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

Father

Household

Couple

Murder

Serial murder

Noise

Music

Gallows

Justice

Cruelty

Farcical

English

Punch and Judy

Scaramouche

Baby

Doctor

Domestic servant

Blind

Police officer

Policeman

Executioner

Devil

Horse

Prologue

Versified passages

Address to the public

Off-stage voice

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

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

Germany

Munich

Turkey

Despotism

Pipe

Black

Woman

Orientalism

Hunger

Wine

Muslim

Beer

Botany

Radish

Mosquitoes

Seraglio

Harem

Comical

Parodistic

German

Konstantinopolitanisches Lustspiel

Sultan

Jailer

Slave

Kasperl

Tambour

Turk

Disguise

Word for another

Monologue

Murder on stage

Allusion to current literary events

Running away

Criticism of actors' theatre

Epilogue

Kasperl in der Türkei

Kasperl in Turkey

Marianne – the wife of a poor lumberjack – sends her starving children Hansel and Grethel in the woods, so that they pick some berries. But the children are captured by the cannibalistic naturalist Fleischmann, at the same time as the travelling tailor Kasperl Larifari, who believes he will find bed and board at his house. They are locked inside chicken coops and fattened. Kasperl is enraged. To calm him down, Fleischmann allows him outside the cage to drink some wine with him. He intends on eating him right after. But they both get drunk, while the professor’s maid, Katharine, helps the children escape and reports the cannibal to the police. Kasperl takes advantage of the general confusion to escape too. The professor chases him and then gives up. He wants to find the children but falls asleep in the end, exhausted. Kasperl finds him and sews the two legs of his pants together. Eventually, the court bailiff arrives with the children’s father, Peter. When they find Fleischmann, he is unable to move, and Peter kills him with an axe. The children come out of hiding and, at the end of the play, Kasperl declares that wickedness has been punished, virtue rewarded and that they all need to go to an inn now.

Cannibalism

University

Natural sciences

Philosophy

Tale

Poverty

Misery

Cage

Forest

Drunkard

Drunkenness

Perversity

Fantasy

Burlesque

Title page illustrated by the author in the original collection

Der Menschenfresser

Teacher

Night

Moon

Hidden character

Animated natural element

Chase

Dialect as a social marker

Caricature

Hansel und Grethel

Hansel and Gretel

Jan Klaassen announces to the audience that he has just married Katrijn and talks vulgarly about her. When she arrives, he beats her and continues insulting her. Kleine Ko (a puppet with a very long and expandable neck) arrives on stage dancing, his back to the audience. Jan Klaassen calls out to him, but Kleine Ko shakes his head at every question to answer “no”. His neck expands until it reaches the ceiling, while Jan Klaassen tries to pull him downwards, but Ko disappears. Jan Klaassen calls Katrijn to get a suit out of his suitcase because it is his birthday. Katrijn initially refuses, but Jan insists, and when she opens the case, he pushes her inside it and locks her in. Jan Klaassen tries to sell the suitcase to a merchant. When the latter opens it, Katrijn grabs him, and Jan pushes them both inside. He leaves singing. Jan Klaassen is about to become a soldier. A general arrives and tries to train him in weaponry, but Jan Klaassen plays tricks on him. The general is offended and challenges Jan to a duel. They both fight, using guns as swords. Jan Klaassen deceives the general, kills him and calls the undertakers to bury him. They have a difficult time putting the general in the coffin, but they finally manage it and leave singing. An executioner is setting up the gallows. Jan Klaassen asks the public whether he should be hanged there. When the executioner comes back to hang him, Jan Klaassen pretends not to know where to put his head and asks the executioner to show him. Jan Klaassen takes advantage of the situation and hangs the executioner instead.

Marotte

Netherlands

Amsterdam

Swearing

Wedding

Trunk

Trap

Duel

Cunning

Janus Cabalt, Jan Klaassen en Katrijn, screenshot from a 1929 anonymous amateur film.

Dutch

Jan Klaassen

Katrijn

Merchant (man)

General

Gravedigger

Dialogue with the audience

Nervous breakdown

Lengthening of a character

[Jan Klaassen en Katrijn]

Jan Klaassen and Katrijn

After the fair Hedwig is taken away from him, Don Juan seduces Zinkelinde, to the utter despair of her tutor Nuckel, who wants her to marry an old man – Purzel. Kasperle pretends to help them find Zinkelinde and puts the two old men in a box. He does not let them out until Nuckel agrees to let Don Juan marry Zinkelinde. As Purzel still tries to stop this union, Kasperle beats him with a stick.

E. Sédouard (Eduard Schlesinger)

Berlin

Seduction

Mismatched couple

Young girl

Old age

Der überrumpelte Hagestolz

Don Juan

Old man

Play in verse

Sung scenes

Political allegory

Forced marriage

In a prison, two exceptional prisoners, Jesus and Pinocchio, talk to each other from the communicating wall of their prison cells, without seeing each other. They talk about the gymnastics they do to distract themselves, about homecountry and homesickness, about their fiancées, everything they miss outside of these four walls. Pinocchio does not believe in the miracles Jesus tells him, but when questioned, he claims to believe in them and his nose gets longer. In their dialogue, they discover they have a lot in common: their condition as persecuted by justice or the fact that they can both walk on water. In the end, the guards come for Jesus; while he is happy and thinks that the men have realised that they have made a mistake in imprisoning him, Pinocchio has a bad feeling and, in vain, shouts at him from his cell not to follow them.

Adults

Brunello Gigio

Italy

Mogliano Veneto

Imprisonment

Miracle

Innocence

Nose lengthening

Tragic

Italian

Pinocchio

Heureux ceux qui sont persécutés pour la justice, car le royaume des cieux est à eux.

Jesus

Dialogue between characters who do not see each other

Conversation

Beati i perseguitati a causa della giustizia perché di essi è il regno dei cieli

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven

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.