Punch and Judy
The bottler might also play accompanying music or sound effects on a drum or guitar, and engage in back chat with the puppets, sometimes repeating lines that may have been difficult for the audience to understand.
Today, most professors work solo, since the need for a bottler became less important when street performing with the show gave way to paid engagements at private parties or public events.
[8] Charles II's ascension to the throne ended the interregnum, Puritan legislation was declared null and void, and a more tolerant period of art and culture was ushered in.
[9][10] William Langley of The Telegraph writes Punch and Judy "owes much of its original success to the bleak killjoyism of Cromwell's England.
[8] The diarist Samuel Pepys observed a marionette show featuring an early version of the Punch character in Covent Garden in London.
The cross-dressing actress Charlotte Charke ran the successful but short-lived Punch's Theatre in the Old Tennis Court at St. James's, Westminster, presenting adaptations of Shakespeare as well as plays by herself, her father Colley Cibber, and her friend Henry Fielding.
[16] Punch was extremely popular in Paris and, by the end of the 18th century, he was also playing in Britain's American colonies, where a fan of the show George Washington bought tickets.
[8] However, marionette productions were expensive and cumbersome to mount and transport, presented in empty halls, the back rooms of taverns, or within large tents at England's yearly agricultural events at Bartholomew Fair and Mayfair.
In the latter half of the 18th century, marionette companies began to give way to glove-puppet shows, performed from within a narrow, lightweight booth by one puppeteer, usually with an assistant, or "bottler," to gather a crowd and collect money.
The mobile puppet booth of the late 18th- and early 19th-century Punch and Judy glove-puppet show could be easily fitted-up and was originally covered in checked bed ticking or whatever inexpensive cloth might come to hand.
Ancient members of the show's cast ceased to be included, such as the Devil and Punch's mistress "Pretty Polly," when they came to be seen as inappropriate for young audiences.
[citation needed] Along with Punch and Judy, the cast of characters usually includes their baby, a hungry crocodile, a clown, an officious policeman, and a prop string of sausages.
[21] Peter Fraser writes, "the drama developed as a succession of incidents which the audience could join or leave at any time, and much of the show was impromptu.
It was based on a show by travelling performer Giovanni Piccini, illustrated by George Cruikshank, and written by John Payne Collier.
It typically involves Punch behaving outrageously, struggling with his wife Judy and the baby, and then triumphing in a series of encounters with the forces of law and order (and often the supernatural), interspersed with jokes and songs.
It is rare for Punch to hit his baby these days, but he may well sit on it in a failed attempt to "babysit", or drop it, or even let it go through a sausage machine.
Punch may next pause to count his "victims" by laying puppets on the stage, only for Joey the Clown to move them about behind his back in order to frustrate him.
Punch—in his final gleefully triumphant moment—will win his fight with the Devil, bring the show to a rousing conclusion, and earn a round of applause.
In my opinion the street Punch is one of those extravagant reliefs from the realities of life which would lose its hold upon the people if it were made moral and instructive.
[27] [28] The show continues to be seen[29] in England, Wales, and Ireland—and also in Canada, the United States, the Caribbean and Puerto Rico, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.
[18] It was developed as part of the Judy Project,[32] a three year study of the roles that women have played in the tradition of puppetry, by a University of Exeter team.
The violence in this version of the show is directed more towards institutions of authority rather than any individuals, and Judy questions the treatment she has received from Punch over hundreds of years.
Rosalind Crone suggests that, since the puppets are carved from wood, their facial expressions cannot change, but are stuck in the same exaggerated pose, which helps to deter any sense of realism and to distance the audience.
Other characters that had to incur the wrath of Punch varied depending on the punchman, but the most common were the foreigner, the blind man, the publican, the constable, and the devil.
[25] Punch is primarily an oral tradition, adapted by a succession of exponents from live performances rather than authentic scripts, and in constant evolution.
The original Swedish cast recording is freely available online and features Disney Channel Scandinavia presenter Linnéa Källström as Judy.
The story and songs originate from a pop band called Punch and Judy Show, started by Schütz and Pettersson in the late 1990s.
[39] A performance of Punch and Judy features prominently in the 1963 film Charade directed by Stanley Donen starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn with the two lead characters watching the show while the inspector lurks nearby.
[40] Judy and Punch is a 2019 Australian film written and directed by Mirrah Foulkes which retells the plot of the puppet show as a black comedy-drama.
Having been thought dead after Punch's beating, Judy survives with the help of village outcasts and decides to enact her revenge on her husband, who has scapegoated their servants.
