After singing and dancing, Pulcinella goes under Teresina’s balcony and calls to her. The building’s watchman arrives and asks Pulcinella what he is doing. The watchman, who is Teresina’s father, demands that Pulcinella speak with her. Teresina arrives and Pulcinella tells her that he wants to marry her. She agrees, on condition that he gets permission from her brother Nicola, who is very suspicious and jealous. Nicola rejects Pulcinella’s request as he doesn’t want his sister to marry such an ugly, unpleasant and weird man. The pair fight with sticks and Pulcinella kills Nicola. The story continues like any classic guarattelle show with other scenes where Pulcinella faces Death or is arrested and sentenced to hang.

Glove-puppet

Marotte

All audiences

Zampella Nunzio

Italy

Naples

Printed summary

Wedding prevented

Jealous brother

Engagement

Comical

Nunzio Zampella's puppet booth with his Pulcinella and his Teresina

Neapolitan

Pulcinella

Guardian

Father

Teresina

Brother

Thug

Song

Dance

Swazzle

Blow-with-a-stick

Syntactic parallelism

National language as a social marker

Il fidanzamento di Pulcinella

Pulcinella's Engagement

Pulcinella and his wife Rosella quarrel. Pulcinella cannot provide his wife with food, despite promising, before they married, that she would never be in need. They only survive thanks to the help of a rich uncle of the wife. Their son arrives in the middle of the quarrel, and he is also starving. He goes with his mother to the rich uncle, who is very sick. At this moment, Pasquariello – Pulcinella’s sidekick – arrives and recounts how he was evicted from his house by the landlord, slept in the street with dogs and, in the morning, was taken by a dogcatcher. Now, he hopes to eat with Pulcinella, but his friend has not eaten for several days. Don Giannattasio Brasciolone, the landlord, comes to ask for the seven months of unpaid rent. Pulcinella pretends to be dead and the landlord leaves. When Pulcinella’s wife comes back crying, the two friends believe that she is lamenting the death of her husband. In fact, Rosella is crying because her rich uncle has just died. Pulcinella receives an inheritance – the head of a Mercury containing a bag full of gold coins. In the end, Pulcinella is a millionaire and pays his rent for the entire year.

Ferrajolo Francesco

Salerno

Manuscript

Hunger

Money

Rent

Inheritance

Misunderstanding

Francesco Ferrajolo's I due ciabattini, handwritten notebook

Pulcinella milionario

Shoemaker

Wife

Pulcinellino

Landlord

Zapatera

Domestic scene

Fake death

Word for another

Story

Dialect

Spectacular turn of events

I due ciabattini

The two cobblers

Pulcinella appears on stage. He cannot find the audience, as he is facing away from them. After a short skit in which the puppeteer explains to him that the audience is on the other side, Pulcinella introduces the performance and warns the audience: “Si vulit’ capì, v’avita vutà” (If you want to understand, you have to turn around). The play starts. Pulcinella talks with his stomach, which tells him through gurglings that it is hungry. A hen comes. Pulcinella kills it, plucks it, and eats it. Then, his stomach lets him know that it is content and wants to sleep. Pulcinella is awakened by a dog that came to eat him, because he has eaten the hen of the dog’s owner. Pulcinella knocks the animal out with a stick. The owner of the dog and the hen, a peasant, comes to get Pulcinella. Pulcinella introduces himself as the owner of the trousers ripped by the dog, and demands to be reimbursed. They settle accounts by beating each other with a stick until Pulcinella kills the peasant. Pulcinella puts the corpse in a casket, and when Death comes to get it and frighten Pulcinella, Pulcinella chases Death away by beating him with the casket. After several lazzi and puns, a carabinier arrests Pulcinella. We then see Pulcinella’s trial. The judge, also playing the prosecution and the defence lawyer, accuses Pulcinella of having murdered the dog’s owner, the dog, the hen, and, above all, of having eaten the hen. For those crimes, Pulcinella is sentenced to death. A monk hears his confession, and blesses him with a macaronic Latin spell which evokes a series of dishes. Pulcinella has to be hanged, but he cannot put his head in the slipknot. He asks the hangman to show him how to do it, and hangs him in his stead.

Not specified

Leone Bruno

Thief

Justice

Coffin

Parodistic

Puppeteer

Stomach

Dog owner

Death

Carabiniere

Judge

Prosecutor

Defender

Sculptor monk

Executioner

Address to the public

Dialog between a puppet and its puppeteer

Sleeping character

Talking animal

Murder on stage

Burial

Arrest scene

Word warping

Parodic trial

Hanging scene

Le mie prime guarattelle

My first guarattelle

Pulcinella plays a serenade for Teresina, but a dog intimidates him. Pulcinella tries to coax him, but the dog bites him. He calls for help. The dog’s master arrives, makes fun of Pulcinella and helps him free himself from the jaw of the dog. The master asks Pulcinella to pay him and they both begin to fight by striking each other with sticks. Pulcinella kills the dog’s master. A monk asks Pulcinella what he is doing; Pulcinella replies that he is taking a dead man to the cemetery. The monk wants to help Pulcinella bury the corpse, but he hits himself against the booth and dies. Pulcinella carries the two dead bodies and screams “o sapunaaar!” like a ragman in the street.

Printed

Ragman

Extortion

Pulcinella e il cane

Fight with an animal

Lazzi

Echoing lines

Il cane

The dog

Before beginning the show, the puppeteer asks the audience to remain silent, “to listen, to understand, to whistle, to make pernacchi” (mocking sounds made with the mouth which Pulcinella will accept as though they were applauses). Pulcinella arrives on stage and dances with his fiancée Teresina. Then he goes under her balcony to sing a serenade. Teresina’s father arrives and asks Pulcinella for explanations. When he learns that Teresina is Pulcinella’s fiancée, the father goes fetch his daughter so that Pulcinella can speak to her. Pulcinella tells Teresina that he wants to marry her. She agrees on condition that he asks for her brother’s approval to marry her. Nicola – her brother – is very suspicious and jealous. Nicola refuses, as he does not wish for her sister to marry such an ugly, unpleasant and odd man. They both fight by striking each other with a stick and Pulcinella kills Nicola. He takes the dead man to the cemetery, into a coffin. Here, Death plays tricks on him. Then, He (Death) strikes Pulcinella with a stick and they both fight. But in the middle of the fight, a guappo (gangster) comes on, replaces Death and receives a stroke of Pulcinella’s cane. They begin to fight each other and Pulcinella kills him. He carries the dead on his shoulders and shouts like a ragman: “o sapunaar! Rat’m’ e vestit’ san’, v’ ronc’ e piatt’ scassat’!” (ragman! Give me all your nice clothes and I’ll give you broken dishes”). Pulcinella, now free, goes prepare the papers for his marriage and dances with Teresina.

Dramatic

Nursery rhyme

Rhythmical parallelism

Il fidanzamento di Pulcinella e La Morte

Pulcinella's engagement, followed by the Death

After performing a traditional guarattelle show, the puppeteer and his Pulcinella think they won’t have anything to eat as the audience left without paying. They both decide to leave Naples for France. When they arrive at court, the King carefully examines Pulcinella with a magnifying glass, and finds him too poor, so drives him away. Pulcinella beats the King with a stick and the guards come to arrest him. The puppet escapes from the puppet booth with the Puppeteer, who explains that if the puppet wants to eat, he must “change his face”.
The Puppeteer then turns Pulcinella into Polichinelle, giving him new, luxurious clothes decorated with ribbons and little bells, two bumps (one on the belly and the other on the back) and a white mask to hide his black half-mask. Thus transformed, Pulcinella moves and speaks far more slowly, but his new lazzi with a cock amuse the King greatly. The puppet and the Puppeteer are able to eat a big plate of pasta in front of the puppet booth and go to sleep with a full belly. Woken by the Marseillaise, they enter the puppet booth, believing a party is going on. On stage, in front of a guillotine, Robespierre and Danton debate whether the King should be tried. After cutting off the heads of Danton and the King, Robespierre also wants to kill Polichinelle, who is friends with the King. First, he cuts off one bump, and then the other, and finally the white mask. Polichinelle, who has now gone back to being “Pulcinella the revolutionary”, cuts off Robespierre’s head and then, like Napoleon Bonparte, proclaims himself emperor and uses a stick to beat, one after the other, the emperor of Austria and the Pope who has come to crown him. He shows his emperor’s crown to the Puppeteer: it means he’ll be able to eat for 200 years. The Puppeteer comes out of the booth for a last monologue at the end of which he dons the black half-mask and proclaims himself to be Pulcinella.