Punch gets his nose bitten by Toby, the dog. Its master, Scaramouche, accuses him of having abused his dog, and they fight with sticks until his head splits from his body under Punch’s blows. In the following scene, Punch asks Judy for their infant in order to take care of him. However, irritated by his cries, he hits him against the frame of the puppet booth, and throws him in the middle of the audience. In the feud that follows, Punch hits Judy to death using a stick. He then has an affair with Pretty Polly. In the second act, Punch is thrown to the ground by his horse, Hector, and ends up beating to death the Doctor who came to help him. He makes a lot of noise, ringing a bell, and fights with the neighbour who came to ask him to stop. In the third act, Punch fights with a blind man. When policemen and Jack Ketch, a hangman, come to stop him, Punch hits them but is finally imprisoned. Punch must be hung, but he manages to have Jack Ketch hung instead. At the end, the Devil intervenes and fights with Punch, but Punch emerges triumphant.

Glove-puppet

Not specified

Piccini Giovanni

Collier John Payne

Great Britain

London

Printed

Stick

Animal

Marseillaise

Infant

Baby

Father

Household

Couple

Murder

Serial murder

Noise

Music

Gallows

Justice

Cruelty

Farcical

English

Punch and Judy

Scaramouche

Doctor

Domestic servant

Blind

Police officer

Policeman

Executioner

Devil

Horse

Prologue

Versified passages

Address to the public

Off-stage voices

Song

Aria

Dance

Blow-with-a-stick

Splitting of the body

Domestic scene

Speechless character

Spectacular show acts

Bawdy equivocation

Confinement

Hanging scene

Blind character

Final intervention of the devil

Character thrown out of the scene

Animal dressé

The Tragical Comedy, or Comical Tragedy, of Punch and Judy

La comédie tragique, ou tragédie comique, de Punch et Judy

Punch gets his nose bitten by Toby, the dog. Its master, Scaramouche, accuses him of of having abused his dog, and they fight with sticks until his head splits from his body under Punch’s blows. In the following scene, Punch asks Judy for their infant in order to take care of him. However, irritated by his cries, he hits him against the frame of the puppet booth, and throws him in the middle of the audience. In the feud that follows, Punch hits Judy to death using a stick. He then has an affair with Pretty Polly. In the second act, Punch is thrown to the ground by his horse, Hector, and ends up beating to death the Doctor who came to help him. He makes a lot of noise, ringing a bell, and fights with the neighbour who came to ask him to stop. In the third act, Punch fights with a blind man. When policemen and Jack Ketch, a hangman, come to stop him, Punch hits them but is finally imprisoned. Punch must be hung, but he manages to have Jack Ketch hung instead. At the end, the Devil intervenes and fights with Punch, but Punch emerges triumphant.

France

Paris

Comical

French

Polichinelle

Police Superintendant

Constable

Mrs Polichinelle

Comical foreign accent

The Tragical Comedy, or Comical Tragedy, of Punch and Judy.

On the advice of his companion Bluteck, the cruel knight Barbe-Bleue (Blaubart) decides to remarry for the seventh time and kidnaps Bertha, the eldest daughter of the rich Geldsack. The next day, Barbe-Bleue leaves the castle and gives Bertha all the keys, including the one to the secret cabinet, which he nevertheless forbids her to enter. But Bertha disobeys him and discovers the decapitated bodies of his previous wives. To punish her for her curiosity, Barbe-Bleue sentences her to death. She is saved by her former suitor Hugo von Hohenfels, who, with the help of the servant Kasperl, enters the castle and kills Barbe-Bleue.

Young audiences

Pocci Franz von

Germany

Munich

Bear

Hunting

Marriage

Romanticism

Novel

Knighthood

Young girl

Deafness

Curiosity

Kidnapping

Women's condition

Dramatic

Parodistic

German

Barbe-Bleue

Kasperl

Knight

Ecuyer

Monologue

Disguise

Word for another

Dialogue of the deaf

Parody of formal language

Devil's apparition

Blaubart

Bluebeard

Polichinelle (de Guignol)

Don Juan overhears a conversation between Amarillis and Don Philippo, who agree to a romantic rendezvous. He sets out to kidnap Amarillis, when her father, Don Pietro, appears. Don Juan stabs him, and then robs his relative Don Alvaro Pantolfius, before fleeing Seville with his servant Schängche. The latter, tormented by a devil, is carried into the air on a giant sausage. After a shipwreck in which Schängche is swallowed and then spat out by a whale, the two fugitives wander through the woods. They meet a hermit, who, under threat, lends Don Juan a suit to disguise himself. Lost in the forest, Amarillis meets Schängche's fiancée, the innkeeper Greta de la Rosa. Don Juan finds the two women and tries to seduce them, but Don Philippo finds him in the meantime. Don Juan murders him. Schängche still has to fight a monster they meet in the forest. They arrive by chance at Greta's inn, where Don Juan seduces the bride of a wedding that has just taken place. At the cemetery, he invites the statue of Don Pietro to supper, who accepts his invitation. But Don Juan refuses to repent and is damned. Schängche, on the other hand, marries Greta.

Rod puppet

Will Hermanns (Peter Josef Wilhelm Hermanns)

Aachen

Seduction

Abduction

Money

Debauchery

Perlicke

Leviathan

Monster

Sausage

Damnation

Forest

Tavern

Don Juan der Fraulütstrüester

Ein schauerlich-schönes Spiel in 5 Akten mit Sing-, Flieg- und Keilerei

Don Pietro

Donna Marillis

Don Filippo

Don Juan

Pantolfius

Hermit

Court usher

Dialect

Lazzi

Tragic irony

Stichomythia

Murder on stage

Pact with the devil

Der steinerne Gast

The stone guest

In a tavern, Virgili presents four short stories that take place in a circus and have the themes of solitude, failure and death in common. A clown, in love with a trapeze artist, kills her partner; a trainer treats his wife as if she were a circus animal and ends up killing her; a young juggler kills his father with the needles he uses to inject cocaine; a soldier, a musician in the circus band who raped girls and killed children during the war, ends up shot as a deserter.

String marionette

Adults

Alapont Pasqual

Spain

Valencia

Love

Drama

Discrimination

Death

Loneliness

Revenge

Violence

Spousal abuse

Circus

Domination

Grotesque

Catalan

Obra per a un actor i titelles

Clown

Trapeze artist

Accordionist

Edith Piaf

Waiter

Spider

Jazz Band

Billie Holiday

Tamer

Carlos Gardel

Guitarist

Danseur

Juggler

Soldier

Harald Paulsen

Général

Announcer

Metatheatre

Throws

Allegory

El circ de la fosca

Le cirque des ténèbres

Alcide Cervi was a farmer. In 1934 he moved with his family to Gattatico, near Reggio Emilia, on a piece of land called Campirossi ("red fields"), which nobody wanted because it was infertile. He lives there with his nine children: seven boys and two girls. With hard work, they manage to make these fields prosper, and the family can afford to buy a tractor. The Cervi family is known for their anti-fascist political positions. After July 1943, when the Americans landed and Mussolini was arrested, all seemed well. But in November of the same year, a hundred fascists besieged the Campirossi house. The seven brothers try to resist, but they are arrested and eventually executed. As a sign of support and respect, Alcide Cervi never ceased to receive gifts from all sides: a Bible from the Fiat factory workers in Turin, a globe from the agricultural cooperative workers in Santa Vittoria, skittles for his grandchildren from some friends of the boules club. Finally, the puppeteer himself, Maurizio Bercini, wants to give Alcide a gift: a puppet with his features, with which he can transform pain 'into serenity and play'.