The devil steals the box in which Kasperl, in the previous play (<a href="https://puppetplays.eu/en/oeuvres/5777/frau-kasperl-und-die-köchin" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Frau Kasperl und die Köchin</a>) had locked his wife, his lover and the night watchman. He replaces it with another box in which Kasperl almost gets his nose stuck when he comes to sniff if it does not contain sausages. Instead, the devil emerges and wants to take him away. But Kasperl has fun making him disappear and reappear with the magic formula "Parlucke! Parlicke" until the devil gets dizzy and cries for mercy. He insists that Kasperl follow him, who finally announces that he is going to draw his will and returns with a club, with which he kills the devil. He seals him up in the box and goes to throw it in the fire.

Glove-puppet

Not specified

Reinhardt Carl

Germany

Munich

Printed

Devil

Woman

Drinking

Eating

Hunger

Stick

Perlicke

Grandparents

Future punishment

Excessive drinking

Drunkard

Tralala

Radirullala

Hits

Comical

Farcical

Grotesque

German

Kasperl

Role reversal

Running gag

Apparition of the Devil

Blow-with-a-stick

Hidden corpse

Kasperl und der Teufel

Kasperl and the Devil

Mrs Kasperl comes to ask her husband for money when Kasperl finds a cook to whom he has promised to marry her and who has just brought him a sausage and some wine. The two women argue with Kasperl and start fighting. Kasperl knocks them both out and locks them in a chest. Alerted by the noise, the night watchman comes to question him. Kasperl explains to him that the two women had a quarrel over some plums inside the chest, offers some to the watchman and closes the lid on the unfortunate man who has put his head in it. Then he leaves, announcing that he will throw the chest into the water...

Sausage

Wine

Shrew

Couple

Household

Married life

Kitchen

Glutton

Plums

Quarrel

Unfaithfulness

Satirical

Madame Kasperl

Night watchman

Argument

Domestic scene

Frau Kasperl und die Köchin

Mrs Kasperl and the cook

In this expanded version of the play, Kasperl introduces himself to the Sultan as a botanist and impresses him with his knowledge of radishes (which go well with beer), so much so that he is hired into his service. But he is unhappy with his situation in a Muslim country where the consumption of alcohol is forbidden (except for the Sultan, in secret). He decides to flee with the slave Mimikatzi, who is being held in Schuriburi's seraglio. Kasperl offers to rid the Sultan of the mosquitoes he has to complain about and beats him to death with his stick. Night falls: Kasperl and Mimikatzi flee.

String marionette

Young audiences

Pocci Franz von

Turkey

Despotism

Cruelty

Pipe

Black

Orientalism

Muslim

Beer

Botany

Radish

Mosquitoes

Seraglio

Harem

Music

Parodistic

Konstantinopolitanisches Lustspiel

Sultan

Jailer

Slave

Tambour

Turk

Disguise

Word for another

Monologue

Murder on stage

Allusion to current literary events

Running away

Criticism of actors' theatre

Address to the public

Epilogue

Versified passages

Confinement

Kasperl in der Türkei

Kasperl in Turkey

Donna Anna turns Don Juan away – she prefers her more virtuous brother. Don Juan asks his father for three hundred ducats to win her over. When Don Pedro refuses and threatens to throw him behind bars, he loses his temper and murders him. Don Juan flees the town with his servant Kasperl, whom he pretends is the new sergeant, to fool the guards, and they hide in the woods. There, they meet a hermit and Don Juan wants to borrow his clothes to disguise himself. But Kasperl tells the hermit what crimes his master Don Juan has committed, and Don Juan eliminates this troublesome witness. In the meantime, the devil appears to Kasperl, who promptly gets rid of him. As they arrive to an inn, Don Pedro’s ghost appears to them and Don Juan invites him to dinner. The ghost agrees to the invitation and is poorly received by Kasperl, who go as far as throwing a chair on him. Don Juan refuses to repent. The ghost invites him back, then holds out his hand to him to seal their deal. At this moment, devils come and carry him into the air. Kasperl takes all of his master’s money and celebrates.

Schmidt Leopold

Austria

Vienna

Father

Lover

Brother

Jealousy

Parricide

Money

Murder

Assassination

Tavern

Ghost

Phantom

Love

Nature

Vanity

Spirits

Dramatic

Tragic

Lyrical

Das nächtliche Gericht, oder Der steinerne Gast, oder Junker Hans von Stein

Don Juan

Don Pietro

Anna

Guard

Hermit

Waitress

Song

Dance

Apparition

Final intervention of the devil

Inn scene

Comic Equivocation

Dialect as a social marker

xDon Juan der Wilde

Don Juan the Wild Man

Pierrot has been dead for six months when he meets Arlequin in the Underworld. Arlequin has just arrived and tells Pierrot that Colombine quickly forgot all about him after he died. First, she went with Valère, then with Arlequin himself, after he and Martine divorced. After having met Platon (Plato) and Socrate (Socrates) and spied on their conversations, Pierrot and Arlequin begin philosophising about women. When they meet Pluton (Pluto), they ask him to bring Martine and Colombine, whom they yearn to see. The two women are taken alive to the Underworld, but they reject Arlequin and Pierrot as they refuse to live with dead men. To keep them away, Martine sends them both on a mission with Pluton and Caron (Charon). The young women meet Platon and Socrate too, who are both affected by the women’s living flesh. Arlequin is jealous and ready to fight Socrate. However, Pluton comes back and tells Martine and Colombine that Valère has already replaced them both. They ask to be brought back to earth, and Pluton grants their wish. After they are gone, Pluton and Arlequin declare that no woman is trustworthy, but Diotime (Diotima) appears and reminds them of the transfiguring power of love.

Pigeon Amédée

France

Paris

Descent into hell

Death

Carnal love

Philosophy

Greek mythology

Afterlife

Dialogue of the dead

Philosophical tale

French

Pierrot

Arlecchino

Socrates

Plato

Choir

Pluto

Colombine

Diotima

Scene of recognition

Spying scene

L'Amour dans les Enfers

Love in the Underworld

Khèyam has been thrown out of the inn where he got drunk. A Cruche (Pitcher) of wine then a Rose appear to him. A woman comes in, and he promises to love her; then a second woman – perfectly identical to the first – comes in, and he makes the same promise to her. The two women appear and disappear in turn and they both accuse him of being unfaithful. Then they tell him that he is seeing double because he is drunk. They leave him alone with the Cruche and the Rose.

Drunkenness

Double

Omar Khayyam

Duplication

Object coming to life

Allegory

Le Songe de Khèyam

Khèyam's Dream

The Prologue begins where Molière’s play ended: Don Juan is going down the long stairway into Hell with the statue of the Commander. When he hears Sganarelle scream “My wages!”, he climbs back up to kick his servant, then comes back down. The statue of the Commander is surprised by his courage and offers to bring him back to life. But La Griffe du Diable (The Devil’s Claw) holds Don Juan back by his clothes. In the end, Don Juan is granted another ten years of life, as he makes a deal with La Griffe: during these ten years, he will continue to corrupt women and claim new victims. Ten years later, this extension is about to come to an end. Don Juan lives in Venice and believes that the Devil has forgotten about him. He is getting ready to have dinner and then go out. A puppeteer is passing in the street, and he invites Don Juan to his home, where he performs his show for him. From the glove-puppet booth, Polichinelle talks to Don Juan, who is reminiscing about the shows he saw as a child. Polichinelle kills Pierrot and Cassandre. He is bitten by a dog then attempts to seduce a doll, using Don Juan’s advice, and finally kills her. Don Juan asks that the puppeteer cut some scenes and get to the moment the Devil takes Polichinelle away. Then he provokes the puppet of the Devil by saying that he would not fear being carried off by him. The puppeteer leaves the booth, reveals that he is the Devil and sits at a table to dine with Don Juan. Don Juan enthuses over his conquests. He asks Sganarelle for the list of the women he seduced, which he then tears up. The Devil turns into a violinist and makes the scraps of paper dance: the Shadows of the one thousand and three women seduced by Don Juan arrive in gondolas. The Devil challenges Don Juan to recognise these women, but he gets them all wrong. Don Juan, who believed he had seduced and possessed all these women, realises that they had him wrapped around their fingers, and that even the tears they shed because of him were fake. He claims his victories, but he is told that he never did anything with them, and that he never knew how to love. Out of desperation, Don Juan reminds the Devil about the scale of his provocation when he gave a coin to Le Pauvre (The Beggar) “out of love for humanity”. But the Devil makes the Pauvre appear, and the latter throws the coin in Don Juan’s face and forbids him from claiming that he has embodied any kind of revolt. The Devil proves to Don Juan that he was only controlled by ribaldry, like Polichinelle. Rather than sending him to the fires of Hell, which is what the seducer proudly demands, the Devil sentences him to become a puppet in a booth.

Rostand Edmond

Cambo-les-Bains

Seduction

Haughtiness

Lust

Suffering

Presumption

Evil

Ridiculous

Revolt

Venice

Deal with the Devil

Sketch by George Barbier for the Puppetteer's costume in Edmond Rostand's La Dernière Nuit de Don Juan, 1922.

Commander

Statue

Sganarelle

Poor

Polichinelle

Pulcinella

Cassandre

Doll

Play in verse

Puppet theatre within the theatre

Disguised character (false identity)

Metonymy (mode of characterisation)

Crowd

Unveiling

La Dernière Nuit de Don Juan

Don Juan's Last Night

Ondina Peteani was born in Trieste on 26 April 1925. As a teenager, she began to associate with the Fontanot family and attended communist meetings. At the age of seventeen, she chose to become an underground activist of the Italian Communist Party (PCI). She soon began to carry out her first resistance actions under the pseudonym "Natalia". During a police operation in a mountain refuge, Ondina managed to save herself with the help of comrade Cvetko. In June 1943, all the members of the resistance group to which Ondina belonged, Ondina herself, her mother and her sister were imprisoned because of a double agent. After the armistice on 8 September, they are all freed by the people. The informer turns out to be Ondina's sister, Santina, because she had a love affair with a young fascist. Santina is executed. Fighting against the Germans begins and the resistance fighters succumb after a fierce struggle. Ondine and comrade Stecchi are sent in pursuit of the traitor Blechi, who has caused the death of many resistance fighters after infiltrating among them. The comic sketch with the glove-puppets begins: Blechi notices the presence of Ondina and Stecchi and disguises himself as a priest so as not to be recognised, thus managing to escape. When he meets Ondina, he disguises himself as an old man, but she recognises him and Blechi is caught and killed. In 1944, Ondina is deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp as a political prisoner. She survives despite the physical and psychological hardships. The horror she experienced in the camp did not erase her conviction that she had to fight for resistance and freedom.