Mr. Fish pays a visit to Mrs. Bones and starts a conversation with her. Mrs. Bones uses different excuses to get angry and threaten to kill Mr. Fish. She then asks him to get divorced from his wife, while offering to get a divorce from her husband for them to marry. Mr. Fish, frightened, begs Teddy, his puppeteer, to save him from this situation. The latter pulls at the puppet’s strings to take him back to the fly loft. Then a hand comes down (the puppeteer’s) and threatens Mrs. Bones, while her strings are cut one by one. Cockatrice, Mrs. Bones’ “old friend,” wants to seduce her and take her with him, but Mrs. Bones can no longer move. Cockatrice thus sends for a girl in the audience to take the puppet, which is now merely a doll. The play ends with the appearance of the face of the Governor (the puppeteer) and with a grand finale for Mrs. Bones, who ascends to heaven, to the surprise amazement of a myriad of glove puppets watching her.

String marionette

Not specified

Craig Edward Gordon

Italy

Bologna

Rapallo

Printed

Argument

Divorce

Anger

Woman

Punishment

Doll

Whim

Comical

Satirical

Edward Gordon Craig, drawing of the heads of Mrs Bones and Mr. Fish

English

Cockatrice

Young girl

Puppeteer

Metadiscourse on puppet theatre

Apparition of the puppeteer

Flying machine

Comedy of language

Address to the public

Intervention of the audience

Ascension

Mr Fish and Mrs Bones

A man named Précair has just lost his job. Sitting on a public bench, he suddenly sees a huge branch fall from a tree. Another day, in the same place, Précair's left arm falls off, then his right. To help him, a kind man takes him to an arm merchant. But as Précair has little money, he leaves the shop with two pieces of wood instead of arms. His wife Zalou leaves him. Précair, now made entirely of wood, runs after work, which constantly eludes him. Hired as a flower pot during a social cocktail party, Précair is treated like an insignificant object, then thrown out onto the street. He loses his head (which is picked up by a dog), then his speech. Précair, now with a dog's head, behaves like one and is taken in by homeless people who are victims of a slum landlord. A dog with a human head (Précair's) arrives and sniffs Précair lying on the ground. Précair stands up, regaining his human appearance. He follows the dog up a long staircase that leads him to the middle of the sky.

Young audiences

Cagnard Jean

France

Meung-sur-Loire

Precariousness

Unemployment

Dehumanisation

Tree

Dismembering

Homeless

Slumlord

Hunger

Absurd

Fantastic

Ironic

French

Chômeur

Wife

Policeman

Landlord

Parable

Silent scene

Set that comes to life

Character ejected through the door

Fall of a set element

Comical fall of a character

Fall of a body part

Throwing rubbish at a character

Scream

Rainfall on stage

A human-faced animal

Inserting poetry

Chorality

Character represented in animal form

L’Entonnoir

Funnel

Pulcinella and Death have a daughter, Baby, who suffers from the difficulties of her parents' separation: Pulcinella is now engaged to Teresina and wants Death to leave him alone. Death would like Baby to become a great actress, so she has enrolled her in an acting class: the end-of-year recital is the next day. During the night, Pulcinella steals the poem Baby was supposed to recite and she loses her voice. In an attempt to get it back, Baby enters Pulcinella's belly to retrieve the poem. When Baby emerges from Pulcinella's belly, Teresina, who had prayed to San Gennaro to give her a child with Pulcinella, thinks that Baby is their longed-for child. So, when Death is about to take Baby back, Teresina makes a jealous scene and gets angry at Pulcinella. Death begs Pulcinella to return, but to no avail. Finally, Baby grows up and manages to do the job she wanted: driver of the Neapolitan underground called "Circumvesuviana".