Pulcinella, an apothecary, is pleased with his situation. Her daughter’s servant, Cannetella, tells him that women have qualities that make good apothecaries. After quarrelling several times about this topic, Pulcinella plans on marrying her. However, Cannatella is in love with a young man, Lisardo, who came to offer his services and work in the shop. Lisardo was hired by Pulcinella and is happy to be progressing with his plans: in fact, under the name Lisardo, a young woman called Delmira is hiding. She came to take revenge on Filarco, who robbed her of her honour and then abandoned her. However, Filarco is now wooing Rosaura, Pulcinella’s daughter. In fact, Rosaura is sick: to cure her, Pulcinella suggests that she marry Damone; she flatly refuses. Filarco sees many similarities between Lisardo and his ex-mistress, whom he believed was dead, but he is still fooled: he asks the young man to help him win Rosaura; Delmira calls him a traitor. To cure Rosaura, Pulcinella hires Damone, who is also a doctor: when the latter woos her during the consultation, she faints. As for Lisardo, he rejects Cannetella’s advances. The servant suggests that Filarco pretends to be a doctor to grow closer to Rosaura: because of her exhortations, Pulcinella summons Damone and Filarco, who examine the young woman together: this leads to double meanings between the young characters, who declare their love to each other. Filarco’s prescription is in fact a love letter, and Lisardo condemns his betrayal (Pulcinella cannot read): however, Rosaura manages to interpret every single word in medical terms. After taking the treatment prescribed by Damone, Rosaura pretends to have gone insane and behaves like Eurydice waiting for her Orfeo (Orpheus). She is so believable that Pulcinella discharges Damone and relies on Filarco: Rosaura pretends to see Orfeo in him; he goes along with it and earns the right to marry her. In an attempt to stop the marriage, Damone discloses that Rosaura is not Pulcinella’s daughter. Therefore, Pulcinella does not have the right to decide who she will marry: Rosaura declares her love to Filarco nonetheless. Delmira reveals who she truly is, and Filarco decides to go back to his first wife. Rosaura then lets herself be talked into marrying Damone, and Cannetella agrees to marry Pulcinella.

Rod and string marionette

Not specified

Italy

Rome

Printed

Medicine

Love

Revenge

Cure

Unfaithfulness

Forced marriage

Melodramatic

Burlesque

Farcical

Comical

Pulcinella speziale in villa, 1728 (title page)

Italian

Pulcinella

Apothecary

Young woman

Young man

Physician

Maid

Music

Dialect

Popular speech

Thwarted love

Argument

Love story

Love rivalry

Disguised character (false identity)

Cross-dressing

Character mistaken as a member of the other sex

Love duet

Sick character on stage

Fainting

Situation comedy

Comic equivocation

Scene of madness

Final wedding

Pulcinella speziale in villa

Pulcinella apothecary in the villa

The maître d’hôtel Rapinet (Polichenelle) offers to take Madame Flanchet and her daughter Margot, whom he wants to marry, to the fair. But Rudepogne reminds them that Margot is promised to his nephew Jacquot. He sends Jacquot, who threatens Rapinet and quarrels with Margot. Since it is already too late to go to the fair, Rapinet asks two Savoyards to perform curiosité shows for them. At the end of the play, the characters dance with “small Savoyard women”.

Carolet Denis

France

Paris

Curiosity

Lantern

Fairground Theatre

Rivalry in love

L'Assemblée des poissardes, Soleinne collection, BnF

French

Polichinelle maître d'hôtel

Merchant (woman)

Polichinelle

Savoyard

Savoyard (woman)

Ballet

Comedy of language

Metadiscourse on puppet theatre

L'Assemblée des poissardes

The Meeting of the fishwives

A Voyageur (Traveller) in a hurry is expected in a neighbouring town; he must cross the river, but the bridge is broken. Upset, he asks a young boy digging on the other side of the bridge if the water is deep. The answer of the “Petit Gas” (Little Guy) is not helpful, and he then mocks the bourgeois with a song. Then the two characters talk in cross-purposes; their dialogue is punctuated by the young rascal’s “tire lire laire” (rhyming nonsense in French), and culminates in the boy showing his behind. When he sees a Batelier (Boatman), the Voyageur hails him and asks to be taken to the other side of the river. The “Petit Gas” then throws stones at the boat, but the bourgeois manages to cross the river and canes the boy.

Shadow theatre

Mischievousness

Punishment

Ducks

River

Bourgeoisie

Appointment in town

Endpaper of the collection illustrated with shadow figures.
Source: GUIGNOLLET. Le Théâtre des ombres chinoises, nouveau Séraphin des enfants, recueil de jolies pièces amusantes et faciles à monter, illustrées de gravures représentant les principales scènes. Paris, LB-Bornemann, [after 1885], p.2

Le Pont rompu

Talking at cross-purposes

Aria

Running gag

Le Pont cassé

The Broken Bridge

Figaro argues with Suzanne, his wife, because he wants to open a puppet theater. He brings his ill daughter, Friquette, to Paris. She recovers thanks to Doctor Fluidas, a neighbor who accompanies her every day to magnetism sessions. She agrees to help her father in his new undertaking, while Suzanne refuses to be convinced. Friquette confesses to her father that she is in love with a young man. She is enamored with L’Enfumé (The Tricked One), a student physicist, whom she has not seen for four days. Upon L’Enfumé’s arrival in the city, Friquette blames him for his absence, but he explains that it is due to his preparation to fly in a balloon that has her name written on it in golden letters. Fluidas announces that doctors have forbidden his magnetism sessions because he is an impostor. After an accident with the balloon he was supposed to fly in, L’Enfumé is robbed of the money left from the subscription that he started for its construction. Figaro convinces everybody to join him in his puppet theater project.

Theatre

Magnetism

False doctor

Imposture

Gas balloon

Gascon

Flight

Scientific experimentation

E. D., Figaro, directeur de marionnettes, 1785.

Figaro

Physicist

Monologue

Comical regional accent

Revelation

Final song

Figaro, directeur de marionnettes

Figaro, puppet director

Pulcinella and Rosetta are husband and wife; they quarrel about love and money. Rosetta then meets a man of a certain age, Cassandrino; he tries to seduce her while she thinks he only wants to take her on for a sewing job. Cassandrino mistakes Pulcinella for Rosetta’s father and asks him if he can marry her. Pulcinella plays along with the situation and makes a fool of him by always talking about his daughter Malvinuccia, who is four years old, instead of Rosetta; indeed, Cassandrino does not know the name of the woman to whom he just spoke. Pulcinella settles on a very high price for the sewing job and agrees to let Cassandrino marry his daughter in return. Pulcinella is thrilled at having duped the old man and relates the story to his brother-in-law Rugantino. The latter takes the matter into his own hands: he asks Cassandrino to make a written commitment and begins to negotiate with him. Cassandrino wants to know how long all of this will take, because he is in a hurry and wants to atone for a failed marriage at the end of which his future wife left with a friend. After making repeated threats, Rugantino manages to turn down all his demands; he even gets money to buy a drink. Rugantino calls Pulcinella, who is sleeping, and tells him that the agreement is ready. However, Cassandro wants to see his fiancée Malvinuccia. Pulcinella then calls the children and the young Malvinuccia greets Cassandro merrily, as though he were her grandfather. The man says that there has been a misunderstanding and that he wants Rosetta. Thus, they go fetch her while she is nursing another child. She arrives and the misunderstanding is cleared: she is already Pulcinella’s wife. Rugantino still demands that the contract be honoured. They therefore decide that Cassandro will pay for dinner and wine for everyone, and the latter asks that they all go to Zagarolo (a village near Rome) to relate all that has happened and turn it into a theatre play.

All audiences

Giraud Giovanni

Poverty

Wedding

Contract

Money

Child

Giovanni Giraud, Opere edite ed inedite, 1841

Old man

Cassandrino

Cassandre

Rugantino

Husband

Wife

Young girl

Misunderstanding

Naive character deceived

Malvinuccia ossia La bambina di quattro anni

Malvinuccia, or the four-year-old girl

Gnafron and Cadet, unable to pay six francs for a meal, decide to invite Guignol and his wife so that the two of them will pay for them. Guignol claims that he could get a better dinner for less money. Gnafron and Cadet accept the bet. Guignol goes to his neighbour Cassandre, who has become rich by organising emigrants' passage to California. Guignol asks him how much a yellow object, as long as an arm and covered with punches, might be worth. Cassandre, convinced that it is a gold ingot and that he will be able to get it from Guignol, invites him to dinner. Guignol eats until he can no longer walk. When it comes time to show the ingot, he admits that he does not have it. Gnafron arrives with Madelon, Guignol's wife, and beats Guignol for eating so much on his own. Guignol fights with her, which helps him digest, and Gnafron reconciles them by offering coffee and promising a good dinner for the four of them the next day.

Glove-puppet

Vuillerme-Dunand Victor-Napoléon

Lyon

Manuscript

Meals

Invitation

Deception

Cipidity

Glutton

Gnafron

Cadet

Guignol

Rich

Aside

Blow-with-a-stick

Le Lingot d'or ou l'art de faire un bon dîner

The Gold Ingot, or how to have a good dinner

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...

Reinhardt Carl

Germany

Munich

Sausage

Wine

Woman

Shrew

Couple

Household

Married life

Kitchen

Plums

Quarrel

Satirical

Grotesque

German

Kasperl

Mrs Kasperl

Night watchman

Domestic scene

Frau Kasperl und die Köchin

Mrs Kasperl and the cook

Mr. Casperl, a wealthy man of private income, has an appointment with Lieutenant Säbelmaier and the wife of the secretary Federspitzen for an excursion to Lake Starnberg near Munich, but his barber comes too late and he has to leave in a hurry to catch his train, which had been announced late. In the second part of the play, the boat of the three excursionists is wrecked by a sudden storm on the lake. Säbelmaier and Mrs. Federspitzen probably managed to save themselves. Casperl has been living like Robinson for eight days in a deserted forest by the lake. He finally meets a sheep with whom he can talk about philosophy, because it is in fact the reincarnation of a professor and living proof of the truth of metempsychosis. But they argue and the sheep flees in the face of another coming storm. A hunter then finds Casperl passed out and wants to bring him to justice as a poacher, but ends up recognising him as the man who disappeared eight days ago, and Casperl concludes by recommending that the audience take the steamboat instead.

String marionette

Young audiences

Pocci Franz von

Train

Railway

Train station

Independently wealthy person

Military

Secretary

Civil servant

Barber

Robinson

Shipwreck

Beer

Hunger

Lamb

Sheep

Professor

Metempsychosis

Reincarnation

Philosophy

Hinduism

Pantheism

Poacher

Loneliness

Parodistic

Humorous

Die Parthie nach Starnberg; Herr Casperl als Robinson

Die Parthie nach Starnberg

Lieutenant

Hunter

Dream

Unexpected turn of events

Talking animal

Scene of recognition

Criticism of actors' theatre

Off-stage voice

Address to the public

Caricature

Philosophical dialogue

Casperl als Robinsohn

Casperl as Robinson

After the death of his father (a miller), Casperl inherits his old cat Muzl, who is no other than a naturalist magician turned into an animal for having questioned creationism: he has been sentenced to live as a cat until he has eaten the giant Lüpel. Muzl introduces Casperl to the local lord by making Casperl bring him rabbits and partridges, for the Lord loves them to the point of not eating anything else. However, Lüpel asks for the hand of Lord Rosalinde’s daughter through the intervention of the chamberlain Gummielastico. Rosalinde refuses and Lüpel turns Gummielastico into a rubber ball. Muzl offers his services to Lüpel and advises him to transform into a mouse to slip inside Rosalinde’s house. The giant transforms and Muzl eats him. Casperl marries the princess.

Muzl, der gestiefelte Kater

Muzl, the Puss in Boots