The Oregon daily journal., July 12, 1908, Page 32, Image 32

THE OEEGON SUNDAY JOURNAL, PORTLAND, SUNDAY WORNING. JULY tt 1903
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F 70t arr Pam during these
warm summer days, you would find, in
scores or hundreds, assemblages of
children with their parents, some seated
and others standing, but all gazing with,
delighted smiles toward the tiniest of tiny
theaters.
Presently would appear a quaint, big'
featured manikin above the shelf that serves
for the stage; and, on the instant, the de
lighted smiles change to still more delighted
laughter.
II, where he has killed the devil and holds
. the infernal carcass up in victory we hav
the whole drama of Punch and Judy done in
pictures, while the dialogue is given verba
tim. ' '
Have you ever seen the wonderful and
thrilling drama of Punch and Judy? It has
always varied with the nations that enjoyed
it; but the Inglish version is the one which
will be most readily recognized. ',
Mr. Punch, who appears as no very belli-,
cose hero when he is introduced to the audi
fence, suffers unprovoked injury at the jawa
of the dog of Scaramoucbe, which seizes him
by his big, beloved nose and almost bites it
off. The dog gets away in safety, and good
natured Mr. Punch shows no such resent
ment as the ordinary man would, display after
having his nose used as chewing gum by an
Irish terrier. '
But along comes Scaramouche, lugging a
big stick, highly incensed over the ill-treatment
Mr. Punch must have visited upon the
dog. Scaramouche is hunting trouble. After
he has rapped the pacific Mr. Punch over the
head with his Btick, he finds it.. Mr. Punch
secures the weapon and, with a single blow,
knocks Scaramouche's head from his shoul
ders. Then Scaramouche is dead.
Mr. Punch, to relieve his annoyance, calls
Judy to fetch the baby. Judy has a bitter
tongue in her head, and she gives her hus-'
band generous samples of it. But he is pa
tient. So she brings the baby. He plays
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with it until the baby cries.
Its father tries to soothe it; but
baby won't soothe. UW, Mr. Punch,
as the audience has seen, has the pa
tience of a saint; yet, as any father
knows, a crying brfby is just the thing
to rip the lining out of any saint's pa
tience. Mr. Punch's patience goes in.
one wild rip and tear, and he chucks
the baby out of the window. Then the
baby is dead.
Cornea Judy, first accusing, then
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the cinematographs in the world
have -.'t been able to oust him wholly
from affections in which he was in
trenched as far back as the year
1600, when Silvio Fiorillo introduced
Pulcinella among the buffoons par
ticipating in the impromptu come
dies of Naples.
Antiquaries have tried to carry
cfcir'.iaitfa.
For tA children of France are celebrat
ing this year, with no warrant whatever, the
centennial of their beloved Punch and Judy,
first friends of childhood and oldest friends
' cf blase age.
WE HAVE the highly scientific cine
matograph now. in America, with in
interminable filmrita already seri
ous riTslry of many he.ters and its
Taulting ambition to hare fall-grown, full
edgd theaters of iU own, with famous play
vrifhts and equally famous actors to do iU
original work. - ,
fortunate ther who ran ro1! ' ..-
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hich the United State has see- so lew in
fflpariaon with Europe. For today w Ameri
tans see com at alL And if Punch cd Judy
ever do return, they are roost likely to come a
fvl'.M 'lnr U!t0ro.er' dpe.of n cinematograph, as a curiosity in fJm.
rr1rcCT i-uaca ana Jndyrcl , , But la Eurore. Tuaci stHl euriihe. AH
Mr. Punch's origin still farther hack, to the
Maccus of the mimes of ancient Rome, whose
bronze statue, with the familiar nose and
hump, was dug up in 1737.
But, indeed, Mr. Punch's antiquity runs
back and back, almost like the genealogy of
the famous John Smith, who could trace his
. ancestry to Adam. Aa a puppet, a mechanical
figure imitating the movements of humanity,
be was a jumping jack for Egyptian babies
who, as old men mummified, were planted in k
the tombs of Pharaohs for their sleep cf thoq
aanda of years.
In classic Greece the nevTopaste carried his
box of puppets tinder his arm from town to
town in the dars of old Euripides. In China
and Japan they hare had their "shadow pUra"
from time immemorial, and barban Java's
shadow puppets art hidecus enough to make
Europe's Mr. Punch an Apollo by compan
' son.
Burmah, like Turkey, has the puppet dia
logue, which has served through generations
to vitiate the morals of the young, where, in
Italy, France and England, Punchinello's
gravest offense has been to mix into politics
and satirize kings and their ministers.
The children of Paris, assisted by many
bigwigs of Parisian journalism, have agreed,
however, that this is the centenary of Guig
nol, as he was called, when he turned up in
the beloved patrie. But that holds water as a
theory only in so far as Paris is concerned
the bigwigs making their usual mistake of
imagining that Paris is France. The truth
is, that Quignol arrived from Italy in Lyons
in 1795, and won there the success that had
carried him on so triumphantly in Italy dur
ing the previous generations.
He went to Paris, yes, and all over
France, a traveling theater all by himself-
impudent, gay, forever jolly, daringly satir
ical of those who gave their coppers to laugh
at his impertinences, daringly satirical of the
bloody Revolution itself, making fun of the
very guillotine that stood ready to lop off his
wooden head, and his master's.
The traveling Punch and Judy show of
England, from which the United States drew
the few examples seen here, was less of the
family affair than itwas in Fraace. Dickena
presented a fair idea of Punch and Judy's ex
ponents when ho brought Little Nell and. her
grandfather upon Messrs. Codlin and Short,
tinkering their lay figures upon the tomb
stones of the solemn churchyard.
It was that brilliant illustrator of Dick
ens, Cruikshank, who conceived the enterprise
of perpetuating Mr. Punch in his habit as he
lived.
It is lucky for us that he did, for the gen
eration he anticipated is already here in
America, and England is neglecting her pop
ular hero almost as much as France, this year,
is exalting him. Yet England took him to her
heart earlier than did France. ,
Even in 1710, when the Spectator and the
Tattler were first delighting English wits with
graceful humor, the marvelous Powell wss mak
ing his Punch and Judy show an entertainment
of such immense interest in London that the
pens of Addison and Steele found his mimetic
skill and his nimble fancy well worthy of their
best attentions.
After nearly 200 jears of favor there, with
such great lights of the national literature as
Addison and Dickens playing upon his joculari
ties, the best of Mr. Punch remains nowadays,
not upon the streets or com. try highways of Eng
land, but in ha little volume containing the two
dozen prints that were done in color by the fond
and skilful hand of the graphic Cruikshank. -There,
from the grotesque frontispiece that
shows the inimitable Mr. Tunch in all the crim
son of his enormous oowe and the queer protru
sion of his enormous hump, to the last scene of
punishing. Punch stands for a little of it; but,'
in the end, he snatches the stick from her, and
beats her until she can't 6peak another word.
Of course, when she can't speak another word,
Judy is dead,-too.
Pretty Polly arrives in the nick of time for
Mr. Punch to perceive he has done well to get
rid of old Judy. Pretty Polly lets herself be
hugged and kissed and, as soon as she makes her
exit, Mr Punch brings in his horse, Hector, in
order to call at her house. Hector throws him,,
and he yells for the doctor.
By this time Mr. Punch has made up his,
mind he ia embarked upon a career of vice and
crime. When the doctor fails to find anything!
serious the matter with him, he kicks the doctor
in the eye to prove the diagnosis. The doctor
goes out and returns with a club. He knocks
Mr. Punch about a bit. until his patient captures
the stick. Soon tho doctor is knocked down and
beaten, and has the end of tho club jammed into q
his stomach. Then the doctor is dead.
Mr. Punch ia so pleased with his prowess
that ho gets a sheep bell and celebrates. His
neighbor's servant comes, with tho usual club,
to protest against, the no'isc. So then, in a
couple of shakes, tho servant is dead.
In speedy succession Mr. Punch now kills a
blind man who begs charity of him, beats the
constable and the police officer, and has the
effrontery to knock down Jack Ketch, the hang
man. But the law is too much fr him. Jack
Ketch and the officer hale him off to prison.
Jack Ketch prepares to hang him. Mr.
Punch, protesting that he never was hanged be
fore, demands that Jsck Ketch show him how to
wear the noose. Next minute Punch has hanged
the hangman.
Ah, but he shan't get off so easily! You
may cheat the hangman, but how cbout the
devil f
For it is the devil himself who finally comes
for doughty Mr. Punch, fetching along a club to
make him tractable. Mr. Punch tries his best to
appease the devil; but, as everybody knows, there
is no postponement when the devil's to pay.
. But there, right there, is where Mr. Punch
makes good his claim to the admiration of hu
manity. Where every other human- sinner has
succumbed before the devil's awful power, Mr.
Punch, scared as he ia, announces that he is will
ing to make a fight for it. And the play con
cludes with the devil beaten to a pulp, hanging
limp from Mr. Punch's stick, while hi conqueror v
calls for universal hurrahs, because ,
. "The devil is deadl