leg. No lead is put in the upper arm or upper leg. The reasons for this will be discovered as soon as one practices manipulating the figures. Care must be used to have the body properly balanced and to have the feet heavy.

The control is a simple piece of wood with five screw eyes to which the strings are tied. More may be added to operate the feet or for other purposes. When using these extremely crude little dolls, however, it is best to depend upon simple means and a few gestures. The strings can be of heavy black thread or fishing cord, the latter is not so apt to become twisted. The strings are attached to the hands, the shoulders, and the center of the back. The hand strings should be loose, the others carefully measured to balance the doll evenly.

In dressing the puppets one must allow plenty of room at the elbow, knee, etc., for free action. We have kept our dolls very simple, the faces and hands painted over, the hair of wool or cotton.

Of the manipulating little can be said. There is no way to learn except by getting up on the bridge and _doing_ it. Too much petty gesticulation in these dolls is ineffective. It is better to hold the gesture. Deliberation and patience are the chief requirements for a successful operator, given a certain natural deftness of hand which is primarily essential.

_Construction of a Marionette Stage_

BY RAYMOND O’NEIL

The marionette stage shown in the diagram has a proscenium opening six feet long by four feet high and is meant for productions that use marionettes from twelve to fourteen inches in height. It is a stage that can be built even by amateurs both readily and cheaply. It is, of course, necessary that some one who is familiar with the electric wiring should be consulted in that part of the work.

The stage is in two sections: the stage floor proper, to which is attached the footlight box, and the proscenium arch, which is made to be demounted and is held to the stage floor by right angle braces. The stage floor itself is made of ⅞″ stock which may run from eight to twelve inches in width. These boards are fastened to 2×4’s which run from the front to the back of the stage. Three lengths of these 2×4’s are all that are necessary. The box which holds the footlights may be made of ½″ stock which should be just deep enough to hold 60-watt lamps. Three circuits should be run into this box to provide for red, blue and green lamps. The diagram shows only one lamp to each color placed in the box, but to obtain the best results three or four lamps should be used on each circuit. Small stage connectors which can be obtained at any electrical dealer’s should be placed in the floor to take care of the lines that run to No. 1 border, No. 2 border and to the various other lamps such as small floods and small spotlights, which will be found necessary for different effects. Both No. 1 and No. 2 borders should have three circuits running into them for red, blue and green lamps, and there should be from four to six lamps on each circuit. These borders may be placed in any position from the front to the back of the stage that the setting may demand. A convenient place from which to suspend them is from the operating platform which is built over the complete length of the stage at such a height as to clear any set that may be used.

The proscenium arch should be built of ⅞″ stock, preferably of white wood, because of the fine surface which it presents, if it is to be decorated. The upright sections of the arch should be at least as wide as those shown in the diagram, because they must carry the three circuits for the proscenium lights, the belt that raises and lowers the curtain, and also special lamps and appliances that will be found necessary for various types of production. The diagram shows one green, one blue, and one red outlet on the two sections on the top section of the arch, but it will be found very convenient to have at least two outlets for each of these colors on each of the three sections of the arch.

The curtain can be the ordinary window shade. After removing the spring, attach it to the face of the proscenium arch with ordinary window shade fixtures. It should be wide enough to lap well over each side of the arch, and the end which extends to the right of the proscenium opening should be sufficiently long to carry a 2″ belt for raising and lowering it. This belt can be of webbing and should be held taut near the bottom of the proscenium arch by a small roller, as shown in the diagram. It is necessary that this belt should be far enough to the right of the proscenium arch opening so the hand which raises and lowers the curtain will not be seen by the audience.

The outlets for the various circuits on this arch may be either keyed sockets or porcelain receptacles fastened to the face of the arch.

Both for the sake of the better framing of the settings to be used on this stage and for more effectively masking off the sides and the top of the stage, it is a good plan to build all around the opening of the proscenium arch at right angles to it an inner proscenium which may run from 6 to 9 inches in width. This inner proscenium may be made of half-inch stock. If the inner proscenium is used, it will be necessary to hang the curtain sufficiently behind the face of the main proscenium so that it will clear the inner proscenium as it rises and falls.

All circuits should lead to a switch-board on which small knife switches may be used. This switch-board should also carry several rheostats or dimmers. The more dimmers that are used the greater will be the possibilities in lighting. These dimmers can be made of special high wattage resistance wire, which can be obtained or ordered from any electrical dealer. In the making and wiring of the switch-board, it is, of course, necessary to obtain either a professional electrician or at least professional advice.

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