VictorianThe

MarionetteTheatre

John McCormick

Studies in Theatre Historyand Culture

The Victorian MarionetteTheatre

000 FM (i-xviii) 8/4/04 9:57 AM Page i

Studies in

Theatre History

& Culture

Edited by

000 FM (i-xviii) 8/4/04 9:57 AM Page ii

The

Victorian

Marionette

Theatre

John McCormick with Clodagh McCormick

andJohn Phillips

University of Iowa Press

000 FM (i-xviii) 8/4/04 9:57 AM Page iii

University of Iowa Press, Iowa City

Copyright © by the University of Iowa Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

Design by Richard Hendel

http://www.uiowa.edu/uiowapress

No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any

form or by any means without permission in writing from

the publisher. All reasonable steps have been taken to

contact copyright holders of material used in this book. The

publisher would be pleased to make suitable arrangements

with any whom it has not been possible to reach.

A number of the illustrations are taken from archival photographs

and are included because of their intrinsic interest, despite some

problems of quality. In the diagrams, the lengths of the strings are

reduced. There could be considerable variation in length, depending

upon the height of the bridge on which the manipulator was standing.

The University of Iowa Press is a member of Green Press

Initiative and is committed to preserving natural resources.

Printed on acid-free paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McCormick, John, ‒.

The Victorian marionette theatre / by John McCormick

with Clodagh McCormick and John Phillips.

p. cm.—(Studies in theatre history and culture)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

--- (cloth), --- (pbk.)

. Puppet theater—Great Britain—History—th century. . Puppet

theater—Great Britain—History—th century. . Marionettes—

Great Britain—History—th century. . Marionettes—Great

Britian—History—th century. I. McCormick, Clodagh.

II. Phillips, John, –. III. Title. IV. Series.

.

.'—dc

000 FM (i-xviii) 8/4/04 9:57 AM Page iv

In memoriam John Phillips

000 FM (i-xviii) 8/4/04 9:57 AM Page v

000 FM (i-xviii) 8/4/04 9:57 AM Page vi

Contents

Preface ix

Chapter Contexts

Chapter Proprietors and Practitioners

Chapter Booths, Barns, and Music Halls

Chapter Merely Players?

Chapter The Anatomy of the Victorian Marionette

Chapter Dramas, Pantomimes, and Screaming Farces

Chapter Fantoccini and Variety

Chapter Presenting the Show

Chapter Apogee and After

Notes

Glossary

Bibliography

Index

000 FM (i-xviii) 8/4/04 9:57 AM Page vii

000 FM (i-xviii) 8/4/04 9:57 AM Page viii

Preface

The marionette was a significant, but today forgotten, part of the theatre

and entertainment culture of Victorian Britain. Its greatest impact was

in rural areas and provincial towns and cities. In London the immensely

successful season of the Royal Marionettes in and the large num-

ber of companies that later passed through the Crystal Palace, the Royal

Aquarium, or the vast Agricultural Hall, Islington, ensured an aware-

ness of the genre with the more middle-class metropolitan public.

London was also visited from time to time by foreign troupes such as

Maffey’s from France in the s and various Italian ones, including

Brigaldi’s in and Prandi’s and Colla’s in the s.

Today people remember only the Punch and Judy shows and see these

as the puppet shows of the Victorian age. The colossal success of glove-

puppet Punch and the way in which he became a national icon made

people forget about the marionette version of the character. Punch and

Judy shows were shows of the streets and often attracted the attention

of artists and illustrators. There is less visual evidence of the existence

of the marionette shows, which generally happened indoors and were

closer in form and presentation to the actors’ theatre of the day.

In this book the term “marionette” is used to refer to a jointed fig-

ure operated from above by rods, wires, or strings (or by some combi-

nation of these). In the nineteenth century marionettes were often

known as fantoccini, an Italian word introduced to Britain in the late

eighteenth century. Henry Mayhew, in the early s, interviewed a

street fantoccini performer, who declared: “The Fantoccini . . . is the

proper title of the exhibition of dancing dolls, though it has lately been

changed to that of ‘Marionettes,’ owing to the exhibition under that

name at the Adelaide Gallery.”1

The Adelaide Gallery show was Brigaldi’s, but what is important

about this statement is that it indicates the relative unfamiliarity of the

term “marionette” in England in the first half of the nineteenth cen-

tury and its general acceptance in the second half. Showpeople stu-

diously avoided the term “puppet” because of its association with the

street glove-puppet player, who was often perceived as no more than a

busker. “Puppeteer” is a twentieth-century term.

000 FM (i-xviii) 8/4/04 9:57 AM Page ix

There is a historical thread which, represented as a graph, would show

a huge growth in the period after and a rapid slowing between

and . As in all popular art forms, development was slow and

conservatism rampant. As in the modern soap opera, once a workable

formula had evolved, it continued for a very long time indeed. Major

technical developments occurred in the s, and English marionettes

soon became the wonder of Europe. They could be seen from Moscow

to Gibraltar and were widely imitated in France, Italy, Germany, and

Turkey. Before the end of the century they had visited every continent.

This book is a companion volume to Popular Puppet Theatre in

Europe – (John McCormick and Bennie Pratasik, Cambridge,

), which attempted to examine its subject in a comparatist manner.

This book proposes instead an in-depth study of the marionette theatre

of Victorian Britain. I hope that it will dispose once and for all of the

notion of the marionette theatre as a distraction for infants and the sim-

ple-minded and, in showing just how rich and diverse the Victorian pup-

pet world really was, will serve as a reminder that it included much more

than Punch and Judy.

In the late s and s Gerald Morice collected material for a

potential book, much of which found its way into articles and interviews

in the World’s Fair. The illustrator H. W. Whanslaw wrote or co-

authored a number of “how to do it books” in the s, s, and

s. The Theatre Museum now possesses some of the Whanslaw

scrapbooks as well as a large archive of Gerald Morice documents. Both

Whanslaw and Morice were able to talk to showpeople who had been

active in the Victorian era, and they had access to the rapidly disap-

pearing artifacts, the puppets themselves. They collected an enormous

amount of valuable information. The puppeteer Waldo Lanchester also

helped rescue Victorian marionettes from oblivion, even purchasing the

Barnard troupe (now, unfortunately, dispersed), but was not himself a

writer. George Speaight, in his monumental and scholarly The History

of the English Puppet Theatre (, with an updated edition in ),

provided the first serious study of the subject. His scope was broad and

invited further research on the nineteenth century.

John Phillips, a senior lecturer at the University of North London,

took up this challenge and worked with primary sources for many years,

revealing the existence of a few hundred practitioners of marionette

theatre during that period. He opened up an important area of research

into families and contacted many of their descendants. Before his early

Prefacex

000 FM (i-xviii) 8/4/04 9:57 AM Page x

death in , he had already published a number of articles on the his-

tory of puppet theatre in Britain. The most important of these were

devoted to D’Arc’s, a major, but forgotten, company whose travels ranged

as far as China, and William J. Bullock’s Royal Marionettes. Phillips also

produced a long article, “A Survey of Victorian Marionettists,” which,

had he lived longer, would certainly have been expanded into a major

study of the Victorian marionette theatre. At his death he generously

passed all his research material to me, and that was the genesis of the

present book. It may not be the book that he intended to write, but it

is unquestionably inspired by his years of devotion to the nineteenth-

century marionette theatre and those who made it.

This book is based on two major areas of research: John’s research on

the showpeople, which involved close examination of newspaper adver-

tisements, and my own on popular theatre in France and Britain in the

nineteenth century. When working on Popular Puppet Theatre in

Europe, I had already examined some of the same sources as John; but

being aware of his research, I did not treat the British marionette the-

atre in depth.

My own passion for puppets dates back to reading the Whanslaw

books in the s and buying George Speaight’s book in . My

professional and academic career has always been accompanied by prac-

tical work with puppets. This has been of great value to me in under-

standing and appreciating the aesthetic and expressive nature of the

puppet as well as its social and cultural significance in a given histori-

cal context.

Clodagh McCormick, who has a long practical experience of puppets,

costume-making, and design combined with an interest in historical cos-

tume, has examined a couple of hundred surviving Victorian figures

from the point of view of construction, movement, materials used,

painting, and costume. Her diagrams are intended to assist the nonspe-

cialist reader in the section dealing with the more technical aspects of

the Victorian marionette.

Two major sources of documentation are advertisements in the Era

between the s and the First World War and articles in the World’s

Fair during the first fifty years of this century. The Era had started as

a sporting paper in the late s; but by the s it had also become

associated with the entertainment industry, for which it became a major

source of professional communication. Through its small advertise-

ments, the Era provides a vast amount of information about the names

Preface xi

000 FM (i-xviii) 8/4/04 9:57 AM Page xi

and whereabouts of companies who used it. Companies usually adver-

tised when they were trying to recruit figure-workers (manipulators)

or musicians. They would also advertise the sale of puppets (sometimes

the signal of the end of a company’s active life) or even of a portable

theatre or caravan. The Era was not used much to publicize shows,

although a small number of proprietors of marionette shows did so.

The World’s Fair, the showpeople’s paper, started at a period when

many of the traveling theatres had ceased to operate or gone into cin-

ema and when marionette performers were more likely to be found in

variety theatres than on the fairground. As troupes ceased to function,

and younger generations turned to other ways of earning a living, the

World’s Fair was less important as a chronicle of who was performing

where but remained immensely interesting for its columns of reminis-

cences, interviews with old puppeteers, and articles on old showpeople

who had passed on. A major contributor was Harry Wilding, sometimes

confused with the showman of the same name. Many of the articles

were written by people who had experienced the life of the nineteenth-

century marionette theatre. Sometimes the events referred to had hap-

pened half a century earlier. Memory could play tricks, but what might

be lacking in accuracy is fully compensated in authenticity, even if the

later researcher is left to struggle with dates and facts and sort out

impressions from so-called objective truth.

Documents relating to puppet theatre are relatively thin on the

ground. The programs of the music halls and variety theatres of the

later decades of the century yield references to numerous companies or

performers that appeared in the larger towns and cities. Many of these

showpeople disappeared without trace, and a single reference may be

the only clue to their existence. Many also had only the briefest profes-

sional involvement with marionettes. A small number of playbills sur-

vive, but very little by way of diaries, registers, and so forth. For this

reason, one of the most significant documents is the memoirs of Richard

Barnard, assembled by his grandson Ken Barnard and edited by George

Speaight (The Life and Travels of Richard Barnard, Marionette Proprie-

tor). Few families have been unable to provide complete family trees.

The traveling life does not lend itself to the preservation of large num-

bers of apparently irrelevant documents, and baptismal records may do

no more than indicate where the family was at that particular moment.

The frequent recurrence of the same Christian names leads to further

confusion. Showpeople often had permanent partnerships without any

Prefacexii

000 FM (i-xviii) 8/4/04 9:57 AM Page xii

formal union, which can also make it more difficult to work out family

relationships. In any case, the aim of this book is not to provide a direc-

tory of Victorian marionette companies and showpeople, but rather to

help toward an understanding of the marionette theatre as a significant

part of Victorian culture.

While we have a reasonably good idea of the dramatic repertoire that

the marionette companies performed, the number of surviving scripts

used and marked for performance is very small indeed. The bulk of these

are in the Clowes-Tiller collections of the Theatre Museum, London.

They give some indication as to how a company might arrange or cut a

script for marionette performance.

Stage equipment is awkward to store and tends to be disposed of when

no longer useful. Consequently, the amount to survive is negligible, and

observations have to be based on the external comments that can be

found or on the handful of backdrops (together with a few photographs)

that do still exist.

The main collections of marionettes to be studied are those of the

Theatre Museum, London (Clowes-Tiller figures),2 the puppet collec-

tion of the Stadtmuseum of Munich (a group of English figures of

slightly uncertain provenance), and the Clunn Lewis holding in the

Musée de la Marionnette (Musée Gadagne) of Lyon. In addition it has

been possible to work on the Desiree Delvaine collection of her fam-

ily’s puppets (Delvaine’s Marionettes); the private collection of John

Blundall; McCormick’s Marionettes (Ireland); John Bright (De Randel

Marionettes), the marionettes of the Harlequin Puppet Theatre

(Colwyn Bay); the collection of the Puppet Centre, London; the pri-

vate collection of Ken Barnard; the collection of the Purves Inter-

national Puppet Theatre, Scotland; that of the Lambert Puppet

Theatre, Dublin; and a few figures still in the possession of the Holden

family. An important U.S. resource is the Detroit Institute of Arts,

where there are a number of marionettes either of direct British prove-

nance or created by British puppeteers who moved to America. There

are also figures, including those of Daniel Meader and Walter Deaves,

which were directly based on the English marionettes with which they

were familiar.

The first three chapters examine the Victorian marionette theatre in

the context of entertainment of the period, those who created and prac-

ticed it, and the venues in which they performed. The next three chap-

ters treat the idea of the marionette as a surrogate actor in a miniaturized

Preface xiii

000 FM (i-xviii) 8/4/04 9:57 AM Page xiii

repertory company performing its own version of the pieces presented

by its live counterparts. Since the marionette is not a live actor, and its

performance and expressiveness are frequently affected by how it is

made or operated, this aspect of the question is approached in a way that

may help the nonspecialist develop a greater understanding of the pup-

pet performer. Marionette showpeople have a long tradition of trick fig-

ures and variety acts, which often accompanied the dramatic repertoire

and supplanted it in many cases. Consequently, a separate chapter is

devoted to what were generally known as fantoccini. The picture is

rounded off with an examination of aspects of staging, design, and

music. The final chapter tries to see what happened to the marionette

showpeople after .

�A Note on Terminology

First names or initials, when known, are used for those who worked

with marionettes. In the case of a company, which often included more

than one member of a family and sometimes continued over two or more

generations, the practice of the period is followed, using only the sur-

names of the proprietors (e.g., Middleton’s, D’Arc’s, Holden’s) unless

otherwise indicated.

In the nineteenth century there was a greater degree of formality.

Proprietors of shows were generally called “Mr.,” “Mrs.,” or “Prof-

essor,” and wives were generally known by their husband’s name (e.g.,

Mrs. Charles Webb). Within a company everyone worked exceedingly

hard; but there was also a basic distribution of roles according to gen-

der – even to the extent that male marionettes might be prepared for

performance by men and female ones by women. The term “show-

man” is redolent of the nineteenth century but is here being treated

as far as possible as non–gender specific. Awkward circumlocutions and

neologisms are avoided because they detract from the sense of histor-

ical perspective.

An essential part of the entertainment industry was the minstrel

show, where ethnically Caucasian performers were made up to look eth-

nically African. The term “Negro” is used in this book in the context of

such performances and should be read in that way.

Before decimalization in the s, the British pound was divided

into twenty shillings, each consisting of twelve pence. The symbols for

these were “£,” “s,” and “d.”

Prefacexiv

000 FM (i-xviii) 8/4/04 9:57 AM Page xiv

�Acknowledgments

There are many people to be thanked for their help and cooperation.

Geoff Felix, well known as a Punch and Judy “professor,” assisted John

Phillips in the collection and recording of material and frequently pro-

vided useful advice during the writing of this book. Oliver Davies of the

Royal College was of particular help concerning the music for the

Victorian Theatre. Martin McGilp and Frank Bruce provided a lot of

material about Scotland. Richard Bradshaw has been extremely help-

ful in connection with Charles Webb and the D’Arc company in

Australia, as has Matthew Cohen for D’Arc’s travels in Indonesia. The

late Paul Newman, a descendant of the Lawrence family, provided valu-

able information about the traveling families. The following individu-

als have also been very generous with their time and advice: Ken

Barnard, John Blundall, John Bright, Harry Cullen, Ricky Deloro, Ann

Featherstone, Douglas Hayward, Brian Holden, Barry McCormick,

Colm McCormick, Richard McCormick, George Speaight, and Agnes

Sullivan.

I should like to thank all members of the staff in the museums and

collections visited who have facilitated research on this project. I should

especially like to thank Catherine Haill, who has a particular responsi-

bility for the puppet collections of the Theatre Museum, London;

Simone Blazy (Musée Historique de la Ville de Lyon); Florian Dering

and Manfred Wegner (Stadtmuseum of Munich); Desiree Delvaine

(Delvaine’s Marionettes); Iris Tunnicliff (Museum of Popular

Entertainment, Whaplode Saint Catherine, Lincolnshire); the Puppet

Centre, London; Malcolm Knight (Scottish Mask and Puppet Centre);

the Stafford Arts and Museum Services (Shugborough); Vanessa

Toulminn (National Fairground Archive, Sheffield); Eugene Lambert

(Lambert Puppet Theatre, Dublin); Ian Purves (Purves International

Puppet Theatre, Biggar, Scotland); Chris Somerville (Harlequin Puppet

Theatre, Colwyn Bay); and John Bright. I should also like to thank

Trinity College Dublin for grants, which have helped cover some of the

research expenses.

Preface xv

000 FM (i-xviii) 8/4/04 9:57 AM Page xv

000 FM (i-xviii) 8/4/04 9:57 AM Page xvi

The Victorian MarionetteTheatre

000 FM (i-xviii) 8/4/04 9:57 AM Page xvii

000 FM (i-xviii) 8/4/04 9:57 AM Page xviii

Chapter 1 : Contexts

�From Village Show to Fashionable Entertainment

Who comes along the village way?

With pipe and drum, in brave array

While merry motley decks his cart

And makes a show to lift the heart?

The children know, they hear the drum,

And from their playing corners come;

Dick, Jack and Tom and little Nan

All race to greet the puppet man!

A kindly soul with nat’ral grace

And well-proportioned form and face;

Cravat and vest a little loud –

He has to dress to please the crowd.

From place to place he jogs along,

Cheering the dullness of the throng.

Lord of a gilded caravan,

Who wouldn’t be a Puppet Man!

A barn is reached, a bargain struck,

The show unpacked, with hopes of luck

No need of advertising wiles,

The news has swiftly travelled miles,

And ev’ryone who can will go

To see the “Royal Puppet Show.”

“The house is full, make ready Dan!”

Exclaims the busy puppet man.

This charming and nostalgic piece of doggerel written in describes

a sight now rapidly disappearing from the English rural scene, the itin-

erant marionette player.1 The showman in question was Thomas Clunn

Lewis, an eccentric figure known to inhabitants of the countryside and

010 c1 (1-16) 8/4/04 10:23 AM Page 1

small towns in the southeast of England. Lewis, who was of Irish origin

and a devout Roman Catholic, could drum up a list of “patrons” which

ran from the actors Henry Ainley, Gordon Craig, Henry Irving, and Ellen

Terry to G. K. Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw, not to mention

Cardinals Herbert Vaughan and Henry Manning, Queen Mary, and the

Duchess of Beaufort. As a child he remembered helping an old penny

showman with his dolls (marionettes): “many a time [I] served mass in

the morning and performed blood-curling dramas in the evening.” This

led to his making a show of his own. His grandfather had taught him to

play the harp and paint, and his first professional engagement was at the

age of sixteen at the Philharmonic in Ramsgate, where he painted the

scenery and played Pantaloon in the pantomime. At the age of nineteen

he married his first wife, a singer and actress, and they managed to save

enough money with their own show to buy a complete marionette fit-up

that had belonged to the Middleton family.2 He toured this for about ten

years, but then he disposed of the wood and canvas booth. Clunn Lewis

continued to perform with a reduced company consisting of his second

wife and an assistant. In his later years she was the marionettist, while

he provided music on a harp. In a special benefit performance was

arranged for him in the Aeolian Hall, London. He died in .3

Gordon Craig (who saw Lewis when staying with his mother, the

actress Ellen Terry) used his puppets as a point of reference in a dis-

cussion of the relationship between the puppet and the actor:

No performer can be quite as versatile as a Puppet – for a Puppet

can even change his head; can have three separate selves, and

all these can, if needs be, appear on the scene at once.

So then for England, Puppets would come as a blessing, coming in

the nick of time to show the way once more to their old

comrades the actors.

So nothing is done to help the best actors to recover what is being

lost to them month by month. They admit the loss of that

important stronghold – their old versatility. They have admitted

other losses – and they continue to retreat.

Now the little puppet steps forward and offers to hold the whole

line – and he can do it.

And I want the Actor to realise that in the Puppet he has the

dearest of old comrades and not a hated enemy, or a competitor.

Contexts

010 c1 (1-16) 8/4/04 10:23 AM Page 2

And this too is where Mr. Clunn Lewis steps in: he is one of the

links between actor and Puppet – even the smallest link in the

longest chain should not be forgotten – should not be broken.4

The Clunn Lewis marionette show had previously belonged to the

Middletons, arguably the most important family of marionette players

in the nineteenth century. Among the celebrations of the coronation of

Queen Victoria in was a fair in Hyde Park, and the Middleton mar-

ionette company was one of the entertainments. The Hyde Park fair

looks like a special version of the tented fairs that were common

throughout Britain. The admission charges for the Middleton show were

one shilling and sixpence (as opposed to a penny or two), an indication

that the main clientele at this fair was middle-class.

Marionette shows were one of the most ephemeral parts of Victorian

theatre. They have left no buildings, very few printed bills or posters,

and only a handful of actual puppets and scripts. Often perceived as

entertainers of children and the unlettered or as purveyors of a some-

what inferior type of theatrical fare, the marionette showpeople in fact

played for whatever audience they could find. One of the biggest

Victorian marionette companies, Holden’s, declared boldly in its pub-

licity that it had appeared before most of the crowned heads of Europe.

The list included the Russian imperial family, the sultan of Turkey, the

khedive of Egypt, the Austrian imperial family, an assortment of

European kings and queens, and “the elite of every town visited by this

Contexts

. Clunn Lewis

performance, early

s. Musée

Gadagne, Lyon.

010 c1 (1-16) 8/4/04 10:23 AM Page 3

superior entertainment.” Such claims were a classic ploy to attract hum-

bler audiences to see the sort of shows that they were told the great and

powerful (and, by implication, discerning) thought worth attending.

�The Reality of the Marionette

The marionette landed itself right into the middle of the discussion

about realism in the theatre. Heinrich von Kleist (in his essay on

the marionette) and the German Romantics had opened up the debate

on the nature of the puppet actor, which, in time, led to Gordon Craig’s

concept of the ideal actor.

Proprietors of marionette shows constantly emphasized “realism” in

their publicity and liked to pretend that their figures were almost life-

sized. Quality was often equated with the ability to look lifelike. To

understand the Victorian marionette theatre, we need to look at it in the

overall context of notions of realism in nineteenth-century theatre.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief” is a useful

starting point to help understand how audiences could accept as “real”

what their basic intelligence told them was artificial and incredibly

unrealistic. The issue is confused still further, however, by the delight

that marionette proprietors took in introducing deliberately “realistic”

elements from glass eyes to real water. The theatre reformer Adolph

Appia (–) commented on how placing the three-dimensional

flesh and blood actor in front of painted scenery highlighted the artifi-

ciality of theatre. This conflict did not arise on the marionette stage.

The fact that the figure was made of wood or papier-mâché and painted

placed it in immediate harmony with the scenic environment, and this

consistency made its lifelikeness less questionable.

Authenticity in itself was a crowd-puller in popular entertainments.

Many fairground sideshows presented themselves as quasi-scientific

establishments and exhibited supposed freaks of nature. When mari-

onette proprietors of the nineteenth century made their regular boasts

about the “reality” of their figures, they were following a long-established

practice of traveling showpeople and charlatans.

The later nineteenth century was obsessed with the presentation of

material reality on the stage. Long before Naturalism became an artis-

tic and aesthetic doctrine, the popular theatres had been pursuing it as

one of their aims in a naïve attempt to blur the distinction between life

Contexts

010 c1 (1-16) 8/4/04 10:23 AM Page 4

and the theatre. It was a challenge to present a “reality” on the stage

that the audience would not question, and part of the audience’s pleas-

ure came from recognition of the skill with which this illusion was pro-

duced. The sensation drama sought to imitate scenes from “real” life

and amaze the spectators with the accuracy of these reconstructions.

Perception changes, however, just as audiences do, and what was realis-

tic in was patently artificial by . Once the cinema became pop-

ular, the struggle was an unequal one.

Realism had become the main yardstick by which marionette show-

people thought they should measure themselves, but the first point of

reference was the live theatre and not life itself. In following the reper-

toire of the live theatre, the marionette theatre was generally operat-

ing according to dramaturgically outmoded conventions; but its target

audiences were not primarily sophisticated metropolitan ones. From

today’s perspective we may feel that an enormous amount of willing

suspension of disbelief must have been required, but in the later nine-

teenth century this was not necessarily the case. What was important

was the consistency of the fiction within its own conventions. Today any-

one watching a puppet show where the manipulators are concealed, as

they were in the nineteenth century, knows how difficult it is to be cer-

tain of the stature of the figures. Context, scale, and optical illusion all

helped persuade audiences that they were watching life-sized figures.

The belief that a puppet might have a life of its own goes well beyond

the nineteenth-century English marionette theatre and relates to an

audience’s desire to empathize even with what it knows to be a figure

made out of inanimate materials. The greatest accolade for marionette

showpeople was to be told that the figures could be mistaken for human

beings, and some proprietors managed to persuade themselves that their

figures had a life of their own.

Viewed with any degree of objectivity, the dramatic marionette of the

nineteenth century as an imitation actor emphasizes the absurdity of

identifying the actor and the role, but the aspiration to be taken for a real

actor meant that the marionette could also be viewed as an inferior actor.

With the avant-garde movement, there was a return to an idea of

showing rather than hiding the theatricality of the theatre. For some

theatre theorists and artists, the puppet became the ideal theatrical fig-

ure in that it avoided the uncomfortable ambiguity of the live actor, who

is simultaneously himself or herself and the role. The puppet’s very

Contexts

010 c1 (1-16) 8/4/04 10:23 AM Page 5

unreality brought to the fore the gap between illusion and reality. In the

s Maurice Maeterlinck wrote dramas for the ideal actor and called

them plays for “puppets.”

Gordon Craig, for all his love of puppets, disliked the idea of the mar-

ionette as a substitute actor in a type of drama for which he had very

little time:

The marionette appears to me to be the last echo of some noble

and beautiful art of a past civilisation. But as with all art which has

passed into fat or vulgar hands, the puppet has become a reproach.

All puppets now are but low comedians.

They imitate the comedians of the larger and fuller-blooded stage.

They enter only to fall on their back. They drink only to reel, and

make love only to raise a laugh. . . . Their bodies have lost grave grace,

they have become stiff. Their eyes have lost that infinite subtlety of

seeming to see; now they only stare.5

�Marionettes and the Entertainment Industry

Marionettes had a distinct place in the Victorian world and were

woven into the texture of the theatrical entertainments of the period.

They performed in many of the same places as live actors. In a limited

number of cases they had permanent theatres which lasted for a num-

ber of years, but most marionette companies were traveling affairs.

Their nomadic mode of existence led to a degree of social exclusion or

marginalization. Marionette proprietors often preferred to emphasize a

different profession, commonly that of musician. On the census,

the Tiller and Clowes families described themselves as “theatrical per-

formers,” not puppeteers.

Information from before is slight; but we know that people

expected to see marionettes at fairgrounds, and we have limited refer-

ences to their appearances in halls and small theatres in larger towns.

The occasional visit of a foreign company tended to attract attention

from the upper social classes and therefore received newspaper cover-

age normally denied to the home-grown product.

Marionette theatres had been a standard feature of the British fair-

ground of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For the traveling

show, the annual fair was a time when numbers of people intent on

Contexts

010 c1 (1-16) 8/4/04 10:23 AM Page 6

amusing themselves were grouped in one place. Most fairs were of short

duration (one to three days), but it was possible to move from fair to

fair. Owen’s Book of Fairs ( and ) was a calendar of the dif-

ferent fairs and was carried by many fairground entertainers. A part of

any marionette troupe’s itinerary can often be surmised in terms of

successive fairs.

By the nineteenth century, fairs still provided a regular occasion for

performance; but they were changing in nature, and some, such as

Bartholomew Fair, had ended their natural life span. As towns grew,

they lost part of their rural origin as cattle or animal markets, and a cat-

tle market in a town center was considered undesirable and insalubri-

ous. People no longer drove flocks of geese for miles to Nottingham to

the Goose Fair on the first Thursday in October. In the Nottingham

Committee was involved in moving the sheep and cattle market out of

the center of the town to a new site.

Many fairs had been important occasions for commerce, but the

rapid growth in the number of shops in towns removed a part of their

original raison d’être. The balance between buying and selling and

amusement changed as the nineteenth century advanced, and side-

shows became the focus of the fair. One of the earliest entertainments

to become a regular visitor to the Nottingham Goose Fair was Womb-

well’s Menagerie (first recorded there in ), which was rapidly fol-

lowed by other entertainments, including marionettes. In the s

mechanical shows and rides began to displace many of the side-

shows. Gas and then electricity gave the fair a brighter appearance at

night, and everything became noisier. By the s the Nottingham

Goose Fair was declining, and a large part of the marketplace was

now occupied by P. Collins’s roundabouts and other mechanical rides,

most notably his celebrated “Venetian Gondolas.” With a growing

demand for novelty, marionette shows were beginning to seem a bit

old-fashioned. On the plan, the top end of the market was still

occupied by what had become Bostock and Wombwell’s Royal No.

Menagerie, but little more than half of the remaining space was now

given over to shows.6 These included several theatrical booths converted

into biographs (as the early cinemas were called), including a pitch

labeled “Lawrence’s Marionettes,” though it too may have been show-

ing films. A nostalgic writer of was already looking back at the

former glories of this fair when “[boys] will recall the brilliant days

Contexts

010 c1 (1-16) 8/4/04 10:23 AM Page 7

when Lawrence’s ‘legitimate’ actors proudly strutted for fitful hours in

front of their booth, when exhibitions of waxworks and marionette

shows were as common as blackberries.”7

The fairs were not only for the local population. With railways, peo-

ple began to travel quite long distances to go to the fair. In the

Nottingham and Midland Counties Daily Express carried advertise-

ments for cheap train excursions to the Hull October Fair.8 By the eight-

ies there were also special trains from the mining districts running into

Nottingham at fair time.9

Throughout the nineteenth century marionette theatres were taken

for granted as a fairground spectacle and seldom rated any specific men-

tion. They were often ranked and associated with other shows, includ-

ing those of a scientific or quasi-scientific nature as well as the various

“curiosities.” The use of popular science as a form of educational enter-

tainment was widespread in the nineteenth century, and scientific dis-

plays were sometimes given in theatre buildings. In London William

Bullock’s exhibitions at the Egyptian Hall, Reimer’s “Anatomical and

Ethnological Museum” in Leicester Square, dioramas, cosmoramas,

panoramas, magic lantern shows, and even illustrated lectures of trav-

els attracted huge numbers of people. “Professor” Eugene Horman is

a good example of a showman exploiting popular science. He was a

magician in the s; but by his “scientific display of natural

magic” had been put together with Madame Ashington’s “world-

renowned troupe of marionettes,” and a year later we hear of “Professor

Horman’s Italian marionettes.” In he went to Ireland, where he

remained for over a year. He visited Cork, Fermoy, and Thurles, and

from January until March or April he was at the Rotunda, Dublin.

The puppets were accompanied by conjuring, but there is no indication

that he worked the marionettes himself.10 By he was advertising

the show as Horman’s Ethescope Theatre and working in the Glasgow

area.11 The advertisement suggests that he was now diversifying his

activities and also indicates that he was running a second show.

The “ethescope” was a form of ghost show based on the principles

of Pepper’s Ghost. One of the first people to exploit Pepper’s Ghost as

a fairground attraction was M. Gompertz, who bought the authoriza-

tion to do so in .12 Gompertz’s show was known as a Spectroscope.

By Sylvester was showing his “ethoscope,” which, according to a

contemporary critic, “combines all the properties of the phantoscope

Contexts

010 c1 (1-16) 8/4/04 10:23 AM Page 8

and spectroscope, produces a great variety of spectres at the same time,

mingling and dissolving in the most bewitching manner.” Henry

Buxton, marionette proprietor, introduced a “spectrescope” for a brief

period in , but it is not quite clear whether he combined it with

marionettes or temporarily put them aside.

Phantasmagorias, dissolving views, ghost shows, panoramas,

and other such visual items were often included in the programs of

nineteenth-century traveling marionette shows. The substitution of the

moving-picture projector for the magic lantern was a natural step for

showpeople who wished to indicate that they were up to date. With the

advent of electric light, often provided by a generator incorporated into

the decorated front, portable theatres had no difficulty in adding films

to an existing program of marionette shows.

In the period before cinema and mass entertainment, traveling mar-

ionette shows constituted a very significant part of available popular

entertainment. The development of the industrial towns of the British

Midlands created a new type of audience, in which the urban worker

predominated. Changing work practices and more disposable income

led to major developments in the entertainment industry and particu-

larly favored the music hall. Leisure also created new and extended mar-

kets for traveling actors and marionette showpeople, and the music hall

created opportunities for performances. Many marionette showpeople

found such engagements preferable to hiring a hall for an evening or a

week. As music halls graduated into variety theatres, with several

grouped under the one management, marionette companies, like other

acts, would pass from one theatre to another under the same manage-

ment. As a consequence, their shows became shorter, brighter, more pol-

ished, and fast moving, but the dramatic and theatrical aspect of their

work faded.

The marionette number became so popular that numerous artistes

added it to their acts, which probably accounts for the many new names

that cropped up briefly in the s and s as marionette perform-

ers or proprietors. The fit-up showman and music hall artiste Harry

Thompson, for example, had a “Negro minstrel” act but is recorded in

as also possessing a Punch and Judy show. By , when he and

his company were filling the bill for the New Gaiety Palace of Varieties,

Preston, Punch had been exchanged for a marionette show known as

“The Levite’s Combination Pantomime Troupe.”13 Thompson was

Contexts

010 c1 (1-16) 8/4/04 10:23 AM Page 9

probably typical of many showpeople who briefly used marionettes

because they could be a popular act. A number of fit-ups began to emu-

late the music hall and diversify their activity into “combinations,” with

marionettes reduced to being part of a variety show, which included live

performers in songs, sketches, and a number of other acts.

By the end of music halls and theatres all over the country were

showing films.14 When Queen Victoria died in , the infant bioscope

industry was growing fast. Her death and funeral led to an avalanche of

newsreel-type film, and the excitement generated by this sort of topical

material outweighed that of most marionette dramas. The building of

the Daily Bioscope in Bishopsgate, London, in signaled the begin-

ning of purpose-built cinemas.

Randel Williams (who had a ghost show) was one of the first fair-

ground showpeople to add film projection to his program, in . He

was followed by a number of others; the already elaborate fronts of some

traveling marionette shows were converted into bioscope entrances and

equipped with brilliantly decorated organs.

By Harry Ashington was offering a “cinematograph” at the

Horbury Wakes Fair (near Wakefield).15 He continued to combine film

with theatre and marionettes when many proprietors had gone over

entirely to cinema.16 Edwin Lawrence had converted his booth into a

cinema in and temporarily abandoned the marionettes. Within a

few years, however, there were so many cinema shows that the clerk of

the market at Nottingham Goose Fair, Mr. Radford, made the presen-

tation of a marionette show a condition for obtaining a permit.17 In the

early s the Lawrences, like many traveling showpeople, were expe-

riencing economic difficulties. They eventually sold their marionette

and cinematograph show to a Mrs. A. Holland in . She removed the

organ, which formed part of the “massive carved and gilded front,” and

installed it on her electric scenic railway. The proscenium arch, sur-

mounted by a carved gold head and bust of Shakespeare, was adapted

to fit Mrs. Holland’s moving-picture screen.18

The combination of film and marionettes was of relatively short

duration. Traveling bioscopes and their organs gradually disappeared,

as the fairgrounds became almost exclusively places for mechanical

entertainments, swings, roundabouts, and other noisy sideshows; and

halls devoted exclusively to the showing of moving pictures multiplied.

What did remain sporadically until the s was the phenomenon of

Contexts

010 c1 (1-16) 8/4/04 10:23 AM Page 10

the ciné-variety show in cinemas, where the film might be accompa-

nied by live acts, which sometimes were marionettes.

�Audiences

Working out who actually saw marionette shows is at best a specula-

tive business. Adult audiences attended traveling shows and music halls

where marionettes were shown. A large proportion of most audiences

was made up of adolescents. They were often noisy and not necessarily

what the showpeople would desire, but their pennies made up a good

share of his income. From the middle of the century showpeople dis-

covered that there was a real market for entertainment for middle-class

children. Charles Kean had persuaded people of the “educational” value

of his Shakespeare productions, and some of the marionette showpeo-

ple followed a similar route. Performances specifically geared for a young

audience were relatively rare until the s, but they did exist, partic-

ularly in private engagements.

The shortage of fixed theatres and the comparative lack of docu-

mentation make audience analysis along social lines a difficult exercise

to carry out. At best, with some reference to what we know in general

about penny theatres or “gaffs,” we can probably say that audiences for

these were young and poor and that gender balance depended on spe-

cific local circumstances.19 Portable theatres were certainly visited by a

broader cross-section of society and usually had a price differential

between the front seats and those behind. The difference was a form of

social segregation, which spared the middle classes from having to sit

next to their social inferiors as well as giving them a better view. In prac-

tice this was a way in which showpeople could extract a bit more money

from the “better class of spectator.” In the s Kelsall’s traveling wax-

work show had an interesting scale of charges based on social ranking:

“Ladies and Gentlemen shilling, Tradespeople d, Working classes,

servants and children, d.”20 This type of classification, even if not

expressed in this quaint way, may well have been applied to a number

of traveling shows, including marionette ones (first seats, second seats,

and children).

The social composition of the audience was also affected by the

place of performance. Portable theatres aimed at audiences of vary-

ing ages and social classes. Billy Purvis appeared at Jedburgh fair in

Contexts

010 c1 (1-16) 8/4/04 10:23 AM Page 11

, charging twopence and threepence, but then, at the request of

some of the local gentry, gave an extra three performances in the

Assembly Room (where the prices were certainly higher).21A Middleton

bill of the s gives prices as one shilling and sixpence, indicating that

the show is in a “commodious room.”22 This also suggests performances

geared primarily to middle-class spectators. In both London and Dublin

some of the halls and assembly rooms hired by marionette companies

were frequented mainly by the middle classes – the Rotunda rooms in

Dublin and St. James’s Hall, the Argyll rooms, and the Egyptian Hall

in London. In a West End London music hall there would be a smarter

public, while a very different one might be found in the East End or in

one of the textile or mining towns of the Midlands.

Private engagements were valued by showpeople, but here they were

performing to audiences belonging almost entirely to one social stra-

tum. Billy Purvis recorded an engagement with a Mr. Blackburn at

Alnwick in the early s. The Howard family engaged a fantoccini

performer for a Christmas party at Arundel Castle in . On August

Ellen Terry noted in her diary: “Drove to Tenterden. Saw Clowes

Marionettes.” In The Story of My Life (), she records how a private

performance was organized:

Henry [Irving] saw one of their playbills in a shop window, but found

that the performances only took place in the evening. He found out

the proprietor and asked him what the takings were on a good night.

The man said £, I think. Henry asked him if he would give him a

special show for that sum. He was delighted. Henry and I and my

daughter Edy and Fussie sat in solemn state in the empty tent and

watched the show, which was most ingenious and clever. Clowes’s

Marionettes are still on the road, but ever since that “command” per-

formance of Henry’s at Tenterden their bill has had two extra lines:

Patronised by .23

�Marionettes, Waxworks, and Automata

Since at least the seventeenth century puppets had simply been one

of the means used by showpeople and mountebanks to attract a crowd

or earn some money. They belong with rope-dancing and acrobatics,

performing monkeys and bears, conjuring tricks and peepshows. In

Contexts

010 c1 (1-16) 8/4/04 10:23 AM Page 12

many cases showpeople possessed more than one skill and could pass

easily from one type of entertainment to another.

A favorite fairground entertainment was the waxworks or wax cabi-

net: costumed wax figures, often life-sized, of well-known persons,

whether real or fictitious. What is really interesting is the very close rela-

tionship between waxwork shows and marionette theatres.

The idea of exhibiting artificial figures, whether animated or static

and whether for edification or entertainment, was already common in

the sixteenth century. The Salmon waxwork show began in late seven-

teenth century London, moving to Fleet Street in , and survived

until the time of Charles Dickens. In the nineteenth century waxwork

shows were everywhere – Dickens’s Mrs. Jarley, proprietor of a travel-

ing waxworks show in The Old Curiosity Shop, was typical of many.

Madame Tussaud traveled throughout the country for years before

establishing herself in Baker Street in the early s. One of the big-

ger traveling waxworks of the later nineteenth century was Kelsall’s,

with its “Crystal Palace Exhibition” of moving waxworks. When

Kelsall’s visited Nottingham Goose Fair in , it boasted a show

“[c]onsisting of upwards of models in seven large carriages, pro-

nounced by the public and the press, the largest and best travelling”;

these included tableaux of Abraham offering up his son Isaac and Joseph

interpreting “King Pharaoh’s Dream.”24

A stock folk figure of most waxwork shows of the eighteenth cen-

tury was Mother Shipton, who also appeared as a marionette. Salmon

had a mechanized figure of her, which kicked the unsuspecting specta-

tor who stood on a trick board. A wax effigy of Mother Shipton could

be found in Westminster Abbey, in a display known as the “play of the

dead volks,” until these waxworks were removed in . A Mother

Shipton, “the celebrated Yorkshire prophetess,” still figured in J. Fer-

guson’s waxworks at Bartholomew Fair in (alongside likenesses of

the murderer William Corder and his victim, Maria Marten).25

Some figure shows occupied a middle ground between automata and

waxworks, as showpeople introduced clockwork mechanisms to give a

semblance of life. The most celebrated figure of this sort was Madame

Tussaud’s Sleeping Beauty, with her heaving breast. Showpeople liked

to blur the distinction between puppets and automata. The Elizabethans

often used the word “motion” for a puppet show; but this could also

apply to a clockwork mechanism with figures, and the ambiguity was

Contexts

010 c1 (1-16) 8/4/04 10:23 AM Page 13

further compounded by references to such mechanisms as “puppets.”

The great eighteenth-century showman Flockton presented a bill at

Bartholomew Fair in that combined conjuring tricks, fantoccini, a

miniature opera (presumably also with marionettes), and a complex

piece of machinery described as a Mechanical Clock, which involved

some figures working at their trades.26

The Lawrence family had been fairground entertainers with portable

theatres in the first half of the nineteenth century and may also have

presented waxworks.27 In the early s Morris Lawrence had acquired

a working model of an Australian gold mine, purportedly constructed

in Melbourne and brought to England by a clergyman. The model had

forty or fifty moving figures but was in bad repair. Lawrence himself

may never have used it. One of his sidelines was an unlicensed firework

“factory” in Plymouth, which blew up on March , as it was prepar-

ing fireworks for a display to celebrate the marriage of the Prince of

Wales and Princess Alexandra, killing Lawrence, two of his sons, and

six other people.28 In his son William Henry Lawrence put the

model into working order and traveled the fairs with it. During these

years he and his brothers Edwin and Albert combined this mechanical

show with a marionette show. After his return from a visit to America

with the Royal Marionettes in , “Lawrence’s Anglo-American

Marionettes” developed into one of the largest touring fit-ups in Britain.

Some nineteenth-century marionette shows called themselves “mov-

ing waxworks” in an attempt to capitalize on the vogue for such dis-

plays. In the Middleton company advertised its show as “Royal

Automatons” and described the figures as being made of wax.29

Some waxwork shows also added marionettes to the entertainment,

but the term “moving waxworks” could be ambivalent. Springthorpe’s

was among the better-known of the traveling waxwork shows in the first

half of the century. The company is recorded in Edinburgh in June

and again in , when it performed in the Old Record Office at the top

of Castle Street, Edinburgh.30 When it appeared on Glasgow Green in

July , one of the pieces from the display of “mechanical composi-

tion figures” was a group of figures in the cavern scene from Sir Walter

Scott’s Guy Mannering. It also included figures of “La belle Roxalana,”

who played a variety of fashionable airs on chimes or bells, and a lively

Italian brigand who could raise his head and fire his gun. The exhibition

was completed by nonmoving figures of Walter Scott and the young

Contexts

010 c1 (1-16) 8/4/04 10:23 AM Page 14

Queen Victoria.31 In the s Springthorpe’s offered “Waxwork Figures

and Grand Cosmoramic Views” at , the Strand (London), and, in

emulation of Madame Tussaud’s, had a Chamber of Horrors.32

In the late s Springthorpe’s combined waxworks with a concert.

Much of the company’s traveling was in the north of England (notably

Hull) and in Scotland (Aberdeen, Dundee), but it also visited Belfast

(Victoria Hall) and Dublin. On Monday, January , the company

had a performance of a Promenade Concert in the basement hall under-

neath the Bell Street United Presbyterian Church, Dundee. A large crowd

had gathered to fill the seats, but the opening of the doors for the :

P.M. show occasioned a rush of people down the icy steps to the basement.

Someone slipped, and twenty people were killed in the resultant crush

and pile-up. These were mostly boys and young workingmen, but a few

girls (one aged eleven) also perished. Performances resumed a fortnight

later.33 John Springthorpe had died a year before this tragedy, in February

. Apparently he had been quite prosperous, but his family failed to

make a success of the business.34 The addition of marionettes to the pro-

gram was probably a desperate attempt to find an alternative attraction.

Around Lambert D’Arc, a Frenchman from Rheims, came to

work for Springthorpe’s as a wax-modeler. In Springthorpe’s adver-

tised that “several new and interesting models by Mons. D’Arc have

been added to the already beautiful collection.”35 By he had his

own waxwork exhibition in Cheltenham at St. George’s Hall. In October

he transferred this to Dublin. Then on July he announced:

“for the first time – Mons. D’Arc’s Mechanical Automatical Figures.”36

Making marionettes was not perceived as vastly different from making

waxworks; like Springthorpe’s, D’Arc may have felt that the moment

was opportune to branch out.

The success of his venture was considerable, and the long room of

the Rotunda, Dublin, became a semipermanent marionette theatre for

about five years. Springthorpe’s company was at the Victoria Hall,

Belfast, from January to March , with a program of waxworks, cos-

moramic views, and marionettes. By early March D’Arc was also there,

at the Music Hall. It appears that he bought up most of the Springthorpe

enterprise. It is not clear whether he did this out of charity, because he

had formed an association with Springthorpe’s, or because he saw it as

a good moment to eliminate possible competition. Whatever the case,

a few weeks later he was advertising the sale of a fit-up that sounds

Contexts

010 c1 (1-16) 8/4/04 10:23 AM Page 15

remarkably like the Springthorpe one, on the grounds that he found it

difficult to manage two concerns. In July D’Arc was selling parts

of wax figures, “the remains of the late Springthorpe’s Waxwork

Show.”37 In addition he was selling marionettes, scenery, and “tricks”

from John Springthorpe’s company, while the widow Springthorpe and

her family struggled on for the next few years with a depleted show.

D’Arc was planning an American tour but ended by turning his atten-

tions to Scotland. He had a season in Dundee, where the show ran from

late July until October . In January , back at the Rotunda,

Dublin, he was advertising for marionette workers for a season at the

Queen’s Hall, Liverpool. The Liverpool season opened at the beginning

of March, and the show ran for an amazingly successful five months.

The lessee of the hall, W. J. Bullock, purchased the show in April and

retitled it the “Royal Marionettes.” The sale had little effect on D’Arc’s

activities. He had retained his waxworks and either already had made

a duplicate marionette show with newer figures or else had a sufficient

amount of material at hand, especially if he had absorbed the

Springthorpe marionettes. The Rotunda remained his base in Ireland,

and in April he was advertising for a new company. In June he was

presenting marionette performances of Cinderella in addition to the

waxworks. He was also rebuilding his company, with a view to foreign

touring, looking for “first class figure workers – who have no objection

to going abroad – also a young man who understands to work the

Shadow Figures cleverly.”38 The reference to shadow figures suggests a

form of puppetry that may have been more widespread than surviving

documents would suggest. Sam Baylis had been involved in this, and the

street galanty shows were also quite common.

In August D’Arc paid a very successful visit to Chester with his

waxwork exhibition but may well have included marionettes in the

program. In December the show was raided by the police in

Manchester. It was offering waxworks and tableaux vivants.39 Tableaux

vivants were a popular entertainment and were often only an excuse for

a display of the scantily clad live female form. By D’Arc was firmly

established with his waxwork exhibition and marionettes in the Victoria

Rooms, Cardiff, where a D’Arc presence remained until the s.

Contexts

010 c1 (1-16) 8/4/04 10:23 AM Page 16

Chapter 2 :

Proprietors & Practitioners

�The Composition of Companies

Like music masters, dancing masters, and singing teachers, propri-

etors of marionette shows in the nineteenth century commonly added

the title “professor” to confer respectability to their calling, a tradition

that has remained with Punch and Judy performers today. They usually

came from the artisan classes and often had other specific trades, rang-

ing from music to carpentry to glass-blowing. In the hierarchy of per-

formers, the status of marionette showpeople was lower than that of

actors, while street showpeople with mobile booths and a few variety fig-

ures virtually fell into the ranks of vagabonds. Because marionette show-

people traveled much of the time and often lived in caravans, they were

sometimes perceived as gypsies. Most marionette showpeople retained

links with the settled community from which they originated, and many

had homes where they could spend time when not on the road.

The nineteenth-century marionette company was based on the fam-

ily. Some families had been involved in fairground entertainments for

several generations; others drifted into the profession out of economic

necessity. When showpeople died or ran into financial problems, the

equipment might be sold and acquired by the proprietor of a sideshow,

or even a nonpuppeteer, as a way of earning a living. Most companies

had more than one member of the same family involved. Links between

families and marriages of cousins were common. In Richard

Barnard married his cousin Elizabeth Jane Middleton, widow of Philip

Clark (another marionette worker). The Holden and Lawrence fami-

lies (both of whom had been traveling entertainers since at least the

beginning of the nineteenth century) became linked by marriage when

the brothers Thomas and James Holden married Sarah and Agnes

Lawrence.

020 c2 (17-45) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 17

Where the family itself did not suffice, hired help was brought in. It

was not uncommon for a son or daughter to continue the business when

a parent died or became too old. Sons and daughters of marionette show-

people had served an apprenticeship in the business and often set up on

their own in the line of business they knew most about (sometimes

helped out with the gift of a set of figures).

The existence of more than one company bearing the same fam-

ily name can cause confusion for the researcher. In Middleton’s

Marionette Establishment was listed as one of the attractions of the

Nottingham Goose Fair; and in “Mr Middleton begs to inform the

Public that his Marionette Theatre is again at the fair. Crowded

Houses.”1 This probably refers to the company of James Middleton but

might also refer to that of his brother Charles. The two Holden troupes

were constantly mixed up and often treated as just one. John Holden (at

a peak of success in London in ) had shows at three separate ven-

ues daily, apparently with three separate companies. The various Tiller

and Clowes companies not only were interrelated but were often in

action in roughly the same area, which leads to a lot of confusion. In

, according to Harriet Clowes, there were five Clowes and Tiller

shows: Mrs. Ambrose Tiller Senior, Walter Tiller, Ambrose Tiller Junior

(his brother), J. G. Clowes Junior (brother of Harriet), and Clowes and

Sons (which included Harriet and her brothers).2

In many cases companies were carried on by widows or daughters

who had married and changed their name. A Middleton of the early

nineteenth century married a widow Frisby. We know that the

Middletons were traveling theatre people, but it is possible that their

marionette activities began as a result of this union and that the later

claim that the “family” had been involved with marionettes since

was true, but through the Frisby line.3

Eliza Hunt, the long-lived matriarch of the various Tiller and Clowes

companies, also belonged to an older traveling family (Cheadle) and

may have brought her own marionettes with her when she married.

Links with other forms of popular entertainment were also common.

Many marionette performers are associated with circus families, includ-

ing the Chipperfields, Fossetts, Duffys, Matthews, and Wilsons.

The demarcation between marionettes and troupes of traveling

actors could be fluid. Owners of booths readily switched from live actors

to marionettes and vice versa, or combined the two. In the s James

Proprietors and Practitioners

020 c2 (17-45) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 18

Middleton was running what was known as the Middleton Theatrical

and Marionette Booth. According to Richard Barnard, it was quite com-

mon in the earlier nineteenth century for theatrical booths touring the

fairs to be joined in the summer months by actors from the London the-

atres, while “in the winter months, the Puppet plays, the old style

Fantoccinni [sic] were resorted to to get a living. Playing in Public

Houses’ Skittle Alleys, and in the country places Barns etc., had to be

fitted up for the entertainment to be given, no other place being then

obtainable.”4

Proprietors and Practitioners

. Middleton and

Frisby bill, s.

George Speaight

Collection.

020 c2 (17-45) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 19

�The First Half of the Nineteenth Century

Information on marionette showpeople in the first half of the cen-

tury is patchy, and much has to be conjectural. The Calver family was

active by the s and was regarded as one of the major traveling

shows, touring the circuit of manufacturing towns: Leeds, Sheffield,

Huddersfield, Halifax, Wakefield, Manchester. Its proprietor, Edward

Calver, was succeeded by his son Walter, who died in at the age of

thirty-six. The last mention of the show is in .

One of the most colorful performers of the first half of the century

was William J. Mumford, born around , probably in Bedfordshire.

He appeared in the streets of London in the s, wearing a straw cos-

tume he had made. This was probably some sort of mummer’s costume,

which would have seemed a little unusual in the capital. No doubt it

attracted as much attention as his “dancing dolls.” His “Italian mari-

onette exhibition” included such classic folk pieces as Valentine and

Orson and The Children in the Wood. He moved to Glasgow, selling spir-

its (though his marionettes may have been the side-line). By he

had set up his “mechanical theatre” in the Saltmarket, where he per-

formed until or . Like other marionette showpeople he had

problems with the licensee of the Theatre Royal, John Henry Alexander,

who objected to all “irregular” theatres. He was also well known for his

serious lectures on the evils of drink, which formed a part of the pro-

gram but were often given in a state of inebriation.5

Billy Purvis’s memoirs provide a unique illustration of the daily life

of a traveling marionette showman between the mid s and the

s.6 These were written toward the end of a working life and largely

from memory, but the constant use of dates suggests that he may have

kept a diary to which he could refer. He ran away from home, near

Edinburgh, to be an entertainer. Initially Purvis worked the fairs as a

singer and dancer and also as a pugilist. He had no background with

marionettes, but in he met the fantoccini performer Grey in

Preston, where they were both performing in a pleasure garden.7 When

they met again in Newcastle, Purvis joined his show. After performances

in that area, Grey vanished one day with his puppets, the takings, and

a gold brooch and ring belonging to Purvis, who then made up his own

set of fantoccini figures and appeared successfully at the October fairs

and also at Newcastle Races in .8 With the end of the fair season

Proprietors and Practitioners

020 c2 (17-45) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 20

Purvis put away his fantoccini for the winter and gave evening dancing

classes. Purvis’s main circuit was the district between Newcastle,

Edinburgh, and Glasgow. He showed his fantoccini at the March fair of

in Kelso and then moved on to Jedburgh Fair, where his success

enabled him to rent the Assembly Rooms for four performances, well

patronized by the local gentry.9 From Jedburgh he made his way to

Edinburgh, via Musselburgh races. In Purvis also appeared at

Newcastle Races, which he followed with a circuit of the Northumber-

land fairs. In , in company with James Scott, manager of a portable

theatre, he traveled to Glasgow by ship (using the Forth and Clyde canal).

After brisk business in Glasgow, he toured Scotland, ending with a stay

of “a month or six weeks” in Dundee and then returned to Newcastle

by ship.

At about this period Purvis decided to become proprietor of a “loco-

motive” or portable theatre and toured Northumberland with live actors

and a dramatic program. In March at Alnwick his actors mutinied,

demanding their unpaid wages. He responded by sacking them all and

continued a short while with fresh actors, before deciding to replace

them with marionettes:

I turned to my own resources and commenced multum in parvo by

myself, I got up a complete set of theatrical performing figures that

could not bother me with a strike, though they might have struck, no

doubt. Cinderella, Homer and the Moor, Fair Rosamund, and Babes

in the Wood were among the many. We spoke behind the scenes for

the figures. Mr. Henry Wadforth was one of the assistant ventrilo-

quists, and the little creatures went through their parts more perfectly

than many of our living leading stars. Mr. James Laird was the vio-

lino primo of the establishment.10

There are fewer details of the itineraries of this period, but the new

troupe appeared in Sunderland, Chester-le-Street, Durham, Bishop

Auckland, and Darlington. Purvis mentions leaving a “pavillion” at

Darlington because the cost of transporting it to Newcastle would be

£. Back in Newcastle, he simply went to a timber merchant, bought

materials, and built a new and smaller booth. In addition he gave shows

in private houses, where he might offer either a conjuring show or a fan-

toccini one. After business declined, and Purvis blamed this on the

Proprietors and Practitioners

020 c2 (17-45) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 21

depression in trade at the time. He spent about five years in Scotland,

briefly returning to live actors. In he was still performing with his

puppets; the next year he claimed to have made quite a lot of money,

“with my threepence for whappers and twopence for trappers.”11 Billy

Purvis’s last years were obviously difficult, and the publication of his

memoirs was itself a partial attempt to keep financially afloat. By the

time he died in , he had already become a semilegendary figure.

Purvis was assisted for a time by Sam Baylis, who worked as scene-

painter, “actor” (puppeteer), and musician. When Baylis set up on his

own, around , Purvis gave him a few figures, informing him that

they had been “the property of Seawood, the greatest figure-man of his

day.” We have no record of Seawood, but it is possible that Baylis meant

Samuel Seward, who created a marionette theatre in Cheltenham in

.12

As well as marionettes Baylis presented “ombres vivants,” appearing

with these in in Manchester, Bolton, Belfast, Birmingham, Leeds,

and Wilton’s Music Hall and the Royal Cosmotheca (London). The exact

nature of this entertainment is not quite certain; his description of it as

“a rational and harmless entertainment, having called forth consider-

able mechanical powers in their construction,” does not make matters

much clearer.13 In September he felt it necessary to remind peo-

ple that he also had a marionette show in addition to his shadow per-

formances: “S.B. has also other performances he would not object to do

occasionally. The speaking figure on the knees which smokes a cigar and

plays several tunes on a whistle and Galvanic and Electromagnetic

Experiments, the dancing Automaton, and a first-rate Marionette

Entertainment.”14

By Baylis began to advertise his show as “Marionettes and Living

Shadows.” In July he completed a five-month engagement at the

St. Leonard’s Hall, , Shoreditch, London, with shadows and a pan-

tomime. He seems to have alternated longer engagements, when avail-

able, with short visits to smaller centers, which he probably organized

himself. In , on a Yorkshire and Lancashire circuit, he visited

Castleford, Harrogate, Pately Bridge, and Ripon, using available public

rooms or halls but never stopping for more than three days.15 In April

he performed at the Lancaster “Exhibition of Arts, Manufactures

etc.” In October he had a season of at least several weeks in Blackpool

before moving on to an engagement at the Grand Infirmary Bazaar at

Proprietors and Practitioners

020 c2 (17-45) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 22

the Corn Exchange, Preston. In April he was performing at the

Victoria Rooms, Doncaster, where he spent a number of weeks, with a

short break in the middle. From early May until at least the second week

of June he toured Lincolnshire, visiting Grantham, Sleaford, Spalding,

and Boston. In August Baylis began a ten-week engagement at the Crystal

Palace, Blackpool, which, he claimed, was visited by , people. In

October he announced his “Fifth Annual Tour of England.”16

Baylis had a small family show and was clearly a gifted artist. From

the s on he remained for long periods in Scarborough, where he

had prolonged summer seasons. The last reference to “Sam Baylis’s

Celebrated Marionettes” is in . There is another mention of Baylis’s

marionettes in , but this may refer to his son Charles, who had his

own company of “Italian” marionettes from , as distinct from his

father’s “French” ones. Baylis’s foreign travels call for more investiga-

tion. He claimed in , possibly with some degree of exaggeration, to

have performed in every country in Europe and America.17

�Middleton’s, a Marionette Dynasty

The Middleton family is central to any study of the nineteenth-

century marionette theatre and illustrates remarkably well the various

relationships and connections of a major group involved in this activity.

They toured mostly in the southeast of England (Kent and Sussex); but

some of their descendants, notably Charles Webb and Richard Barnard,

went much farther afield.

The earliest document is a permit signed by the town clerk and the

mayor of Dover on February :

We do hereby certify that the Bearer, to wit Jane Middleton, about

the age of fifty whose deceased husband was a native and freeman of

Dovor [sic], is a Woman of a good and respectable Character, and that

her Performances in the Town have been uniformly conducted with

Propriety and Decorum. . . .

From her proper conduct and industrious Exertions to support her-

self and a Family of Five Children we have been induced to grant

her this Certificate.18

A cutting from a newspaper of mentions the imprisonment of

a Mr. Middleton (probably James) for doing plays without a license and

Proprietors and Practitioners

020 c2 (17-45) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 23

to the supposed detriment of the Theatre Royal. Sometimes the holder

of the license for the local theatre could be very jealous of any infringe-

ment of the monopoly. The event was recorded in the form of a satiri-

cal poem about Punch being arrested by a “wooden-headed” local

council. 19

A bill of printed in Canterbury gives the company the title of

“Middleton’s Royal Automaton Figures.” After the problems of a few

years earlier, care is taken to announce that “Mr. M. assures the Public

that his Exhibition is essentially different from Theatricals; the

Characters of the Pieces here represented being supported throughout

by MECHANICAL FIGURES ONLY, but still with the strictest resem-

blance to life.”20

As was common, the words “fantoccini” and “marionette” do not

appear on the bill, though the content of the program, which includes

a comic opera and some stock fantoccini acts such as four quadrille

dancers, the “Magic (Grand) Turk” (who dismembers), and the Italian

“Scaramouch,” makes it quite clear that this is a marionette show and

not a display of automata.

By the s two Middleton companies were active, headed by James

Middleton and Charles Middleton, presumably the sons of Jane (Frisby)

Middleton. James, who would have been a young man in the s, is

probably the “Mr M.” mentioned in the bill. A sister married an

Irish actor called Terry and became involved in theatrical wardrobes.

Family myth tried to make her the mother or grandmother of the great

actress Ellen Terry, but that does not appear to be the case. Another

brother, Henry, was the father of Henry James Middleton, who was mar-

ried to Sarah Jane Holden (sister of Thomas Holden) and went to

America in , probably as a part of the second Bullock company.21 In

he died of sunstroke. By his sons Harry and George William

had reformed a company called the Middleton Brothers. When Harry

died in , George William, his mother, and his wife, Jenny, contin-

ued the show, which ceased only with his death in .22

James Middleton had a number of children, including Alfred, James

II, Edwin, and William. By the enterprise was known as Middleton

Brothers’ “Royal and Original Marionettes” and traveled in the south-

east of England.23 “Professor” A. (Alfred) Middleton, who also had a

troupe of performing dogs, acted as manager. Alfred, Edwin, and James

II found their way to America over the next few years and were proba-

Proprietors and Practitioners

020 c2 (17-45) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 24

bly responsible for “The Original and Only Royal Marionettes,” which

appeared in Philadelphia in .24

Middleton’s Marionettes are recorded in Margate in January ,

probably under the management of William; but by the show had

ceased to function and was stored in a decrepit state in Sittingbourne,

Kent. William was then in poor health and put the equipment up for

sale, indicating in the advertisement that he might be prepared to take

on a “partner with a small capital.”25 The portable theatre, marionettes,

wagons, stage, and scenery were bought by Thomas Clunn Lewis, who

then employed William Middleton as a figure-worker and musician.

William Middleton’s sister Lenorah was married to a musician,

Richard Barnard, who died in . Their son, Richard Barnard, became

one of the most important marionette proprietors of the last quarter of

the century.26 At the age of thirteen, he joined his great-uncle Charles

Middleton, with whom he traveled from the late autumn or winter of

through the summer of . This period is recorded in his Life

and Travels, which, allowing for inaccuracies or lapses of memory, gives

a great deal of information about Charles’s company and provides a rare

and valuable account of the everyday life and traveling pattern of a mar-

ionette theatre around .27 Barnard joined the portable theatre in

Chatham and went with it to Strood. As business was poor in the south-

east, Middleton decided to make for Norwich Fair. They hired horses to

take the two living caravans and four wagons of equipment to London.

The wagons were then sent by rail to Norwich, while the caravans took

a week to complete the journey, being slowed down by stops to hire

horses and by appalling weather.

Railways for freight transport coupled with improvements in road-

making took some of the pain out of traveling. By this period more and

more showpeople (circus, theatre, and marionette) were using four-wheel

caravans. These well-equipped “living wagons” were usually more com-

fortable than the cheap lodgings available and became the homes of

showpeople when they were on the road, if not all the time. The cara-

van was usually occupied by the proprietor’s family and replaced the more

primitive wagon covered with heavy canvas. The construction of bigger

and better ones became an important industry in itself.

After Norwich Charles Middleton took his show to Great Yarmouth,

Gorleston, Lowestoft, and other places in Norfolk and Suffolk. They per-

formed in various small towns in Essex until they reached Colchester,

Proprietors and Practitioners

020 c2 (17-45) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 25

where they remained for three or four weeks. At Malden Fair the booth

was wrecked by a storm (doing £ worth of damage). During the three

weeks it took to rebuild the booth, they performed in the Public Hall.

The company reached Cambridge for the fair on Midsummer Green.

According to Barnard, fairground performances lasted fifteen or twenty

minutes, with twenty-five to thirty performances daily. Cambridge was

followed by Framlington, Stowmarket, and Newmarket, after which

they worked their way back to Kent. Business was slack until they

reached Brighton, where they were able to remain for five months. They

then moved westward to Portsmouth, stopping at Shoreham, Little-

hampton, and Chichester. In Portsmouth they rented a site for four weeks

but remained fifteen months, performing twice nightly, despite unsuc-

cessful attempts by the nearby theatre to have them closed down for per-

forming stage plays without a license. They stayed five months in

Southampton. After a good initial week, illness hit various members of

the company, and business deteriorated. After this they tried Lymington,

Christchurch, and finally Poole, where Barnard left the company.

Barnard’s cousin Charles Webb was a grandson of Charles Middleton.

He was born circa and grew up and worked in his grandfather’s

company until , when Charles Middleton remarried. Middleton’s

second wife was herself the proprietor of a theatrical booth, which she

sold to a member of her company. Disagreements with the new Mrs.

Middleton led to the departure of Charles Webb, his wife, Mary Ann

Wiggins, and their young cousin, Richard Barnard. They all found work

with Springthorpe’s, then in Liverpool. The show opened in Belfast and

toured in Ireland and southwest England; but audiences were poor, and

it had to close down early in . Most of Webb’s subsequent career

was spent touring outside Britain.

A daughter of Charles Middleton married William Case. The Cases

were active in the s and traveled largely in the Midlands. They per-

formed the popular plays of the day. The importance of the show can

be gauged by an advertisement for a band of five.28 The company

was now called “Case’s Royal Champion Marionettes.” There are vari-

ous references to them up to ; but, according to their cousin Richard

Barnard, Mrs. Case and her son Walter were working for John Simms

at Swansea in .29 This may point to the death of Case himself. An

advertisement for the sale of the whole outfit, including a new booth,

is followed by an indication that “[t]he Proprietor would receive a good

Proprietors and Practitioners

020 c2 (17-45) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 26

energetic partner . . . with capital.”30 The energetic partner with capi-

tal may have been Frank Walton, since a W. (probably Walter) Case was

manager of Walton’s Royal Marionettes. The outfit did not prosper. In

Walter Case was advertising for a job as worker or speaker, since

“in consequence of another failure of Marionettes, I am thrown out of

an engagement.”31 Walter Case and his wife were with Wilding’s in

. Case joined his cousin Richard Barnard in , but it is not cer-

tain whether he remained with him consistently. The last we hear of

Walter Case is an advertisement for employment as a figure-worker or

stage manager in .

�Clowes, Tiller, and Rural Touring

Middleton’s company was only one of many traveling family groups.

The last years of the century, despite a huge increase in the number of

marionette showpeople, saw a decline in the number of fit-ups on the

roads. One of the most significant groups to emerge in the second half

of the century was the Clowes and Tiller company, most of whose tour-

ing was on the relatively small rural circuits of East Anglia and the

southwest. Their combined activity originated with another marionette

proprietor, John Simms. In the s Simms and his partner Edward

Hunt had a major touring marionette theatre in the southwest of

England and South Wales. Hunt, who belonged to a family of traveling

showpeople and may have been the owner of the booth they used, was

married to Eliza Cheadle; their daughter Betsy was married to a mem-

ber of the Simms company, John Clowes. Clowes came from another

well-established marionette show that followed a rural circuit in the

Birmingham area. In May the Simms booth was badly damaged

by a storm. In the struggle to save it, Hunt was seriously injured and

died a few days later. According to family legend, Eliza Hunt swore to

her husband that she would never remarry. This story was used to jus-

tify why she subsequently became the common-law partner of Ambrose

Tiller, a young carpenter from Southampton who had been with the

company since about . Eliza Cheadle thus became the long-lived

matriarch of both a Clowes and a Tiller line of marionette showpeople.

By Ambrose and Eliza were running their own show. Like many

such enterprises, this had its vicissitudes. In they were looking for

work, although subsequently they had their own outfit again. Between

Proprietors and Practitioners

020 c2 (17-45) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 27

and the names of Clowes and Tiller are linked as “Clowes

and Tiller’s Marionettes.” An advertisement of mentions only

“Tiller’s Marionettes.” In Walter, eldest son of Eliza and Ambrose,

left his parents’ show and went briefly into partnership with J. G. Clowes

Junior (his half-sister’s son). They called themselves “Clowes and

Tiller’s Famous Marionettes.” The partnership lasted only a year. Walter

then set up on his own, while a separate Clowes troupe traveled in the

southeast of England. He called his show “Walter Tiller’s Famous

Marionettes and Talented Concert Party,” presenting a mixed bill of

marionette dramas, fantoccini or variety marionette numbers, and var-

ious musical and comic acts with live performers. His son Sid (Wilfrid

Sidney) was particularly noted for his Big Boot dance. Their main area

of activity was the West Country (Somerset, Devon, and Dorset).

After the death of Ambrose I, around , Eliza continued the show,

assisted by her daughter Lucy (Tiller), son-in-law Bert Bowden, and

some of her Clowes grandchildren. It was known as “Mrs E. Tiller’s

Marionettes and Bioscope.” Eliza Tiller continued until . Bert

Bowden, who had managed the show since , was running it as “Bert

Bowden’s Marionettes” in but closed down in for the duration

of the war. Eliza Tiller herself died on February at the age of

eighty-eight or eighty-nine in her living wagon in the yard of the

Reindeer Inn at Lincoln.32

Eliza’s son Ambrose Tiller, who was also a musician (conductor and

leading violinist at Boscombe Arcade, near Bournemouth) and a pho-

tographer specializing in picture postcards, left the family show about

and set up “Tiller’s Mechanical Mannikin Show and Theatre of

Varieties.” In articles in the World’s Fair the term “mannikins” is con-

stantly used when referring to his show and may have been a way of dis-

tinguishing it from his mother’s.

In March Ambrose Tiller departed on a tour of the West Country,

visiting eighteen towns and villages in Devon and Dorset and giving an

average of six to eight performances in each place. Then he gradually

worked his way back to East Anglia; like his mother, he toured East

Anglia and Lincolnshire, performing at fairs and setting up a booth in

inn-yards.

Ambrose Tiller kept diaries between and , which have

helped establish a picture of the life of a traveling marionette theatre

during these years.33 Except for and , Ambrose gave between

Proprietors and Practitioners

020 c2 (17-45) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 28

and performances a year; the annual takings were usually

between £ and £. Over fifteen years some , people saw the

show. Audiences averaged about sixty persons per show. The average tak-

ings (with seats at s, d, and d) were £/s per show. This meant that

Ambrose had a daily income of about s, out of which he paid all bills,

food, hire of horses, extra artists, and men. That indicates what a tight

budget a small family show had to run on. An added economic problem

was the number of days when performances were canceled because of

the weather or because the tilt (roof) had been blown off. The struggle

to make a living is undoubtedly a reason why many puppet showpeople

were seeking another profession by the early twentieth century.

�Foreign Touring

Foreign touring was not strictly a new phenomenon. We know that

English puppeteers were traveling through Holland and Germany by

the start of the seventeenth century. The most phenomenally success-

ful tours of the nineteenth century were those of the Holden family.

The first documents relating to Holden’s are for Bartholomew Fair

around and refer to Thomas Holden, a glassblower, who also pre-

sented marionettes and enjoyed a certain notoriety because of the glass

wig that he sported. Glass-blowing was a common fairground attrac-

tion, and small animals and other figures of glass could be bought.

Unfortunately, we know nothing of the marionettes; but it seems likely

that Holden used glass-blowing as a good way of attracting an audience

for the show inside.34

In the s John Holden, probably the son of Thomas, was a mari-

onette proprietor and had moved northward to Yorkshire from Essex,

where he had been based.35 The company became known as “Holden’s

Champion Marionette Exhibition.” By John Holden’s son, also

John (“eldest of ”), was working with him as manager. Advertise-

ments for personnel invite applicants to contact J. and J. Holden. At this

period Holden’s and Middleton’s were probably very similar in terms of

repertoire and image.

A younger son, Thomas, worked with the company but had left

the family business by and gone to America as stage manager

for Bullock’s Royal Marionettes. Upon returning to Britain, Thomas

Holden did not rejoin the family troupe but looked for employment as

Proprietors and Practitioners

020 c2 (17-45) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 29

a figure-worker. The main Holden troupe was probably not large enough

to support too many family members, and there were already dis-

agreements with John Junior. Thomas and his younger brother James,

who later had a reputation as a particularly fine figure-worker, set up

their own company early in .36 In April T. Holden was per-

forming with his “Queen’s Marionettes” at Hengler’s Circus, Glasgow.37

In late October of that year John Holden (Junior) announced a season

at the London Pavilion, where he probably remained until mid January

, when he transferred to the Royal Forrester’s Music Hall (Mile

End). Thomas Holden also had his company in London, performing at

the Cambridge Music Hall at roughly the same time.38 John Holden was

back in Liverpool by early February, but Thomas remained in London,

transferring to the Royal Holborn, where a final benefit performance

was given on March. The following winter both companies appeared

again in London music halls. For the next fifteen years there seems to

have been little communication between the two Holden troupes. The

situation may have been exacerbated by the marriage of Thomas and

James into the “rival” Lawrence family.

Foreign tours were now perceived as profitable. Both companies

worked extensively outside Britain, acquiring a high reputation in con-

tinental Europe. John traveled in France, Spain, Belgium, and Holland.

Back in Liverpool at the end of , he indicated that he had not been

there for thirteen years and that he had been out of England for eight.

He subsequently referred to his “transfer to the continent.”39 Broadly

speaking, John Holden was based in Europe (mainly France and

Belgium) from the late s until the mid s.

Outside Britain, Thomas Holden was the best-known Victorian mar-

ionette proprietor. His name became almost synonymous with English

marionettes and supreme technical virtuosity. His show was a constant

point of reference and managed to be credited with every novelty that

appeared on the marionette stage. In – he was the main attrac-

tion at the Bolero Star Music Hall in Paris for fifteen months, launch-

ing a dazzling international career which ultimately led him as far as

South America. Holden’s was widely imitated, and the name was used

to boost publicity for other companies. The Schichtls, a German troupe

that borrowed liberally from any available source, boasted that they had

been on St. Pauli fairground in Hamburg when Holden’s company was

there. In Turin the Lupi company of the Teatro Gianduja both com-

Proprietors and Practitioners

020 c2 (17-45) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 30

peted with and imitated Holden’s when it had a season in that city in

. In Istanbul, a city that Holden’s visited several times, a replica of

the show was staged in by a puppeteer called Emin Bey.40

John retired about in easy circumstances. Thomas, having made

a fortune, retired about the same time, leaving James to continue the

show until , when he too retired from marionettes to become the les-

see of the Empire Theatre, Harrogate.41 By the early s the great days

of Holden’s company were receding into the past. Advertisements in the

Era for show them looking for engagements, an indication that they

were no longer sought after as before. The years spent touring abroad

may also mean that home audiences were less familiar with them.42

Both Holden companies discovered the art of publicity on the grand

scale. John Holden took a whole column of a local newspaper to

announce the coming of his “grand marionette exhibition and temple

of fantoccini” to Nottingham Goose Fair in .43 His extensive and

very public “row” with Lawrence’s in the pages of the Era in

centered on Lawrence’s bold claim to be the “Originators and Manu-

facturers of the principal Marionette Entertainments in England,

Germany and America.”44Insults were hurled: Lawrence’s was described

as the “Fungi Fraternity,” while John Holden became the “Crusher”

and “Fog Horn.” Readers became involved in a spectacular fight

between two companies, both claiming to be the “greatest.” Holden’s

companies (especially Thomas’s troupe) also made much of the origi-

nality of their show and warned people against imitators. They also

made unprecedented use of the media and publicity to promote an

image of smart and up-to-date shows aimed at more affluent spectators.

Mae Holden (sister of John, Thomas, and James) married Jesse Jewell

and also sometimes traded under the name of Holden. The Jewell-

Holdens also traveled in Europe, performing in front of the Dutch royal

family in . A bill for the Kurhaus, Scheveningen, for August of

that year shows them presenting the same repertoire as the other Holden

companies and obviously trading on the name. When they appeared in

Edinburgh in under the name of Holden, John and James promptly

published a letter in the Era, declaring that no Holden marionettes were

performing in England or Scotland at that time, especially as a “side-

show.” The brothers did not feel that Madame Jewell’s show added to

the Holden reputation. After this the company (advertising in Liverpool,

Dublin, and London) retained the name Jewell and was sometimes

Proprietors and Practitioners

020 c2 (17-45) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 31

advertised as “Madame Jewell’s French Marionettes.” The Jewells

moved to the United States, probably in , and Jesse Jewell died in

February . A note in the Era referred to him as “one of the finest

marionette workers in the field.” A week later this was rectified by Harry

Fanning, who pointed out that he was a proprietor not a worker and that

the main manipulator was Madame Jewell.45

The first recorded marionette shows in America, with Punch, date

from the s and are almost certainly English.46 By the middle of the

nineteenth century companies were traveling to America more fre-

quently. The most important American tour was that of William

Bullock’s Royal Marionettes, who arrived hot from the success of a pro-

longed visit to London in September . The complicated saga of this

tour has been well recorded by Paul McPharlin.47 In the end it involved

not one but two troupes of some of Britain’s leading marionette per-

formers touring the United States and resulted in a number of close imi-

tations of the successful English show.

Bullock’s Number company included Charles Webb and his wife,

Philip George Clark and his wife (Elizabeth Jane Middleton), Thomas

Holden and his wife (Sarah Lawrence) and brother-in-law (William

Henry Lawrence), and James Shaw. John E. McDonough and Hartley

A. Earnshaw, the American managers/partners, lured away most of this

team with higher wages. They tried to obtain control of the show and

eventually built their own replica of it.48 The new company included

the Webbs and Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Holden. They toured in San

Francisco and a number of cities before moving on to Honolulu in

December . By the time the ten-member company reached

Australia in May , only the Webbs and a Miss Hughes were left of

the original group.

At the beginning of April Bullock sent over his Number com-

pany, which opened in Brooklyn. This time the company included

Richard Barnard, who had missed the opportunity to go with Charles

Webb the previous year. He left Liverpool on March . Almost on

arrival, he found himself plunged into the bad feeling between the

breakaway group and the new company. Bullock’s new company con-

sisted of a limited number of genuinely competent figure-workers and

a motley assortment of assistants. Because of his experience, Barnard

rapidly became the principal figure-worker of the company and worked

for Bullock until . His salary was thirty-five shillings a week, about

Proprietors and Practitioners

020 c2 (17-45) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 32

ten shillings above the usual rate for a figure-worker in England but low

by American standards.

With the development of steamboats in the mid-century, crossing the

Atlantic (and other oceans) became much simpler, and railways allowed

huge distances to be covered relatively easily. The expansion of the

British Empire had created expatriate populations of administrators,

soldiers, merchants, and others in far-flung parts of the globe. One con-

sequence was the springing up of theatres and opera houses for the enter-

tainment of these expatriates and their families. Theatre companies

toured the colonies, and in their wake came marionette companies.

When McDonough and Earnshaw reached Australia in , audiences

had the experience of seeing an English show under American man-

agement. The Webbs left the company in Melbourne and set off for just

under three months in New Zealand as a fantoccini act, part of Smith’s

Combination. They left Auckland for Sydney on March and

then appeared in May and June in Sydney and Melbourne with “The

English and French Artists.” In Melbourne they joined up with another

former member of the McDonough-Earnshaw company, Charles

Trotter, to form “Webb and Trotter’s Royal Marionettes,” which pre-

sented a full-length program. In February “Webb and Trotter’s”

left for Sydney, performing at the exhibition from April to June, and

then on to a second tour of New Zealand until the end of the year. In

they were in Melbourne and again at the Sydney Exhibition. On

their way back to England in they played in Singapore, Burma,

Ceylon, India, Suez, Port Said, and Alexandria. They appeared at the

Royal Oriental Theatre in Ceylon on May.49 It has been suggested that

Sri Lankan puppetry shows the influence of passing European mari-

onette performers. If this is the case, that influence could have come

from the Webbs.

Back in England, the Webbs, with Trotter as stage manager, appeared

in East Anglia (Cambridge and Norwich) in January as the Royal

Australian and Indian Marionettes, still with a program based on the

Bullock/McDonough and Earnshaw one. They then embarked on a

northern European tour, visiting Germany, France, Belgium, Sweden,

Norway, and Finland. At the beginning of they were in St.

Petersburg in Lent’s Museum and then continued to Moscow. At the

end of they returned to Australia, this time accompanied by

Charles’s sister. Between March and May they appeared in Adelaide,

Proprietors and Practitioners

020 c2 (17-45) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 33

Melbourne, and Sydney as a part of “Hudson’s New Surprise,” but Mrs.

Jane Webb died on April in Sydney. After a visit to Brisbane and sur-

roundings, “Webb’s Royal Marionettes” set off for a third tour of New

Zealand at the end of August. They remained there until February ,

when they visited Tasmania before returning to Melbourne in May. On

October Charles Webb died at Probolingo, Java.50 Richard

Bradshaw calls him “the most important Australian marionettist of the

Victorian era.”51

Almost by chance the D’Arc company found their way to Africa,

Australia, and East Asia. In , according to his son W. J. D’Arc,

Lambert D’Arc received three offers to tour abroad, performing at the

Paris Exhibition, in America, and in South Africa.52 He finally went to

South Africa, with Arthur Bonamici as his manager. After a successful

six weeks in Kimberley, they moved on to Tillis’s Circus, Cape Town, for

another six weeks, then to Durban and Pietermaritzburg. It took them

six weeks to reach Johannesburg with a team of bullocks. They played

at the Theatre Royal there for four months and later visited Pretoria.

South Africa was followed by India in , and “Mons D’Arc’s

Fantoches Françaises” arrived in Sydney from Calcutta in . The

group consisted of Lambert D’Arc and his six children (aged twenty-

six to twelve).53 They played at the Royal Standard Theatre, apparently

to fairly small audiences, and then for a further month in Melbourne at

the St. George’s Hall. After returning to Sydney, they toured Queensland

and reached Cooktown in December. Just as a final transformation scene

was being prepared there, fire broke out on stage. In the ensuing blaze

D’Arc’s lost most of the figures and equipment (apparently mari-

onettes were destroyed). A few days later a benefit concert was orga-

nized; George D’Arc, the eldest son, was specially noted for his efforts

in arranging the stage and his performance of a comic song. Lambert,

who had remained in Sydney (possibly for reasons of health), arrived in

Cooktown the day after the concert. The company remained there for

six months to rebuild the show. In June they played for a week in

Cooktown and then sailed for Thursday Island, where Lambert D’Arc

died on June. Led by his son George, the troupe continued its tour,

performing in Java and in the Straits Settlements and then in Hong

Kong, China, Japan, eastern Siberia, and India. Between May and July

it was performing in Japan, appearing in Kyoto and Tokyo. The

company’s work was particularly appreciated by the Kikugoro family of

Proprietors and Practitioners

020 c2 (17-45) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 34

Kabuki actors. D’Arc’s popularity was so great that Japanese actors tried

to imitate the English marionettes in their own performances. Following

subsequent visits a former manager for D’Arcs, Suekichi Matsune, set

up a troupe of Western-style marionettes.54

�Vicissitudes of a Showman’s Life

Richard Barnard’s life and career help us understand the ups and

downs associated with a small traveling show or showman. Barnard was

ready to go wherever work or an engagement might take him. He ran

his own show, worked for other proprietors, and traveled on small local

circuits in Britain as well as in Europe, from Gibraltar to St. Petersburg.

After his brief American experience with Bullock’s (which he left with

money still owing to him), he joined Thomas Holden’s company in

Brussels and toured Belgium, Holland, and Germany. Holden’s returned

to London to play at the Royal Cambridge Music Hall in January

and then accepted an engagement with the impresario Van Lier of

Amsterdam. Van Lier toured the Dutch fairs with two wooden booths

(one for performances, the other sent ahead and erected in the next town

to be visited). The Barnards’ first baby died in Hoorn; Barnard himself

became sick and had to return to England. With the help of a small

legacy (£) he built his first show. He was joined by Harry Wilding. A

first performance was given at the Royal Aquarium, Westminster, but

the venture proved short-lived. The Barnards were next employed by

H. Montague and the Girards, who had acquired the remnants of the

Springthorpe marionettes, which were put into working condition

again. A small company was assembled, consisting of the Barnards, Mr.

and Mrs. R. C. Donnelly, a limelight worker, a baggage man, and a

pianist, and they set off for a disastrous tour of Belgium, followed by

Douai, Arras, and Amiens. They moved on to Paris, appearing in a hall

in the rue du Château d’Eau, and then at the Alcazar d’Hiver. After a

good start, business deteriorated; their equipment was seized for debt

and held for five weeks, and much of it was lost. Thomas Holden paid

Barnard’s fare back to England.

Performances were given in Kent, but poverty once more stared

Barnard in the face. He was reduced to odd jobs and saw ten shillings

from an aunt as riches. An eight-week engagement at the Brighton

Aquarium, opening on Boxing Day, , led to an engagement at the

Proprietors and Practitioners

020 c2 (17-45) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 35

Ambassadeurs on the Champs-Elysées in Paris. It was spoiled by very

bad weather but did lead to one at the Folies-Bergère. There he signed

contracts for Vienna and Bucharest. In Vienna Barnard’s company

appeared at Danzer’s Orpheum. In Wiener Neustadt a performance was

prevented by the manager of the local theatre, on the grounds that they

had no permit. They also had to pay compensation to the owner of the

hall where they had been going to perform.

This tour was accompanied by a catalogue of problems, often allied

to sharp practice. The winter of –, which was very severe, was

spent in Rumania, where they performed in Bucharest, Galati, and

Bârlad. Barnard again became ill, and his wife gave birth to a baby in

appalling circumstances. They moved on to Jassy, where they discovered

that their “manager” had no money. Barnard put together a full pro-

gram with other artistes, however, and they played there for four or five

weeks. A contract for a twelve-month visit to Russia was drawn up, but

the murder of the czar prevented this. The plan was now to tour Austrian

Poland, and they started with Czernowitz (Cernauti). There too, they

were swindled by a dishonest manager, sporting a spurious aristocratic

title. They lost a lot of money and were lucky to escape back to Vienna

with their equipment. They performed in various halls in and around

Vienna, but business was bad and xenophobia rife. Next came an engage-

ment in Bratislava (Pressburg) and then in Berlin, where they remained

a few weeks. After this they visited Wroclaw (Breslau), Dresden,

Chemnitz, Danzig, and the fair at Leipzig (one of the major European

fairs and a central point for many itinerant European marionette show-

people). From Leipzig they went to Hamburg and then to Munich,

where they gave five or six performances a day in a museum and wax-

works.

In early the company moved back to Paris (via Strasbourg).

Barnard set off for an engagement in Bordeaux, having sent the chil-

dren to England with his wife, who then returned to France. The

Barnard troupe at this time consisted of four persons, including his

cousin Walter Case (who was also a scenic artist and responsible for the

limelight) and an assistant. Bordeaux was a successful engagement and

was followed by a difficult journey to Seville, where they spent two

months at the Cirque Cervantes, followed by brief visits to Cádiz and

Córdoba. Barnard became ill again, possibly with smallpox. Small audi-

ences and doctor’s bills exhausted their meager resources. Performances

Proprietors and Practitioners

020 c2 (17-45) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 36

arranged for Malaga were canceled, because they coincided with a visit

from Holden’s. They managed to negotiate a two-week engagement in

Gibraltar, where another child was born in September. After recover-

ing from this, they returned to England.

Back in England, Barnard assembled some new scenery and took on

two assistants and a pianist. This brought the strength of the troupe to

six (including Barnard and his wife). They performed, without great

success, in the southeast (Deptford, Woolwich, Bexley Heath, and

Gravesend). In January , under the title of “R. Barnard’s Con-

tinental Fantoches Marionettes,” they were engaged at the Pavilion,

Gravesend,55 but only for two weeks. By March, citing family illness as

the reason, Barnard was looking for employment and was taken on by

a company performing in Devon, where business was even worse. An

offer to tour Holland led to fifteen days in Amsterdam and ten in

Rotterdam, but then it was back to England. Barnard had to take a job

as limelight worker in the theatre at Gravesend for the Christmas pan-

tomime. Early in the marionettes were taken out again and per-

formed a little in Kent (Sittingbourne, Ashford, Canterbury), followed

by Chatham, Gravesend, Deptford, and Woolwich. Having spent nearly

all his savings, Barnard bought a portable theatre for £ and took it to

Manchester, where the roof was blown off at the first pitch in Oldham.

He was reduced to selling nonalcoholic drinks from a stall at fairs and

markets.

In came an engagement of fifteen days in Rotterdam (which

turned out to be a tour). He visited Dordrecht, Utrecht, Haarlem,

Leiden, Arnheim, Deventer, and various other towns, traveling by

canal, which was cheaper than the train. When the tour concluded at

Rotterdam, Barnard became ill again but then set off for a fortnight in

Antwerp and a month in Brussels. The next engagement was in

Wroclaw, followed by Poznan and Inowroclaw. Next came a fortnight’s

engagement with a variety show, playing in a wooden booth in

Brunswick; a month later they had a two-month engagement in Leipzig

(where another child was born but did not live very long). According to

the Life and Travels, they spent a cold Christmas in Budapest then

two months in Vienna, after which they made their way to Berlin via

Bohemia. In Berlin Kaufman’s Varieties (Königsplatz) engaged them

for two months. After this came Kassel, Magdeburg, Stuttgart, and the

St. Pauli Fair in Hamburg for Christmas. Barnard may be confusing

Proprietors and Practitioners

020 c2 (17-45) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 37

dates here, since in February he was advertising his “fifth” season

at the Crystal Palace (Sydenham), and by May “Barnard’s renowned

Crystal Palace Marionettes” were appearing at the Oxford Music Hall

(London).56

For Barnard, getting on a boat to Holland or France or setting off for

places as remote as Rumania, Vienna, or St. Petersburg did not neces-

sarily seem much worse than visiting another part of England. Despite

the problems, foreign engagements could be more profitable than per-

formances in Britain. After the chronology of The Life and Travels

becomes sketchy; but there appear to have been more visits to Germany,

Austria, and Bohemia, followed by a brief engagement of three weeks

in London in a variety program at the Piccadilly Hall. Finally came the

engagement in St. Petersburg, Russia, where they were employed for a

three-month period in at the Zoological Gardens (a pleasure gar-

den with various entertainments of a theatrical nature which the direc-

tor Ernst Rost had developed in ). Barnard’s number in a variety

show lasted fifteen to twenty minutes. The troupe on this occasion con-

sisted of Barnard, his stepdaughter and her son, and another “male rel-

ative.” The engagement was marred by Barnard’s ill-health, and money

was lost. Another difficult period in England followed, although it

included a few successful weeks at Barnard’s Variety Theatre in

Chatham.57

The year – was particularly good. It was spent in Paris on

the occasion of the Great Exhibition. Barnard’s had several engage-

ments, commencing at the Eden Theatre (which had become a variety

theatre) and then at the Montagnes Russes (where the main attraction

was a Spanish bullfight), at Ollier’s establishment on the Boulevard, and

at the Skating Rink.

After Paris Barnard put together a full two-hour program for an

engagement that unfortunately came to nothing. Finally he obtained

one at the Westminster Aquarium, moving on to the Crystal Palace for

Christmas to fulfill what he confusingly refers to as his “first” engage-

ment there.58 In the early s the show was carried on by Barnard,

his stepdaughter, and his cousin Walter Case. When Case left and the

stepdaughter moved into a theatrical career, Barnard began to bring his

own offspring into the show. He reverted to a variety slot of ten to twenty

minutes. This final phase of his career made him into a well-known

figure of the English halls. The troupe performed as “Barnard’s

Proprietors and Practitioners

020 c2 (17-45) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 38

Marionettes,” “Barnard’s Fantoches Français and Marionettes,” “Bar-

nard’s Mannikins,” “Barnard’s Comic Marionettes and Fantoches Fran-

çais,” and “Barnard’s Original Royal Aquarium Marionettes.” When

Barnard retired from active work for health reasons in , his sons

Frederick, Julian, and Richard and his daughter Lenorah continued the

show until , visiting the United States and Australia in and

South Africa in .

�Impresarios and Managers

The entertainment industry took off in the s, and marionette

shows or acts increasingly became a commodity. When W. J. Bullock

bought the complete D’Arc show in , he was buying a show that

had already proved itself in Dublin since as an enterprise geared

for the more middle-class spectators – it was in no way a fairground

show. The production values were clearly much higher than those of

the vast majority of shows. We have no clear indications of Bullock’s

prior involvement with marionettes, but he had a very good idea of how

to market a show.

In D’Arc had been thinking of taking his show to America.59

Instead he took it to Liverpool, where it opened at the end of March in

the Queen’s Hall, of which Bullock was lessee.The enormous success of

the show, played twice daily, led Bullock to purchase it in April. Before

the show transferred to London in July, Bullock had already been

approached about an American tour, which eventually took place in

.60 The London season was pitched at the well-off urban audience

and became the fashionable entertainment of the season. By producing

a printed program and even a text (possibly rewritten by Bullock) the

show was placed firmly in the same category as the fashionable theatres

of the West End.

In the s long-running plays led to the creation of road compa-

nies designed to profit from the success of a London show. In some cases

two or even three companies might be sent out to tour the provinces.

Bullock followed this example when he sent a company to America in

, while continuing to present the same show in Britain. The trou-

bles with the American managers arose because of the large sums of

money involved. This was no struggling troupe of entertainers. Just as

a market had been found in Dublin, Liverpool, and London, lucrative

Proprietors and Practitioners

020 c2 (17-45) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 39

ones were found in the main cities of America. In the court case taken

against Thomas Holden for breach of contract in America, Bullock

claimed that in a month in America he had cleared a profit of £,

and that in one day in Baltimore the takings had been £ (about the

equivalent of a full year’s takings for many smaller touring companies

in Britain).61 Such pickings meant that Bullock found it worth his while

to assemble yet another company playing the same show and send it out

in . Likewise, McDonough and Earnshaw were quite happy to make

their own replica of the Bullock show once they failed to retain control

of the puppets.

When his two companies (or what was left of them) returned to

Liverpool in July , Bullock had a single company of some twenty

artistes, including the band. Unfortunately, he was never able to repeat

his success; and by July he had to let go some of the best members

of his troupe.62 After this the company continued to tour Britain, always

presenting a full-length show and using theatres and halls. Bullock died

in . In its last years the company was reduced to being an act on the

variety stage; the last specific reference to the “Royal Marionettes” is in

Leeds in .63 In the remains of the troupe, “ undressed fig-

ures height inches. Dirt cheap,” were advertised for sale.64

Wycherley and Pettigrove was one of the major companies of the

s but may have been more management than marionette players.

Lack of any reference to them in the Era before suggests that they

may have been new to the marionette scene and joined it because of the

obvious profits that the Holdens and Bullock had been able to make.

The first mention of them in the Era refers to performances in

Cheltenham in October as the “Queen’s Marionettes, the property

of Mr Henry Wycherley.” They visited Northampton in January ,

but by February the “sole proprietors and directors” were Sidney Cooper,

Herbert (Henry?) Wycherley, and Britton Pettigrove.65 The name of the

company changed to the “Imperial Marionettes,” and by it had

become Wycherley’s Imperial Marionettes. For the next few years it

covered most of Britain. In and it was looking for manipula-

tors for the “continent,” “Holland, Russia and uncivilised countries

excepted.”66 The last we hear of the company is an advertisement for

the sale of the whole outfit in , with an indication that the propri-

etor “has his hands full and will be shortly going abroad.”67

Proprietors and Practitioners

020 c2 (17-45) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 40

Britton Pettigrove separated from his earlier partners and called his

show “The New Grand National Marionettes.” Understandably, this

title did not really stick, and he reverted to “Mr Pettigrove’s

Marionettes.” By May he was advertising for a “complete company

consisting of Manipulators, Speakers, Singers, Pianists & limelight

worker for the Continent.”68 This was his number two company. The

tour took them at least as far as Copenhagen in April; but that same

month Pettigrove dissolved a partnership with A. Bedford, which

resulted in the sale of a large booth. Pettigrove reassembled a company.

In September he was advertising for “workers and musicians” and set-

ting up a fixed theatre in the Albert Palace, Battersea. This did not last

very long. His son, who had obviously become a performer, was looking

for employment with other companies. A bill of around , on a scale

similar to the Holden bills, mentions the sole proprietor as Richard

Pettigrove and a company including a Miss E. Pettigrove (wardrobe)

and a Mr. T. Pettigrove (properties). At this period, the company visited

Dublin repeatedly, generally appearing in the World’s Fair Music Hall.

As the organizing of tours became a business in itself, a figure who

became almost indispensable was the manager, whose duties included

arranging bookings, especially in music halls, and negotiating foreign

tours. J. H. Montague was managing Simms’s show in and later

had a brief spell of running his own company for an unsuccessful

European tour. His name repeatedly crops up in connection with other

troupes, including Thomas Holden’s and Barnard’s, and he clearly spe-

cialized in handling marionette companies.

�Figure-Workers

Many proprietors advertised in the Era was for “figure-workers.”

The proprietor of a show was not necessarily a figure-worker. The

Springthorpes, with their background in waxworks, did not have the

skills to handle their figures. According to Barnard, one of the two

Springthorpe sons acted as agent, while the other played the violin for

the show, and one of the two daughters played the piano. An advertise-

ment of October shows the widow Springthorpe advertising for

“two respectable people, who thoroughly understand how to work mar-

ionettes” and suggests that Mr. and Mrs. Henry Middleton might apply.

Proprietors and Practitioners

020 c2 (17-45) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 41

The Middletons were probably not available; but the Donnellys were,

and by November an advertisement for Belfast announces: “The figures

are skilfully worked by Mr and Mrs Donnelly.”69

Lambert D’Arc, like the Springthorpes, was no figure-worker and

had to employ people to do this. His enterprise in Dublin employed some

of the leading figure-workers of the day. It also launched the Fanning

family as puppet showpeople. James Fanning, a Dublin church organ-

ist, played the piano for D’Arc’s during seasons at the Rotunda. His

children (including his son Daniel, born September ) first sold

programs and then were hired as figure-workers. When D’Arc sold his

show to W. J. Bullock, the Fannings probably went with it. Over the next

decade they maintained an association with Bullock’s show, were

engaged several times, and rebuilt it after a fire at Altrincham in .

When Bullock died in , his family tried to continue the company.70

In late they were advertising for figure-workers; the two Fanning

brothers, Daniel and Harry, joined them.

The Fannings probably finished their association with Bullock’s in

. Harry joined John Radford and Wilding for a time, and this was

followed by a long engagement with the Jewell Holden company before

he started his own company, which began as Harry Fanning’s and then

became “DeMarion’s Royal Court Marionettes.” Most of the troupe

were members of his family.71 The same was true of his brother Daniel,

who called his company “Delvaine’s” to avoid confusion.72

The Wildings are a good example of showpeople who sometimes

were proprietors and sometimes were simply employed for their skills

with puppets. Like the Middletons, they claimed to have been traveling

showpeople since the eighteenth century. Arthur Wilding (interviewed

in ), however, thought that his grandfather was the first “exponent

of the art.”73 The grandfather in question was Charles Wilding, born in

London in and listed in the census as a marionette manipu-

lator and proprietor. He was a Londoner born in the Tottenham Court

Road, made his own figures, and at one period worked for the Grand

Star Marionettes.74 The first specific references to his family troupe date

from the s, and much of their activity was in the Birmingham area.

An advertisement in the Era shows Charles Wilding and his fam-

ily looking for places as figure-workers. Three years later Charles had

become a proprietor himself and was advertising for “a Lady and

Gentleman Figure Worker to speak for Dramas etc.”75 The advertise-

Proprietors and Practitioners

020 c2 (17-45) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 42

ment stresses that the terms must be low and mentions “building small.”

As sometimes happens with tenting circuses today, all members of a

company were expected to participate in the setting up of the stage or

even the portable theatre when the company possessed one. In the

Wilding show was joined by Walter Case and his wife; but in

Charles Wilding was once more looking for work, having just finished

an engagement with Bullock’s.76

Henry (Harry) James Wilding was born in Suffolk, at Plomesgate

near Aldeburgh, in .77 At the age of seven he was apprenticed to

Sylvester’s Circus in Ireland (perhaps a family connection) and by the

age of fourteen had become an acrobat and bare-back rider, billed as

“Mons. Hugo Sylvester, the boy wonder.”78 In his father called him

back home to the family show, but by he was advertising for work

in England or America. In he received a letter from the “Imperial

Marionettes Cooper, Wycherley and Pettigrove”: “We beg to offer you

an engagement as figure-worker, cornet-player and to make yourself

useful as usual for a period of six months from next Monday (th) at a

weekly salary of thirty-five shillings.”79

Era advertisements of the s indicate about shillings as a going

wage for a figure-worker or musician. This suggests that Wilding was

perceived as a valuable employee, although salaries were increasing dur-

ing the s. In Wycherley and Pettigrove offered him shillings

a week plus travel expenses for a tour of the continent as a manipulator

and cornet player.80 This salary reflected the anticipated profitability of

the tour as well as increased expenses. In June there was another

engagement with Wycherley’s, this time together with Mr. and Mrs.

Fanning (his brother-in-law and sister), for £. a week. The salary cov-

ered the three of them as a team, with Harry as principal manipula-

tor.81 Around this period Wycherley also offered him a contract at £.

per week, another indication of the going rate for a good figure-worker.

A letter from John Holden in Paris in November shows that Harry

had applied for a job with him; a note from Jesse Jewell in Newcastle

upon Tyne a month later enclosed a pound for the journey and asked

him to get there by the following Monday.82 It is unclear how long he

remained with the Jewell Holden company, but he was involved in their

tour of Holland, which also took in Belgium, France, Germany,

Switzerland, and Russia. By he had his own company, “Harry

Wilding’s Champion Marionettes.” This company toured the Black

Proprietors and Practitioners

020 c2 (17-45) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 43

Country, generally stopping six to seven weeks in each town and play-

ing a different piece each night. Wilding was also known for the num-

ber of benefit performances that he gave to help people who had been

injured in accidents in the mines or ironworks. By five of his six

sons had enlisted, and the show ceased to function.

Many proprietors of shows had either begun as figure-workers (with-

out their own show) or been reduced to seeking employment at par-

ticularly difficult moments. The Donnellys are a good example of

figure-workers who never had their own show for any length of time

but passed from one engagement to another. Companies were constantly

advertising for “figure-workers,” commonly in the form of a husband

and wife team, and the names of desired applicants were often men-

tioned. Mr. and Mrs. R. C. Donnelly were in regular demand in the s

and s. Donnelly claimed to have been working with marionettes

since . In he was the “machinist” and “director” of a mari-

onette company appearing at the St. George’s Hall, Cheltenham.83 In

August Sam Baylis was encouraging him to join him, but by

November Mr. and Mrs. Donnelly were advertising for a position. Two

years later they were with Buxton’s in Reading but again advertising

for work. In August James Todd of Sunderland was also advertis-

ing for workers and invited the Donnellys to apply.84 In they teamed

with the Webbs to look for work. In July an engagement with

Bullock’s came to an end. They appear to have been taken on again, since

in April , once more advertising for work, they announced that they

were concluding a three-year engagement with Bullock. In they

were trying to buy marionettes or get work as figure-workers, and

Donnelly was also advertising for work in . Mrs. Donnelly, by then

a widow, died on December .

A general conclusion that can be reached is that Victorian marionette

companies, with a few exceptions, were constantly forming and reform-

ing. Children of showpeople started as assistants then often sought

employment elsewhere when they reached an age at which a realistic

wage was required. Many a company survived partly by exploiting its

own unpaid junior family members. When a family troupe became too

big and could not support itself economically, it was common for sons

or daughters to go to other companies if they wished to remain in the

profession. Or an enterprising son might branch out on his own, as

Thomas Holden did. Widows sometimes continued shows but generally

Proprietors and Practitioners

020 c2 (17-45) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 44

sought a new partner to assist them. The proprietors were often show-

people first and marionette performers second. William Bullock

brought the former D’Arc troupe to London in , employing no less

than six Middletons or Middleton relations; when he sent his first com-

pany to America he hired a separate group to perform there. All this

points to quite a large labor force of figure-workers, engaged by one

troupe or another but frequently not recorded, since they were not the

proprietors of the companies. Poor audiences, adverse weather, illness,

and a host of other variables could change the fortunes of a company

almost overnight. Proprietors who had been employing a number of

assistants might suddenly find themselves seeking employment.

For the really successful, the pickings were excellent; but for most,

working with marionettes was a subsistence existence. Even so, steady

work with a marionette company during this period could and did pro-

vide an income for many.

Proprietors and Practitioners

020 c2 (17-45) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 45

Chapter 3 :

Booths,Barns, andMusicHalls

�Marionette Theatres

The marionette theatre was perceived as a form of theatre; it took

place in the same booths or halls as the companies of live actors; used

stages, scenery, costumes; and performed the same plays, but did so with

a company of wooden actors.

Marionette showpeople belonged to a predominantly traveling pro-

fession. Most appeared at fairs, where they could find numbers of peo-

ple out to enjoy themselves and ready to spend money. Some had portable

theatres, but the majority made use of available halls, assembly rooms,

or barns. Before the theatres act of abolished the monopoly of the

patent houses, marionettes were associated with lesser entertainments of

a nondramatic nature and grouped among the activities permitted in the

so-called minor theatres. The license for the grandiosely named Theatre

Royal, Royal Opera House, Dublin, which opened in , allowed this

minor theatre to perform a range of genres outside the “legitimate”

repertoire: “Concerts, feats of horsemanship, fantoccini (marionettes),

ballets, melodrama and operatic pieces.”1 Prior to the advent of the music

hall, proprietors of marionette shows rarely used theatre buildings, sim-

ply renting whatever hall they could. This might depend on their pocket

or on the readiness of the person in charge to lease the facility for this

purpose. Assembly rooms and ballrooms were often used in country

towns, while most larger towns had halls available for a variety of pass-

ing entertainments. Some became semipermanent marionette theatres

for a season or even several years in succession. Sam Baylis ran long sum-

mer seasons at the Mechanics’ Hall (Scarborough) between and

. Lambert D’Arc occupied the Rotunda Rooms (Dublin) in a virtu-

ally full-time capacity between and . Charley James’s waxworks

(also known as the World’s Fair) in an arcade off Henry Street (Dublin)

030 c3 (46-64) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 46

was an almost full-time marionette theatre, which G. B. Shaw recalled

attending in his youth. Likewise, Carter’s waxworks in Belfast and Alfred

J. Reynolds’s in Liverpool had this dual function. Reynolds’s opened in

in Bullock’s former theatre in Lime Street. Jennion’s marionettes

appeared there, and Charlie Reynolds (son of the original proprietor)

wrote scripts for their pantomimes.

There were probably more full-time marionette theatres than sur-

viving documentation would suggest. Samuel Seward opened his

Sadler’s Wells House Fantoccini Exhibition in Cheltenham in .2

His family continued it after his death in ; the theatre and some

of the equipment and puppets were eventually acquired in by

J. Rebecqui, who ran it until . Old Waxy’s show in Sunderland,

known as the Marionette Theatre and situated by Anderson’s steps

(“nearly opposite Church Street”), evolved out of a waxwork show

and functioned from to . Most of the information about this

theatre comes from a cache of playbills that miraculously survived.3

Admission was one penny. “Old Waxy” may have been a James Todd,

who advertised for figure-workers in .4 The brothers Brown had

a theatre in Hull, which was a well-established part of juvenile life in

the town by the s. It was situated behind a pub in Marlborough

Terrace, and admission was a penny. To avoid any inconvenient

promiscuity, sexual segregation was practiced – girls and younger chil-

dren occupied the front four rows, which were known as the “pit,”

while boys perched on steeply tiered planks, which were attached to

beams bolted to the walls and formed the “gallery.” Mrs. Brown had

a table at the side where she sold hot peas, baked potatoes, sweets,

chocolate, and ginger pop. Pass-out checks were provided between the

acts (probably to allow some of the audience to patronize the pub). By

the Browns’ theatre had been relocated in Osborne Street. The

actual date when it finally closed down is uncertain.5 In Calver’s,

who performed both in theatres and halls and on the fairground, had

a hall in Huddersfield converted into a theatre; but business was not

good, and the venture did not last.6

In Glasgow J. Mumford’s “geggie” was a combination of semiper-

manent fairground booth and penny gaff. It was set up at the Saltmarket

on the edge of Glasgow Green, a place of popular resort where the

annual fair also occurred. This largely wooden structure had a “parade”

balcony on the front to accommodate musicians. It opened in the early

Booths, Barns, and Music Halls

030 c3 (46-64) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 47

s and continued as a theatre until the late s, when it became a

Gospel Hall and subsequently a clothes market.7

�Penny Gaffs

Penny gaffs were small unofficial theatres. Most existed without a

license and were frequently closed down by the authorities. They flour-

ished in the East End of London from onward and also existed in

other cities. Some, like the early music halls, were extensions of drink-

ing establishments. After they usually applied for a license for music

and dancing. Holders of theatre licenses objected to what they regarded

as unfair competition, which was aggravated by the fact that regular

theatres could not serve alcohol. Licenses were sometimes refused

because of the ambiguous status of gaffs and some music halls.

Around Mayhew’s “penny gaff clown” observed that the most

expensive of the gaffs cost twopence and threepence and that London’s

largest one, the Rotunda in the Blackfriars Road (which could hold

a thousand “comfortably seated”), would give two performances an

evening with admission at a penny, twopence, and threepence. May-

hew’s own visit to “one of the least offensive of the exhibitions” pro-

vides a valuable eyewitness account.8 He mentions how often a shop in

London might be converted into a theatre (usually the shop itself pro-

vided the waiting room, with the “theatre” above or behind). On a

Monday night (the most popular night for working people before the

development of the weekend as a break) as many as six performances

could take place, each with a few hundred spectators. Most of the audi-

ence consisted of “boys” and “girls” aged between eight and twenty.

Mayhew commented on the showiness of the girls’ clothing and their

generally immodest manner and speech. More interestingly, he also

observed that over three-quarters of one audience consisted of women

and girls, whereas he counted only eighteen “men.” The number of

females may reflect how many girls worked from an early age in

milliners’ shops or in factories. There was also much official concern

about the number of prostitutes in such places (a concern later applied

to the London music halls). The sort of audience the gaffs attracted was

perceived as indulging in juvenile crime and prostitution. The gaffs were

unashamedly places of popular entertainment, much frequented by

youth. Sexual promiscuity was probably no worse than at a modern-day

disco, but the Victorian middle classes perceived them as insalubrious

Booths, Barns, and Music Halls

030 c3 (46-64) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 48

dens of iniquity whose entertainment was of poor quality and of no cul-

tural value whatsoever. If we look at Victorian notions of respectability

and the desire to combine culture with moral improvement, we can

understand the mistrust of the gaffs, their audiences, and the enter-

tainments offered.

The limited documentation indicates that marionette showpeople

used penny gaffs.9 Cardoni’s Fantoccini played in a house attached to a

shop in the East End in the s. Admission was fourpence for the pit,

which consisted of three rows of red stuffed seats, and twopence for the

gallery, a “tier of bare benches rising to within a yard of the ceiling.”10

In Peter Bianchi, who had held a license since , applied for a

renewal of a license “for public music to be carried on at your petitioner’s

well-known exhibition of wax-work and mechanism” at , Holywell

Street, Shoreditch (London).11 This could be no more than an exhibi-

tion with moving waxworks or automata, but the word “mechanism”

was also commonly used to make a marionette theatre sound more

respectable. We have visual evidence that the Bianchi enterprise was

presenting live entertainment with actors, even if the tiny stage seems

more suited to puppets.12

Marionette shows often appeared in the context of other entertain-

ments and activities. In Mr. Benedict Zilbach, a Swiss who had

originally come to England as a waiter in , acquired premises at

Whitechapel Road and Baker’s Row. There he carried on a barber’s

business on the second floor and had a photographic studio at the top of

the house. In summer he manufactured mineral water, and during the

winter he let a room for the exhibition of “living curiosities.” These

could be anything from a “fat boy and a skeleton” to a marionette show.

He provided gas heating and took half the receipts as rent (his wife col-

lected the money). People were let in for a penny, and the room could

hold between ten and twelve shillings’ worth (– people). “The

shows generally commenced about eleven or twelve o’clock in the day,

got slack in the afternoon, and lively towards six o’clock, running on

then till eleven o’clock.”13 Establishments of this sort, frequently unli-

censed, were probably quite common.

�Marionettes and Music Halls

The development of music halls and variety theatres provided an

increasing number of potential venues for marionette performances.

Booths, Barns, and Music Halls

030 c3 (46-64) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 49

Packed into the galleries of the music halls were audiences very little

different from those that might frequent the gaffs. All popular enter-

tainment in the nineteenth century attracted young people. In music

halls, where the better seats were becoming relatively expensive, the

vast galleries usually cost only twopence. Dave Russell has pointed to

the large number of boys aged between fourteen and sixteen in the audi-

ences of the Liverpool concert rooms in the s.14 These “boys” were

in fact young working people. Worries were expressed about the moral

dangers of young people visiting the halls. It was pointed out to the

select Committee on Public Houses in –, however, that if

young people were allowed to earn their living in mills and factories and

made “premature men in that way” it was unjust to exclude them from

an evening’s entertainment.15 Work done by Peter Bailey on the music

hall reveals that the majority of the inhabitants of the galleries were

under twenty, and many under fourteen.

After , as music halls developed into variety theatres, they proved

to be ideal venues for marionette performances. In some cases a mari-

onette company might provide a full program, but it was more usual to

present a - to -minute entertainment. Marionette stages were often

adapted to the music-hall stage, with the whole fit-up designed to be

pushed forward to follow an act or withdrawn quickly to make room for

the next.

H. Chester and Clarence Lee claimed that they could set up their

stage in three minutes and clear in two when on a music-hall stage.16 In

Arthur Milton’s music-hall act had a fit-up which could be moved

in two minutes within two feet of the back of the stage.17 In Carl

Howlett announced a -week provincial tour and pointed out to the-

atre managers that “my fit-up does not interfere with other artistes

preparing their entries, as it is constructed so as it can be cleared away

in one minute and a half and only occupies ft in of room.”18 In

he announced that his fit-up, an original and “novel apparatus” which

would fit onto any music-hall stage, was patented.19

In the nineteenth century halls proliferated for philanthropic, scien-

tific, and educational purposes. These were respectable places and

tended to attract more middle-class patrons. In the Brigaldi “Royal

Marionettes” had occupied the long galleried room of the Adelaide

Gallery in the Strand.20 Their repertoire, with its heavy emphasis on

parody and satire, was aimed at a middle-class adult audience.

Booths, Barns, and Music Halls

030 c3 (46-64) 8/4/04 10:24 AM Page 50

The Long Room of the Rotunda in Dublin (today’s Dublin Gate

Theatre) was commonly used for panoramas as well as marionette shows

and other types of recital and entertainment. This was probably the

room used in the s by Professor Horman, and subsequently by

D’Arc’s (–). It measured eighty feet by forty and cost £ a week

to hire.21 When D’Arc’s brought a show to Liverpool in February ,

the Queen’s Hall was specially adapted for it. It played there from the

beginning of March until the second half of July. W. J. Bullock (the new

Booths, Barns, and Music Halls

. Brigaldi’s Royal Marionettes. Illustrated London News, January .

030 c3 (46-64) 8/4/04 10:25 AM Page 51

owner) then transferred it to London, first to the St. James’s Great Hall,

Piccadilly, where it remained until the end of October, and then to the

Egyptian Hall, another venue associated with exhibitions and the recent

Albert Smith illustrated lectures.22 Both halls had a distinctly middle-

class clientele. Bullock boasted that the show was “witnessed daily by

large and aristocratic audiences.” The publicity encouraged families to

book their seats in advance at the box office. The show was advertised

as “Grand Christmas Revels for the Juveniles” and as “The most Amus-

ing and Chaste entertainment in the World”;23 audiences were also

informed that the Egyptian Hall had been turned into “a perfect Juve-

nile Paradise.”

The reviews make it quite clear that the show was much enjoyed not

only by children, but also by older people. Marionettes had been made

fashionable for a brief period in the capital, attracting an audience of

middle- to upper-class children. The admission prices, ranging from one

shilling to five shillings (children half price except in the gallery), indi-

cate the social composition of the target audience, especially when we

compare them with a penny or twopence for a gaff or the gallery of a

provincial music hall.

�Marionette Shows in Public Gardens and Exhibition Halls

Public gardens were a feature of London life from the eighteenth

century onward.24 In the s and s Vauxhall Gardens had regu-

lar marionette performances provided by Gyngell’s.25 In a mari-

onette theatre was specially built in Cremorne Gardens (King’s Road,

London). It first housed the Brigaldi Royal Marionettes, and the Chester

and Lee company may later have originated there.26 The structure,

which survived until , when it was dismantled and sold, was a

slightly bigger and more elegant version of the portable theatres of the

different fairground circuits, as is clear from the following description:

We follow the throng and find ourselves approaching a light and ele-

gant structure, presenting an elevation something after the Italian

School. The face is elegantly moulded in white and red entablatures,

and the building is altogether of a chaste and elegant structure, pre-

senting an elevation something after the Italian School. It consists of

a solid front, with canvass roofing and sides – canvass at least between

Booths, Barns, and Music Halls

030 c3 (46-64) 8/4/04 10:25 AM Page 52

the girders and beams – it is feet long by forty-five feet wide and

thirty-five feet high. This is the new theatre built expressly for the

representation of the Marionettes which Mr. Simpson was the first

to introduce to London at the Adelaide Gallery in January . It

comprises a commodious stage, a roomy orchestra, handsome prosce-

nium, private boxes, and all the appurtenances of a regular theatre,

and it is calculated to seat comfortably persons. This is the struc-

ture which Mr. Beachcroft, the district surveyor, sought to bring

within the meaning of the Metropolitan Building Act, with refer-

ence to which proceedings were taken before Mr. Arnold, the magis-

trate, at Westminster. That gentleman, however, who is one of the

most acute magistrates on the bench, visited the spot and judged for

himself, and finding that it was not constructed of wood or stone, that

it was removeable and that it would not rest in the freeholder upon

the expiry of the lease, determined that it was not a building within

the meaning of the Act, and that Mr. Beachcroft therefore had no

control over it. Mr. Simpson has thus vindicated a principle, and we

have no doubt that this elegant design will be pretty extensively imi-

tated by the proprietors of similar establishments.27

The big exhibitions that marked the nineteenth century created a

number of new centers of entertainment. The most famous of these

was the Crystal Palace in London (). The program of the Crystal

Palace for February , for example, consisted of an organ per-

formance at : P.M. “on the great Handel organ,” followed by the

“Company’s Orchestral Band” in the Concert Room at : and “Bul-

lock’s Royal Marionettes” in the Concert Room at :. The Alexandra

Palace and the Agricultural Hall, Islington, known as the “Aggie,” also

included marionettes as part of the concert program.

Aquaria became centers of entertainment, with concerts and variety

shows as well as fish tanks. Like the music halls, exhibition palaces and

aquaria were run by managements who engaged marionette companies

among the other acts. In the s W. K. Whatman and Jennion

appeared at the Royal Aquarium, Brighton, while Richard Barnard

performed at the Westminster Aquarium on at least two occasions in the

s and s.

Changing leisure patterns, including organized holidays and day-

trips on the railways, led to the development of seaside resorts, which

Booths, Barns, and Music Halls

030 c3 (46-64) 8/4/04 10:25 AM Page 53

created yet another context in which marionette showpeople could find

audiences. Sam Baylis realized this when he chose Blackpool and

Scarborough for his extended seasons. The seaside resorts of Victorian

England had piers and promenades, which often included a pavilion

used for entertainments. From the s onward, seaside entertainment

was an essential feature of a holiday. Chester and Lee appeared at the

Pier Pavilions of Worthing and Eastbourne in the summer of and

had a ten-week season on Wellington Pier, Yarmouth, in . There

also exists a picture of their marionette stage set up, like a Punch and

Judy booth, on the beach at Herne Bay, probably in the s. Their

well-known skeleton is going through his act, with performances at ,

, , and o’clock. A card on an easel on the stage says: “All seats free,”

which indicates that by this date the company was paid by the local coun-

cil to perform as a seaside attraction and did not have to collect “cop-

pers” (pennies).

�Portable Stages

The Punch and Judy booth was a common sight in Victorian England.

The simplest booths were carried around by showpeople or placed on a

small handcart for transport from one pitch to another. A similar sight,

and certainly quite common between the s and the s, was the

street fantoccini show. This offered a variety program which included

trick figures and may have been introduced by Italian showpeople.

Mayhew’s fantoccini man was described as having “a large roomy show

upon wheels, about four times as capacious as those used for the per-

formance of Punch and Judy.”28

The Lano family originated in Milan with the street performer

Enrico Lano. His son Alberto arrived in America in , but on his way

he played in Austria, Spain, Portugal, and England with a stock of a

dozen marionettes.29 It is therefore more than likely that his marionettes

performed in the streets of London in the early s. Mumford like-

wise had a street fantoccini show in London in the s. Purvis’s com-

patriot Grey was another well-known figure at the time and was

successful enough to be invited to perform at Covent Garden.

In Hone spoke of the presence of a fantoccini show in the street.

And this was sketched by George Cruikshank. The proprietor was an

individual called Candler. William Hone describes him as “a foreign-

Booths, Barns, and Music Halls

030 c3 (46-64) 8/4/04 10:25 AM Page 54

looking personage”; he may well have been of Italian origin but have

adapted his name or taken on an English one. Albert Candler, probably

his son, was born in and claimed to have assisted his father with

street performances of fantoccini until , when he learned to play

the Pandean (pan) pipes; but by he had set up on his own as a Punch

professor.30 Like the Punch and Judy show, the street fantoccini used a

musician – Candler’s used a drum and panpipes (also called a “mouth-

organ”). The assistant’s job was to carry and erect the booth and to serve

as a bottler, collecting ha’pence at fairly frequent intervals.

Both Mayhew and the German artist George Scharf regarded fan-

toccini performers as normal street entertainments, not requiring any

particular explanation. Scharf left at least three sketches of street scenes

with four different “Fantoccina” performers. One page from his sketch-

book, dated , depicts a tall booth labeled “Fantasina” (an interest-

ing anglicization of fantoccini) as well as a man with some sort of

peepshow. It also shows two other men, one carrying a booth (which

looks very similar to the Fantasina one but might be a Punch and Judy

booth) and his companion with a drum hanging in front and a box of

puppets slung over his back. Another sketch on the same sheet shows a

Fantasina stage drawn by a donkey. The proscenium is framed by two

levels of “stage boxes.” In front is a musician banging a drum and play-

ing the panpipes. The sides and rear of the booth are draped in what

Scharf notes to be a green curtain (Grey’s stage also had green curtains).

A telltale bulge indicates that the performer was standing on the cart

on which the booth was mounted and leaning over the back-cloth. The

exact proportions are difficult to establish (Scharf himself has a note

“here a little higher” at the top of the back of the booth). A more fully

worked Scharf drawing, probably of the same period, depicts a per-

formance in full swing, with a mixed but predominantly youthful audi-

ence and two figures on the stage, one identifiable as Harlequin and the

other female. This stage also is mounted on wheels and appears to have

a platform at the back for the operator. This stage is likewise flanked by

two decorated shutter-like doors, which may have been a tidy way to

close up the stage for traveling but also a way to focus attention on the

stage itself and enhance visibility in a situation where there might be

sunlight coming from behind the booth. A separate drawing shows a

ballet dancer on a “fantasina” stage and conveniently provides the name

of the showman, William Marler.

Booths, Barns, and Music Halls

030 c3 (46-64) 8/4/04 10:25 AM Page 55

. George Scharf, sketch of “Fantasina” stage, circa . G. Scharf drawings

of London, vol. , p. , no. . By permission of the British Library.

030 c3 (46-64) 8/4/04 10:25 AM Page 56

Like Punch and Judy performers, street fantoccini showpeople could

easily move the stage indoors for an engagement. Marionettes came to

be perceived as an ideal (and morally safe) entertainment for children’s

parties. An illustration of a marionette show at Arundel castle in

depicts an obvious fantoccini performance with a marionette horse.31

The context seems to be a party, possibly for local orphans, with a lib-

eral sprinkling of nuns in attendance, together with members of the

Howard family and their friends. The stage shown at Arundel is very

similar to the one used on the sand by Chester and Lee. It is lower than

those depicted by Scharf, and the whole fit-up is wider, indicating that

it was intended for audiences that were mainly seated.

�Portable Theatres

The term “booth” can be applied to the stage of the peripatetic

street fantoccini or the Punch and Judy show but can also mean a tem-

porary or semipermanent structure occupied by various types of pass-

ing entertainment, notably at fair time. In addition, it can be used in

the sense of a portable theatre. Sybil Rosenfeld, in her study of the

London fairs in the eighteenth century, has noted the existence of both

permanent booths used for drolls and puppet shows and booths erected

for the duration of the fair. Semipermanent booths were on the decline

in the nineteenth century, but portable theatres were relatively com-

mon and were equipped with seating and even heating. There was no

real difference between a portable theatre for marionettes and one for

other performances. An advertisement for the sale of Pettigrove’s

booth in indicates: “The above with slight alterations could be

made to suit any Travelling Show.”32 The portable theatre was not a

sine qua non of the traveling marionette show. Stages were frequently

set up in halls or theatres, especially during the winter months, when

bad weather could be a problem for a portable theatre. Many portable

theatres were little more than tents with a painted façade. The engrav-

ing of the fair in Hyde Park in shows Richardson’s, the major

traveling theatre company of the time, in a large rectangular tent,

with access on the long side. The other shows have simple ridge tents

with an entrance at one end. Gyngell’s is one of these, and Middleton’s

(unfortunately not identifiable) was another.

Booths, Barns, and Music Halls

030 c3 (46-64) 8/4/04 10:25 AM Page 57

The simplest portable theatre was no more than a stage placed within

a canvas enclosure to contain the paying customers and prevent the non-

paying ones from seeing the show. Billy Purvis refers to a booth with-

out a roof used by a company of actors when he was at Jedburgh Fair

in (the weather was bad, but he was more fortunate: his booth pos-

sessed a canvas roof). Purvis is a very valuable source of information for

different types of portable theatre in use in the first half of the century.

He makes what may be the first reference to the idea of a caravan being

incorporated into a booth: “I visited Muselburgh, fell in with Mr. Morell,

an old show chep [sic], who lent me his caravan to exhibit my Fantoccini.

By the assistance of wood and canvas I completed my booth, and pleased

all the folk at the races.”33

The implication here seems to be that the caravan had a removable

side, which exposed a stage front; the enclosure to contain the audience

was simply built onto the caravan. Later in the same year he refers to

an accident while traveling: “A sudden jolt pitched the stage on one side,

and all the sleeping dwellers on its top into the miry grass. We were in

bonny hobble; the ground was so soft that the wheels and part of the

stage carriage sunk in the mud.”34

The stage was probably ready-mounted on a four-wheel cart, which

served both for transport and to raise the stage itself. A painting by J. T.

Lucas shows a traveling marionette performer with his stage front

mounted on the back of a four-wheel carriage.35

Billy Purvis had a very large booth built toward the end of his career

but also appeared in barns and private houses. On one occasion in

he recalled performing in a smithy, where he stretched his back-cloth

across the chimney opening and stood inside. He mentions setting up at

Glasgow Fair in for some very successful performances. He arrived

by ship from Newcastle and brought with him “my canvass, frontage

and sundries.”36 At Glasgow he acquired timber for the booth. The can-

vas was probably for the tilt and the timber for the stage and seating. On

leaving Scotland he sold the materials of the booth to a canvas weaver.

By the s portable theatres were becoming more elaborate and

solid affairs. Improved roads and above all the railway allowed quick

and efficient transport of heavy loads. The plain tent made way for larger

booths with wooden walls and raked seating.

Charles Middleton kept the interior of his theatre warm by coke fires

in winter. It was “lined throughout with green baize curtains and orna-

Booths, Barns, and Music Halls

030 c3 (46-64) 8/4/04 10:25 AM Page 58

mented with yellow fringes and cords.” The rafters and underside of

the top were partially insulated with a red and white striped under-tilt.37

The interior of a booth might vary from a basic enclosed space to a rea-

sonable degree of comfort. In Walton’s booth (formerly Case’s) had

seats in the boxes, pit, and gallery. There were gas fittings for lighting

both inside the booth and on the outside. Like Middleton’s, the roof was

lined with a red and white inside tilt.

The number of spectators varied enormously. In Walter Calver

could boast that he had now erected a “large and commodious portable

theatre” and that this “new Monster Portable Pavillion” could seat

,.38 Later he mentioned that he had reserved seats, a pit, and a “com-

modious” gallery. In Charles Middleton had three different prices:

front seats one shilling, second seats sixpence, gallery threepence. Most

booths had some form of tiered seating or at least a raised area at the

back. In the gallery of Purvis’s theatre collapsed, fortunately with-

out serious injuries.39 The gallery was occupied by a separate category

of spectators, possibly standing, frequently overcrowded, and certainly

noisy because of its predominantly youthful denizens. In most cases

“gallery” meant no more than raked seating or a floor on a higher level,

to distinguish it from the flat floored “pit.” Barnard mentions Charles

Booths, Barns, and Music Halls

. Clowes and Sons booth. Postcard, circa . Author’s Collection.

030 c3 (46-64) 8/4/04 10:25 AM Page 59

Middleton’s seating accommodation, going from six inches at the front

to eight or nine feet at the top of the “gallery.”40

One of the best descriptions of the inside of a booth at the turn of

the twentieth century is given by “Southdown” in an interview with

Harry Wilding in :

He had a commodious booth capable of seating some seven hundred

persons. The inside of the building was comfortably equipped with

raked seating and cosy inside lining, while all the rafters carried fancy

scallops. At the stage end of the show gorgeous scenery formed a mas-

sive proscenium which extended from the roof of the booth to the

top of the stage front, where the beautiful painted act drop was fixed

with a row of footlights at the base. On one side of the stage was a

big drum, while on the opposite side was a small pipe organ, these

instruments, with the addition of a cornet, provided the orchestra.41

The show was illuminated with paraffin oil lamps, with three or four

big ceiling lamps hanging from the ridge and one at either side of the

stage. The heating apparatus used during the winter months consisted

of some three or four big coke fires in various parts of the booth, which

always had its floor sprinkled with clean sawdust. In this show it was

possible to obtain two and a half hours’ entertainment for as little as a

penny (the highest price was sixpence). There is no extant photograph

of the interior of a booth, but very similar booths were used for both

live performances and ghost shows.

Weather was a constant problem for showpeople. First of all, bad

weather could lead to thin or nonexistent audiences. More seriously, it

could wreck booths, tearing off the canvas roof. In the winter of

– Purvis’s booth, now described as a “pavilion,” was blown

down at Morpeth. The steward of Lord Morpeth, Mr. Fenwick, helped

him out. Purvis recorded the event in verse:

Though my tilt was destroyed by the force of the gale,

Good Fenwick relieve’d, as he pitied my tale;

Though shutters, and scen’ry, and stage got a fall,

The kindness of Fenwick recover’d them all.42

Fighting the weather could be a serious matter. Sometimes the men

of the company would have to keep watch all night in the event of a

storm and, if necessary, remove the canvas roof or tilt to prevent it from

Booths, Barns, and Music Halls

030 c3 (46-64) 8/4/04 10:25 AM Page 60

being blown to shreds. Edward Hunt was killed in this way in ,

when a gust of wind came at the wrong moment and blew down a

wooden panel which broke his back.43 The young Richard Barnard used

to climb up onto the roof of Charles Middleton’s theatre to let loose any

fittings that had to be released so that the tilt could be removed. On one

occasion he had a lucky escape when the entire heavy, wet canvas was

carried off with him on it.44

Showpeople who performed at fairs had a parade space in front of

the theatre. Its origin was the platform used by mountebanks since the

sixteenth century. Its function was to draw audiences, with music or

some sort of performance, and persuade them to part with a coin or two

to see the show inside. In the eighteenth century the parade space was

often a balcony at first-floor level, as is shown in William Hogarth’s pic-

ture Southwark Fair (). By the nineteenth century this had been

lowered to three to six feet above the ground and was directly accessed

by steps. From the parade space the audience usually came directly into

the rear of the auditorium, at the top of the tiered planks that provided

the seating.45

Booths, Barns, and Music Halls

. Professor Clarke’s Ghost Show, .

National Fairground Archive, Sheffield.

030 c3 (46-64) 8/4/04 10:25 AM Page 61

Hogarth depicts the painted cloths that decorated the fronts of pup-

pet theatres, often indicating something of the nature of the perfor-

mance inside. John Nixon’s watercolor of Bartholomew Fair shows

the painted cloth raised above the front of Gyngell’s “Grand Medley”

and designed to be visible from a distance.46 In Billy Purvis visited

Kilmarnock, where he specifically mentions having a beautiful front

painted by Mr. Wardhaugh Nichol.47 As the nineteenth century pro-

gressed, the fronts of portable theatres offered plenty of opportunity for

the decorative skills of painters. Cloths and painted panels continued to

be used, sometimes with scenes from the shows performed; but there

was a new emphasis on a more architectural façade, enhanced with dec-

oration and gilding. Like the proscenium arch of the later Victorian the-

atre or the entrances to other types of fairground booths, the framed

entrance became the focal point of the façade. In Case’s Royal

Champion Marionette Exhibition, then at Birmingham Fair, advertised

for sale “a good front for marionette booth (painted by Mr. Green of

Leicester) with profile coat of arms etc., for top, side-wings, opening out

feet with stage feet x feet and shuttering, poles and run-down,

the whole forming a complete front.”48

The front sometimes became so important that the large fit-ups had

it mounted on two wagons designed for that purpose. As with some cir-

cuses today, the wagons formed a grandiose frame for the intervening

space, which was used for the entrance. In , when Case’s theatre was

again put up for sale, it was advertised as being “ feet wide by

back,” with “Boxes, Pit and Gallery,” and was lit by gas. The whole out-

fit consisted of six wagons, of which “two forms a splendid front feet

wide (just new built by the late Mr Davison of Manchester).”49 When

Britton Pettigrove disposed of his booth in , he mentioned in his

advertisement two twelve-foot “panel waggons, beautifully fitted up

inside with every requisite,” and indicated that “the Front opens out

feet, representing all Nations elaborately carved and gilt.”50

In the Case fit-up was again for sale, this time as “Walton’s late

Case’s.”51 The advertisement also mentions a “stage waggon” and gives

the overall dimensions of the booth (which was “shuttered all round”)

as sixty-seven feet by thirty-six feet. Pettigrove also mentioned a sixteen-

foot “back waggon.” It is not clear exactly what this was. One is tempted

to see this as a wagon equipped as a stage. The dimensions are certainly

suitable in terms of both what we know about sizes of scenery and the

Booths, Barns, and Music Halls

030 c3 (46-64) 8/4/04 10:25 AM Page 62

overall width of the booth. Indeed this may have been a more sophisti-

cated version of what Billy Purvis called his “stage carriage” in the s.

Booths did vary in size, but sixty by thirty feet (slightly less than

twenty meters by ten) seems to have been fairly standard. In Clunn

Lewis disposed of a former Middleton booth of those dimensions.52

The dimensions of a booth, and certainly the length of the frontage,

could have economic implications for the company. The rate charged to

stall-holders at the Nottingham Goose Fair of was generally one

shilling per linear foot of frontage and allowed for a depth of fifteen

feet.53 Theatrical booths, with their greater depth, obviously had to

negotiate a different rate. The exaggeratedly wide façades of some of

the later booths both made them more visible and indicated that the

show was important enough to pay for the bigger frontage.

Booths, Barns, and Music Halls

. Front of

Lawrence’s

Theatre, St. Giles’s

Fair, Oxford, circa

. National

Fairground

Archive, Sheffield.

030 c3 (46-64) 8/4/04 10:25 AM Page 63

There is no hard and fast distinction between companies that trav-

eled with their own theatre and those that did not. In some cases the

difference was purely seasonal. Apart from a very brief period, Barnard’s

company never had a booth of their own. They traveled with their stage,

scenery, and puppets and set up on available stages wherever they were.

Middleton’s traveled with booths, as did Holden’s, but Thomas moved

away from this aspect of the profession, preferring halls and theatres.

His foreign touring was another reason not to use a booth. Companies

performing in villages, visiting fairs, or performing in inn-yards were

more likely to retain their portable theatres, as they were away from the

main music-hall circuit. We know that Calver’s, Lawrence’s, and Clowes-

Tiller’s were among the larger shows to use portable theatres. D’Arc’s,

Bullock’s and Fanning’s (Delvaine’s) were never in that business; nor

were the many companies that appeared in the s and s as acts

for variety theatres or aquariums.

One thing that seems fairly clear about the last quarter of the nine-

teenth century is that we see simultaneously the apogee of the portable

theatre and its decline. Urban concentrations of population reduced the

need to carry a theatre from village to village looking for audiences; and

the fairs, with noise and machinery, were becoming less sympathetic

places. Within a very few years around the portable theatre was

becoming a thing of the past and had taken on a sort of old-world aura.

Those who continued with it were moving downward on the economic

scale. Having said this, however, it is important to note that portable the-

atres did survive for a remarkably long time, with the last ones contin-

uing in Ireland until the s.

Booths, Barns, and Music Halls

030 c3 (46-64) 8/4/04 10:25 AM Page 64

Chapter 4 : Merely Players?

�The Suspension of Disbelief

One of the most fascinating things about puppet theatre is the way

in which audiences accept a material object that stands for a living being

as if it were the living being itself.1 The live actor pretends to be the

dramatic character he or she is representing but does not have to pre-

tend to be alive. Where the actor is at one remove from the character

represented, the puppet representing an actor in a part is at a further

remove. Like the actor, it too has its own reality, but it is a very differ-

ent sort of reality. The modern puppet makes less pretense of being an

actor and exists more directly in terms of its role in the performance.

The nineteenth-century theatre was heavily caught up in notions of

realism and in the idea of trying to deceive the audience into a belief

in the reality of what was being presented. The patent unreality of the

glove puppet allowed it largely to escape this concern, but in the case of

the marionette there was an extraordinary degree of ambivalence.

The extent to which an audience will project life into a puppet has

been studied.2 In many countries there are anecdotes about audiences

attacking puppet villains, even attempting to shoot them. When Holden’s

company visited Istanbul in , an Armenian photographer fell in love

with their Cinderella and stole her.3 Puppeteers themselves have often

exploited this tendency, and some have half believed that their puppets

possessed a life of their own.4 Showpeople loved to propagate myths of

this sort. The Chester and Lee company had a skeleton, which they

claimed to have owned since the s and to have made perform before

royalty at Balmoral. Additionally, they contended (and probably believed)

that the figure became difficult to work whenever any danger threatened

the family but became easy again after the danger had passed.5

Nineteenth-century marionette shows performed a range of plays in

which the puppets were a visual support for the verbal presentation of

the dramatic text. Once we have established and accepted the separa-

tion between the living voice of the hidden operator and the figure being

operated, we are entering upon a convention that is not normally found

040 c4 (65-82) 8/4/04 10:26 AM Page 65

in actors’ theatre. The function of the nineteenth-century marionette

was as much illustrative as dramatic, and this is where it really parts

company from the living actor. Everything suggests that nineteenth-

century audiences were only too ready to empathize with the situations

in which the puppets, as pseudo-humans, found themselves, without

necessarily believing in them as real human beings. No doubt they did

weep at the deaths of William in East Lynne or Jo in Bleak House and

feel angry with the villains. The inherent sense of the mock heroic that

is found with puppets performing drama for human actors, however,

never quite disappears. The comic scenes, as Bertolt Brecht would dis-

cover later, restored a sense of objectivity and reminded audiences of

the gap between real life and the wooden figures interpreting it.6 In the

s Sergei Obraztsov noted that, when the puppet is placed in a human

situation, it redefines that situation, either negating it or reinforcing it

and filling it with a special humor.7 If we apply this statement to the

dramatic repertoire of the nineteenth-century marionette theatre, we

touch on one of the things that distinguished it from the live theatre,

which it echoed and paralleled.

�A Stock Company

The majority of plays for the Victorian theatre ran to about a dozen

characters, though casts could be inflated with an assortment of vil-

lagers, gypsies, sailors, servants, and so forth. In the stock companies the

roles were distributed among a collection of actors, each with his or her

own “line of business.” Dion Boucicault, the popular writer of melo-

dramas, classified the different lines of business for live actors, which

correspond closely to their marionette counterparts.8 Usually a company

ran to at least four main male actors: leading man, juvenile man,

“heavy” (who played the villains), and old man. The female strength

was roughly the same. Some of these performers could be doubled. They

were backed up by various “character” actors or actresses, “walking”

ladies and gentlemen, and other “utilities.” Most important was the low

comedian, who, of course, came into his own in the farce. A large com-

pany could have several actors in this line of business.

The average Victorian marionette troupe had a corpus of figures used

for the presentation of a wide range of stage plays and was the puppet

equivalent of a stock company of actors. Stock figures were treated in

Merely Players?

040 c4 (65-82) 8/4/04 10:26 AM Page 66

such a way that they could reappear in play after play. This meant that

they usually had basic signifiers indicating age, sex, social status, or race,

to which could be added some rather basic notions of character.

Reconstruction of the composition of a Victorian marionette company

can be partially based on our knowledge of the repertoire performed.

Heavy cutting, taking into account the effective strengths of a company,

was the norm in the live theatre. Live actors might sometimes double

parts. A marionette company seldom included more than three or four

performers behind the marionettes, who had to cover all the roles.

Marionette showpeople simplified plots and numbers of characters to

allow for a small manipulation team, with a limited number of voices.

For the presentation of the solid dramatic repertoire of the nine-

teenth century, a score of puppets would have been sufficient. A reper-

toire of twenty-five plays did not mean that the company had to possess

something in excess of figures. We do hear of companies possess-

ing and figures, but a claim to have a lot of puppets was also

one of the ways in which a company signified its importance. Moreover,

many of the figures mentioned would have been used for variety acts

or as extras. Delvaine’s supposedly had about figures, but many were

abandoned when they ceased to be used or were destroyed when the

company stopped performing in the s. The present Delvaine col-

lection is about figures. The Munich and Lyon collections contain

between and figures each; when Speaight and Morice bought the

Clowes-Tiller figures in the s, they acquired about puppets,

including the variety ones. Surviving collections of figures serve mainly

to give us an idea of the company at the very moment that it ceased to

exist. The following Clowes-Tiller list offered to Morice and Speaight

is also interesting in that it indicates four of the last plays to be per-

formed:

Figures to suit any play

Handsome gent

Heavy man

Farmer’s Boy

Elderly lady

Old woman

Young Lady (Maria Marten with hair come away)

Leading lady

Merely Players?

040 c4 (65-82) 8/4/04 10:26 AM Page 67

Madame Eve (in East Lynne)

Elderly gent

Old man

odd men

children (Babes in the wood, etc)

Angel

Sailor

Poor Jo, the crossing sweeper (from the Dickens story)

Nigger

demons

Giant.9

The remainder of the list consisted of harlequinade and trick or vari-

ety characters.

�The Low Comedian

Michael Booth has described the low comedian as one of the most

important stock roles in the Victorian theatre: “the direct descendant of

the Elizabethan clown,” who “often took the roles of countrymen, ser-

vants, street-sellers, nouveau-riche landowners and working-class

eccentrics” and was “either energetically ludicrous or phlegmatically

droll and the helpless victim of chance and misunderstanding.”10

In nearly all puppet traditions, from Indonesia to Italy, the comic fig-

ure has a central and usually subversive role. On the marionette stages

of eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland Punch could erupt irrever-

ently in the middle of the biblical Creation of the World or commit such

anachronistic improprieties as placing his bum on the Queen of Sheba’s

lap. His popularity with audiences was such that he could become iden-

tified with the leader of the troupe. A bill of from the town of

Youghal announces the arrival of “Mr William Punch” with his “com-

pany of artificial comedians.”11 The showman usually operated this fig-

ure and gave it his voice. Punch or the comic often served as an announcer

but, more importantly, provided an opportunity for direct improvisa-

tion. Where the showman was especially garrulous, this puppet became

a sort of stand-up comedian. Marionette Punch, unlike the glove-puppet

Punch, may have lost his central position on the marionette stage in the

nineteenth century, but he certainly did not disappear. When Bullock

Merely Players?

040 c4 (65-82) 8/4/04 10:26 AM Page 68

had his season in London in , Punch was used to introduce the vari-

ety section of the bill. In the dramatic repertoire, Punch’s role devolved

to the rustic clown. A Middleton bill of mentions a character called

“Old Darby,” who entertained the audience with “Droll sayings, Queer

Doings, Whims, Wonders and Oddities.” “Darby” had become semi-

proverbial in the eighteenth century (often coupled with “Joan”), and

the character may well have been a garrulous old man with plenty of

wisecracks.12 The Clunn Lewis collection has a small figure certainly

dating from the early nineteenth century. He is costumed as a rustic with

the customary smock and a large felt hat and is the one figure in that

particular collection with an opening mouth. This puppet could well be

Middleton’s Old Darby.

Merely Players?

. Rustic from

Middleton troupe.

Musée Gadagne,

Lyon.

040 c4 (65-82) 8/4/04 10:26 AM Page 69

There is a strong physical similarity between the various rustic clown

marionettes in Britain. By the end of the nineteenth century the pre-

dominant name is Tim Bobbin (we also hear of Tim and Bob), which

led George Speaight to view him as the English popular puppet.13 The

original Tim Bobbin was a folk poet in Lancashire, whose name went

into popular mythology. He appears as a member of the cast in the melo-

drama based on the murder of Maria Marten and of course appears in

marionette versions of that story. “Tim Bobbin’s show” visited Earing-

ton near Hull around . Brown’s Theatre in Hull had a comic figure

called Timmy, who appeared in every show as the “hero.” In the con-

cluding farce he was invariably the comic figure with the chief part. He

also occasionally acted as a narrator or presenter. As late as we hear

of children (together with their fathers and grandfathers) enjoying a

north of England marionette performance with “Tim Bobbins.”14

Generally this character was dressed as a yokel, but he could also appear

in more appropriate costume for historical or nautical plays.15 In

Joe Randel Hodson claimed that his “Yorkshire Bob” had been in his

family for generations and was some years old. He also mentioned

that Ashington’s, Lawrence’s, and Holding’s had a similar character. The

Clowes-Tiller collection has a “farmer’s boy” who seems to fill this role,

and Harry Wilding had a character known as “Tim the comic.” The

Munich collection includes a strongly characterized rustic. From

Donegal, Ireland, came a figure, abandoned by some company, that pre-

sents all the hallmarks of the character.

The rustic clown appeared as the countryman of the melodrama. His

earthy common sense had a hint of lost values for audiences composed

of recent urban dwellers, while his ignorance of more sophisticated

polite behavior could be both a source of comedy and a satirical com-

ment on such behavior. In much of Europe a similar phenomenon can

be observed in the creation of a host of new puppet figures from

Sandrone and Girolamo to Guignol or Tchantchès. Punch with his funny

archaic costume was a theatre figure, which may explain why he was

increasingly relegated to the variety show.

Other attempts to create new popular characters did occur in England

but were short-lived. The celebrated cartoon character Ally Sloper trans-

ferred to the puppet stage. George Speaight mentioned an Ally Sloper

show given at the Tottenham Club by a showman called Marshall in

, and Harry Wilding’s also used the character. He briefly repre-

Merely Players?

040 c4 (65-82) 8/4/04 10:26 AM Page 70

sented a more urban type, but no texts or routines involving him have

been preserved.16

�The Harlequinade

Every Victorian company had a set of figures for the harlequinade.

If audiences could recognize the stock figures of the dramatic troupe

without much difficulty, it was even easier to recognize those of the har-

lequinade. Columbine (décolletée and short-skirted) was a cross between

a soubrette and a ballet dancer. The athletic, balletic Harlequin (with

his fitted diamond-patterned costume, often enhanced with braid and

glitter, and a smooth black mask) was reminiscent of the masquerade

rather than the Commedia dell’Arte.17 Clown evoked Joey Grimaldi,

with his tufts of red hair, white face, red cheeks, and bright eyes, together

with a white costume whose added flounces were edged with red

braid.18 Pantaloon’s costume still retained something of the seventeenth

century with its ruff, while his gray hair in tufts and pointed beard rep-

resented comic old age. He was there to be the butt of every joke and

prank. These characters formed a separate part of the program with its

own tradition and did not mix with the regular dramatic characters.

Their distinctive theatre costumes, like Punch’s, remained the same

from show to show.

The marionette harlequinade followed the live theatre one quite

closely. Grimaldi’s Clown had not really been a speaking role, however,

whereas the marionette Clown was often eloquent. His eloquence was

directed at Pantaloon, who was also a speaking part. Most of the fun of

the harlequinade (such as chases and dealing with recalcitrant donkeys)

was given to these two. Clown Joey was quite distinct from the rustic

Clown in appearance and behavior. He had far more agility, and his per-

formance was full of physical gags. Even if his outfit was a nineteenth-

century innovation, Clown Joey was basically a variant on a classic

Commedia type – he was the clever “zanni.”

The other nineteenth-century addition to the harlequinade was the

policeman, who also became a standard figure of every troupe. Sir

Robert Peel had created what could be regarded as the first modern

police force (the “peelers”). From the s the “comic” policeman was

a part of London theatre entertainment. He was rapidly absorbed into

the Victorian harlequinade as an authority figure to be a subject of

Merely Players?

040 c4 (65-82) 8/4/04 10:26 AM Page 71

amusement. He was instantly recognizable on the marionette stage, with

his helmet, uniform, and heavy whiskers. He was the butt of jokes and

suffered such indignities as having his bottom bitten by a dog or even

being pulled in two (something impossible with a human actor). On

occasion his head and limbs could be completely separated from his

torso.19 Some policeman figures, notably one from the Jim Tiller col-

lection and the Barnard one, were exceptionally tall, which no doubt

provided a further physical gag. The policeman also joined the Punch

and Judy show, just as Grimaldi’s Joey had a few years earlier.

�Animals

The nineteenth-century theatre had a passion for live animals on the

stage. Horses starred in the countless equestrian dramas at Astley’s

Amphitheatre in London, while the immensely popular melodrama

The Forest of Bondy depended on a trained dog. Almost every variety of

fauna was also represented by actors in papier-mâché carapaces in such

extravaganzas as Boucicault’s Babil and Bijou (). The live animals

Merely Players?

. Harlequinade on the Barnard stage, Leeds, . Ken Barnard Collection.

040 c4 (65-82) 8/4/04 10:26 AM Page 72

could be classified as “actors,” while the cardboard ones came close to a

form of puppetry – artificial shapes animated by live performers. Unlike

the puppet stage today, the nineteenth-century marionette stage was

following the actors’ theatre in its use of animals. A marionette animal

in a marionette show is actually less incongruous, however, than a live

animal on the stage of a theatre with living actors. A puppet animal,

even if made of papier-mâché or wood, did not carry with it the over-

tones of the papier-mâché animals, where audiences could not forget

the human actor inside.

From frogs and crocodiles to horses, bulls, ostriches, robins, elephants,

and dragons, the Victorian marionette theatre boasted a wide range of

animals. The majority appeared in variety and trick acts or in the spec-

tacular scenes of pantomimes. Very few of these figures have survived.

Our knowledge of them depends mainly on illustrated posters and the

occasional script or newspaper reference.

Only a few animals were used in the Victorian marionette theatre

with any distinct dramatic function; and, unlike today’s puppet theatre,

even fewer were given human characteristics. The Bullock pantomime

of Little Red Riding Hood had a lively speaking jackdaw, much loved

by the juvenile audience members. The wolf was a metamorphosis of

the wicked duke and probably stood upright and behaved like a human

performer. No doubt it resembled Holden’s Beast in Beauty and the Beast,

which evoked a human actor in a shaggy coat with an animal head and

ferocious jaws. We have no record concerning Dick Whittington’s cat,

but it too may well have been an acting role. Dick Turpin’s horse, cen-

tral to the equestrian drama based on Harrison Ainsworth’s story, was a

functional utility more than a character in its own right. The Jewell-

Holden pantomime of Bluebeard involved an elephant drawing the

main character’s chariot, but this was little more than a spectacular sce-

nic effect.20 Bluebeard also included an undersea scene with associated

creatures of the deep, including mermaids.

The donkey of the harlequinade was coupled with the clown. The

combination of comic figure and recalcitrant mount is a stock joke of

traditional European puppetry and can be found, for example, in

Germanic versions of Faust, where Hanswurst finds himself riding a

very awkward goat. The uncontrollable donkey cart was a forerunner

of the uncontrollable motor-car, so often found in circuses (and also

adapted to the marionette stage). Bullock’s had Pete and Barney, a pair

Merely Players?

040 c4 (65-82) 8/4/04 10:26 AM Page 73

of donkeys, as well as a maverick bull (literally in a china shop), while

Thomas Holden had a dog that grabbed the policeman’s tunic in its teeth

and bit the seat of his pants.

�Acting

Most actors and playwrights of the eighteenth and early nineteenth

century followed the convention of presenting types of a fairly gener-

alized nature rather than individualized characters. Eighteenth-century

acting was based on a series of carefully coded gestures, body positions,

movements, and facial expressions used to denote different emotions;

there was a strong belief that the external appearance of the face and

head could give information about the character of the person. The

seventeenth-century French painter Charles Le Brun had been used as

a point of reference for actors because of his attempts to codify facial

expressions; Johann Caspar Lavater’s Essays on Physiognomy, published

at the end of the eighteenth century, developed this idea.21 Actors strove

to turn their faces into masks presenting the various characteristic

expressions. Marionette carvers were content with simpler emotions,

which corresponded to the basic theatrical types; their aim was to pro-

duce heads that were instantly recognizable to audiences. Unlike the

mobile human face, however, a marionette face with a fixed expression

usually had to be adapted to a wide range of emotions.

In the absence of mobile features, the Victorian marionette used a

shorthand of gesture, where head and body posture and hand gesture

took on the greatest significance. Marionette performance has much in

common with acting with a mask, which compensates in a similar way

for the absence of facial expression. Two obvious examples are the head

bowed to indicate depression and raised to indicate pride. In Alfred

Jarry, an advocate of the use of the mask in actor’s theatre in France,

took the puppet Guignol as an example and suggested that a wide range

of expressions and emotions could be derived from six different head

angles.22 Many puppeteers have discovered how the puppet can use light

not just as illumination but as a means of suggesting mobility of facial

expression. This is achieved by using the light to make the contours of

the face throw shadows that will modify with changes of position. In

most Victorian marionette theatres, as in the live theatre, the primary

function of lighting was illumination. This was usually rudimentary,

Merely Players?

040 c4 (65-82) 8/4/04 10:26 AM Page 74

and the showpeople probably did not even think of using it to assist the-

atrical expression. Those who saw Thomas Holden’s performances at

the Bolero Star in – were convinced that the eyes, lips, and

even facial muscles moved.23 This may be no more than a tribute to his

manipulation skills, but it does also suggest that he had some idea as to

how to use the lighting to make the features of his dolls appear to be

mobile.

The direction in which a puppet looks is every bit as important as the

direction in which the live actor looks. For the Victorian marionettist,

the movement of the head and the direction of the gaze could give an

audience a sense of focus and lend support to the text. Deliberately turn-

ing away and averting the gaze from another character could also be a

dramatic signifier, while looking directly at the audience could have a

startlingly strong effect, best kept for the soliloquy or the frame-breaking

behavior of the comic.

Our idea of marionette acting in the nineteenth century is at best

hypothetical and cannot be re-created from eyewitness accounts.

References to marionette performance, if they mention the acting at

all, generally speak of the extent that the viewer was persuaded for a

moment that these were live actors. The live actor provided the yard-

stick by which marionette showpeople measured their own perfor-

mances. With the exception of the comic figure, who might appear in a

variety of roles while remaining only too recognizable, the puppet could

be perceived not as a more or less realistic actor but as a representation

of the role itself. Audiences accepted the “reality” of the marionette

(just as we accept the reality of strip cartoon figures today) and did not

feel any particular need to question it. Once they had done this, they

could enter into the reality of the fiction that the puppet was performing.

The very real limitations of the marionette and its specifically puppet-

like movements were not really an issue. A puppet’s walk is a puppet’s

walk, and audiences recognize it as such, however much they may

admire its approximation to the walk of a “real” human being when

the figure is well constructed and the manipulator is skillful.

Despite a limited range of potential expressive movement, the

Victorian marionette could be remarkably convincing. This was a period

when many live actors relied on a restricted range of conventionalized

gestures and tended to line themselves up close to the footlights. Without

doubt the more wooden acting of some provincial barnstormers cannot

Merely Players?

040 c4 (65-82) 8/4/04 10:26 AM Page 75

have seemed so remote from the puppet theatre. The marionette that

was speaking drew attention to itself by moving, while the others

remained relatively still. Motion of the head usually indicated speech;

by focusing their attention on this movement, audiences could instantly

associate the unseen voice with the moving figure. Arm movements

(reminiscent of the pump-handle movements of some actors) were also

used to reinforce speech.

Two of the actor’s most expressive elements, the hands and the facial

features, were fixed and unchangeable in the case of the marionette. In

the rather rhetorical style of acting, popular before David Garrick intro-

duced a more “naturalistic” one, much attention was drawn to the

expressive possibilities of the hand alone.24 A limited number of fixed

hand positions can be given extraordinary variety when supported by

arm gestures, a point that was not lost on marionette showpeople. The

Victorian dramatic marionette had neither wrist joints nor articulated

hands. The three main forms taken by marionette hands are flat open

hands, half-open hands with the thumb brought into alignment with

the index finger and the fingers either straight or curved, and closed

hands. The flat hand is the least expressive and in many cases may have

been produced by a maker less aware of the dramatic potential of the

hand. The closed hand was designed to hold a prop (often a stick or

sword) but could also suggest the clenched fist. In some cases a pin

through the thumb and index finger of the half-open hand could also

create an enclosed space between thumb and index into which a prop

could be stuffed. A partially closed hand with a pointing index finger is

less common but allows for a range of strong demonstrative gestures,

such as a finger toward the sky to call on providence or toward another

character to accuse or denounce. As a rule, female characters have both

hands in the half-open position, partly, no doubt, because they were less

frequently involved in fights and did not need to handle weapons (a

reminder of the less than active role of women in most plays of the

period).

Conventions of course varied from one company to another. The open

curved hand combined with the closed one is typical of the Clowes-

Tiller figures, while the Munich and Lyon ones include a number with

both hands in the curved position as well as some interesting variants

produced by more skilled carvers. An examination of the carving of

hands can also help group certain figures according to stylistic features

Merely Players?

040 c4 (65-82) 8/4/04 10:26 AM Page 76

and even show how figures from different sources may originally have

been in the same troupe or been produced by the same makers.

�Marionettes and Acting Theory

In the eighteenth century various manuals on the art of acting began

to appear. Their target was the amateur actor as much as the profes-

sional. Behind such manuals lay the belief that specific emotions could

be portrayed on the stage by the adoption of certain techniques. Thomas

Sheridan and Aaron Hill focused their attention on the speech of the

actor. The notion of pantomime acting also took a firm hold and led to

the elaboration of a less formal acting style, with simple clear and

expressive gestures that owed little to the previously more rhetorical

style based on ancient classical models. David Garrick, as an actor,

demonstrated just how important attitude and gesture could be.

In – Johann Jakob Engel published his Ideen zu einer

Mimik. In this was translated into French with the title Idées sur

le geste et l’action théâtrale. Henry Siddons, son of the celebrated British

actress Sarah Siddons, adapted this for the contemporary British stage

as Practical Illustrations of Rhetorical Gesture and Action (). The

work of Engel and Siddons was a landmark as a serious attempt to exam-

ine the gestural codes of the theatre, noting how they were produced,

how they might be classified, and how they were received by the audi-

ence. Siddons’s volume is well illustrated, even if most of the gestures

and attitudes depicted have become faintly ridiculous to us today. Until

the middle of the nineteenth century an actor’s skill was measured less

by the overall interpretation of the part than by the ability to portray

certain emotions at specific moments. Audience reaction to this was

more like reaction today when the skill of the ballet dancer or the opera

singer at a specific moment of the performance may be applauded.

Young actors of the nineteenth century saw part of their training as con-

sisting of learning the tricks of their elders. Siddons was ahead of his

time and anticipated Konstantin Stanislavsky in his dislike of “false act-

ing” and his belief that acting must come from within. His only refer-

ence to puppets is when he refers to “false acting,” and “puppetlike” is

not a term of admiration.

Siddons distinguishes between “picturesque” acting (more con-

cerned with the sculptural beauty of the attitude and gesture) and

Merely Players?

040 c4 (65-82) 8/4/04 10:26 AM Page 77

“expressive” acting (more concerned with conveying meaning). He

comes down heavily in favor of the latter. Siddons was thinking in terms

of the legitimate drama. The expressive style was also endemic to both

pantomime and the melodrama, forms of theatre that did not meet with

his approval. The expressive acting of the marionette stage was proba-

bly closer to pantomime and melodrama than to the legitimate theatre.

Siddons’s book provides an excellent idea of expressive attitudes. To take

an example, his description of the portrayal of the drunkard on the stage

shows what an audience of the time might read as a drunken state:

All his senses seem absorbed in the desire which consumes him. His

haggard eyes come out of his head; his steps are wide and straggling;

his body with his stretched out neck bent forwards; his hands tightly

clasp the cup, or are stretched out with eagerness to seize it: his res-

piration is rapid and uneven; and, in the case of his springing for-

wards to lay hold of the glass, his mouth is open, and his dry tongue

appears through his lips, eagerly lapping the liquor on the surface of

the vessel which contains it. 25

Temperance melodramas often found their way to the puppet stage.

One popular piece was W. W. Pratt’s Ten Nights in a Bar Room, Drink;

or, Father Dear Father, Come Home (). While we might have to

imagine the peculiar expression of the eyes and the tongue hanging out,

much of the rest of what Siddons describes could easily be communi-

cated by a marionette. In particular one might note the leaning-forward

position indicative of desire, which he elsewhere contrasts with bend-

ing backward away from a threat or something that is not desired.

Siddons distinguishes between straightforward functional gestures

(which denote such basic things as entering, exiting, sitting, striking

another character) and ones which give information about the emo-

tional state of a character.26 He looks particularly at the significance of

the various arm and hand gestures and observes how the extension of

the right arm and hand can denote protection, reproof, command, admo-

nition, and invitation.27 He also notes that scorn and contempt can be

indicated by an angry downward gesture of the open hand, pointing

toward the feet of the interlocutor. Boasting, triumph, or an exultant

expression of joy can all be expressed by putting out the raised hand and

shaking it “as it were into a shout.”28 For gestures of admiration and

sublimity, Siddons says, “the whole figure of the man becomes straight:

Merely Players?

040 c4 (65-82) 8/4/04 10:26 AM Page 78

i. Stock fi gures for drama (Clowes-Tiller). John Phillips Collection, now in the Theatre Museum, London.

ii. Papier-mâché heads with glass eyes:(top left) Punch head with moving mouth (Delvaine), top left) Punch head with moving mouth (Delvaine), top left

Desiree Delvaine Collection; (top right) Dancer (Clunn Lewis), top right) Dancer (Clunn Lewis), top rightMusée Gadagne, Lyon; (bottom) Older man (D’Arc),

Puppet Centre Trust Collection.

iii. Wooden heads with carved hair:(top left) Early nineteenth-century male, Stadtmuseum, Munich; top left) Early nineteenth-century male, Stadtmuseum, Munich; top left(top right) Sailor head: Chorus Tommy (De Randel), John Bright top right) Sailor head: Chorus Tommy (De Randel), John Bright top right

Collection; (bottom) “Swell” (Clowes-Tiller). John Phillips Collection, now in the Theatre Museum, London.

iv. Mother Shipton (Middleton). Musée Gadagne, Lyon.

v. Grand Turk (Barnard):(top left) Full figure;top left) Full figure;top left(top right) Halfway, showing top right) Halfway, showing top rightfive small heads; (bottom) Complete transformation. Purves International Puppet Theatre Museum, Biggar.

vi. (left) Gypsy dancer (James Holden), Holden Family Collection left) Gypsy dancer (James Holden), Holden Family Collection left(right) Lottie Collins (Barnard), Purves International Puppet right) Lottie Collins (Barnard), Purves International Puppet right

Theatre Museum, Biggar.

vii. Thomas and James Holden bill with harlequinade scenes.Musée Gadagne, Lyon.

viii. Barnard backcloth (cut down from original size): Chinese Street. Purves In ter na tion al Puppet Theatre Mu se um, Biggar.

nevertheless, the feet, the hands, and the traits of the visage are in repose;

or if one hand is in movement, it is not held forth as in simple admira-

tion, but lifted upwards.”29 He then goes on: “To throw up the hands to

heaven is an expression of admiration, amazement, and astonishment,

used by those who flatter and excessively praise. This expression always

appears at some unexpected accident, and is used by painters to express

amazement.”30

Remarkably similar attitudes were recorded by producers of prints

of actors in their best-known roles. Sheets of characters for toy theatres

produced by John Kirby Green, John Redington, the Skelt family,

William West, and others also provided a simplified rendition of the

live theatre, with figures in expressive attitudes. Tempting as the idea

is, nothing suggests that toy theatre sheets should themselves be seen as

a source of acting styles for the marionette stage. They do provide yet

another indication of the norms of stage practice that the marionette

proprietors were also striving to emulate.

The first point of reference for the marionette proprietors was the

live theatre, whether as witnessed in a major metropolitan house or as

performed in a portable booth by Richardson’s or others. Some of the

marionette showpeople had themselves been involved in performance

as live actors or in companies where puppets and live acting ran side by

side. For them the puppet was often little more than an actor made of

wood. In performance it had to convince as a role but not as a human

being, and the presentational style of pantomime and melodrama was

exactly the style it could best use.

The cheap acting editions of plays (used both by the portable the-

atres and by the marionette showpeople) often carried an engraving of

a key dramatic scene depicting attitudes and gestures that immediately

conveyed meaning. The Illustrated London News, which began to appear

in the s, carried reviews illustrated with scenes from plays with

actors in visually expressive postures. Further graphic suggestions could

also be found in the engraved plates of cheap editions of the novels from

which much nineteenth-century theatre was derived. Quite apart from

what might or might not be currently observed in the live theatre, the

performances of the traditional marionette showpeople also depended

on what was handed down by previous practitioners. Many marionette

showpeople may seldom have set foot in a live theatre – or at best seen

only performances by traveling players in portable theatres. Effectively

Merely Players?

040 c4 (65-82) 8/4/04 10:26 AM Page 79

this would have increased the gulf between what they were doing and

the current practice in mainstream metropolitan theatre.

Parallels between the marionette theatre and the live one are fasci-

nating. An inexpensive acting manual produced by John Dicks around

(designed mainly but not exclusively for amateurs) was in the

same collection as many of the play-texts which marionette proprietors

used. Whether they studied it or not is of relatively little importance.

What is important is that it lays out some of the most commonly

accepted conventions of the later nineteenth century. It is also inter-

esting in that it warns against the widespread tendency to imitate well-

known actors and suggests that the performer should look closely at the

part.31 This principle, however desirable, would seem to be at variance

with the practice of most marionette showpeople. There are, however,

many practical tips that could be seized upon. Pages – outline the

“methods of expressing the various passions, emotions &c.” The writer

analyzes a series of emotions in terms of gesture, attitude, voice, and

facial expression. Once we allow for the physical limitations of the mar-

ionette, we are left with a simplified and codified set of gestures and

attitudes that are easy to imitate and could be directly applied to the

acting of marionette drama. Despite a warning against learning a sys-

tem of feelings by rule, the author presents what he calls “an analyti-

cal review of the effect of various emotions on the human frame.”

If we look at this list, omitting all reference to facial expression and

gestures requiring articulated hands, we are still left with a useful cod-

ification of gesture, attitude, and voice that could be applied to the mar-

ionette stage:

Joy, when sudden and violent, is expressed by clapping of

hands . . . the voice rises from time to time to very high tones.

Tranquility or apathy. Appears by . . . general repose of the body

and limbs, without the exertion of any one muscle . . .

Mirth, or laughter, . . . shakes and convulses the whole frame, and,

appearing to give some pain, occasions holding the sides.

Grief, sudden and violent, expresses itself by beating the head or

forehead, tearing the hair, and catching the breath, as if

choking; also by screaming, weeping, stamping, lifting the eyes

from time to time to heaven, and hurrying backwards and

forwards. This is a passion which admits, like many others, of a

Merely Players?

040 c4 (65-82) 8/4/04 10:26 AM Page 80

great deal of stage trick; but which, if not well contrived, and

equally as well executed, frequently fails of the desired effect.

Melancholy or fixed grief is gloomy, sedentary, motionless . . . the

eyes are cast down . . . and weeping, accompanied by a total

inattention to everything that passes. The words are dragged

out rather than spoken; the accent weak and interrupted, sighs

breaking into the middle of sentences and words.

Despair . . . bends the eyebrows downward . . . the head is flung

down upon the breast; the arms are bent at the elbows, the fist

clenched hard; and the whole body strained and violently

agitated; groans expressive of inward torture, accompanying the

words appertaining to his grief; the words are also uttered with

a sullen eager bitterness, and the tone of his voice is often loud

and furious. When despair is supposed to drive the actor to

distraction and self-murder, it can seldom be overacted.

Fear . . . draws back the elbows parallel with the sides, lifts up the

open hand (the fingers together) to the height of the breast, so

that the palms face the dreadful object, as shields opposed to it;

one foot is drawn back behind the other, so that the body seems

shrinking from danger, and putting itself in a posture for fight;

the heart beats violently. The breath is fetched quick and short,

and the whole body is thrown into a general tremor. Fear is also

displayed, frequently by a sudden start, and in ladies by a

violent shriek, which produces fainting; the voice is weak and

trembling.

Hope, . . . bends the body a little forward, the feet equal, spreads

the arms, with the hands open, as to receive the object of its

longings; the tone of the voice is eager and uneven, inclining to

that of joy, but curbed by a degree of doubt and anxiety.

The last item on his list is Death, which “is exhibited by violent distor-

tion, groaning, gasping for breath, stretching the body, raising it, and

then letting it fall.” He then adds that “dying in a chair, as often prac-

tised in some characters, is very unnatural, and has little or no effect.”

Despite the shift toward a more visual mode of perception in theatre,

the vocal element was still regarded as primordial. Old Stager (the

author of the Dicks manual) declared: “Elocution is to acting what

speech is to thought.”32 Audiences still went to hear a play as much as

Merely Players?

040 c4 (65-82) 8/4/04 10:26 AM Page 81

to see one, and this was certainly true of the dramatic offerings of

the marionette theatre. Deprived of the niceties of facial expression, the

marionette theatre was heavily dependent on the modulations of the

voices provided by the operators, each of whom might also have to speak

for three or four different characters in one drama, providing distinct

voices. The role of the voice in the nineteenth-century marionette the-

atre cannot be emphasized enough, since it is very often one of the

biggest dividers between the “traditional” approach to the marionette

and the modern one.

The naturalist theatre and cinema dragged audience perception

toward a form of realism with which the marionette theatre could not

hope to compete. As they moved into the twentieth century, marionettes

began to lose the need to look real. Popular audiences may have deserted

them for the cinema, but the gain was a fuller acceptance of the pup-

pet in its own right and not as a surrogate actor. At about the same time

that Gordon Craig was writing his essay on the “Actor and the Über-

marionette,” Clunn Lewis received a letter from George Bernard Shaw,

who wrote: “A good puppet show ought to be attached to every school

of acting as an object lesson. – The cinematograph, which is said to be

killing the dolls, is much more natural, and the result is that it has com-

paratively little effect on the imagination, but I shall not be surprised if

in the long run it revives the puppet show instead of killing it, for it can

never take its place.”33

Merely Players?

040 c4 (65-82) 8/4/04 10:26 AM Page 82

Chapter 5 : The Anatomy

of the Victorian Marionette

�The Makers

The marionette actor, like its human counterpart, has a number of

physical characteristics, which in turn affect its expressiveness. Wood

and cloth may replace flesh and blood, but the moment it enters on a

stage it is alive. The nineteenth-century British marionette was both a

piece of folk art and a functional object. It lacked the folkloristic sig-

nificance of the Sicilian pupi, but it could have aesthetic qualities, which

sometimes make it a collector’s item today. Individual carvers had their

own styles, and the dressmaking and embellishment of costumes often

revealed a sophisticated sense of color and design.

In any one company the figures could come from a variety of sources.

Some troupes made most of their own figures, while others inherited

them or acquired them from professional makers or from other show-

people. Companies developed organically, and brand-new figures could

be juxtaposed with ones fifty or more years old. With time, figures them-

selves could change a great deal. Limbs were often replaced, heads

moved from one figure to another; repainting was a regular occurrence.

Certain companies included highly competent makers, but even they

might occasionally buy figures or turn to commercial makers for hands

or heads.

Figures from different collections can show similarities in construc-

tion, which is also a reminder of the extent to which puppets might pass

from one company to another. A close examination of the surviving fig-

ures reveals not only interrelated families of puppeteers but also stylis-

tically related families of puppets.

James Shaw, stage manager for D’Arc’s and later with Bullock’s,

claimed that he had been employed to make a second set of figures for

W. J. Bullock for the Royal Marionettes for the tour to America.1

050 c5 (83-108) 8/4/04 10:27 AM Page 83

In the midst of all the litigation, McDonough and Earnshaw commis-

sioned their own figures in America, probably from Henry Lawrence.

Later Lawrence said that McDonough had paid him “double the price

that he would have to pay others in order that he might have the gen-

uine article.”2 Lawrence also provided figures for Thomas Holden,

who, having returned from America, was setting up his own show and

preparing a German tour. He may have made the marionettes used by

Holden at the Cambridge Music Hall, London, in January , includ-

ing those for Beauty and the Beast and the harlequinade and also two

figures dancing on a tightrope, a pole-balancer, and a dancing skeleton.3

In November Lawrence’s announced: “We have just forwarded to

Mr. Thomas Holden Four Model (or Muddle) Marionette Minstrels,

Five Chairs, Two Fiddles and One Banjo!”4 An advertisement of

implied, or intended to imply, some form of partnership, stating: “The

Marionettes and Tricks Manufactured by H. Lawrence are exhibited by

Mr Holden and the Brothers Lawrence.”5 At that particular moment,

Lawrence’s company was in Portsmouth, while Thomas Holden was

happily packing audiences into the Royal Cambridge Music Hall in

London. It looks as if he was trying to draw additional publicity from

the association.

The Clowes family had a reputation for carving skills.6 The first Tiller

company may have used figures made by John Clowes.7 A comparatively

large number of Clowes figures survive. There is a stylistic similarity

between most of the figures that suggests that they may all be the work

of members of the same group. The Clowes-Tiller puppets now in the

Theatre Museum, London, show the hand of at least four different

carvers. Many of the heads appear to be by the same carver; but two

other carvers are also recognizable, one because of the attention given

to the carving of ears, and the other because of the rather flat noses and

deeply excavated nostrils. Some of the Clowes-Tiller variety figures,

notably a pair of stilt-walking clowns, show stylistic differences and may

well have been bought in.

D’Arc’s, with a background in waxworks, was an example of a com-

pany that included both makers and modelers. The Fannings almost

certainly learned their techniques from them. They rebuilt the Bullock

show in , and Harry Fanning also claimed that he had made fig-

ures for the Jewell-Holden show: “I myself made three parts of the pres-

ent show figures, tricks etc. and can prove the same if disputed.”8

The Anatomy of the Victorian Marionette

050 c5 (83-108) 8/4/04 10:27 AM Page 84

Richard Barnard made most of his figures himself. The sheer bold-

ness of the carving and the elements of individual character detail

indicate one-off pieces made by an artist. In Paris in Barnard

made up three acrobats whose heads are sufficiently different in style

to indicate that they were purchased. There is a degree of uniformity

about some of the hands and feet of figures in the Munich collection

which suggests that they may have been batch-produced and supplied

by a professional maker. Some of the shoes are exceptionally neat, with

heels, squared toes, and even some creases. The style of carving of the

heads is reminiscent of work being produced in the north of Italy and

reminds us that commercially made figures were made by a crafts-

people whose carving skills could be greatly superior to those of the

puppeteer.

Bonini of Turin, founded , was mainly a maker of puppets for

domestic use but also supplied such important companies as Lupi of

Turin and Colla of Milan. It also exported figures as well as individual

parts (such as heads) and props, and some of these were almost certainly

bought by British clients.9

The demand created by the expansion of marionette activity after

led to the establishment of firms of puppet-makers or suppliers.

Le Mare’s, well-known for ventriloquist dolls, was established in

and sold marionettes in three sizes: inches ( cm), inches ( cm),

and inches ( cm).10 Heads for the smaller figures cost s d, and

the larger ones s d (moving mouths were s d extra). The standard

range cost £, s, and s, according to size, and included: “Clown,

Policeman, Sailor, Irishman, Nigger Dance, Milkmaid, Scaramouch,

Cure etc. Slightly more elaborate figures, such as the Chair Performer,

Ball Juggler, Old Woman and her Children, Dissected Policeman [sic]

and others cost shillings, shillings and shillings according to

size.” The catalogue lists some of the more important clients, which

included Barnum and Bailey and Robert Houdin, but also Holden and

Madam Jewell as well as De Vere’s.

DeVere’s, established in , had a branch at rue Saulnier, Paris

(near the Folies-Bergère) and later on the rue de Trévise. In a letter of

to the French showman Emile Pitou, C. de Vere indicated that they

were makers for the main English and American showpeople and listed

Jennion, Wickley (Wycherley?), Bullock, Tray, Morley, and Holden

among their clients.11 He also mentioned making figures for Gallici, who

The Anatomy of the Victorian Marionette

050 c5 (83-108) 8/4/04 10:27 AM Page 85

provided figures for some French companies. Their elaborate catalogue

(running to pages) covered puppets, ventriloquist’s figures, and a

huge variety of stage props, conjuring tricks, magic lanterns, and so forth.

A short version indicates that they made “Fantoches à la Holden” approx-

imately cm high. They could provide special figures with moving fin-

gers and smoking puppets. Their main list included rope-dancers, a pole

juggler (tranka), a ball juggler, a wheel balancer, a drinking clown on

stilts, an acrobatic clown, Mère Gigogne (old woman) and her numerous

family, a pair of Chinese dancers, street singers, a dancing dislocating

skeleton, Loïe Fuller, the Grand Turk, a “Negro” jig dancer, a “Negro”

big boot dancer, and a “Negro” orchestra (of any number). De Vere’s

standard range of figures had papier-mâché heads, but for a special price

they could provide figures with hardwood heads, painted, with enamel

eyes, richly dressed, complete with tights, wigs, and shoes as well as con-

trols, and ready for immediate use. They also sold complete marionette

stages and transformation scenes for pantomimes and apotheoses with

lit-up fountains and so forth.

John Till, who went to America with the Bullock company in ,

remained there, worked for a time with Middleton’s, and subsequently

set up on his own, both as a performer and as a maker of marionettes

for sale. He dealt in variety figures but also groups of the main charac-

ters for four popular pantomimes.

�Size

There is evidence that marionettes in the eighteenth century could

sometimes be life-sized.12 We can probably ignore the many nineteenth-

century puffs making this claim. Showpeople were perfectly aware that

a puppet on a stage with other objects in scale (or even slightly smaller)

can appear larger than it actually is. The Middleton Mother Shipton

measures cm. The largest other surviving figures are Grand Turks

and extending figures. The Barnard Grand Turk is nearly . m tall,

and their Scaramouche is of a similar height – but both are trick

figures.

At the other end of the scale, Speaight suggests that Grey’s figures

were only inches high; and for them the stage need have been no big-

ger than a Punch and Judy one. This seems very small but could corre-

spond to a set of figures originally intended for domestic performances.

The Anatomy of the Victorian Marionette

050 c5 (83-108) 8/4/04 10:27 AM Page 86

Many late-eighteenth-century Venetian marionettes designed for pri-

vate use were no more than cm high. This was also true of the fig-

ures used in the Patagonian Theatre of Dublin and London in the

s.13 The print of Candler’s Fantoccini suggests that his figures were

about cm ( inches) high. Smaller figures would have been easier

for street fantoccini performers to transport, though the George Scharf

drawings do not suggest that they were that diminutive.

Most marionettes come in one of two size ranges: – cm (–

inches) and – cm (– inches). It was quite common for the dra-

matic figures to be in the latter range (Clowes-Tiller, for example), while

most variety ones were smaller.

Clunn Lewis had a set of dramatic figures, almost certainly old

Middleton ones, measuring between and cm.14 If they can be seen

as representative of a traveling troupe of the mid-century, the implica-

tion would be that the dramatic marionettes in the earlier part of the

century were smaller than those of the later years. This would be borne

out by some of the Munich figures. The larger fit-ups and the improved

travel and transport facilities after may have encouraged the use

of larger figures.

�The Head

Carved wood and papier-mâché were the main materials used for

heads. The first demanded carving skills, the second modeling skills.

Wood is a more durable material than papier-mâché, especially when

stored under damp conditions, which may account for the comparatively

higher survival rate of figures with wooden heads. Carving could range

from simple whittling with a penknife to a high degree of artistry with

chisels. Less well-carved heads tend to have a rather flat profile, with

eyes as bulges without any indication of lids or else simply painted onto

the area scooped out on either side of the nose. The proportions of the

head and face were not always very well observed. A low forehead could

be used deliberately to indicate lower social status (a high one was meant

to look aristocratic) but was generally no more than rather naïve carv-

ing. Some carvers would split the head and hollow out the middle to

reduce weight.

The Clowes-Tiller and Barnard figures are designed to have a direct

dramatic impact. The individual styles are very distinct from one

The Anatomy of the Victorian Marionette

050 c5 (83-108) 8/4/04 10:27 AM Page 87

another. Neither is unrealistic, but realism is clearly not the primary

concern. Clowes-Tiller heads are divided into broad types, whereas the

Barnard heads verge on caricature, with a high degree of observation

of different individuals. The latter also have more pronounced relief

than most other contemporary heads. Above all they are unashamedly

puppet heads. One group of the Munich heads is far more realistic. They

have neither the element of caricature nor the same folk quality. They

are superbly finished and very beautiful, and in terms of scale and fin-

ish they are similar to the few surviving Holden figures. A small num-

ber of heads in Lyon, including one unpainted one, look as if they may

come from the same source.

Modeled heads were executed in papier-mâché and sometimes fin-

ished with wax. It is unlikely that they were ever made solely of wax,

though this was sometimes stated, probably because wax was expensive

and this was a way of enhancing the prestige of the show. The term

“papier-mâché” can be loosely applied to mean a laminate of paper built

up inside a mold or directly on top of a model. More correctly, it means

a mix of macerated damp paper, glue-size, and a base such as whiting,

all well pounded together and reduced to a paste or composition. Most

nineteenth-century theatres had workshops for the making of papier-

mâché scenic elements, props, and the very large false heads used in pan-

tomimes and extravaganzas. Occasionally puppeteers modeled heads

directly in solid papier-mâché or else worked it up on top of a wooden

core. Most, however, preferred to make a laminate. Papier-mâché was

used by Brigaldi’s, by D’Arc’s, Bullock’s, and Delvaine’s, and by Chester

and Lee. The Jim Tiller figures include a number with papier-mâché

heads, which may have been acquired from the remnants of the Bullock

troupe in . Some of the Joe Hodson figures have papier-mâché

heads, as do about half of the Clunn Lewis ones.15 According to the cat-

alogue, De Vere’s supplied puppets with either papier-mâché or carved

heads (depending on cost and requirements).

Cheaper dolls were often made of wax over composition,16 and

papier-mâché was used as a base for waxwork figures. Mayhew’s doll-

maker in letter of his articles for the Morning Chronicle written in

said: “I make the composition heads for the dolls – nothing else.

They are made of papier-mâché (paper mashed, he called it). After

they go out of my hands to the doll-makers, they are waxed. First, they

are done over in ‘flake’ light (flesh colour), and then dipped in wax. I

The Anatomy of the Victorian Marionette

050 c5 (83-108) 8/4/04 10:27 AM Page 88

a.

“Negro” minstrel carved

by Richard Barnard. Ken

Barnard Collection.

b.

“Negro” head.

Stadtmuseum, Munich.

050 c5 (83-108) 8/4/04 10:27 AM Page 89

make a mould from a wax model, and in it work the paper – a peculiar

kind of sugar paper.”17

This was very similar to the technique employed by D’Arc’s. As wax-

modelers, D’Arc’s would have been used to working from molds. Molds

can be kept and used again and again. This probably explains how, in

, the company was able to sell a complete set of puppets to Bullock

but be in action again within a few months. When William D’Arc was

interviewed by Gerald Morice in , he informed him that all the

heads of his music-hall stars were in papier-mâché.18

Marionette heads were generally large in proportion to the rest of

the body. This was not just a matter of naïve folk art but a conscious

decision. In De Vere’s wrote a slightly indignant letter to the

French showman Emile Pitou, explaining: “In England, where we are

famous for our ‘fantoches,’ we deliberately make the head and hands

bigger in comparison to the rest of the body, so as to give a sense of dis-

tance and perspective.”19

The head carries the personality of the puppet, and for the dramatic

repertoire the head was about one-sixth the overall height of the fig-

ure, as opposed to the more anatomically correct one-eighth. This is the

general case for the Clowes-Tiller dramatic figures, though a few, like

the acrobats, have slightly smaller heads (about one-seventh). The most

important puppets were the comic ones that addressed the audience

directly, and these tended to have the largest heads. The Middleton

Mother Shipton, the Clowes-Tiller Tim Bobbin, and Hodson’s Yorkshire

Bob are all cases of a marionette whose head is about one-fifth of the

total height. Holden’s moved toward proportionately smaller heads. This

may have been part of an attempt to deceive the eye and give audiences

the feeling that they might be watching real living people. The same is

true of some of the Munich heads.

The carved or modeled head was coated first with a layer of gesso,

which provided a smooth and light-colored surface for the painting.

Marionette heads were commonly painted with water-based paints

and sometimes with some form of tempera, but oil paints were also

used. A varnish or even a thin coat of wax or encaustic provided a

slightly shiny finish. In most cases a restricted palette was used (red,

white, black, or brown). Attention was drawn to the center of the face

by red lips, the painting of the eyes, and sometimes two red dots in

the nostrils.

The Anatomy of the Victorian Marionette

050 c5 (83-108) 8/4/04 10:27 AM Page 90

The painting of the marionettes followed the conventions of stage

makeup, translating the powder, rouge, or greasepaint into water or

oil-based paint. There were conventions in stage makeup, which rec-

ommended the use of “Ruddy Rouge” for country characters, low come-

dians, and seamen. More upper-class characters, in contrast, had much

paler faces. For “Indians, Mulattoes etc.” there was a brown paste known

as “Mongolian,” which Samuel French sold before its replacement by

greasepaint. The increase in lumens provided by electric stage-lighting

after called for more color on the human face. Leichner had already

introduced greasepaints in the late s, and by the s they had

become the standard theatrical makeup.20 The Clowes-Tiller figures

reflect conventions of makeup, both from the earlier period and from

the greasepaint era. Figures dating from before the s, provided they

had not been repainted, were generally given a pale creamy-colored base

coat. The ivory complexion that these figures display today may, in fact,

be a degraded white oil-based pigment which has darkened and yel-

lowed with time. Faces painted around have much pinker com-

plexions. Another convention, adapted from stage makeup, was the

addition of dark lines, which can look a little odd but in fact are an

approximation to the heavy lake liner that was required for wrinkles

and furrows.

Some puppet heads show considerable subtlety and delicacy in the

painting, notably some of the Munich group. Most, however, were

painted and repainted many times to retain freshness. The repainting

was often crude, a touch-up job done by someone with very little skill.

�Eyes

The puppet’s eyes are the most important focus of attention. With

modern puppets they are often enormous, and even in the nineteenth

century they were proportionately large in what were already slightly

oversized heads. Whanslaw, worried by the apparently “staring” eyes of

many Victorian marionettes, missed the point that the puppet’s eyes can

vastly reinforce gesture and expression. The simplest figures rely on

paint alone to create the eye, but often there is a raised eyeball. Some of

the Munich figures and some Clunn Lewis ones have very carefully

carved eyelids with a slight ridge above the upper lid that throws an

extra shadow.

The Anatomy of the Victorian Marionette

050 c5 (83-108) 8/4/04 10:27 AM Page 91

The eye was painted as an oval white shape. Some figures have rather

schematic outlining of the eyes (with a dark line on the top and bottom),

whereas others, probably following portrait painting, outline the upper

lid more heavily than the lower one. Some puppeteers drew in simpli-

fied eyelashes all around the eye. Such painting was little more than

a piece of stylized primitivism, and the eyes looked as if they had been

button-holed. From a slight distance, however, the stage effect of this was

to make the eye less sharply defined and produce a sfumato effect.

In the center of the eye was a black dot representing both pupil and

iris. A rather dead and staring effect was avoided by highlighting this

with a fleck of white paint. This practice, often found in eighteenth-

century portrait painting, gave life to the eye. It was much used by the

Clowes-Tiller companies. The position of the fleck could be used to hint

at looking upward, downward, or to one side, an effect that could be rein-

forced by the positioning of the pupil on the eyeball. Another technique

was to paint a series of lighter streaks around the black dot to give the

impression of an iris. This also helped avoid fixity and, with the move-

ment of the head, could suggest that the eyes themselves were moving.

Some of the Munich and Clunn Lewis heads have a hole in the center

of the pupil, which creates a zone of shadow and gives a greater sense

of life when the head moves.

Red dots in the corners of the eyes were commonly employed in

actors’ stage makeup. In the age of oil and gas lighting this gave extra

life to the eye. If the head turned and the eye was partly thrown into

shadow, the red highlight could also serve as a means of ensuring that

the audience’s focus remained on it. Imitation of stage makeup proba-

bly explains how this idea found its way to the marionette stage. It is a

technique employed in eighteenth-century portrait painting, however,

and is also found in some eighteenth-century dolls.21

Glass eyes were used by a number of companies, but not necessarily

with any degree of consistency. For example, two almost identical

Christy Minstrel figures in the Clowes-Tiller group are distinguished

by the fact that one has glass eyes and the other merely painted ones.

Earlier glass eyes (often manufactured in Birmingham) were white with

a black pupil and iris. Around they became more realistic. They

were usually almond shaped, with a blue or brown iris and a black

pupil.22 After most glass eyes for doll-making were imported from

Germany. Glass eyes occur most frequently in papier-mâché heads

The Anatomy of the Victorian Marionette

050 c5 (83-108) 8/4/04 10:27 AM Page 92

(Clunn Lewis and Delvaine), where they are easiest to insert, but we

also find a number in carved wooden heads.

�Mouths

Mouths were shaped and painted red. Rustics might have open

mouths with a couple of teeth showing, but generally the mouth was

closed. Some of the Munich figures, surviving Holden ones, and Clunn

Lewis ones have holes in the corners of the mouth as well as the eyes.

This assists the play of light and shadow and, helped by head move-

ments, can give an impression that the lips are moving.

Very few dramatic figures had moving mouths. These were used

mainly for characters who had to communicate with the audience

directly. The Brigaldi troupe was seen as remarkable because of the

number of figures with opening mouths. They became more common

toward for marionette versions of music-hall stars. The mechan-

ics of an opening mouth were simple. The jaw was on a pivot with a

counterweight that held it shut. Most commonly a wire or piece of strong

string was attached to this; the other end emerged through a hole in the

top of the head, where it ended in a loop to which a control string could

be attached.

�Hair and Wigs

Puppet hair could be carved, molded, painted, or “real.” In some

cases the hairstyle can help us date a puppet. For example, hairstyles

of one group of figures in the Munich collection place them in the

first half of the nineteenth century. Certain carving conventions were

used for the representation of hair, most notably the punching of

holes all over to suggest curly hair (quite common with ethnically

African figures). The haircut could be evoked simply by the general

shaping, but sometimes considerable attention was given to careful

representation of the hair itself, complete with waves and curls. Male

figures generally had short haircuts with carved and painted hair. By

the later nineteenth century female figures were almost always pro-

vided with wigs. Many older figures ended up with wigs placed on

top of carved hair. Some of the Munich figures have professionally

made wigs using real hair, and the Clunn Lewis collection also

The Anatomy of the Victorian Marionette

050 c5 (83-108) 8/4/04 10:27 AM Page 93

includes a few wigs with wig-makers’ labels: Clarkson of the Strand

in London and G. H. Fox of Covent Garden. Cheaper alternatives were

theatrical crêpe hair, horsehair glued on, or even rabbit skin or some

form of astrakhan (as in the case of the Barnard minstrel figures).

After the popularity of wigs for doll-making opened up another

readily available source.

Wigs could be changed frequently, and marionette heads sometimes

resemble pincushions with numerous holes made by tacks. As wigs took

over from painted or carved hair, heads began to be made with round or

even flattened tops to which wigs could be attached.

Facial hair (beards, moustaches, sideburns) was nearly always

carved, modeled, or painted. Only exceptionally was real hair used.

The facial hair indicates the age or social status of the character. For

nautical plays a sailor might be given extensive sideburns, whereas

Pantaloon would be unrecognizable without his neat triangular white

beard, coupled with his three tufts of hair. A heavy beard could indi-

cate the leading man. Very often these styles are an indication of the

period of the figure, but that can be fairly approximate. Acrobats and

some older figures favored the Napoleon III moustache and goatee for

a long time. Nearer the turn of the century, the smooth-shaven masher

or swell sported a neat black moustache, which generally looked as if

the points were well waxed.

�The Body

It is very difficult to date marionettes on the basis of materials used.

Costume is not a reliable guide. Traditional principles of construction

can persist for a long time, and most older figures have been altered.

Those with a longer body, a slender waist, and more pronounced hips

are most probably among the older ones and may reflect the elongated

body of eighteenth-century dolls. Some of the Munich figures, despite

replacement arms and legs, show these characteristics and may date back

to at least the beginning of the nineteenth century.

The standard figure used for dramatic work in the nineteenth cen-

tury had a body consisting of two pieces of wood (shoulder yoke and hip

piece) linked by a tube of cloth or sometimes wash-leather. This could

be shaped and might be stuffed, generally with wood shavings, though

rags and straw were also used.23 Victorian dramatic marionettes were

The Anatomy of the Victorian Marionette

050 c5 (83-108) 8/4/04 10:27 AM Page 94

remarkably light for their size, which was often achieved by keeping the

amount of wood to a minimum.

In much of Europe a one-piece wooden trunk was usual. North Italian

figures sometimes had a joint at the waist, and this may be the source

of the English two-part body, which was comparatively light and flex-

ible. A standard two-part body had an upper section shaped roughly as

a shoulder yoke. Most bodies were unisex; but dancers had low-cut cos-

tumes, and where there was a need to display a fuller form the shoul-

der piece was carved to include the bosom. Another piece of wood

generally sufficed for the pelvis, from which the legs were hung. Some

companies preferred a heavier piece of wood that allowed the hips and

bottom to be more carefully shaped.24 This may have been for appear-

ance but could also have improved the balance of the figure.25 To reduce

weight, many makers used the smallest amount of wood compatible

with the construction of the figure, and in some cases shoulder and pelvis

pieces were hollowed out.

A small number of figures have survived where the only wood

employed is a shoulder piece inserted into a stuffed and sewn torso onto

which the legs are sewn. There are several such figures in the De Randel

collection, one from an unknown source in Dublin (Lambert Puppet

Theatre), and four in Munich. Sheila Jackson has two such figures dat-

ing from the early nineteenth century and part of an entire troupe con-

structed in this way. It is hard to tell how much this is an alternate, and

possibly older, form of construction and how much it is a technique taken

over from doll-making.26

A characteristic of D’Arc and Delvaine figures is a spring linking the

hips and shoulder piece. A few of the Jim Tiller figures also have this

type of body.27 The springs used were quite stout, forming a firm but

flexible backbone. In some cases two parallel springs were used to the

same effect. Delvaine’s continued to use this type of construction until

the s.28 It is conceivable that this spring comes from the waxwork

tradition rather than the marionette theatre. A spring can help a figure

remain upright when not supported by strings.29

The neck and shoulders were linked with interlocking wire staples.

Sometimes the head simply sat on top of the shoulders, but often the

neck joint was sunk into a hollow which concealed it.30 Some of the

Munich figures have distinctive and carefully shaped shoulder yokes,

where the hollow to take the neck is over cm deep and is traversed

The Anatomy of the Victorian Marionette

050 c5 (83-108) 8/4/04 10:27 AM Page 95

. (Garland)

dancer, early nine-

teenth century, with

padded body and

legs sewn on. Sheila

Jackson Collection.

050 c5 (83-108) 8/4/04 10:27 AM Page 96

from back to front by a stout piece of wire onto which the staple at the

base of the neck is threaded. This method of attaching the head is

unusual in Britain, but it does allow for heads to be changed with rel-

ative ease.

�The Limbs

English marionettes had joints at the shoulder, elbow, hip, knee, and

often ankle. Tenon and mortise joints were usually restricted to knees

(and ankles), which could be visible and where unidirectional move-

ment was important. Visible limbs (usually forearms and calves) were

well shaped, but there was little attempt to make the nonvisible parts

of the body resemble human anatomy – what mattered was the move-

ment. Like the figures of the Bunraku theatre, the average Victorian

marionette was an articulated mechanism onto which a costume could

be placed; it could then move in a way which evoked human motion.

An Italian view of Holden’s figures was that they were completely limp

and could collapse into a little heap of limbs and rags.31 It was this very

lack of a rigid structure that gave them their magic.

The upper arms usually consisted of a tube of cotton, which was some-

times stuffed or had a piece of wood slipped in to give rigidity. This was

tacked onto the shoulder yoke, producing a joint that could move in any

direction. The hand and forearm were carved in a single piece that could

vary in length – sometimes it consisted of no more than a hand and

wrist. Children and dancers could have complete arms carved in a sin-

gle piece, incorporating a nonjointed elbow. A little girl in the Munich

collection has one-piece arms which disappear under two little puffed

sleeves, where they are linked directly to the shoulder. Acrobats were

virtually the only figures to be provided with wrist joints.

It was usual to tack the cotton tube of the upper arm to the forearm

(sometimes it was turned back to produce a clean finish). If the carved

forearm was very short, there might be some padding between this and

the elbow seam. The elbow joint was created by a line of stitching.

Some puppeteers made a little pocket here by using two lines of stitch-

ing and inserting a small piece of wood or a pad to give a more precise

elbow movement and ensure that the arm moved at the correct angle.

Where the upper arm was stuffed, a line of stitching was made both

above and below the stuffing to help keep the shape and avoid bending

The Anatomy of the Victorian Marionette

050 c5 (83-108) 8/4/04 10:27 AM Page 97

in the wrong place. Less frequently showpeople used a two-part wooden

arm with an elbow joint. They employed a variety of joints, including

a staple with a pin through it, a mortise joint, or a simple butt joint,

which eliminated the need for any carpentry skills, was strong, and

could work very efficiently.

Legs were hung from the pelvis, frequently by means of a cloth joint,

which was tacked directly onto the underside. Sometimes the front of

the pelvis was cut away, and the legs were fixed on there. The use of a

cloth hip joint is almost a hallmark of British marionettes. It can look

crude but is remarkably effective. The cloth could bridge a gap of as

much as cm between the pelvis and the top of the thigh and thus allow

for exceptionally free movement. A similar joint could occasionally be

found in the eighteenth century in Italy, but it was generally restricted

to Commedia dell’Arte figures, which had to be more flexible than the

ordinary dramatic ones. It is just possible that this was the source of

the English cloth joint. An alternative joint, found occasionally with the

Clowes-Tiller and De Randel figures, is the leg hanging from a wire sta-

ple on the underside of the pelvis by means of a leather or canvas loop.

A number of the Munich figures have a reversed version of this, with

a staple in the top of the thigh, with a loop of cotton or leather running

through it and tacked onto the pelvis. Elsewhere in Europe the hip was

often a wooden joint, with tongues from the tops of the legs going into

slots in the pelvis and held in place with pins. Another popular European

joint was a T-shaped pelvis, with the legs hanging directly on a wire,

which passes through the shaft of the T. These joints do not offer the

same flexibility of movement and are comparatively rare in Britain.

The thigh was generally a solid piece of wood, often tapered into a

wedge at the top. Like the forearm, the thigh could be foreshortened

and linked by a tube of cotton (sometimes stuffed) to the pelvis. This

was how Delvaine’s reduced the weight of the upper legs.32 The larger

Clunn Lewis figures, in contrast, maintained their comparative light-

ness by the extensive use of papier-mâché for limbs.

The knee-joint was one that needed special attention if the figure

was to work well. This and the neck could be the only points where two

wooden elements had to articulate directly with one another. For the

standard knee joint, the upper leg was hollowed out behind the knee; a

tongue of wood, prolonging the shaped lower leg, was inserted into this

hollow and made to pivot on a wire put through the joint. Clowes-Tiller’s

The Anatomy of the Victorian Marionette

050 c5 (83-108) 8/4/04 10:27 AM Page 98

. a. Male figure, first half of nineteenth century (Munich). b. Young man

(Clowes-Tiller). c. “Negro” (Barnard). d. Unfinished figure, first half of

twentieth century (Delvaine). Drawn by Clodagh McCormick.

050 c5 (83-108) 8/4/04 10:28 AM Page 99

sometimes used a reverse version of this joint, with the end of the thigh

entering a hollow behind the shaped knee. A number of the Munich

figures have butt joints held together with wire, but we also find metal

staples held in place in a slot by a pin.33

Ankle joints were favored by many companies. A common joint con-

sists of a small piece of sheet metal or else a staple, which pivots in a

slot. A feature of D’Arc’s and Delvaine’s is a fairly thick piece of leather

used instead of the piece of metal or staple. The Munich ankle joints

are predominantly wooden mortise ones with a tongue of wood enter-

ing into a foot, but some of them are wire butt joints, like the knees

and elbows.34

�Animals

As in much of Europe, larger marionette animals were nearly

always two-dimensional, sometimes with relief on the side that faced

the audience. The idea of a flat figure makes perfect sense once we

realize that a fully three-dimensional horse, if made in scale to accom-

pany an -cm marionette, could be large, heavy, and extremely awk-

ward to handle, pack, or transport. Whanslaw illustrates a large flat

cow that belonged to a William Clowes and was probably used for the

pantomime of Jack and the Beanstalk.35 He describes it as a frame-

work covered with hide, with a solid head and legs. The overall length

was about cm. He also mentions that the Clowes troupe had some

racehorses and jockeys as flat cutouts about cm long. In addition it

had a flat cut-out elephant.

The standard horse figure was a simple silhouette with the head and

body cut out in wood and front and rear legs hanging on a pivot. This

required no more than two strings (rump and nape) to operate, which

meant that there was nothing to get in the way of a marionette mounted

on its back. An extra string was used if the head and neck were also on

a pivot, allowing some valuable tossing of the head. Harness and a

leather saddle completed the animal. Many of these mounts were one-

sided, so that they could cross the stage in one direction only; but a few

were treated in the same way on the reverse, which allowed them to go

in the opposite direction. Provided that they remained sideways to the

audience, they could look very convincing; a rocking of the control could

evoke the idea of a galloping or prancing animal.

The Anatomy of the Victorian Marionette

050 c5 (83-108) 8/4/04 10:28 AM Page 100

�Perches and Crutches

The mechanical means of operating a marionette vary across the

world, from a bunch of strings held in the hand to a metal or wooden

rod implanted in the head. The ordinary European marionette of the

eighteenth century was operated by a stout head rod, often combined

with a couple of strings or wires to the hands. William Hogarth depicted

marionettes on various occasions. His satirical engraving

Enthusiasm Delineated depicts a preacher, dressed as Harlequin, hold-

ing two puppets, with others hung around the pulpit. The print shows

hand strings and rod controls to the head but no leg strings.36

As time went by, different ways of holding an increasing number of

strings or wires were devised. The top of the head rod developed a bar

or other attachments to which these could be attached, and this control

became known by showpeople as a “perch” or “crutch.”

Until relatively late in the nineteenth century, the head rod remained

in use for dramatic figures. It was either embedded directly in the head

or hooked onto a staple in the top of the skull. A small number of fig-

ures with very solid head rods, or traces of them, can be found among

the Joe Hodson (De Randel’s) figures. The Middleton Mother Shipton

has a rod firmly fixed into the head, and the skeleton has a rod hooked

onto a staple.37 If we are to judge by surviving figures, a staple in the

head, combined with a lighter wire, was the preferred method in

Britain until the s. It is quite possible that there was a progression

from the rigid rod to a wire and that this wire, in turn, made way for a

single head string.

As long as a dramatic repertoire was the main activity of the com-

pany, the incentive to use an all-string figure was not great. When

Thomas Holden embarked on his European tours in the late s, he

presented a repertoire of pantomimes and variety, and the dramatic fig-

ures were not what the dazzled foreign audiences would have seen.

Legend often has it that Thomas Holden “invented” the all-string mar-

ionette. There is no evidence to support this.

Everything points to two distinct traditions in nineteenth-century

Britain, the dramatic and the fantoccini. Fantoccini were associated

principally with ingeniously worked trick figures and dancers, many of

which were introduced by Italian showpeople in the late eighteenth or

early nineteenth century. The all-string trick marionette was certainly

The Anatomy of the Victorian Marionette

050 c5 (83-108) 8/4/04 10:28 AM Page 101

known in Italy, and it is likely that one of the specialities of the fan-

toccini was precisely that they were operated entirely by strings and

did not require the cumbersome head rod that would have impeded

many of their routines.38 Mayhew’s fantoccini man mentioned that

he had a figure of a hornpipe-dancing sailor, which also took its hat

off. He stressed that when he had finished performing he “took good

care to whip it into a bag, so they should not see how I arranged the

The Anatomy of the Victorian Marionette

. Middleton skeleton

with head rod detached.

Musée Gadagne, Lyon.

050 c5 (83-108) 8/4/04 10:28 AM Page 102

strings, for they were very backwards in their knowledge.”39 His

emphasis on the strings suggests that they were part of the “secret”

of what he was doing.

Brigaldi’s, when appearing in London in the s, may have led the

way for the all-string dramatic marionette. One critic commented on

the lightness of the figures and the fact that they seemed to “float.”40

This could support a hypothesis that they were operated either entirely

by strings or with only a light head wire. It is quite conceivable that

Bullock’s company owed part of their success in London in , and

subsequently in America, to the fact that they too were using all-string

figures. By the time the Colla Company of Milan visited London for a

season at Hengler’s circus in , the head rod or wire was perceived

as a thing of the past. The Era reviewer complained that though the

Colla figures were very cleverly worked, “the visibility of the central

cord or wire, by which they were principally hung, somewhat impaired

the illusion.”41 One of the Holden “innovations” may have been the

replacement of the wire or string to the top of the head by two thinner

strings, attached to the ears, though this too may have been done by

D’Arc’s.42

This development opened the way for the modern marionette. Once

the head rod had gone, the strings were attached to a horizontal bar or

bars. Ernest Maindron commented on the fact that Thomas Holden’s

marionettes were suspended from a horizontal bar, to which the numer-

ous strings by which they were operated were fixed without getting tan-

gled.43 Undoubtedly there was a mystique about Holden manipulation,

but nothing suggests that they had special controls. Part of the secret of

Thomas Holden’s success may have been an awareness of basic mechan-

ics combined with a readiness to use more than one manipulator for a

single figure. This could allow for a greater number of control bars but

could only have worked if there was exceptionally fine coordination

between the manipulators.

A single bar was an adequate crutch for most figures. It was used

extensively by the Middletons. Most of the Clunn Lewis figures have a

single bar, and some Barnard figures are also operated this way. This

allowed for one performer to operate two figures at the same time. When

there was a second bar, its main function was to take leg strings. Trick

figures usually required a second bar and sometimes more. Some com-

panies continued to use the horizontal bar control until well into the

The Anatomy of the Victorian Marionette

050 c5 (83-108) 8/4/04 10:28 AM Page 103

. Jim Tiller using horizontal two-bar control,

s. Archival photo. Museum of Popular

Entertainment.

. Selection of controls.

Drawn by Clodagh

McCormick.

050 c5 (83-108) 8/4/04 10:28 AM Page 104

twentieth century.44 In America, George Middleton, son of Harry, did

so until his death in .45

The single seven-string bar of the Clunn Lewis figures corresponded

to current practice for dramatic figures. When there was a separate leg-

bar, it often had a leather tab or wire loop in the center, allowing it to

be slipped over a wire hook in the middle of the other bar when not in

use. In this case the main bar normally carried only five strings. The

bars were about cm long, with notches around which the strings were

tied.46 The points to which strings were attached might be changed

according to the practice of the individual puppeteer. Consequently,

many control bars also show traces of points where strings were attached

at some stage; but a control bar with ten possible points of attachment

does not necessarily indicate that ten strings were ever attached to it at

one time.

Many figures (including the Delvaine ones, some of the Clunn Lewis,

D’Arc, and Barnard ones, and a group in Munich) have a main control

bar in the form of a T.47 The T-bar may have begun as a head rod with

a cross bar to take the hand and, if necessary, leg strings. With the dis-

appearance of the head rod, a lesser projection (giving a T shape to the

control) could prove valuable as a point to which a string might be

attached.

�Slangs and Slanging

“Slang” was a cant term for a traveling show; but for the marionette

performer the word “slangs” meant the strings, while the verb “slang”

could be used for operating marionettes. As long as even a comparatively

lightweight wire to the center of the crown of the head remained, the

expressive potential of the puppet was limited. Once this had given way

to two strings, attached at the ears, the dynamics of the puppet’s move-

ment also changed. The older rod had allowed for strong and vigorous

movement that was impossible with a suspending wire or strings. With

head strings came an additional string attached to a staple placed mid-

way between the shoulder blades. This was the speaking string. If tight-

ened, it allowed the tension to be taken off the head strings and

introduced a new type of head movement to accompany speech. The

Tillers developed a system with strings attached to a small staple in the

forehead and to one in the back of the head. The head could be rocked

The Anatomy of the Victorian Marionette

050 c5 (83-108) 8/4/04 10:28 AM Page 105

backward and forward. The speaking string for dramatic figures was

placed in the center of the five- (or seven-) string main bar. If this was

a T-bar, it was tied to the end of the tail; a tilting of the bar meant that

it could be tightened without an extra finger to pull the string, which

allowed the head to drop forward.

Shoulder strings, taking much of the weight of the figure and thus

allowing for even greater freedom of head movement, probably did not

come into use before the twentieth century. A bum-string was used by

variety figures to provide an additional point of support for certain more

acrobatic postures. This was unusual with dramatic figures before the

introduction of shoulder strings. As more and more showpeople pro-

duced miniature versions of music-hall artistes, bowing became impor-

tant, and this string came to be thought of as the bowing string.

Methods of attaching strings to the figure also vary. Older figures can

provide evidence of several positions for attaching the same string. Hand

strings were usually attached to small staples, most commonly placed at

the wrist in a way that allowed the hand to be held with the palm at a

right angle to the ground. There are often extra small staples, however,

probably designed for holding props or to allow for more specific move-

ments or gestures. In some cases strings are directly attached around the

wrists of the puppet. Additional holes are sometimes drilled in hands,

to allow strings to run through and guide the hand in a particular direc-

tion. Staples appear in odd parts of the anatomy, often to allow for the

passage of a string to permit a very specific gesture or the handling of

a particular prop. We might note, for example, a staple in the mouth of

a figure that needs to drink. As puppet costumes sometimes had to be

changed on a daily basis, it is likely that the strings were attached to the

crutch by a knot which could slide or be easily undone (slip-knot, clove

hitch), since this would make it a simple matter to detach the strings.

Strings tied directly around the wrists might have been removable in a

similar way. Knee strings were sometimes attached by a bent pin to a

staple or a small loop of thread or cotton at the knee, and their passage

through garments could be facilitated by a well button-holed orifice.

�Figure-Working

When Brigaldi’s Royal Marionettes made their first appearance in

London, there were some comments that they did not always remain

The Anatomy of the Victorian Marionette

050 c5 (83-108) 8/4/04 10:28 AM Page 106

on the ground. Within a short time, however, the manipulation seems

to have improved vastly; the Times could report that “they no longer

wave timidly in the air, as when they first appeared, but they plant their

feet firmly on the stage, as if aware of the stability of their position.”48

“Floating” (failing to keep the feet on the ground) is often seen as a

mark of bad manipulation. To some extent this is true, but this view is

colored by the assumption that marionettes are miniature actors and

must move exactly like live human beings. Dramatic marionettes, once

more emulating the live stage, moved with increasing naturalism in the

later years of the nineteenth century. A review of D’Arc’s indicates this

tendency:

The figures are very cleverly worked, and they have this superiority

over their Italian rivals – they actually walk, whereas many of their

Italian rivals simply “float” off the stage without flexing their knee

joints. Occasionally, it is true, Mons. D’Arc’s marionettes indulge in

a kind of prancing gait, not quite in accordance with the character

they represent; but these eccentricities are rare, and, on the whole,

the Fantoches carry themselves, if we may use the expression, appro-

priately and with propriety.49

The attitude to fantoccini was different. H. W. Whanslaw commented:

“In many of the old troupes of Fantoccini it was almost a tradition to

swing the puppet onto the stage with a prodigious sweep, so that it

appeared to fly through the air, scarcely touching the stage until it landed

in the midst of the action.”50

The dramatic marionette existed in a theatrical context, and in rela-

tion to other figures, whereas the fantoccini figure was itself the cen-

tral focus. Fantoccini acts did not need to walk onto the stage – in some

cases their stringing did not even allow for that. They needed to be dis-

covered in situ at the rise of the curtain or to be moved on as rapidly as

possible. The street fantoccini booths of the earlier part of the century

had very little wing-space, and showpeople may have had to drop their

figures directly onto the stage.

We are looking at two different traditions: one perpetuating a style

of theatre executed by jointed figures, the other a type of trick per-

formance designed to astonish and amaze. It is quite likely that the

fantoccini techniques developed in an unprecedented way in Britain

and that the dramatic figures followed suit a bit later as fantoccini

The Anatomy of the Victorian Marionette

050 c5 (83-108) 8/4/04 10:28 AM Page 107

principles of stringing became the norm. The old rod marionettes of

the dramatic repertoire may have begun to look very staid. The all-

string control may have been perceived as a huge leap forward in terms

of the realistic and expressive possibilities of the figure. The live the-

atre was moving increasingly toward realism, and it is hardly surpris-

ing if the marionette theatre was dragged along in its wake.

The Anatomy of the Victorian Marionette

050 c5 (83-108) 8/4/04 10:28 AM Page 108

Chapter 6 : Dramas, Pantomimes,

& Screaming Farces

�Repertory Theatre in Miniature

The curtain’s up, the play begins,

The villain plots, the maiden sins,

Then, to the cruel wooden knife,

The paste-board victim yields her life.

The scene is changed. In castle walls

The ghost the wicked Duke appalls,

Pours all his crimes upon his head

And, with a trident, strikes him – dead!1

Until the early twentieth century companies traveling on the back

roads and in small towns and communities provided rural people with

one of the limited available opportunities for seeing plays. Today the

average puppet company seldom has more than three or four pieces in

its repertoire at any one moment. In the nineteenth century traveling

marionette shows often changed the program nightly to encourage

audiences to return more than once. The majority of the plays per-

formed were established pieces whose titles were familiar, even if their

authors’ names were not. Some would have been performed by live

actors in local theatres or on portable stages; others simply evoked a

well-known individual, event, or crime, and a known name was in itself

a form of publicity. Many were rather out-of-date by metropolitan stan-

dards. George Speaight established a list of ninety-nine plays per-

formed by the Sunderland theatre between and . Three of

these he classified as folktales, eleven as based on eighteenth-century

plays. Of the rest, three were from the early s, four from to

, twenty-two from the s, sixteen from the s, six from the

s, six from the s, and three from the s. One of the last

three was Dion Boucicault’s immensely popular Colleen Bawn, which

060 c6 (109-139) 8/4/04 10:29 AM Page 109

shows how a marionette theatre could seize the opportunity to stage a

very popular new piece.

Victorian theatre audiences expected a full evening’s entertainment.

This would involve at least a drama and a pantomime or afterpiece. In

addition there might be some concert items, such as a musical interlude,

and audiences were seldom in a theatre for less than three hours. The

marionette shows followed a similar pattern. A collection of trick acts,

however, was an integral part of the program. What was interesting

about this part of the bill is that it was something that belonged specif-

ically to the marionette theatre and had been common practice in most

of Europe since the later eighteenth century. A Middleton bill of the

s begins with the tragedy of Arden of Faversham, with an epilogue

spoken by Miss Middleton and then a comic song by Master Middleton.

Next comes “the laughable interlude of the Sheep Stealer,” then the

comic song “Lunnun (London) Is the Devil” by Master J. Middleton,

and the four-year-old Miss E. Middleton in her favorite song in the char-

acter of a sailor boy. The evening was rounded off with the “Merry

Man’s Festival,” which would have contained a string of the obligatory

trick and variety acts.2

The standard program of the later Victorian marionette theatre

lasted about two hours, combining a collection of variety acts, minstrels,

and a drama. When “Professor” Horman visited Cork in he was

offering The Babes in the Wood, a “representation à la Christys,” “The

Chinese Fair,” and a Pantomime.3 In the s Simms’s marionette pro-

gram started with a drama, comedy, or farce. Part two was Christy

Minstrels; part three, fantoccini; and part four, a pantomime (Bluebeard

in this case).4 They advertised a nightly change of program, but this

may have applied only to the first part. When Ellen Terry visited the

Clowes marionettes in , the program began with a drama, The

Robbers of Bohemia, followed by a series of variety acts, “The Italian

Fantoccini.” Next was a concert-party act, the “Star Christy Minstrels,”

then the pantomime of Bluebeard, and finally a “Harlequinade and the

Grand Transformation Scene.”5 At the end of the century Wilding’s was

still offering variety acts, a main piece (either a drama or pantomime),

and a “screaming farce.”

According to Richard Barnard, Charles Middleton’s repertoire

included Black Ey’d Susan, My Poll and My Partner Joe, The Floating

Beacon, The Waterman, The Charcoal Burner, The Hunter of the Alps,

Dramas, Pantomimes, and Screaming Farces

060 c6 (109-139) 8/4/04 10:29 AM Page 110

The Miller and His Men, The Brigand Chief, The Mistletoe Bough, The

Babes in the Wood, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Wife of Seven Husbands, The

Miser and Three Thieves, Maria Marten or the Murder in the Red Barn,

Alonzo the Brave, Sweeney Todd, Jack Sheppard, and Robin Roughhead,

besides several pantomimes and comic scenes.6 By the s, however,

Charles Middleton was already finding that two houses a night did not

really allow for a full performance of a drama and that when the bill

also included fantoccini or variety acts and “Negro” minstrels there was

room only for a curtailed drama or a farce.

Clunn Lewis, in an interview of , looked back to the dramatic

repertoire at the beginning of his career. In the s, he says, “the nobil-

ity and gentry knew of the shows, for we always gave good plays.”7 His

most popular show was Maria Marten or the Murder in the Red Barn

(“I’ve played that hundreds of times”). He also regularly played Robin

Roughhead, The Padlock, Black Ey’d Susan, and Arden of Faversham.

In the earlier part of his career as a showman, Clunn Lewis claimed to

have a repertoire of some seventy plays in his head (later he revised this

to a more conservative thirty or forty), which he claimed were the “real”

marionette plays and had never been published. He declared: “Many a

time have I extemporised a play, reading up a new plot in the afternoon

and trusting to my mother with the puppets in the evening. But those

days are over now, and I keep for the most part to the old scenes, while

my niece and her little son and a young ‘serio’ who has joined us help

with the ‘varieties.’”8

In Joe Hodson mentioned that he possessed a lot of old play-

books which had belonged to his father and grandfather (and therefore

probably went back to the s at least).9 These were acting editions

produced by the publishers Dicks and Lacy and appear to have included

The Wood Demon, Rob the Gardener, Charles Peace, and Robin Rough-

head. With Dicks Standard Plays, which cost only one penny each, British

marionette showpeople of the nineteenth century had easy access to very

cheap acting editions.

Most companies presented more or less heavily cut versions of act-

ing editions, adapted to suit the personnel of the troupe, possibly the

figures, and, above all, the duration that was required. A number of

Clowes-Tiller scripts still survive.10 Most are acting editions marked for

performance, plays heavily adapted with manuscript sequences sum-

marizing large chunks of the action. Cutting the texts meant that most

Dramas, Pantomimes, and Screaming Farces

060 c6 (109-139) 8/4/04 10:29 AM Page 111

scenes were reduced to two or three characters, which lessened confu-

sion when one performer was responsible for several parts. The more

formulaic aspects of melodrama writing were emphasized, with simi-

lar scenes appearing in play after play. This probably helped perform-

ers who might not always have known the text word for word.

A number of notebooks with complete scripts, parts of scripts, or short

sequences of dialogue also survive. They are often written in pencil,

tightly spaced, and clearly of little use during a performance. They were

probably used when a play was performed after some lapse of time and

the performers needed to refamiliarize themselves with it. Scripts were

memorized in the portable actors’ theatres, and the same was usually

true of the marionette theatre.11

Some scripts are marked for individual performers with indications

such as a dot, a cross, or a dash. The playbook for East Lynne, like many

of the Clowes-Tiller scripts, was designed for the performer who, accord-

ing to the markings, played the roles of Barbara, Joyce, Isabel (alias

Madame Vine), and William. A further notebook is marked only with

cues for Miss Cornelia. If we compare this script with some others in

the same collection, we find that the scripts are commonly marked for

three speakers, suggesting that the manipulation strength of the Tiller

company at the turn of the twentieth century was three people.

�The Folk Repertoire

By the time of Victoria, the folk repertoire was rapidly disappearing.

Mother Shipton lurked around as a folk figure but no longer had a dra-

matic context. Some pieces with a folk origin reemerged as pantomimes,

notably Dick Whittington, Beauty and the Beast, and Jack the Giant

Killer. Valentine and Orson was still being performed in Sunderland

around . Only one folk piece had real significance in the Victorian

marionette theatre: The Children [Babes] in the Woodwas almost as basic

to the British and Irish repertoire as Genoveva was to the Germanic one.

The story of The Children in the Wood was recorded in a popular bal-

lad of and published in chapbook form in . Powell and Stretch

performed it at their marionette theatres in London and Dublin in the

first half of the eighteenth century. Thomas Morton’s comic opera ver-

sion, with music by Samuel Arnold, was performed at the Theatre Royal,

Haymarket, in . The Babes in the Wood had become a Victorian pan-

Dramas, Pantomimes, and Screaming Farces

060 c6 (109-139) 8/4/04 10:29 AM Page 112

tomime by the s and was one of the more popular subjects from the

s on. On the marionette stage it remained a folk drama. It was in

Grey’s fantoccini repertoire in the s and in the Sunderland reper-

toire in the s. It remained in the repertoire of traveling marionette

companies longer than any other piece. Bullock took it over from D’Arc’s

in . His publicity at the Queen’s Hall described it as “the popular

drama” “with superb scenic and choral effects.” In Ireland it was still

being performed in the s, while in England Joe Hodson brought it

into the s, using Victorian figures.12

Fragmentary scripts in notebooks associated with the Tillers and

Harry Wilding indicate that marionette showpeople were familiar with

Morton’s text.13 Names of some of Morton’s characters are used. Sir

Roland is the evil brother, Sir Rowland, Josephine is the female servant,

and the ruffian engaged for the murder of the children is Oliver. The

name of Gabriel (a drunken servant in Morton’s play), however, is given

to Walter, the loyal servant and protector of the children. Despite the

Dramas, Pantomimes, and Screaming Farces

. Joe Hodson and his wife in front of their stage. Scene from the Babes in the

Wood with Yorkshire Bob, circa . John Bright Collection.

060 c6 (109-139) 8/4/04 10:29 AM Page 113

names, these marionette versions are closer to the ballad than to Morton

and Arnold’s happy-end comic opera. They retain the death of the par-

ents and the death of the children.14 One fragment of act I presents the

deathbed scene of the father, with the children coming in for a last bless-

ing, while their uncle kneels by the bed and grieves.15 In the second act

Gabriel tells Josephine that he has overheard the uncle talking to the

rascal about getting rid of the children. There is a comic scene in which

he proposes to her, and she makes him go on his knees to do it properly.

Returning to the serious plot, Roland instructs Gabriel to destroy the

children and then discusses the matter with Oliver. At the end of the act,

Sir Roland sends the children off for their “walk” in the forest. The

rather incomplete script for act II allows for a brief soliloquy by the chil-

dren now abandoned in the forest. When they die, an angel appears and

reminds us that they are now to live “in realms of eternal bliss.” A sec-

ond notebook contains some isolated speeches, most notably one for the

dying mother in act I and for the uncle in act II. The mother’s deathbed

speech mentions wealth and the fact that the uncle will inherit it in the

event of the children’s death. The context of the speech makes it clear

that the children and the uncle are present. As she dies the mother sings:

Arise, sweet babes, arise.

Come to your morning sacrifice.

Your heavenly father

Waits for thee

Arise sweet babes and come to heaven with me.

This is followed by a tear-jerking singing of “Home Sweet Home.”

The ballad and some marionette productions contain a climactic

scene in which the robins cover the bodies of the two children with

leaves. This detail, combined with “a brilliant apotheosis,” was much in

evidence in John Holden’s production, which was being performed in

the early s under the title The Fairy of the Golden Cloud.

In Faversham, Kent, an unsavory case of adultery and murder

occurred in . The subsequent trial resulted in a number of hang-

ings.16 The events became a part of folk memory and eventually led to

Arden of Faversham, an anonymous play on the subject published in

. The subject was performed in curtailed versions in the actors’

booths of the eighteenth-century fairs as a droll and also found its way

Dramas, Pantomimes, and Screaming Farces

060 c6 (109-139) 8/4/04 10:29 AM Page 114

to the marionette stage. It is probable that puppeteers used an old and

unpublished text, passed down through companies. In a Faversham

newspaper reported that “Mr Henry Collyer with his puppet show has

acted ARDIN for several Nights with great Applause being perform’d

after a curious manner”; in another company with “German [sic]

marionettes” was touring Kent and performing Arden.17 Because of

their own Kentish associations, Middleton’s and later Clunn Lewis

frequently performed Arden of Faversham. In the eighteenth century

George Lillo reduced the sixteenth-century play to three acts. Dicks pub-

lished a five-act version of his text, and this would seem to be the ver-

sion most used by Victorian marionette companies. Lillo sharpened the

character of Mosby as a calculating and melodramatic villain. He turned

the adulterous wife into a victim, drawn along by the action into which

her fault has led her, and also introduced some powerful dramatic scenes

between Alice and her husband, Arden. He retained the comic murderer

Black Will, and no doubt marionette versions of the piece allowed this

character to develop ad libitum.

�The Theatrical Repertoire

There was close correspondence between the marionette repertoires

and those for the portable theatres. The gothic melodrama (with its brig-

ands and underground prisons, vigorous fight scenes, fires, and explo-

sions) held its own. Isaac Pocock’s The Miller and His Men () was

in the repertoires of Calver, Bullock, Middleton, and Wilding and was

probably performed by a number of other companies.18 The supernat-

ural paraphernalia of ghosts and vampires remained popular. M. G.

Lewis’s The Castle Spectre () was still played in Sunderland in the

s, as was William T. Moncrieff’s The Vampire ().

The nautical melodrama, which had been very popular in the earlier

nineteenth century, remained in the marionette repertoire long after

such plays had dropped out of fashion. Nautical themes had been pop-

ularized by Isaac Bickerstaff’s comic opera Thomas and Sally ().

The piece had passed into the repertoire of the Patagonian (Marionette)

Theatre in the s. It was a precursor of one of the most popular nau-

tical melodramas of the nineteenth century, Douglas Jerrold’s Black

Ey’d Susan (), which was performed by many marionette compa-

nies and lasted into the twentieth century.19 My Poll and My Partner

Dramas, Pantomimes, and Screaming Farces

060 c6 (109-139) 8/4/04 10:29 AM Page 115

Joe () was another popular nautical drama included in the mari-

onette repertoire, while Luke the Labourer, with its more rural setting,

also has the British Tar as its hero.

T. P. Cooke, the great stage interpreter of the British Tar, starred in

these plays. His fame contributed to the popularity of naval pieces on

the marionette stage. In Edward Fitzball’s The Floating Beacon (),

still being performed around , he played Jack Junk, who, with the

crew of a British naval sloop, rescues the young hero and his persecuted

mother from a beacon just off the Norwegian coast. This beacon is the

equivalent of the brigand’s cave and the lair of two thoroughly gothic

convicts, Ormoloff and Angerstoff.

J. C. Cross’s Blackbeard the Pirate (), based on the redoubtable

early-eighteenth-century pirate Edward Teach, was also set on board

ship. It involved a captured Turkish princess and a Turkish prince come

to rescue her, but also a grand naval encounter between sailors and

pirates.

Among the more popular fantastic pieces was the Arabian

Nights–inspired Bottle Imp, by Richard Brinsley Peake, originally staged

at the Royal Lyceum in .20 Speaight found The Bottle Imp in both

the Brigaldi and the Sunderland repertoires. It may have been in

Mumford’s repertoire,21 and D’Arc’s certainly had a figure that could

have played the main role. Like Faust, the owner of the bottle contain-

ing the “Imp” possesses a “servant” who will perform magic for him,

but the final owner of the bottle will belong to the devil. It is therefore

important to get rid of the bottle as quickly as possible, but each time it

must change hands for a lower price than before. The play is a nonstop

excuse for scenic effects and pyrotechnics and was enormously popular

for that reason. The imp himself usually appeared in a puff of smoke,

wearing a “tightly-fitting skin dress, of a sea green, horns on the head,

and demon’s face, from the wrists to the hips a wide-spreading wing,

extending or folding at pleasure.”22 Clunn Lewis had an anecdote about

The Bottle Imp:

As for stories of the road and of the show, I should hardly know where

to begin – and certainly not where to end. They would fill a book.

One amusing little experience that comes into my mind happened in

a Sussex village. We were playing “The Bottle Imp,” and a patron,

well primed with beer, took a front seat and went to sleep. He was

Dramas, Pantomimes, and Screaming Farces

060 c6 (109-139) 8/4/04 10:29 AM Page 116

suddenly awakened, however, by our fine display of sheet lightning,

not to mention tin-tray thunder and strong smell of sulphur – we

always believed in “red fire” in those days. Straightway “The Bottle

Imp” flew out of the trap, and the awakened sleeper caught sight of

the marionette demon. Never shall I forget seeing him scramble over

the seats, and nearly break his neck down the steps. He thought his

time had come.23

The stage portrayal of upper-class opulence, particularly if there was

a shady underside to it, was a source of endless fascination to popular

audiences. Many of the dramas of high life originated as prose narra-

tives. Dion Boucicault’s The Corsican Brothers () was based on an

Alexandre Dumas story and partly set in Parisian high society. Its

vendetta plot offers two exciting duel scenes, a female victim caught up

in the exceptionally nasty snares of a society villain, a scene of a carni-

val fancy-dress ball at the Paris opera, and a ghost scene (accompanied

by one of the best-known pieces of theatre music of the century). Part

of the fascination of the plot came from the theatrical exploitation of

the idea of telepathy between identical twins.

Plots of novels needed to be vastly simplified for the stage, and the

theatrically effective moments survived. This tendency is very clear in

the case of Charles Dickens’s Bleak House. There were at least eight

stage adaptations, quite apart from the marionette ones. It generally

appears under the title of Poor Jo(e), the Crossing Sweeper. D’Arc’s

brought it to London in , when appearing at the Agricultural Hall,

Islington:

The first part of the programme is a version in three acts of Bleak

House, which is subtitled Poor Jo. The main lines of the story are

strictly adhered to. We have the scene at the inquest, with the exam-

ination of Jo, Lady Dedlock’s visit to the churchyard, and her disclo-

sure to Esther Summerson of their relationship, and finally the

deathbed of Jo in the arms of Mr. Snagsby, who, like Inspector

Buckett, is visibly affected by the touching scene. . . . The figure rep-

resenting Jo was especially well manipulated, and his gestures in the

death scene were admirably natural. Inspector Buckett, Mr. Snagsby,

and Tulkinghorn were also easily recognisable, and Lady Dedlock

moved with dignity and grace whilst she was on stage. The scenes

were neatly painted and quickly changed.24

Dramas, Pantomimes, and Screaming Farces

060 c6 (109-139) 8/4/04 10:29 AM Page 117

Ambrose Tiller used the Dicks text of Poor Joe (no. ). The marked

prompt copy shows extensive cuts. The drama is built mainly around

the pathos of Joe’s situation and his death. This handling of a dramatic

plot, which already represented a drastic reduction of the original novel,

shows how the marionette theatre could transform the entire sense of

the original novel and bring a comparatively minor character to center

stage. The Lady Dedlock/Esther Summerson plot is so heavily cut as to

be barely comprehensible, leaving Lady Dedlock as little more than a

“woman with a past.” The characters of Esther, Guppy, Chadband, and

Smallweed disappear altogether. We are left with Sir Leicester

Hortense, Bucket, Snagsby, and, of course, Tulkinghorn, who is in pos-

session of Lady Dedlock’s secret.

The death of Joe provides a stock scene on which to hang the play.

Similar situations are exploited for theatrical effect with William in East

Lynne, Eva in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Little Nell in The Old Curiosity

Shop (not to mention the two orphans of The Babes in the Wood).

Mrs. Henry Wood’s novel East Lynne () had its tear-jerking

moments as well as inviting sympathetic consideration of the “fallen”

woman. It reached the portable actors’ fit-ups and marionette theatres

in a number of versions, many of them not even printed. Such adapta-

tions were not uncommon and consisted of whole passages of dialogue

lifted directly from the novel and tacked onto a plot that linked the cho-

sen episodes. The Tillers used a text from the Dicks collection, which

they duly shortened and simplified. Act III ended with the death of

Willie, who has not recognized his mother in Madame Vine. The fourth

act was reduced to little more than the death of Isabel herself.

This adaptation of East Lynne omitted most of the first half of the

novel, which was rather incoherently alluded to. It started with the

elopement of Lady Isabel and then focused on her return as governess

to her own children under the name of Madame Vine. The whodunit

element, which dragged readers along, was lost almost entirely, and

audiences were informed almost incidentally that Francis Levison was

a murderer as well as a seducer. The Hare plot and family, with the

exception of Barbara, were omitted.

Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s novel Lady Audley’s Secret

reached the stage of the St. James’s Theatre in . In this case the

woman with a past is a consummate villainess, who believes that she

has successfully murdered her first husband. Clowes and Sons even went

Dramas, Pantomimes, and Screaming Farces

060 c6 (109-139) 8/4/04 10:29 AM Page 118

so far as to decorate the parade space of their booth with a scene show-

ing Lady Audley pushing her first husband into the well.

W. H. Murray’s Obi; or, Three-Fingered Jack (), where the dom-

inant figure is a black slave looking for a diabolical revenge, is a scary

play. It certainly indicts some of the evils of slavery but presents a cen-

tral character who has become a monster. Obi’s horrendous behavior,

including the harking back to “pagan” religion, reinforced stereotypical

associations of blackness and moral depravity. Obiwas in the Sunderland

marionette repertoire and continued into the twentieth century in the

repertoires of some portable actors’ theatres. One of the most popular

novels to deal with slavery was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s

Cabin, which spawned a number of stage versions, including Edward

Fitzball’s (). With a white not a black villain, it was altogether a

more comfortable work than Obi and in tune with the antislavery feel-

ings of the time. This too was in the Sunderland repertoire by the early

s and was later performed by Barnard’s, Wilding’s, and Tiller’s. The

Tiller text is contained in an exercise book and is made up partly of man-

uscript and partly of pasted-in extracts from a printed text. The first act

revolves around the escape of George Shelby and then that of Eliza and

her child, aided by uncle Tom. It concludes with the spectacular scene

in which Eliza crosses the wintry river filled with ice floes (accompa-

nied by a spectacular burst of theatrical green fire), while the foiled vil-

lain, Legree, stands on the bank and curses: “Tarnation seize the girl she

’as foiled us and ’as escaped.”

Act II mainly concerns the dying Eva; the pathos of her death is off-

set by the comedy provided by the black servant Topsy.

Act III begins with the auction of the late St. Clare’s slaves. Among

them are Emmeline and Tom, who are bought by Legree. When

Emmeline refuses to have intercourse with him, he orders Tom to flog

her. Tom refuses and is himself taken off to be flogged by two other

slaves. Emmeline escapes through the window of a barn; when Legree

discovers this, he whips Tom. George reappears and attempts to arrest

Legree for cruelty. Legree tries to shoot George but is himself shot by

Marks. At this point we return to the printed text and the death of Tom

in George’s arms. In a final apotheosis, Eva appears in a milk-white

dress and stretches her hands in benediction over the kneeling figures

of St. Clare and Tom to the accompaniment of “expressive music.” The

number of figures on the stage at any one time is relatively small, and

Dramas, Pantomimes, and Screaming Farces

060 c6 (109-139) 8/4/04 10:29 AM Page 119

this version of the play could be handled by three or possibly even two

puppeteers.

When H. Milner adapted Harrison Ainsworth’s ghoulish gothic novel

Rookwood for Astley’s in , he picked up on the alternate title, Dick

Turpin, Highwayman; having provided the story with an equine hero-

ine, he called it Turpin’s Ride to York; or, Bonny Black Bess. The histor-

ical character of Dick Turpin is woven into the original novel to lend a

sense of authenticity. The drama focuses on book , in which he leads

the famous chase to York, while the rest of the story sinks into the back-

ground. We enjoy Turpin’s pranks as he tricks people out of money; and

the episode of his leap over a tinker’s cart full of carrots is retained, if

only to allow for a spectacular leap on stage. The drama also provides at

least two spectacular scenes: a topographical view of York Minster as

Turpin concludes his ride and a tableau of a burning barn, which

includes a grand stage conflagration (not to be found in the novel). The

marionette version of the play was staged by Wilding’s, Tiller’s, and the

Browns.

Dick Turpin was a criminal who was glamorized and elevated to the

status of a social brigand. This also happened to the eighteenth century

thief Jack Sheppard, who managed to escape from Newgate four times

before being hanged at Tyburn in in the presence of , spec-

tators. He reached the stage in November , in John Thurmond’s

pantomime Harlequin Shepherd. Young and good-looking, he enjoyed

popular admiration; and his misdeeds became a subject for broadsheets.

Harrison Ainsworth devoted a novel to him. J. B. Buckstone adapted this

for the theatre in , and in the s (if not earlier) Sheppard became

a hero of the marionette stage, with Middleton’s and Wilding’s.

From Arden of Faversham to Jack Sheppard, real-life crimes attracted

the popular imagination. Often they were made into ballads which could

be sold as broadsheets. A number of eighteenth-century chapbooks were

based on robbers and murderers and the retribution meted out to them.

All this became part of the common stock of popular mythology and

transferred readily to the more popular theatres, especially the fair-

ground drolls. The nineteenth century became progressively more and

more interested in criminality and the criminal underworld, as evi-

denced by the novels of Charles Dickens and Eugène Sue. Countless

melodramas terminated with a court scene where the “truth” was ulti-

mately revealed and wickedness punished. In a society that was often

Dramas, Pantomimes, and Screaming Farces

060 c6 (109-139) 8/4/04 10:29 AM Page 120

far from just or equitable, the theatre provided a satisfying fantasy world

of natural justice. As newspapers became more widespread, they took

over from broadsheets; people were hungry for detailed accounts of

crimes and trials.

One of the most sensational crimes of the nineteenth century was

the murder of Maria Marten by William Corder at Polestead, Essex, in

. It was widely reported in the newspapers of the time, and a full

account of the trial was subsequently published. The events took an

immediate grip on the popular imagination; even a month before the

trial two versions of the story had been staged at Polstead fair.25

Joe Hodson claimed in that Maria Marten had been performed

by his grandfather, who was in Essex at the time of the Polestead mur-

der and immediately turned this tragic fait divers into a drama with Tim

Bobbin as the comic figure. This is perfectly plausible, but it may be no

more than a good case of myth-making. Clunn Lewis, one of the last

showpeople to present Maria Marten, said that the son of the unfortu-

nate Maria came to see him performing the drama and did not turn a

hair, while Richard Barnard had a similar story that Charles Middleton

was requested not to perform the play in Colchester in the late s

because a relative of Corder lived there.

The social difference between William Corder and Maria, the death

of their child, Corder’s luring of Maria to the Red Barn in man’s attire,

attempting to shoot her then battering her to death and burying her

there, and the subsequent discovery of the badly decomposed corpse

(recognized by clothing and two missing teeth) were already the sort

of material that made for popular interest. The revelation of the mur-

der through Maria’s mother’s dream, the final tracking down of Corder

(married and running a girls’ school), and his trial and subsequent pun-

ishment were the material out of which myth is constructed. For most

people this was reality imitating fiction – and it also carried with it the

dire warning to any young woman who might be foolish enough to

become infatuated with a man of a higher social class and allow herself

to be seduced.

Dion Boucicault’s Colleen Bawn is based on very similar true-life

events. His heroine, Eily, escapes drowning in the famous water cave

scene, however, and ends up as a respectable married woman. The Colleen

Bawn, first staged in New York in , entered the D’Arc marionette

repertoire in . By John Holden (Senior) had staged his own

Dramas, Pantomimes, and Screaming Farces

060 c6 (109-139) 8/4/04 10:29 AM Page 121

highly successful marionette version in Liverpool “in a style as regards

scenic effect and the manipulation of the automata surpassing anything

they have hitherto produced. The Cave Scene is a work of art.”26

The locale in which a crime took place was so heavily charged with

associations that it became an actor and not just a background. The very

sight of the shop of Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street,

was designed to send a frisson down the spine. The true story of the bar-

ber who tips his customers into the cellar, where they are murdered and

turned into meat pies to be sold by his neighbour, Mrs. Lovett, had

become part of popular mythology. Marionette performances were

probably based on the text of George Dibdin Pitt’s Sweeney Todd, the

Barber of Fleet Street: or, the String of Pearls ().27 Walter Tiller and

Harry Wilding were both performing the piece at the end of the nine-

teenth century. Their version probably omitted the rather complex sub-

plot (and extra characters) that Pitt added to the story. Todd’s assistant,

Tobias, forced to serve him because of a threat of blackmail, and the

cheerful street-boy, Jarvis, who rescues him, would almost certainly have

been retained in the marionette versions of the piece. Tobias is another

variant of poor Joe, whereas the comic, and streetwise, Jarvis is effec-

tively the young popular hero. The play offers three major scenes. The

first is Todd’s shop, complete with a chair on a pivoting trap which has

an empty chair mounted on the reverse (an opportunity for an inter-

esting piece of stage machinery). The Bakehouse, described as “a

gloomy cellar of vast extent and sepulchral appearance,” is instantly rec-

ognized as a variant of the prison scene of the gothic melodrama. It is

made all the more sinister because “a fitful glare issues from the vari-

ous low-arched entrances in which a large oven is placed” – a reminder

of the culinary fate awaiting the barber’s victims. The final scene is the

classic courtroom.

Henry Arthur Jones’s The Silver King () was a popular drama

about a man framed for a murder of which he is innocent. He is sen-

tenced for this but manages to escape (thanks to a train crash), go to

America, return wealthy, save his wife and children from the villain,

and eventually confront and deal with the latter, who, of course, is the

real murderer. Two texts of this long and complicated five-act play are

among the Clowes-Tiller scripts. Both are in manuscript form. One is

incomplete but retains the five-act structure.28 The second script is in

three acts and labeled “condensed version for marionettes.” This text

Dramas, Pantomimes, and Screaming Farces

060 c6 (109-139) 8/4/04 10:29 AM Page 122

is heavily cut but also contains extensive pieces of linking text to cover

the cuts. The lengthy first scene of the original passes rapidly, and a

brief rewritten scene two leaves little more than the drunken Denver’s

loudly expressed threat to kill Ware. The latter is robbed and murdered

a couple of scenes later by the “Spider” (Skinner) and his associates

Coombes and Corbett. Denver is onstage for this but has been chloro-

formed, which leads to his own belief that he must have committed

the murder. The subsequent action is cut, and two years pass. Nelly,

Denver’s wife, and her children are now living in poverty in a cottage

on the estate which the Spider has purchased on the proceeds of crime.

He has discovered their identity and plans to evict them in the snow

(Wilfred, the boy, is ill and possibly dying). Denver, now white-haired,

reappears, having made his fortune and become the “Silver King.”29

The act concludes with recognition by his family and the payment of

the rent. The third act is devoted to retribution. Denver disguises him-

self as an elderly halfwit and gets work with the criminals (the mari-

onette version cuts most of the preparation of the situation). Denver,

wearing an “old coat, slough [sic] hat,” arrives in the old kitchen where

the criminals meet. When they begin to quarrel among themselves,

Skinner threatens to kill Corbett, who retorts: “Yes, the same way you

murdered Geoffrey Ware” (thus indicating clearly to Denver that he

was not the murderer). A further interest of the manuscript is a sketch

of the scene showing the relative positions of the characters. The scene

has a divided stage (inside and outside). At the end of it Denver goes

stage right and shuts the door behind him, exclaiming: “Caught like

rats in a trap!” Inside there is a chair, center, with Coombes, a table,

and then another chair with “Spider,” right, and down right is Corbett.

Such production notes, like the costume changes of Denver, are excep-

tionally rare in the manuscript of a marionette text. When Denver

appears in the final scene, dressed once more as the Silver King, Spider

sends for a detective, who unexpectedly puts the handcuffs on him,

since Coombes and Corbett have turned queen’s evidence.

It was common practice for companies to make fairly free adapta-

tions of known and existing plays. Occasionally the puppeteers also cob-

bled together their own plays, borrowing effective scenes and plot

elements from this repertoire.30 Crippen; or, Tracked by Wireless, which

featured on the Wilding bills, was written by one of Harry Wilding’s

sons.31 Despite Wilding’s own initial skepticism, it proved one of the

Dramas, Pantomimes, and Screaming Farces

060 c6 (109-139) 8/4/04 10:29 AM Page 123

more successful pieces in the repertoire, no doubt because of its topi-

cal and gruesome subject coupled with the use of wireless to find a

criminal.

Among the Clowes-Tiller texts is a manuscript of The Factory Girl

of Manchester, which is a puppeteer’s compilation of several existing

pieces rather than a completely original play in itself. This manuscript

tells us a great deal about the working methods of the traveling pup-

peteer. The major source is John Walker’s machine-wrecking play The

Factory Lad (Surrey Theatre, ). This contains the name of the vil-

lain, Westwood, and a very similar name for the male lead, Will Rushton

(as opposed to Rushworth), the former good worker, now poacher and

outcast. Walker’s play has a very simple plot and no female interest apart

from the desperate wife and daughters of one of the redundant weavers.

Two key scenes are provided by Walker: the final court scene, in which

Will shoots the factory owner, Westwood, and the burning of the fac-

tory. From J. T. Haines’s The Factory Boy (first performed in and

printed in Dicks) comes the theme of the factory worker falsely accused

of theft because of evidence planted on him by the factory owner.32

Tiller’s (or whoever cobbled the piece together) introduced a central

female figure threatened with abduction and worse, who provides the

title for the play. In The Factory Girl of Manchester Will Rushworth

returns from prison on a ticket-of-leave after eight years, just in time to

save his sister Rose from abduction by Westwood. When Walter, Rose’s

boyfriend and obstacle to Westwood’s designs, is framed for arson and

about to be convicted, Will rushes into the courtroom. He stabs

Westwood, avenging at the same time the deaths of his wife and daugh-

ter who died in poverty while he was in prison. Comic relief is provided

by the rustic Bob, muddle-headed and of great integrity. He argues with

Westwood in act I and in the second scene returns to the stage drunk

and delivers a monologue before Westwood enters and attempts to

assault Rose.33 Just before the burning of the mill, Bob has a long scene

as a comic night watchman. He sees Will knock Westwood down and

hears him say to his recumbent opponent: “I’ll owe you as much mercy

as you did my wife and child when they were in your power.”

As if commenting on this, Bob as night-watchman then turns a dra-

matic situation into a comic one, as we hear him offstage calling: “All’s

well All’s well All’s well.” He sets off for the courthouse, declaring that

he will be “principal wickedness” (witness) to prove the innocence of

Dramas, Pantomimes, and Screaming Farces

060 c6 (109-139) 8/4/04 10:29 AM Page 124

Walter. In the final courtroom scene like that of Boucicault’s Shaun the

Post in Arrah na Pogue (), he subverts the dignity of the court, but

he is too confused to win. He has some of the longer speeches and, as the

stock comic figure, would certainly have had freedom to improvise too.

Even at the end, after Will stabs Westwood and announces that now “the

convict can die on the scaffold happy,” Bob has the last word as watch-

man. His voice in the background can be heard repeating “All’s well.”

The script of the Factory Girl has a number of directions, which help

us envisage how it would have been staged. For the destruction of the

mill the “biz” (business) at the side (offstage) indicates “cracking wood

and red fire.” When Will announces his plan to burn the mill – “this

night’s work shall make the proud Factory master and the convict even”

– a stage direction indicates that he laughs and then “forms picture

centre” for the final tableau of the act. Act II, which shows the exterior

of the mill, starts with a crowd scene and “biz” indicating “work-

people wishing goodnight.” A change of scene from before a fire or

explosion to after that event was popular on the Victorian stage. In

this play the fire scene is followed by a scene at the ruins of the mill.

The final scene is a “Full police court set,” with indications of the

positioning of characters and elements of furniture: “Witness box

left prisoner box Right Counsel at table L. centre dise [sic: dais]

Arlington (Walter) prisoner R Westwood witness Left.” The reduc-

tion of the speaking parts to a limited number of roles allows even the

final scene to be managed by a small number of manipulators. On the

marionette stage characters not directly involved in the action at a given

moment are frequently suspended, to free the manipulators’ hands. In

the earlier parts of the play there are never more than three speaking

characters on stage; and even in the court scene the focus of attention is

always on groups of two or three characters. The others can simply be

left to hang in the background until the moment when they may be

more centrally involved.

�Pantomimes

Marionette companies often used the terms “pantomime” and “har-

lequinade” as if they were synonymous. The confusion stems from the

history of pantomime itself. In a classical sense it meant a dumbshow,

or acting without words, but in the eighteenth century it coalesced with

Dramas, Pantomimes, and Screaming Farces

060 c6 (109-139) 8/4/04 10:29 AM Page 125

a genre performed at the minor theatres in France and involving char-

acters of the Commedia dell’Arte. In the fairground theatres of Paris

these performances often carried an element parodying the produc-

tions of the Comédie Française or the Opera. In England in the early

eighteenth century a group of Commedia dell’Arte characters was

grafted onto a more serious subject as a form of comic relief. The almost

invariable subject was the love of Harlequin and Columbine and the

efforts made by Pantaloon (the elderly father, guardian, or suitor of

Columbine) to retrieve her. The pursuit of Harlequin and Columbine

gradually extended to a dozen or more scenes, enlivened by the capac-

ity of Harlequin’s bat to work magical transformations.

In the latter part of the eighteenth century the “Clown,” already a

stock role of the English theatre as a rustic simpleton, found his way

into the harlequinade but was not very much developed in dramatic

terms. At the beginning of the nineteenth century Joey Grimaldi began

to perform the roles of Clown and Punch in pantomimes. He made the

Clown the center of attention in Charles Dibdin’s Harlequin and Mother

Goose at Covent Garden in . His clown was transformed from the

oafish rustic into a highly athletic, gluttonous, and clever figure, whose

main aim seemed to be to play tricks on other people. In many ways his

Clown seems to have taken on the characteristics of Punch. The

Grimaldi clown rapidly became a marionette character. By

Middleton’s had a version of Mother Goose in the repertoire as Mother

Goose; or, The Golden Egg.34

The eighteenth-century repertoire had been full of Harlequin pieces,

but these gradually disappeared from the theatre and marionette reper-

toires. In the s a late survival was still in the Sunderland marionette

repertoire, playing the pantomimes of Harlequin O’Donoghue; or, The

White Horse of Killarney and Harlequin Little Tom Tucker. Generally,

Harlequin faded as a character and ended as little more than a decora-

tive dancing figure, while his magic bat lost its transformative power,

which was now vested in the wand of the fairy queen. After Grimaldi,

the harlequinade element of pantomime receded, and the main story

came to the fore, developing into the full-scale Victorian pantomime.

The harlequinade itself was no longer central to the action but became

an appendage at the end, which then gradually disappeared in the early

twentieth century. By the end of the nineteenth century some theatres

hired a harlequinade group just for this purpose. In the marionette the-

Dramas, Pantomimes, and Screaming Farces

060 c6 (109-139) 8/4/04 10:29 AM Page 126

atre the situation was rather different. The longest surviving element

of the pantomime was the harlequinade, with Clown as the dominant

figure, while the dramatic fairy-story plot became ever more vestigial.

What we think of today as the “Victorian” pantomime, with its har-

lequinade, visual tricks, and transformations, was firmly in place on the

marionette stage by the middle of the nineteenth century. Victorian pan-

tomimes were drawn from a variety of sources from folktales to the

Arabian Nights and gradually came to replace any other form of dra-

matic element with many companies. Puppet pantomimes were not nec-

essarily restricted to the Christmas season but could appear at any time

of year.

In the s Wilding’s, one of the largest portable marionette the-

atres, advertised six pantomimes in the repertoire: Little Red Riding

Hood, Beauty and the Beast, Blue Beard, Robinson Crusoe, Cinderella,

and Dick Whittington and His Cat. During the years in Dublin

(–), D’Arc’s played Blue Beard, Beauty and the Beast, The Forty

Thieves (Ali Baba), Aladdin, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella,

and the popular Irish piece O’Donoghue; or, The White Horse of

Killarney. Simms had been presenting Blue Beard and Sinbad at least

as early as , while his Christmas pantomime of – was Jack

and the Beanstalk.35 Chester and Lee were advertising Mother Goose in

and four years later claimed to have twelve pantomimes in their

repertoire.

George Colman and Michael Kelly’s immensely popular “Turkish”

opera Blue Beard had entered the marionette repertoire by , when

J. Rebecqui staged it with his “fantoccini.”36 A hundred years later

Bluebeard had become a favorite pantomime subject, and this serial

killer of wives still appeared as a Turk.

The Clowes-Tiller scripts include Red Riding Hood, Jack and the

Beanstalk, and Sinbad the Sailor. The plot, written in comic doggerel,

usually has only the most tenuous relationship to the original tale; the

dénouement is provided by the arrival of the good fairy, who dishes out

rewards and retribution and transforms the characters as appropriate.

Sinbad becomes Harlequin; the Princess Badora, Columbine; her father,

the King, becomes Clown; and the more sinister Davy Jones, who causes

shipwrecks, is awarded the role of the inevitably ridiculous and ridiculed

Pantaloon. In Red Riding Hood it is the Wolf (alias evil Duke Ravens-

burg) who gets this part. The Victorian theatre had a special line in large

Dramas, Pantomimes, and Screaming Farces

060 c6 (109-139) 8/4/04 10:29 AM Page 127

papier-mâché heads, and the pantomime characters of Clown and

Pantaloon usually emerged out of these. The lead characters or lovers

slipped off their top garments to reveal the costumes of Harlequin and

Columbine underneath. On the marionette stage, instead of using

masks, it was usual for a separate set of figures to replace those of the

fairy-tale main plot.

For Christmas, , John Holden’s Marionettes were in Liverpool,

presenting “in the evenings a Pantomime of Blue Beard, with Twenty

Wives and Twenty-one Babies.”37 The show was promoted as the fun-

niest in the town; but five years later, in , the emphasis was on its

spectacular nature:

This is certainly one of the most greatest productions ever introduced

upon a music-hall stage, every detail being carried out so closely to

imitate nature that the keenest eye cannot reconcile the action of the

performers with the mechanism. The opening scene, one of subma-

rine life, in which the monsters and mites of the mighty deep are

seen; the grand procession of Blue Beard and his Retinue; the arrival

of Blue Beard’s chariot – one blaze of grandeur.38

This may even have been the prototype of the underwater ballet

sequences so popular with twentieth-century marionette theatres. The

same scene appeared in the program of James Holden, and Delvaine’s

also had an underwater scene, viewed through gauzes.

Jack and the Beanstalk and Dick Whittington are examples of folk

material that was adapted for the marionette stage and became pan-

tomimes.39 Dick Whittington (together with his cat) found his way into

the repertoire of the drolls and puppet shows of the fairs in the seven-

teenth century. Samuel Pepys saw a puppet version in : “it was pretty

to see; and how the idle throng do work upon people that see it, and even

myself too.”40 The most complete account of Jack and the Beanstalk as

a marionette pantomime is that of Louis de Moranges, who describes

Thomas Holden’s production:

The giant, who is a sort of ogre, kidnaps a little princess. Her lover

comes to the giant’s home, rather like our Tom Thumb, and, disguised

as a pilgrim, offers himself up to the terrible appetite of Giant

Blunderbore, the ogre in question. Just as the giant hopes to devour

Dramas, Pantomimes, and Screaming Farces

060 c6 (109-139) 8/4/04 10:29 AM Page 128

the pilgrim, Jack and the little princess, helped by the giant’s servant,

escape through the window. The furious giant rushes after the fugi-

tives, and as in a simple French “féerie” draws his sword against Jack.

The little princess’s little lover has a strong arm. He runs the giant

through and stretches him on the ground like a rabbit. The peasants

arrive and dance a saraband. But Blunderbore opens one eye. “Oh,

what if I were to dance too” he says, although he is dead, and he joins

the dancers. Then the fairy arrives and turns the characters into

Harlequin, Clown, Columbine and the other characters, after which

there follows a comic pantomime which, as you can imagine, has

nothing to do with Jack the Giant-Killer.41

Beauty and the Beast had become a popular fairy extravaganza fol-

lowing J. R. Planché’s version staged at Covent Garden in . It first

appeared in the D’Arc and Holden repertoires in . John Holden’s

played it through the s; and when Thomas had his season at the

Cambridge Music Hall in , he also presented it as a pantomime.

The first scene turned Planché’s “bower of roses” peopled by fairies

into a dark scene with demons, more evocative of a prologue to Faust.

The reviewer comments on the performance being “like one carried

on by real miniature beings,” but then moves on to the harlequinade,

some of the tricks, including the dancing skeleton, and the transfor-

mation scene.42

Moranges gives a fuller account of Thomas Holden’s Beauty and the

Beast. For someone unfamiliar with the Victorian pantomime and

bewildered by its treatment of the original story-line, Beauty and the

Beast (in twenty-four scenes, including spectacular transformations)

must have seemed strange: “Beauty is a princess who lives in a palace.

The Beast is a sort of bear who lives nearby. The Beast wishes to abduct

Beauty and comes and declares his love to her. Beauty protests. Her

grotesque squire is chased off by the Beast, and just as something terri-

ble is going to happen . . . the play stops. Nothing else happens and Beauty

and the Beast makes room for Pantaloon and the others.”43

Beauty and the Beast was also presented by the Jewell-Holden’s com-

pany in Holland at the Kurhaus, Scheveningen, in . The program

includes a full synopsis of the piece.44 The first scene is completely dif-

ferent from the outdated first scene of Planché’s work, with its then top-

ical reference to British foreign policy and the situation of the declining

Dramas, Pantomimes, and Screaming Farces

060 c6 (109-139) 8/4/04 10:29 AM Page 129

Ottoman Empire. A “bottom of the sea” scene, probably capitalizing on

the success of such a scene in Blue Beard, provides a reason for the trans-

formation of the Prince. In the absence of a surviving script, we can only

assume from the synopsis that the action was loosely based on Planché’s

script until scene . The harlequinade occupied the remaining scenes,

leading up to the final apotheosis:

Scene Bottom of the sea Busy at their work. The Prince,

wandering there, becomes transformed to a Beast – The curse

laid on him and its conditions.

Scene Pump’s Folly, Brixton. Arrival of the good ship “Polly.”

Departure of Mr Pump and his faithful “John Quill.”

Scene Forest in the snow. Mishap to the travellers.

Scene Fairy home to the Beast. Arrival of the travellers.

Unfortunate resolution to pluck the rose. Appearance of the

Beast. Despatch of his mission to Pump’s home – the

heartbroken travellers return homewards.

Scene The Beast’s Palace. Arrival, dismay, explanation – The

Curse removed – Instantaneous appearance of the Fairy Queen

who transforms the characters – Arrival of Clown, Pantaloon,

Harlequin and Columbine – the fun grows fast and laughter

reigns supreme.

Scene Street in London.

Scene Mysterious photographic studio of Boscage (Paris).

Scene Crystal Palace, Sydenham, England.

Scene Spectre. Bed chamber – The Haunted Chateau.

Scene Broadway, New York. . . . Gorgeous apotheosis and

transformation scene – Enchanted abode of the Good Fairy in

the Glittering cave of coral – Appearance of Neptune in his

chariot drawn by the Golden Horses of the Sun – Venus and

the Naiads of the Silver Stream – the leaping cascade of

bubbling waters. The whole illuminated by Electric light of

different colours and introducing a Real Waterfall. The scenery

and decorations by the most eminent artists in Europe.

Little Red Riding Hood had been a pantomime subject at the Adelphi

in and at Covent Garden in (under the title Harlequin and

Little Red Riding Hood); by the s it had become one of the most

frequently performed stories of the pantomime repertoire. Once the

Dramas, Pantomimes, and Screaming Farces

060 c6 (109-139) 8/4/04 10:29 AM Page 130

trappings of the pantomime are stripped away, there is the ever-popular

melodrama theme of virtue under threat, this time from the ambigu-

ous figure of the Duke/Wolf. Little Red Riding Hood was presented by

D’Arc’s from at least . Bullock sold a full text as part of the program

when the show appeared at the St. James’s Hall in London and subse-

quently in America.45 On the occasion of the – tour of Australia

and New Zealand, McDonough and Earnshaw sold a text which they

indicated had been written expressly for the Royal Marionettes by Silas

S. Steel.46 With some minor modifications, the text seems to be sub-

stantially the one used by Bullock.

Little Red Riding Hood is written in appalling doggerel. The plot and

motivation are of the sketchiest. The human characters are Little Red

Riding Hood, her mother (Monica), and her grandmother (Dorothy),

Ravensburg (a wicked baron, later the wolf), Poggidorf (a foppish

courtier), and Hyacinth (a son of King Carnation, disguised as a shep-

herd). Fairies and pygmies are grouped under their queen, Amaryllis,

and four gnomes under their king, Hobblegobblewitz. Most popular was

a “wonderful” talking Jackdaw.

Scene is in the cave of the gnomes (the stock cavern scene) and opens

with a chorus allowing for some topical allusion:

We’re the board of Brokers

Where Speculators come.

In a brief exposition Hobblegobblewitz reveals that Ravensburg is in

his debt and hints that if the money can’t be found he might accept:

some fair innocent to make me good,

and set me free [we never learn from what], like fair Red Riding

Hood.

Ravensburg then arrives, exchanges some awful puns with Hobble-

gobblewitz, and asks for a wolf-skin so that he can hunt down Red Riding

Hood (and palm off the grandmother on the gnome).

We then move from the gnomes’ cave to the fairy grotto. Amaryllis

is aware of the dangers facing Red Riding Hood and also that Prince

Hyacinth is wandering around dressed as a shepherd. He ends the scene

with a sentimental number based on the song “If Ever I Cease to Love.”

The words of this lyric (in the McDonough and Earnshaw version)

reflect the passage of the Royal Marionettes to America:

Dramas, Pantomimes, and Screaming Farces

060 c6 (109-139) 8/4/04 10:29 AM Page 131

May Erie Railway Bonds always fail to pay the “spons,”

If ever I cease to love.

May I for Lager beer,

Feel thirsty for a year,

If ever I cease to love.

The six “belles” of the fairy court – Rosebud, Mignonette, Violet,

Apple Blossom, Peach Bloom, and Sweet Briar – together with the

Queen’s two “lieutenants” – Lily Leaf and Flower Bell – perform a bal-

let entrée to the Chilperic Quadrilles of Hervé (Florimond Rongé).

After these two prologue scenes, we move to grandmother’s cottage in

the wood, where Monica and Dorothy are together. Dorothy’s conser-

vatism comes out in a topical complaint about people enjoying a holiday:

Monica: All work and no play makes Jack dull, says the song.

Dorothy: They’ll want all play and no work ere long.

They’re always clamouring for some improvement.

They’re agitating now for the eight hours movement!47

Later the Duke arrives and is about to force entry to the cottage, but

Amaryllis casts a spell which obliges the Duke and Poggidorf to do a

comic song and dance routine until she releases them. In the fourth

scene (a forest in winter) the fearful Red Riding Hood is accosted by

the Duke, now in the form of a wolf, who persuades her to trust him.

Once she has gone, Poggidorf is startled to find that the wolf is the

Duke. Then Hobblegobblewitz arrives to warn the Duke that his time

is running out; a chorus of pygmies concludes the scene, singing “Pop

Goes Your Rifle and All Will Be Well.” Old Dorothy, in her cottage,

sings a little song (“How I Love You, Ridy Darling”) and then falls

asleep. Amaryllis appears with the Jackdaw, who is left to protect Red

Riding Hood and calls for the police. He also has an amusing scene with

the Wolf, as the latter disguises himself and gets into bed for the clas-

sic scene, which ends:

Red Riding Hood: You can’t be granny!

Wolf: No I’m not your granny.

Come, time’s up.

Red Riding Hood: Oh spare me.

Wolf: No: entreaties scorning,

I’ll drag you down.

Dramas, Pantomimes, and Screaming Farces

060 c6 (109-139) 8/4/04 10:29 AM Page 132

Red Riding Hood: Hark! The clock is giving warning.

Wolf: (Wolf is shot) It’s just struck One. Oh, my! I’ve got my gruel.

Hobblegobblewitz: Now, wicked Duke, you’re ruined, and no more

will do ill.

Wolf: O, spare me! Spare me!

Amaryllis and the pygmies arrive for a final chorus to celebrate

shooting the wolf and freeing Red Riding Hood. In the “Grand Fairy

scene” Hobblegobblewitz is turned into “laughter moving, mischief-

making Clown,” the Duke into Pantaloon, Hyacinth into Harlequin,

and Red Riding Hood into Columbine. A brief note indicates: “The

Harlequinade commences.” This is then followed by the obligatory

“Grand Transformation Scene,” about which the script also gives no

details. The implication here is that everyone knows more or less what

a harlequinade is: since there is little real plot, there is no point in giv-

ing a synopsis. The reviewer of the Era, however, provides an excel-

lent firsthand description of Bullock’s harlequinade as presented in

London in :

The great climax of delight is attained in the Harlequinade man-

aged with a completeness which cannot be believed by those who

have not seen the show. Not only do Clown and Pantaloon go through

their old gambols, knock one another about, steal sausages, mount

upon steam engines, ride fiery dragons and rob innocent maidens of

an important portion of their costume, but there are tricks introduced

that would do credit to any Christmas pantomime. There is a bull in

the pantomime who tosses the Clown and bounds after him through

the window of a china shop, who is a perfect masterpiece. This bull

ought to be seen and cannot fail to be admired. He is a splendid bull

and his determined opposition to the Clown makes the house scream

with delight. Hardly less meritorious is the donkey, harnessed to a

costermonger’s drag, who becomes restive, upsets everybody and cul-

minates the fun with a delightful smash. The way in which the don-

key refuses to be coaxed, and runs his head obstinately against a wall

is supreme fun.48

Harlequin and Columbine would have been involved in this scene as

the objects of pursuit, but they are not even mentioned by the reviewer

and are certainly no longer the center of attention.

Dramas, Pantomimes, and Screaming Farces

060 c6 (109-139) 8/4/04 10:29 AM Page 133

Moranges gave an entertaining description of Thomas and James

Holden’s pantomime as presented in Paris in . The numerous scenes

of the harlequinade forming part of Beauty and the Beast were domi-

nated by the antics of “a sort of Polonius dressed in red” (Pantaloon)

and “a clown with a white face with bright scarlet marks”:

By smashing up shop displays, throwing hams over buildings, upset-

ting the tea-pot and pouring boiling tea over the hostess of the inn,

teasing and infuriating horses, mules, and dogs, Polonius and Clown

reduce everyone and everything to total chaos. The only thing that

can call a halt to their unruly behaviour is the appearance of Death

or a Policeman, of which they are equally afraid and which put them

to flight like frightened rabbits. Then, introduced by some dreamy

or jolly music, Columbine appears, together with her lover Harlequin.

She is blonde, pretty and dressed in a short skirt which shows off her

strong dancer’s legs. He is in silver with a pink bow. Both express the

ecstasies of happy love in a dance, after which they fly away like two

birds leaving room for the two “tyrants of nature.”

At a certain point Polonius and Clown have committed so many

crimes that the Constable decides to arrest them. With one hand he

grabs Polonius and with the other Clown. Each of them pulls away

as hard as he can in an attempt to escape, and all three roll, run and

leap from one side of the stage to the other until the traction becomes

too strong and the policeman tears in half, vertically, leaving his two

bleeding halves in the hands of the two crazy characters.49

At this dramatically inconclusive point, the curtain simply falls, only to

rise again for a dazzling series of “apotheoses” or transformation scenes.

An illustrated bill for Holden’s gives a graphic impression of the fast-

moving slapstick of the harlequinade. A central scene depicts a runaway

donkey cart, driven by Clown. Pantaloon is falling off, and the police-

man receives a hoof in the eye. Various other episodes showing Clown

and Pantaloon are also depicted, but Harlequin and Columbine are

reduced to two small balletic figures.

Barnards’ Harlequinade was distinguished by the following piece of

business: At the end of this act an anchor came swinging across the

stage and caught the pantaloon by the seat swinging him to and fro

until he disappeared above the stage much to the joy of the clown.

Dramas, Pantomimes, and Screaming Farces

060 c6 (109-139) 8/4/04 10:29 AM Page 134

But his turn came next. After a while the clown fell from a great

height, indicated by increasing noise, on to the middle of the stage.

While he was writhing about and feeling sorry for himself the dis-

tant gurgling commenced again and in due course the pantaloon fell

on top of him. The scene for this act was the old harlequinade scene

– grocer’s shop with eggs and butcher’s with sausages.50

Sydney Race, in his diary, describes a routine used by Lawrence’s at

Nottingham Goose Fair in :

The usual bother took place and clown and pantaloon got into hot

water with the policeman. One scene was a capital view of the Crystal

Palace before which was what appeared to be a garden seat. Clown

and Pantaloon sat on this, and then it opens out to a large bird of

which they take possession, one at each end, and then this rises with

them, right out of sight. Two or three seconds out, the two figures

drop on the ground with a great flap and the illusion was perfect.

After these was the usual business with the baker’s shop and the don-

key and cart and a big bull tossed the two villains right through a

house top.51

Harlequinades became virtually interchangeable and could be

used for any variety of pantomimes or even presented as a number of

their own. What was important was a good chase, a number of outra-

geous situations, and plenty of slapstick comedy. The stage policeman

became an important element of the pantomime chase and was prob-

ably a distant ancestor of the Keystone cops. Two fantoccini routines

shown by Mayhew’s man found a home in the harlequinade. The first

was a sketch of the clown Grimaldi, “who does tumbling and postur-

ing, and a comic dance, and so forth, such as trying to catch a butter-

fly.”52 The other is “a country man who can’t get his donkey to go, and

it kicks him and throws him off and all manner of comic antics, after

Billy Button’s style.”53

As more and more companies began to perform in music halls and

variety theatres, a new emphasis was placed on quick and slick action,

slapstick comedy, tricks, and transformations. The pantomimes were

reduced to a very brief version of the fairy tale, followed by the harle-

quinade and a final transformation scene which provided a grand visual

finale. Holden’s, Barnard’s, and others, touring non-English-speaking

Dramas, Pantomimes, and Screaming Farces

060 c6 (109-139) 8/4/04 10:29 AM Page 135

countries, offered the usual variety show of fantoccini and then the har-

lequinade part of the pantomime, sometimes accompanied by an abbre-

viated version of the main plot or at least its more spectacular moments.

�Farce

Enough of gloom the show affords,

A screaming farce now takes the boards,

Spectators rock and shriek with glee

The antics of the clown to see.

Two larkish rogues, as strong as bears,

In twain a portly Bobby tears;

The law will yet their fate decide,

Another Bobby’s found inside.

The dolls all nat’ral laws defy

With tricks no humans dare to try.

In plays the puppets might do well,

But farce is where the dolls excel.

The play is done, the yokel strides

To bed to rest his aching sides

And roundly swears, whate’er his span,

He’ll ne’er forget the Puppet Man.54

The sequences of Clown, Pantaloon, and the Policeman in the harle-

quinade are pure slapstick farce, with one visual gag following another

in a helter-skelter chase. Once speech had been given to the previously

silent pantomime characters of Clown and Pantaloon, the harlequinade

had become a farce in fancy dress. It would seem that this was the one

element of the program that audiences could never tire of. Clunn Lewis,

when interviewed in , regretted the disappearance of the serious dra-

matic repertoire. He bemoaned the fact that the “modern audience wants

humour” and added that “the squib in the donkey’s tail goes down bet-

ter than blood.”55 He was really reflecting a complete change in the way

that marionette theatre was perceived: it could no longer be seen as an

alternative way of presenting the mainstream theatrical repertoire.

Farce has always been an element of puppet theatre. Following the

practice of the live theatre of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,

many marionette programs included a short farce. Unfortunately, it is

Dramas, Pantomimes, and Screaming Farces

060 c6 (109-139) 8/4/04 10:29 AM Page 136

more difficult to write with any certainty about the farces performed on

the marionette stage than about any other element of the repertoire.

They ranged from known popular pieces to semi-improvised sketches,

and the way in which they were played was probably far more impor-

tant than the text itself. Wilding’s bills listed all the dramas and pan-

tomimes performed, but the announcement that these would be

followed by a “screaming farce” left the actual content of the latter up

to the audience’s imagination (or at least its theatre-going habits).

George Speaight picked up about twenty titles of comedies and

farces performed by marionettes in the nineteenth century. The com-

pleteness or otherwise of his list is not at issue, but what is surprising

is how few titles are actually recorded. Over half the titles on Speaight’s

list are from the Sunderland repertoire, where bills carefully noted the

titles of both the main play and afterpiece, a practice that was less com-

mon elsewhere.

Among the more popular farces dating back to the eighteenth cen-

tury are Isaac Bickerstaff’s comic opera The Padlock (), J. T.

Allingham’s Fortune’s Frolic (Robin Roughhead), and The Cobbler of

Preston. C. Bullock’s Cobbler of Preston () is a reworking of the idea

of the tinker Christopher Sly of The Taming of the Shrew. His behav-

ior when socially elevated for a brief period gives rise to considerable

comedy based on the idea of social disparities and offers a major comic

role for the cobbler (and an almost equally amusing one for his wife, a

sort of Judy to his Punch).

Robin Roughhead works on similar social incongruities, when the

good-hearted Robin, the ploughman, suddenly becomes heir to a for-

tune. This play, also known as Fortune’s Frolic, was originally staged in

. Its subtitle is The Ploughman Turned Lord. Like The Cobbler of

Preston, it offers a virtuoso role for a comic performer and was popular

in various marionette repertoires, including Old Waxy’s in the s

and John Holden Senior’s in , when it was described as a “comic

extravaganza.” It is referred to in in a statement put out by Thomas

Holden and others to indicate that they were now working for

McDonough and Earnshaw’s Marionettes, when they would be pre-

senting “for the first time in America Thomas Holden’s great perform-

ance of Robin Rough Head, originally performed by him in London for

nights.”56 The play would later find its way into the Lawrence and

the Tiller and Clowes repertoires.

Dramas, Pantomimes, and Screaming Farces

060 c6 (109-139) 8/4/04 10:29 AM Page 137

One conclusion we may be able to draw is that audiences loved to see

the same comic scenes and situations repeated ad infinitum and had no

objection to laughing at a favorite farce again and again. In the drama

the plot element was much more important, and audiences therefore

required a greater turnover of programs.

A farce was usually a short piece built around a single comic situa-

tion and one or more comic characters. For audiences to enjoy it, the ver-

bal wit (and the way in which it was delivered) was clearly of utmost

importance. Very few titles of farces survive. Some notion of what

Wilding meant by a “screaming farce,” however, may be gleaned from

a manuscript of his found among the Clowes-Tiller scripts. It is called

The Football Match and is based on mistaken identity. A certain Peter

Pimple (comedy role) comes to a village to be the guardian of a May

Merry Drew. When he arrives on the day of the village football match,

Stripes (light comedy), the captain of the team, mistakes him for the

Dramas, Pantomimes, and Screaming Farces

. Clunn Lewis

performing a farce,

circa . Archival

photo. Musée

Gadagne, Lyon.

060 c6 (109-139) 8/4/04 10:29 AM Page 138

referee. Peter knows nothing of football, and this gives rise to a series of

comic misunderstandings and puns, such as “fowl” and “foul.” Harry

(a walking gent.) is in love with May but needs her guardian’s permis-

sion to marry her. In the final scene Peter reappears in rags, pursued by

the mob, having been a dismal failure as a referee. He hides under the

table and is saved by Harry on condition that he gives his consent to the

marriage plus an annual ten-guinea cup to the football team.

Clunn Lewis had a farce, There He Goes, which he seems to have

played ad nauseam. This also figured in the Clowes-Tiller repertoire.

No script survives, but there is a brief description of Lewis’s perfor-

mance around : “The ‘legitimate’ included a farce, There he goes;

or, The Landlord outwitted, in which there was song and dance by

Currycomb, the ostler, the landlord’s daughter, and a villainous nonde-

script person with a fearful knife. Incidentally, it unfolded a delicate lit-

tle romance between a long black-haired gentleman of lowly birth and

the publican’s daughter.”57

Short slapstick sketches were also often performed. Pierce Egan’s

novel London by Night () features in the Tiller and Wilding reper-

toires as a play. Its popular heroes, Tom and Jerry, frequently appeared

in short farcical sketches, including one in which they manage to tip a

watchman’s box over on top of him. The comic rustic (Tim Bobbin,

Yorkshire Bob, or whoever) could also introduce a note of farce into the

most blood-curdling melodrama, and this is precisely what he does in

Maria Marten. Since the seventeenth century, as we have already seen

with Punch, the comic figure has been a force to be reckoned with on

the marionette stage. However serious the main theme of the play, farce

was always waiting just around the corner and ready to erupt.

Dramas, Pantomimes, and Screaming Farces

060 c6 (109-139) 8/4/04 10:29 AM Page 139

Chapter 7 :

Fantoccini &Variety

�Trick Puppets

Every marionette showman in Britain possessed a set of trick or spe-

cialized figures. How these worked was always one of the great “secrets”

of the trade. Purvis learned his trade by “spying” on Grey, and Mayhew’s

fantoccini man emphasized the need to conceal what he was doing.

When on a music-hall stage Barnard’s and Holden’s both hung a cur-

tain behind their fit-ups to prevent stagehands or other unauthorized

persons from spying on them. The similarity of the different trick acts

from one company to another indicates just how ready showpeople were

to cash in on anything that worked. It was standard practice for a fair-

ground act to claim that it was the “only” one of its sort.

Street fantoccini performers presented a selection of clever numbers,

while the traveling marionette companies made trick figures into a sec-

tion of the evening’s entertainment. A program repeated ten or more

times a day on the fairground or a number among other numbers in the

music hall was more suited to variety acts than to a dramatic piece.

In the live theatre the term “nondescript” was used in the early part

of the century for monsters or fantastic creatures in the pantomime.

Puppets able to perform trick acts impossible for a human being were

loosely covered by the same term. Clunn Lewis applied it to a character

with an extending neck (more generally known as Scaramouche),

while Mayhew’s fantoccini man used it for one who juggles with his

head. Whanslaw indicates that the word might mean any sort of weird-

looking figure, even without trick action, and that it could cover extend-

ing and contracting dolls, disjointing skeletons and clowns, and “other

strange and wonderful puppets.”1 By the end of the nineteenth century

some showpeople referred to “utilities” as “nondescripts.”

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:30 AM Page 140

Italian companies visiting Britain in the later eighteenth century

introduced the term “fantoccini” to describe puppets operated by rods

and strings. It was initially applied to trick and variety figures but then

extended to mean marionettes in general.2 The stringing of fantoccini

was one of the secrets of their success, but this had to be taken in con-

junction with the construction and articulation of the figure. Most trick

figures had one or two special strings designed to produce a particular

effect. The physical principles were not that complicated, but there was

some variation from one puppeteer to another.

When John Holden visited Ghent, people remembered his “fan-

toches” (fantoccini) and his “metamorphoses” or transformation fig-

ures.3 One trick that is found in several repertoires is a box that opens

out to become a dragon spewing fire, produced by sparklers placed

behind its nostrils. In Munich there is a box ( cm long) which unfolds

to produce the head, neck, tail, and wings of a dragon ( cm long).

Jim Tiller had a similar dragon and remembered a routine where the

box began as a box of Yarmouth bloaters loaded onto a donkey cart.

With the arrival of the devil (and the release of a spring), the box

became a dragon.4

�The Magnetic Skeleton

In Britain one of the most popular variety acts has always been the

disjointing or “magnetic” skeleton. It probably originated as the death

figure common to most European puppet traditions and may have had

a dramatic role initially. The Clunn Lewis figures include a skeleton,

but this is not a trick figure.

When Parsloe presented his “Grand Medley of Entertainments” at

Southwark Fair in , he offered, in addition to a dramatic piece, a

“Variety of Dancing and Tumbling between the acts; particularly, a

surprising figure of a moving skeleton which dances a jigg [sic] upon

the stage, and in the middle of his dance falls all to pieces, bone from

bone, joint from joint, all parts of his body separate from one another;

and, in the twinkling of an eye up in his proper proportion, and dances

as in the beginning.”5

Candler had a dancing skeleton, and Mayhew’s man had a pair of

them. Hone describes the Candler routine:

Fantoccini and Variety

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:30 AM Page 141

The music played solemnly, and the puppet skeleton came slowly

through a trap door in the floor of the stage; its under jaw chattered

against the upper, it threw up its arms mournfully, till it was fairly

above ground, and then commenced a “grave” dance. On a sudden

its head dropped off, the limbs separated from the trunk in a moment,

and the head moved about the floor, chattering, until it resumed its

place together with the limbs, and in an instant danced as before; its

efforts appeared gradually to decline, and at last it sank into a sitting

posture, and remained still. Then it held down its skull, elevated its

arms, let them fall on the ground several times dolorously; fell to

pieces again; again the head moved about the stage and chattered;

again it resumed its place, the limbs reunited, and the figure danced

till the head fell off with a gasp; the limbs flew still further apart; all

was quiet; the head made one move only towards the body, fell side-

ways, and the whole re-descended to a dirge-like tune.6

“Magnetic” skeletons separate at the neck, shoulders, and pelvis.

Arms and legs are linked by strings attached to the forearm and to the

thigh. This allows an arm and a leg to be operated as a unit, with a

control string attached to the wrist. Some puppeteers managed with

two control bars; others used three, and possibly a second manipula-

tor. Both Delvaine skeletons work with two bars. One bar operates the

arms and legs. The other bar has two pairs of strings that run through

the shoulders and pelvis, holding the limbs in place, while another

pair of strings supports the figure from the shoulders. The shoulder

strings pass through staples on either side of the skull, which can slide

up and down on these. If they are pulled tight, the tension on the

strings holding arms and legs in place is eased, and the limbs are

released to dance separately. Where a company used three bars, the

third bar was given over to the run through strings that hold the limbs

to the body. A string attached to the top of the skull allows it to be

pulled up and separated from the body. When the skull is lowered onto

the spine, the jaw pivots open, and a small movement of the head can

make it clack open and shut.

The main bar for the Smith and Harry McCormick skeletons is a T-

bar. Tilting this can also relax the tension on the strings that hold the

figure together. This type of control probably represents a fairly late evo-

lution, however.

Fantoccini and Variety

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:30 AM Page 142

The total number of strings for a skeleton is normally ten or eleven,

though Chester and Lee claimed that theirs had no less than seventeen.

This is probably an attempt to make the act sound more complicated.

The disjointing clown or policeman had the same basic construction

and stringing as the skeleton. When Grey presented his fantoccini in

New York in , one of the acts was “the old soldier who disengages

from his body the whole of his limbs.”7

�Mother Shipton

The English folk character of Mother Shipton first appeared on the

live stage in the late seventeenth century, and by Martin Powell

Fantoccini and Variety

. “Magnetic”skeleton (Clowes-

Tiller). Drawn by Clodagh

McCormick.

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:30 AM Page 143

was announcing a marionette performance of Mother Shipton, and the

Downfall of Cardinal Wolsey.8 By the nineteenth century she had lost

her dramatic context and become a solo act as a comic old woman who

smoked a pipe and told fortunes. The Middleton bills of the early s

mention her among other acts as “The Yorkshire Hag, who will light

and smoke her pipe.”9 Mother Shipton existed in many nineteenth-

century marionette companies. Her physical appearance was extremely

like that of Punch’s Judy as well as of such pantomime dame figures as

Mother Goose and Dame Crump.10

In the later nineteenth century Mother Shipton was conflated with

a character very popular in France, La Mère Gigogne. This folk figure

first appeared on stage in the seventeenth century and later transferred,

as a trick figure, to the puppet stage. She produces a quantity of little

puppets from her skirts, and each of these proceeds to perform a dance

of its own. One source suggests that La Mère Gigogne could produce as

many as offspring.11 The first specific reference to such a character

in Britain seems to be Mayhew’s fantoccini man, who had a character

called Judy Callaghan who produced six small figures from her pock-

ets, “and she knocks them about.” In November Chester and Lee

appearing on Jersey advertised “Mother Shipton, and her numerous

retinue of little ones. Costume Old English.”12 In an article on

“Some peculiar entertainments” contained an illustration of the Richard

Barnard figure surrounded by some of her progeny, captioned as “The

old witch and her satellites.”13 Her seventeenth-century costume, com-

plete with tall black hat, by that time evoked a witch rather than a given

historical period.

On American posters in the s, Holden’s depicted Mother Shipton

as an old woman, rather like the Barnard figure, performing a sprightly

dance, surrounded by her progeny, some of whom are emerging from

her clothes.14 The Delvaine old woman is provided with knickers and a

short petticoat with lace frills, combined with black silk stockings. This

suggests that the routine included a very saucy cancan dance.

The figures produced usually represented different Commedia

characters or variety acts. Richard Barnard’s old woman was pho-

tographed with six small figures (all adult) – a dancing Columbine, a

Punch, a sailor, a clown, an acrobatic figure, and a big-boot dancer –

whereas there are twelve on the Holden bill. These are Punch, Dog

Toby, and possibly Judy; two lively and rather Dickensian figures (who

Fantoccini and Variety

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:30 AM Page 144

Fantoccini and Variety

. Punch from Holden

“Mother Shipton.” cm.

Holden Family Collection.

could be Tom and Jerry from Pierce Egan’s novel); a ballerina (per-

haps Columbine) and a male figure in a short jacket brandishing a pair

of scissors (who looks rather like Harlequin); a Grimaldi-type Clown

emerging from one apron pocket and a “Negro” Minstrel with a banjo

from the other; a one-legged soldier brandishing a crutch and a sailor;

. Mrs. Clunn Lewis

demonstrating Middleton

Mother Shipton, circa .

Musée Gadagne, Lyon.

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:30 AM Page 145

and a flat-hatted gentleman wearing a waistcoat and knee-breeches,

possibly a plantation-owner.

Most of the small figures have only one or two strings to the head.

The Delvaine clown has a small T-bar control and is strung to perform

a dance of his own. The Holden figures may also have been more fully

strung (and handled by several manipulators).

“Producer” figures such as the old woman may have been introduced

to England with the Italian fantoccini players of the later eighteenth

century. There is a strong Commedia dell’Arte tradition of the her-

maphroditic Pulcinella and his numerous offspring. The Borromeo col-

lection of northern Italy includes a Pulcinella out of whose costume a

number of little Pulcinelli spring. The Italian fantoccini in the Great

Room, Panton Street, London, in showed the Turk, with his wife

in a basket.15 Whanslaw mentions a milkmaid carrying a yoke with two

buckets, out of which small figures emerge. In the s McCormick’s

Marionettes still had a character known as Basket Biddy, who carried a

basket on her back, out of which children appeared.

�The Grand Turk

In the Italian fantoccini had caused amazement with a puppet

whose arms, legs, head, and body came apart to form six smaller figures,

who danced a cotillion. The additional figures were carefully packed

inside the body and could be released by the pulling of a string.16 In

England this puppet took the form of a Turk. The turban and full sleeves

and breeches offered a good means of concealing other figures.17 The

Turk was deeply ingrained in the British popular imagination, as a fero-

cious bogeyman. He was found in mummers’ plays and Morris dances

and as a stage figure since the seventeenth century.

The celebrated Jackson’s in had an “enchanted Turk.” Middle-

ton’s company had a “magic Turk” by . In they described him

as a “Magic Sultan” who transformed into a grotesque group of fairies.

Grove’s “animated diorama” which appeared at the Rotundo, Dublin,

in or included in the bill “a pleasing performance of magical

automatons. The nec plus ultra posture master and the astonishing

magic turk.”18 In this case “magical automatons” can certainly be read

as “marionettes.”

Mayhew’s fantoccini man had two versions of the “enchanted Turk.”

The first had arms and legs that became two boys and two girls, while

Fantoccini and Variety

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:30 AM Page 146

the head turned into a clergyman and the body into an old lady. His

other version converted the Turk into “a parson in the pulpit, and a clerk

under him, and a lot of little charity children, with a form to sit on.”

There was perhaps an added element of humor in the idea of “con-

verting” the Muslim Turk into a clergyman.

Middleton’s advertisement of gives a fuller idea of the routine,

describing the “excellent figure of Mahomet the Turk, which after

dancing a short time, the limbs fall off and become perfect figures; the

head is divided into two, and formed Somebody and Nobody.”19 An

unusual John Bull figure in the Delvaine troupe dates from . He

struts up and down on the deck of a British warship and then, in an

Fantoccini and Variety

. Construction and stringing of Grand Turk. Drawn by Clodagh McCormick.

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:30 AM Page 147

explosion of patriotic fervor, breaks down into no less than a dozen sailors

of the British navy. The presentation of the Turk in this guise echoes

the prevailing mood of jingoism of the time, which often found expres-

sion in music hall and variety theatre.20

The Turk could be quite a large figure. The Barnard one is nearly

. m high. The sleeves and breeches are gathered at the top with a series

of rings, which are hooked onto the trunk at the hips and shoulders. A

jerk of a string unhooks the rings and allows each part of the costume

to fall down, revealing a head, and thus the four limbs become four lit-

tle characters with skirts. The turban falls down, hiding the face and

revealing another head inside the folds. The body then opens out to

reveal a head previously concealed in the chest. To allow the costume to

fall open easily and reveal the reverse side, each part (breeches, sleeve,

and body covering) was cut with an open seam at the back, rather like

an apron, and some small lead weights were inserted into the hem. Once

jerked loose, this provided an almost instant transformation.

A simpler metamorphosis based on the same principles was the cel-

ebrated balloonist Madame Sophie Blanchard, who met an untimely

end in . This act is found across Europe, often in the form of a flat

metal figure whose skirt flaps up to reveal a balloon on the reverse side,

while leaving the basket with figures hanging below it. In the mari-

onette act the lady appears: then her sleeves, like those of the Grand

Turk, become two small figures, while her skirts are hauled up to become

a hot-air balloon, leaving the little basket hanging down, into which the

two small figures climb as the balloon flies away. No examples of this

trick figure seem to have survived in Britain, but it was one of the acts

presented by Mayhew’s fantoccini performer, who emphasized that he

did it with round not flat figures.

�Extending Figures

Extending figures are among the oldest trick puppets. In Britain in

the s they became known as “cures,” after a popular American

entertainer, J. H. Stead, who performed a song called “The Perfect

Cure,” which was accompanied by a lively dance, jumping up and down,

that accompanied the chorus.21 Because of its rhythm, this song or at

least its chorus was adapted to extending and contracting puppets. The

words of the song tell the sad story of a young man jilted by his girl

Fantoccini and Variety

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:30 AM Page 148

Fantoccini and Variety

. Cure.

Stadtmuseum,

Munich.

friend and then charged with the paternity of his rival’s offspring.

Clunn Lewis listed music for this act as a cure, which suggests that the

tune had become traditional for the act. Lewis’s cure is a very large fig-

ure with an exceptionally fearsome face, which makes one wonder

whether it may have originated in a pantomime as a giant who could

shrink or a dwarf who could grow. The earlier term for a cure had

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:30 AM Page 149

sometimes been a “giant-dwarf.” Puppet cures often came in pairs. The

Clowes-Tiller figures include two clown cures dressed in red and white

striped outfits like that worn by Stead. A similar one in Munich has an

opening mouth and may have given the full Stead performance. At a

late date a Clowes troupe dressed two cures as Pierrots, while Delvaine’s

had three extending guardsmen (later redressed as sailors).

The basic technical principle for extending figures was a body con-

sisting of a light-weight pelvis and shoulders (sometimes a disk of wood,

sometimes a small hoop of cane or metal), with an additional disk or

hoop at chest level. This is covered with a costume, and run-through

strings allow the whole to be drawn together or expanded by the con-

trary pull of head strings or a head rod. The arms and legs are often of

a similar construction. Generally two but sometimes three control bars

were used, so that when one was raised above the other the figures con-

tracted. The trick could also be performed with a single T-bar. A pair of

Holden cures sketched by Emile Pitou in show the shoulders and

hips connected by a long spring. This may have been speculation on his

part. The highly elongated cures of Holden’s may simply have had a

larger number of disks than was usual concealed within the costume.

The Pitou sketch does give a hint of a routine. He also shows a string

attached to the bottom, which allows for some very strange movements,

virtually turning the figures into quadrupeds. From the sketch it appears

that their routine included a frog.

�Scaramouche

An omnipresent variant of the cure is Scaramouche, with his extend-

ing neck, emerging out of his body and sometimes surmounted by sev-

eral heads. The Commedia dell’Arte figure of Scaramouche had been

on the English puppet stage since at least the early eighteenth century,

but his nineteenth-century marionette incarnation had little in com-

mon with either his dramatic function or his physical appearance.22

Scaramouche was already a live character in the British harlequinades

by the end of the seventeenth century, appearing in James Miles’s booth

in Bartholomew Fair in in “a new entertainment between a

Scaramouch, a Harlequin and a Pulcinello, in Imitation of Bilking a

Reckoning.” He was certainly well established as a puppet character by

, when he appeared in Stretch’s show in Dublin.23 In his satirical

Fantoccini and Variety

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:30 AM Page 150

engraving A Just View of the British Stage () Hogarth included the

marionette figures of Punch, Harlequin, and Scaramouche being han-

dled by greedy theatre managers. He shows the Commedia figure of

Scaramouche dressed in black and wearing a large beret, the costume

worn by Tiberio Fiorelli as Scaramouche. Scaramuzzia had often been

the foil to Pulcinella in Naples, and this may explain how he became

part of the Punch and Judy show. In England, in the course of the eigh-

teenth century, he dropped out of the group of harlequinade characters

and abandoned the Fiorelli costume for the brightly colored costume of

the buffoon.

By the early nineteenth century, outside the Punch and Judy show, the

Punch-Scaramouche duo had been replaced by the Clown-Pantaloon

one. As he lost currency on the live stage, Scaramouche’s name was

entirely associated with a trick puppet. One of the earliest references to

Scaramouche in this form is in a New York bill of for a Mr. Grant’s

show.24 He is announced as one of the “Prussian Fanticina”: “A Curious

ITALIAN SCARAMOUCH will dance a Fandango, and put himself into

twenty different shapes, being one of the greatest Curiosities ever pre-

sented to an American audience.”

The major feature of the nineteenth-century Scaramouche is the

ability to conceal his head within his body and then to produce it at the

right moment, at the end of a disproportionately long neck. In early

a show at the Spectaculum of the Chatham Museum, New York,

included “an Italian Scaramouch who puts his body into a variety of

wonderful postures, and at the same time swallows his own head.”25 A

Cruikshank illustration in Hone’s Every-Day Book depicts this figure

on Candler’s stage. Hone simply refers to him as a clown but then

describes the routine: “Enter a clown without a head, who danced till

his head came from between his shoulders to the wonder of the chil-

dren, and, almost to their alarm, was elevated on a neck the full length

of his body, which it thrust out ever and anon; after presenting greater

contortions than the human figure could possibly represent, the curtain

fell the third time.”26

An Middleton bill mentions “The Italian Scaramouch,” adding

that the “agility and drollery of the Figure must be witnessed to be

believed.”27 Speaight mentions a Middleton bill of , where we learn

that the “Scaramouch” was “with no head and afterwards all head,”

while Mayhew’s fantoccini man in speaks of “Italian Scaramouch

Fantoccini and Variety

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:30 AM Page 151

. Scaramouche (Clunn

Lewis). Musée Gadagne,

Lyon.

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:30 AM Page 152

Fantoccini and Variety

. a. Stringing of Cure (Harry McCormick). b. Stringing of Scaramouche

(Smith). Drawn by Clodagh McCormick.

(he’s the old style). This one has a long neck and it shoots up to the top

of the theatre. This is the original trick and a very good one.”28

By the latter part of the century Scaramouche had often acquired a

series of heads. A Clunn Lewis figure has two heads, a Tiller one three,

and the Barnard Scaramouche four.29 In all cases the heads emerge out

of the body as the neck extends.30 Sometimes they are carefully packed;

sometimes they fit inside each other like Russian matrioshka dolls. In

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:31 AM Page 153

America, Daniel Meader had a three-headed Scaramouche, which sur-

prised audiences by producing an additional head out of its stomach.31

The Scaramouche always created much amusement by its initially head-

less dance. Once the head(s) had emerged fully, the tightening of a bum-

string could turn it into a particularly ridiculous long-necked quadruped.

�Circus Acts

The streets and fairs of the eighteenth century were full of acrobats

of different types. Many acrobats obtained work in the nineteenth-

century circus, and their acts became a point of reference for the mari-

onette troupes of the second half of that century. Circus acts fall under

two main headings: ground acts and slack-rope (later tightrope) ones.

Ground acts include most jugglers, contortionists, and tumblers. Rope

dancing (funambulism) had been extremely popular in the eighteenth

century, and performers on the rope or wire were to be found regularly

in the nineteenth-century circus. A third category was introduced in

, based on the trapeze performances of Jules Léotard and others.

Emile Pitou, on a visit to Paris and the north of France in , saw

a Holden company. He observed the figures closely and sketched eleven

acts: a strong man; the “American” rope, where the artiste swings from

a slack rope and has strings attached to his heels to allow him to stand

on his hands on it; the trapeze, where the artiste has strings to both hands

and heels and can remove one hand from the bar; a chair-balancer, with

strings to both hands and heels; a tight-wire walker, with broken rings

on his feet, which can be drawn along the wire by strings; a flying tra-

peze act with strings to the hands and to the heel; a tumbler going

through a paper-covered hoop (the circle of the metal frame is incom-

plete at the top to allow passage of strings); a wooden man on the top of

a post which rises from under the stage; a contortionist shown in three

positions; and two men performing handstands on a fixed bar (strings

to the hands and feet). Audiences were amazed as the diminutive fig-

ures went through the complicated routines and easily forgot that the

skills required of the manipulator of a marionette acrobat are very dif-

ferent from those required of a live acrobat.

Pitou’s sketches are immensely valuable. Holden was very secretive

about backstage; but, as Bil Baird has pointed out, “there isn’t much any-

one can hide from an intelligent and curious puppeteer in the audi-

Fantoccini and Variety

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:31 AM Page 154

ence.”32 Pitou’s speculative representation of the controls is plausible,

but not for English marionettes. What his puppeteer’s eye detected were

the tensions and directions in which the strings were pulled during per-

formance and, consequently, the points where strings were attached to

the figure.

What comes over again and again where the Holden figures are con-

cerned is the idea of a single puppet having more than one manipula-

tor. Even if the stringing of the individual marionettes is relatively

simple, the coordination of a group of operators to make the act work

was very considerable.

�Contortionists, Chair-Balancers, and Trapeze Acts

The general term for a contortionist in the eighteenth century was a

“posture master.” The most celebrated posture master of the century

was the little Polander (from Poland), who flourished on the British

stage between about and . He was often designated “The

Famous Ballance Master.” One print shows thirty of his “surprising per-

formances.”33 One of his most celebrated acts was to climb to the top of

a ladder then bend backward over the top rung and descend head-first,

weaving in and out of the rungs. We learn that: “so much famed for his

surprising Agility, [he] will Perform ground and Lofty Tumbling with

many curious Attitudes in Posturing. He also Performs the ITALIAN

Table, and Chair Tricks, to a Wonder; And is allowed by all Judges to

exceed in the VENITIAN Performances.”34

Chair balancing was popular with marionettes and a common act

with street fantoccini performers. Candler had “a jolly-looking puppet”

who “performed the tricks of a tumbler and posture-master with a

hoop.” Mayhew’s performer had “the Polander, who balances a pole and

two chairs, and stands on his head and jumps over his pole; he dresses

like a Spaniard.”35

Acrobat bodies were sometimes made in three or even four wooden

sections, held in place by tapes or by the unpadded cloth tube of the

trunk. Such a body allowed an acrobat to do the “crab” or bend right

back and put his legs over his shoulders. H. W. Whanslaw drew a dia-

gram of a contortionist, as a devil.36 The arms of the figure are in two

sections, both wood, and the wrists have joints which permit the plac-

ing of the flat hands on the ground.

Fantoccini and Variety

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:31 AM Page 155

Wooden upper arms are not common among Victorian marionettes

and often point to a contortionist, chair-balancer, or trapeze artiste.

Slightly curved or cupped hands, sometimes with a hole for a run-

through string, can also indicate a puppet that has to handle a bar or

pole, though this is also a feature of a juggler. A feature of contortion-

ists, and sometimes of chair-balancers and trapeze artists, is a pivot shoul-

Fantoccini and Variety

. Acrobat/contortionist (Delvaine’s).

Archival photo. Desiree Delvaine Collection.

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:31 AM Page 156

der joint, where both arms are hung on a wire running through the

shoulders. This permits only backward or forward movement and is usu-

ally reinforced by a firm elbow joint, also designed for unidirectional

movement.

The only trapeze figures that can be identified with certainty are ones

that continued to be used by Delvaine’s.37 At least one of the Munich

figures, however, may have been a trapeze artiste.

Unfortunately, none of the paraphernalia for aerial acts has survived.

Trapeze bars were probably no more than bars to cm long, sus-

pended by a cord at each end. The ordinary trapeze routine was fairly

simple. The figure jumps up to a hanging bar from which it can swing,

and the action is enhanced by the use of strings to the back of the calf.

The same figure can also swing from a slack-rope. The Pitou sketches

show an artiste hanging by one hand from a trapeze bar, with his legs

horizontal to the ground, while a second one is flying from one bar to

another. Elsewhere in Europe we can also find figures who swing from

bars, sometimes dropping one hand, often drawing their feet up to the

bar as well, and then hanging by them as they continue to swing.

Fantoccini and Variety

. Sailor swinging on slack-rope (Delvaine’s).

Archival photo. Desiree Delvaine Collection.

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:31 AM Page 157

. a. Holden routines, after sketches by Emile Pitou, .

b. Chinese contortionist (Clunn Lewis). c. “Negro” acrobat/chair-balancer

(Munich). d. Sailor in figure (Delvaine). Drawn by Clodagh McCormick.

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:31 AM Page 158

Nicholas Nelson and J. J. Hayes present a stringing for such a figure, with

the foot strings running through the trapeze bar.

The Pitou sketch is our only documented evidence of a figure swing-

ing from one bar to another through the air. With more than one manip-

ulator, this is quite possible, though Léotard’s celebrated midair

somersault is less likely. The Pitou sketches show that the Holden troupe

he saw was unusually well provided with acrobat figures, and this could

support the hypothesis that the Munich figures, no less than eight of

which have acrobat bodies, originated with a Holden company.

�Jugglers and Balancers

Marionette jugglers and balancing acts demanded a totally different

set of techniques from the live acts they simulated, and the skill of the

puppeteer lay in making audiences believe that the figure was really per-

forming the act. The names of noteworthy live performers were often

borrowed for their marionette doubles. Around the celebrated

Indian juggler Ramo Samee visited London, and his name was appro-

priated for fantoccini jugglers. In the s the Jesson Brothers’ Royal

Marionettes (who had enjoyed the distinction of performing at Windsor

Castle on the occasion of the wedding of the Duke of York in ) were

still offering “Ramo Samee – the great Indian juggler.”38 As Samee him-

self was forgotten, companies often referred to the juggler as “Indian”

or even “Italian.” The routine involved throwing balls into the air and

bouncing them onto the toes or the head. Mayhew’s fantoccini man gives

us a hint of the routine as executed by a puppet Ramo Samee. This fig-

ure “chucks the balls about under his feet and under his arms, and catches

them on the back of his head, the same as Ramo Samee did.”39

The marionette juggler usually had two balls (Barnard’s had three)

with holes through them, which allowed them to slide up and down the

hand strings. An additional string through one ball continued to a toe.

By slackening the hand string and putting tension into the foot string,

the ball could be transferred from the hand to the toe. In a similar way,

a string attached to the top of the head allowed a ball to be thrown in

the air and caught on the head. A string could be attached to the heel of

the foot which did not catch the ball, so that this leg could be raised and

the puppet could balance on one foot. A juggler could be operated with

three bars: one for support, one for the hands, and one for strings to the

Fantoccini and Variety

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:31 AM Page 159

head or toes. An illustration of a possible stringing for this is to be found

in Nelson and Hayes.40 Most performers, including Clunn Lewis, man-

aged to do the act with two bars. His Chinese juggler balanced balls on

each foot, and he could also perform the splits.

A variant of the juggler was a dissecting clown, who could also jug-

gle. The limbs and head separated from the trunk, and the balls were

juggled only in the hands.41 A curious character who could “chuck his

head from one hand to another” is also mentioned by Mayhew’s fan-

toccini man.42 He could be seen as yet another variant of the combina-

tion of juggler and (partially) disintegrating figure.

A popular act was the wheel-balancer, although there is little docu-

mentation on this. One nineteenth-century figure survives in the De

Randel collection. He retains his wheel and was still in use in the ,

but unfortunately no description of the possible routine has survived.

A staple in the upper lip suggests that part of the act was to balance the

wheel on the tilted-back head. Special stringing for this act includes a

Fantoccini and Variety

. Chinese juggler (Clunn Lewis). Archival photo. Musée Gadagne, Lyon.

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:31 AM Page 160

staple on the head and also at least one on a foot for the balancing act

itself.

Much more widespread was the stilt-walking clown, who combined

supposed “skill” with a complete comedy routine. Stilt dancing was a

popular act in early-nineteenth-century Britain and became a circus

favourite. An act described as a “Clown balancing a bottle,” which was

in the Middleton repertoire in , may have included stilts. Almost

invariably there is a bottle in the right hand, with a special string to draw

it up to the mouth. This string passes through a small staple in the upper

lip or else through the mouth and out the top of the head. Another string

Fantoccini and Variety

. Chinese juggler (Clunn Lewis)

showing stringing. Drawn by

Clodagh McCormick.

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:32 AM Page 161

to the base of the bottle allows it to be tipped up in a realistic manner.

The lurching stilt-walker could be extremely funny, since the stilts exag-

gerated the staggering movement. A heel string, when used, allowed

him to stand on one leg. The comic effect was often reinforced by using

a pair of stilt-walkers.

The Holdens developed a routine in which the stilt-walker picked

up his bottle from the ground while on stilts and, like a juggler, threw

it from hand to hand. Emile Pitou made a highly detailed sketch of a

Holden stilt-walker in . His drawing of the control is almost cer-

tainly conjectural and owes more to controls in use in the north of

France, but the stringing details are invaluable and help understand

how the routine was performed.43 One detail worth noting is a staple

in the neck of the bottle (which was weighted at the bottom), since

this allowed it to travel along a string running through the two hands,

as it was thrown from one to the other. Pitou omits the hand support

strings that would, in fact, be needed to make this act possible. Some

stilt-walkers, including the Holden one and two Tiller ones, have mov-

ing jaws. The act often included a number of verbal gags and a comic

drunken song.

Pole balancing was an act where performers lay on their backs,

chucked the poles they were carrying into the air, caught them on their

feet, and proceeded to juggle with them. Because of the upside-down

position, these performers were also called “antipodeans.” The act

became known as the “Tranka Hispaniola” in , when an American,

Derious, introduced a sort of stool with a support for the hips.44 “Tranka”

(or “trinca”) was the name for the stool, and the Spanish association

lurked around for a long time. The marionette act probably dates from

the mid s. The pole itself was striped like a barber’s pole, to enhance

the optical effect of the movement. The stringing principles are simi-

lar to those of the juggler, but each foot is equipped with two strings.

One string runs through a hole toward the end of the pole, the other to

a hole nearer the center. This allows the feet to move on the pole and

for it to be tossed from one foot to the other.45

In some cases, the stool (which gave the name to the act) was dis-

pensed with, and the puppet simply stood and juggled with the pole.

Once the “Polander” had been well and truly forgotten, popular ety-

mology associated his name with the pole-balancer, and sometimes this

modulated into “Pole Andrew.”46 To confuse matters, the tightrope per-

Fantoccini and Variety

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:32 AM Page 162

former was also sometimes referred to as the “Polander,” because of his

balancing pole. In John Holden was advertising “Polandric exer-

cises” as part of his program. What these were is still a little unsure, but

they may relate back to the type of acts performed by the original

“Polander.”

Rope acts had been very popular throughout the eighteenth century.

These were generally performed on the slack-rope; but in the s

Astley’s in Paris had introduced a taut brass wire, while in the s the

more modern more supple tightrope became the norm.

With the possible exception of Madame Saqui, the most famous rope-

walker of the nineteenth century was Charles Blondin, who made his

celebrated crossing of the Niagara Falls in and performed high

under the roof of the Crystal Palace in . He created his own cos-

tume of bright pink tights, with a red satin doublet decorated with

sequins, together with garters and a copper helmet. The act and the out-

fit or an approximation of it, without the helmet, was taken over by

many marionette companies. He used a long balancing pole, and this

too was carried by marionette Blondins.

Double acts that included a “Madame Blondin” became popular in

marionette shows. Thomas Holden presented a tightrope act with a pair

of artistes for his first London season in . He claimed to have been

on very friendly terms with Blondin, having met him both on the con-

tinent and in England. He had worked for a time with Fossett’s Circus

in the s, which had helped him in the creation of the Blondin fig-

ure. “I knew all the tricks that a tightrope artist should do and under

my manipulation it was a natural and successful performance and a great

asset to my repertoire.”47

Our understanding of the mechanics of the Holden tightrope walker

is greatly enhanced by two documents relating to Emile Pitou. The first

is the page of sketches of Holden circus acts in , and the second is

some communication in the s with De Vere’s, from whom he had

acquired a tightrope walker “à la Holden,” which he was having some

difficulties in working. The page of the notebook includes quite a

complex diagram for a tightrope performer. It requires a degree of rein-

terpreting. At a first glance, the sketch contains an unnecessary num-

ber of operators’ hands, some of which have been sketched in pencil,

and others overdrawn more heavily. Clearly Pitou was guessing at dif-

ferent possibilities for controls that he never actually saw. A bar with two

Fantoccini and Variety

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:32 AM Page 163

. Stilt-walker (James Holden), early twentieth century.

Archival photo. George Speaight Collection.

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:32 AM Page 164

. Holden Stilt-walker after Emile Pitou sketch of . English controls

substituted for those drawn by Pitou. Smith stilt-walker control shown upper

right for comparison. Drawn by Clodagh McCormick.

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:32 AM Page 165

. Tranka (Tiller). Museum of Popular Entertainment, now in the Theatre

Museum, London.

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:32 AM Page 166

. Stringing of Tranka (Tiller). Drawn by Clodagh McCormick.

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:33 AM Page 167

. Blondin (Clowes-Tiller). John

Phillips Collection, now in the

Theatre Museum, London.

. Conjectural drawing of

operation of tightrope walker

based on Pitou sketches of

and subsequent indications

provided by De Vere’s. Drawn by

Clodagh McCormick.

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:33 AM Page 168

strings supports the head, and a further string for the back is shown. A

second bar has strings to the back of the calves. Two other bars are

equipped respectively with strings to the knees and strings to the ends

of the balancing pole. The Holden figure kept its feet firmly on the bar

or rope, and Pitou tried to work out this mechanism, without coming to

a definite conclusion. What we can deduce from the sketch is that the

Holden Blondin required three manipulators, where most other com-

panies used two. The real secret was the use of under-stage strings to

maintain tension and stop the figure from wobbling off the rope. The

mechanics of working such a figure were made clear to Pitou in De

Vere’s letter a few years later. De Vere wrote to him explaining, in rather

poor French, both how to operate the puppet and also the routine that

could be followed. At the beginning of the act the performer is discov-

ered sitting on a velvet-covered bench at the back of the stage. A string

attached to the left foot goes over the rope to the right, while one attached

to the right foot goes over the rope to the left. These are held by an assis-

tant under the stage during the rope-walking part of the act; once this

is over, the assistant cuts the strings under the stage so that the figure

can jump down and walk freely off the stage.48 The secret lay in the ten-

sion between the over-stage manipulator pulling upward on a string

attached to the foot and the under-stage one pulling downward. A pho-

tograph of the German marionette showman Franz August Schichtl’s

Blondin circa shows this type of control in action.49

Pitou also noted two other Holden acts using an under-stage manip-

ulator to pull against the other(s). These are a tap dancer, where under-

stage strings were used to help produce very precise and sharp

movement, and a comic pantomime scene of a dog biting a policeman’s

bottom. In the latter case a string attached to the policeman’s stomach

is depicted as being pulled from under the stage to produce a counter-

pull to the string attached to the bottom (and operated from above).

�Singing, Dancing, and Sketches

Every marionette program included an element of singing, dancing,

and comedy. Part of the delight of the marionette dancer is its ability

to defy gravity and to demonstrate a capacity to do things that the human

performer cannot. A jig had been part of theatrical entertainments in

Elizabethan times and persisted in the drolls and other fairground shows

Fantoccini and Variety

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:33 AM Page 169

of the eighteenth century. Jigging dolls are one of the oldest forms of

puppets, and marionettes are ideal for almost any lively dance. In

Bullock included in his program two Irish characters, Pat and Biddy,

who dance a “rale Irish Jig.” Figures for this act cannot be identified

with any degree of certainty in any British collections. The Detroit col-

lection does have a pair of figures made by Daniel Meader, however,

who worked with McDonough and Earnshaw when they tried to re-

create the Bullock program, on which he subsequently based his own

show. The stage Irishman was a stock type of the British stage, and

Irishness itself was little more than a local form of the ethnically exotic.

The same applied to the Mayhew showman’s Scotsman who danced a

Highland fling.50 In Clunn Lewis had a countryman who danced a

jig. A more vigorous dance was executed by the Tichborne Claimant,

who appeared in D’Arc’s show in Liverpool in March with a comic

song and performed the supposedly Australian “Wagga breakdown”

(presumably some sort of break-dance with an Australian flavor).51

The sailor’s hornpipe was a popular and patriotic stage dance in the

latter part of the eighteenth century and inevitably transferred to the

marionette stage. Candler had a puppet sailor who danced a hornpipe.

One of the first marionettes to be made by Billy Purvis when he cre-

ated his own show was a sailor, Ben Block. Mayhew’s fantoccini man

opened his show with a female hornpipe dancer, and later in the per-

formance a sailor danced a hornpipe and concluded the act by taking

off his hat. One of the Munich figures, dressed as a sailor, has heel strings

and small staples near the top of the back of the thighs, which indicate

the possibility of extra kicking to the side or crossing the legs in a dance

step.

The McDonough and Earnshaw program for Australia in

included “Jack’s the Lad, with a hornpipe.” The tune used was proba-

bly a piece known as “The College Hornpipe” to which, according to

W. Chappell, an old sailor’s song called “Jack the Lad” was sung.52 This

was certainly one of the tunes traditionally associated with hornpipes

danced by Victorian marionettes.

Sets of dancers appear throughout Europe. These are usually

mounted on a single control, and in most cases they are smaller than the

other figures. Generally they performed a folk dance or reel, though

some companies converted them into groups for a corps de ballet.

Mayhew’s fantoccini man managed four female dancers on his own.

Fantoccini and Variety

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:33 AM Page 170

They were, he said, two feet high and danced a polka. At evening par-

ties (when he had an engagement) he claimed he could keep them going

for twenty minutes. A set of quadrille dancers exists among the Clunn

Lewis figures, and Harry McCormick was using a group, known vari-

ously as the “four Miss Adams” and the “four Miss O’Reillys.” An inter-

esting construction feature is that they have no legs but, rather like the

Japanese Bunraku, have a bag that reaches from the waist to the knees

under the long skirt.53 The figures moved and bobbed, and the skirts did

the rest. There was no complex control. They were simply mounted in

pairs on horizontal bars, with strings to the head and arms. Mayhew’s

man mentions long skirts covered in spangles. It is likely that his dancers

were also bobbing female figures, able to link hands but not requiring

any leg controls.

Ballet was another form of theatrical entertainment that the mari-

onette stage readily imitated. Marionette ballet dancers often had

shaped legs without knee joints, so that they could go on their points

and take balletic attitudes. The arms were sometimes carved in a single

Fantoccini and Variety

. Clunn Lewis stage with two pairs of quadrille dancers, circa .

Archival photo. Musée Gadagne, Lyon.

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:33 AM Page 171

. Pair of quadrille dancers (Harry McCormick). Drawn by Clodagh

McCormick.

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:33 AM Page 172

piece with a bend at the elbow. Mayhew’s fantoccini man specifically

mentions a flower girl dressed as a fairy in a white skirt “with naked

carved arms, nice modelled, and the legs just the same; and the trunks

come above the knee, the same as them ballet girls. She shows all the

opera attitudes.”54 Scharf illustrates a figure remarkably like this in one

of his sketches of a “fantasina” stage. Two dancer figures belonging to

Ambrose Tiller II (one based on his wife, Sarah Chipperfield) had legs

without a knee joint, which allowed for certain attitudes that required

very straight legs. Barnard’s Columbine had one-piece arms that incor-

porated the elbow. The James Holden company included two ballerinas

with nonjointed arms but also possessed a beautiful and fully jointed

gypsy dancer figure, who would have danced more freely and not

depended on balletic poses. To conceal her knee joints she is wearing

white jersey stockings.

Clunn Lewis’s ballerina was strung so that she could lift her skirts.

The tightening of a special string that ran through a staple in the left

Fantoccini and Variety

. Ballerinas (James Holden). Archival photo. George Speaight Collection.

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:34 AM Page 173

hand drew the hand to the skirt and lifted it. The Holden Gipsy, with a

hole through her left hand, could do the same, as could a dancer of the

Barnard theatre, who represents Lottie Collins, famous as the inter-

preter of the song “Ta Ra Ra Boom De Ay.” Her dance, with its display

of petticoats and suspendered legs, was very daring in and was

probably one of the things that a member of the London Borough

Council found “shocking and indecent” in the Barnard performance.55

Stage chinoiserie had been fashionable since the eighteenth century,

with Garrick’s Chinese Festivalat Drury Lane in and the subsequent

production of Arthur Murphy’s Orphan of China. Nineteenth-century

visits by Chinese and Japanese acrobats meant that a number of variety

figures came to be depicted as “Oriental.” Barnard and Clunn Lewis both

had Chinese jugglers, and the latter also had a contortionist with Asian

features. Chinese bell dancers were another popular act, which probably

originated in Britain and found its way into nearly every company by the

second half of the nineteenth century. In all probability this act began

as a piece of chinoiserie performed by live dancers, perhaps as early as

the eighteenth century. One of the earliest examples of music for such a

dance is Thomas Valentine’s “A Chinese Bell Dance – composed and

arranged as a familiar Rondo for the pianoforte,” which dates at least

from the s.56

Bell-dancers came in pairs or even threes. De Vere’s sold them, and

some of the ones found in France look very much as if they were com-

mercially made and perhaps from this source. Daniel Meader’s bell-

dancers were made in imitation of Bullock’s show. Bullock wrote his

own “Chinese song and chorus” for his three bell-ringers, Chang, Bang,

and Pang. Unfortunately, we have only the words and not the music.

Bell-dancers were specially constructed, with arms and legs designed

to move laterally, rather like a Jumping Jack. A similar movement was

used in Italy for ballet dancers’ legs in the later nineteenth century,

since it allowed for certain specific ballet steps and positions. In many

cases the bell-dancers’ arms and legs were in a single piece. The legs

were designed for this particular dance and not for walking, and the

effect was extremely comic. The wrist was linked to the knee so that

when the arm was lifted the leg also rose. This particular technique of

stringing economizes on the number of strings and produces a distinc-

tive movement. It can be found in the Grimaldi Clown, Scaramouche,

and skeletons.

Fantoccini and Variety

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:34 AM Page 174

. Chinese bell-

dancer (Clowes-

Tiller). John Phillips

Collection, now in the

Theatre Museum,

London.

. Chinese bell-dancer

(Clowes-Tiller). Drawn

by Clodagh McCormick.

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:34 AM Page 175

�Chorus Tommy

Fiddle-playing marionettes may have first appeared in Britain in the

s with visiting Italian companies. From a technical point of view

the fiddler was not very complicated. He had a small staple placed in

the side of the neck or on the shoulder to allow the fiddle to be drawn

up by a string running through it, while the right hand was equipped

Fantoccini and Variety

. Chorus Tommy (Clowes-Tiller).

Drawn by Clodagh McCormick.

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:34 AM Page 176

with a bow, with a special string to the tip. In some cases the two strings

to the right hand and the bow tip were provided with a bar of their own.

One of the Munich figures, which probably dates to the first half of the

nineteenth century, would have had a head rod with a bar for strings

attached to it that would take the four strings required for the left and

right hands, the bow tip, and the end of the violin. An additional bar

may have been used for the leg strings.

Street entertainers were often physically impaired. Incapacity stirred

charity and offered some protection from a police force inclined to treat

buskers as beggars.57 Candler had his fantoccini version of a well-known

black street entertainer called Billy Waters, who had a wooden leg,

played the fiddle, and danced. As people forgot Billy Waters, the act

remained, but the character became a British Tar. The disabled naval

veteran was a not uncommon sight in the streets of larger towns of

Victorian Britain. A cruel cartoon in the Judy of July shows two

sailors, one on crutches with two peg-legs and the other with only a

stump of a left arm, bawling their heads off. A caption reads “Why didn’t

they lose their voices instead?”58 In the music halls hardship was often

exploited for primarily sentimental and commercial reasons, and songs

dealing with it should not be read too literally.59 Piling up a catalogue

of disasters was used for comic effect. “Chorus Tommy” involves two

elderly and inebriated vagrants, Tommy and Sal, who perform a popu-

lar song called “Oh, Cruel Were My Parients.”60 Sal, the old woman,

sings the lugubrious ballad; Tommy, her deaf partner, who has lost a leg

and an eye in a naval encounter, plays the fiddle and joins in the cheery

chorus when she reminds him with a shout of “Chorus Tommy,” after

which they dance a comic jig.

“Chorus Tommy” found its way into virtually every marionette

repertoire and even existed in glove-puppet form. The older Edward

Calver was so well known for this act that he was nicknamed “Chorus

Tommy”; when his show was being set up, people would say, “Chorus

Tommy has coom again; Chorus Tommy is on’t fairground, lads.” The

charm of the performance, according to the Reverend Thomas Horne

(chaplain of the Showmen’s Guild) was the way in which the couple

sang the ballad. Calver managed both the voice of the old woman for

the verses and the voice of her partner for the chorus. At the end of each

verse she shouted at her partner the words “Chorus Tommy”: at this cue

from the old woman, the old man, with a presto accompaniment of the

Fantoccini and Variety

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:34 AM Page 177

. Woman with mobile mouth, first half of nineteenth century.

Probably used as Sal. Puppet Centre Trust.

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:34 AM Page 178

fiddle and a shuffle of his leg stump, began to yell the chorus in a thun-

derous roar that set the audience going, and again and again the chorus

would ring out.61

The first verse of the song, which was popular in the repertoire of

comic singers, runs as follows:

Oh! Cruel were my parients, as tore my love from me,

And cruel was the press-gang, who took him off to sea,

And cruel was the little boat, as row’d him from the Strand,

And cruel was the great big ship as sail’d him from the Land,

Singing too rol loo rol loo rol loo rol too rol loo rol loo

Jig.

After another six verses of disasters, Sal concludes:

Then Ladies all take warning, by my true love and me,

Tho’ cruel fate should cross you remember constancy,

Like me you’ll be rewarded and have your heart’s delight,

With fiddling in the morning, and a drop of Gin at Night,

Singing too rol loo rol loo rol loo rol too rol loo rol loo.

Jig.

In a surviving version known to have been used by the Tillers, the

original words of the song have been simplified, and the absurd tale

of woes has been reduced from eight verses to two, interspersed with

“patter”:62

Mary:

Ladys and Gentlmen I will sing to you a song

Its but a little ditty, and I’ll not detain you long

Its all about my Husband as you can plainly see

He lost his right leg and his eye

When going out to sea

Patter

Mary: You did loose your sight of eye in Battle

Didn’t you Tommy.

Tommy: Ah, that I did Mary. I have only got one light left now.

Mary: Never mind My Darling I love just the same.

Chouros Tommy.

Fantoccini and Variety

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:34 AM Page 179

. “Oh, Cruel Were My Parients.” Sheet music cover. Author’s Collection.

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:34 AM Page 180

Chouros

Turly lury lido Turly lur lay

Turly lury lido Turly lur lay

Lurly lur lido Turly lur lay

Turly lur lido Turly lur lay

Mary:

My love he plays the Fiddle through every street in town

And I sing at his elbow as we wander up and down

We spend our lives in Harmony we very seldom fight

Unless he takes Grogg on bord and I take gin at night.

Patter

Tommy: Ah you like your drop of gin at Night don’t you Mary

Chouros Tommy

�Minstrels and Pierrots

In Victorian concerts the performers sat on a stage in a semicircle,

without any specific scenery or costume, and got up to perform their

various numbers. From the American minstrel show came the idea of

a concert-party performed by a group of black-faced performers. A very

popular group in America was the Virginia Serenaders. Edwin Deaves

had introduced an act with marionettes into performances by the

Virginia Serenaders in , which probably involved marionette ver-

sions of the minstrels. The manager Edwin P. Christy cashed in on the

success of the Virginia Serenaders, forming a group under his own name

in . Subsequent entertainments of this type tended to be known as

Christy Minstrels. In the early s Mayhew recorded the presence of

“negro serenaders” in the streets of London.63 They claimed to have

been active since the mid-s and consisted of groups of four to seven

black-faced entertainers who sang a variety of songs, such as “Old Mr

Coon,” “The Buffalo Gals,” and “O, Susannah,” as well as playing the

bones and the banjo. Brigaldi’s Royal Marionettes added “Ethiopian

Serenaders” to their program in London in April :

Among the achievements of the puppets, whose agility has now

reached such a point that wood and wire begin fairly to rival bone

and muscle, none is more creditable than their imitation of those

Fantoccini and Variety

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:34 AM Page 181

veteran “lions,” the Ethiopian Serenaders, which they attempted for

the first time last night. Not only are the figures made up to the exact

resemblance of Messrs Pell and Co, not only are the movements of

their human predecessors followed with mechanical accuracy, but

the sentiment and humour of the prototypes has been caught and

reproduced to the utmost nicety of feeling. That dogged manner in

which the “bones” used to wait for his inspirations, and his frenzy

of delight when those inspirations actually came, are represented as

effectually in the puppet as they appeared in the real man.64

In February D’Arc’s had “Christy’s Minstrels with their Funny

Jokes, Songs and Dances.”65 During his season at the St. James’s Hall,

Picadilly, in the summer of , Bullock devoted a section of his pro-

gram to “the Great Troupe of Christy Minstrels, the funniest Niggers

in the world.” He even added two figures, one of them a comic violin-

ist. When he presented his troupe at the Crystal Palace in February

the minstrels formed the first part of the program, with an overture, a

comic song (“Laughing Nigger”), a song (“Belle Mahone”), a planta-

tion song and dance (“The Poor Old Nigger,” old Snowball), and a

“Plantation Walk Round” performed by the troupe. From the program

published by McDonough and Earnshaw’s in Australia and based on the

Bullock show, the minstrel numbers are “The Mulligan Guard, We’ll

all skedaddle, The Old Nigger, and Lottie Lee also Silver Threads among

the gold, Good old friends.” These two lists give a fairly good idea of the

musical side of the average marionette minstrel show.

According to a program for the Real Politeama of Naples in ,

Thomas Holden’s traveled with an act on the program that went by the

name of “Grande Concerto di Negri del Congo,” which consisted of two

ladies and three gentlemen. Marionette minstrel acts generally involved

up to half a dozen figures, but the number could fluctuate. Remember-

ing Barnard’s in the s, one of Waldo Lanchester’s correspondents

wrote:

You mentioned Niggers in “Notes and News.” There were four of

these, two male and two female and they sat in a crescent formation

on the stage cracking jokes, asking conundrums and singing The Old

Folks at Home and Poor Old Jim. I think they had bones and tam-

bourines. Their nigger voices I can hear in my imagination now and

one of their conundrums. One of them men asked “can you tell me

Fantoccini and Variety

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:34 AM Page 182

why a good wife is like ivy?” “No I can’t tell you etc.” “Well, a good

wife is like ivy because the greater the ruin the closer she clings.” The

other then said “Now I will ask you a conundrum – Why is a bad wife

like ivy?” “Give it up. Why is a bad wife like ivy?” “Because the closer

she clings, the greater the ruin.”66

Virtually every British troupe had its “Negro” minstrels, who occu-

pied a full section of the program. Holden posters feature minstrels, and

the Clowes and Sons booth had an illustration of the minstrels on the

façade. At a late stage the act evolved into a plantation scene, which con-

textualized it and freed the puppets from the staid drawing-room set-

ting that was common for concert parties.

When Clunn Lewis was offering his rather rundown show in ,

the minstrel part of the bill was reduced to a single figure who per-

formed to “coon jazz.”67 Delvaine’s had a much loved puppet called

Alabama, supposedly one of their oldest, who performed a big boot

dance. The Smith troupe had a bones player. One of the figures pro-

duced by Holden’s Old Woman was also a bones player, which may sug-

gest something about the popularity of the music and dancing of the

minstrel program.

In most companies, opening mouths were used for sketches with

singing, such as “Chorus Tommy,” and the popular marionette Christy

Minstrels. We do not know whether Lambert D’Arc’s original Christy

Minstrel act of had opening mouths, but a set of figures which

were used in when he opened his show in Cardiff most certainly

did. A photograph in the Lanchester scrapbooks, taken in the s,

shows seven minstrel figures, all with opening mouths.

In a century fascinated by alterity, when almost every nationality

appeared on the stage, the minstrels had a distinct exotic quality, with

their unfamiliar and heavily rhythmic music, songs, and dances. The

black-faced puppet was neither more nor less than a puppet with a black

face, but it represented a white performer with a face coated in a mix-

ture of burnt cork and turpentine.68 The ambivalence was even more

patent here than in the case of the actor in a dramatic role.

In the seaside Pierrot show concert party came into existence in

Bray, Co. Wicklow, Ireland, and its success rapidly eclipsed the black-

face minstrels.69 Instead of black faces, all the performers now had white

faces and dressed in Pierrot costumes. The Pierrot show arrived a little

Fantoccini and Variety

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:34 AM Page 183

too late for the marionette theatre and never had the same appeal as the

minstrel show. Pierrot figures did multiply, however. In a Chester

and Lee advertisement baldly stated “we do not work niggers,” proba-

bly an indication that the minstrel concert had been dropped from the

program.70 Barnard’s incorporated a couple of Pierrots in the pan-

tomime. Holden’s had a pantomime, The Sprightly Sprites of the Demon’s

Cave, in which two speaking Pierrots replace Clown and Pantaloon as

central figures of the harlequinade:

For the funny business two Pierrots known as Tommy and Jemmy

are chiefly responsible, and the way in which these figures are worked

is quite marvellous. They steal joints from a butcher’s shop, chop off

the proprietor’s head, play larks with a baby in charge of a careless

nursemaid, and indulge in mischievous pranks in a photographic stu-

dio and a Parisian restaurant, while much laughter is caused by an

artful dog that slily pilfers all the articles that Tommy and Jemmy

take unlawful possession of.71

Through the last quarter of the century, marionette shows were mov-

ing closer to the variety stage. In their last years, Bullock’s announced

Fantoccini and Variety

. D’Arc’s Marionette Empire of Stars, circa . Includes May

Henderson, George Lashwood, Bijou and Bella, T. E. Dunville, Marie

Lloyd, Fanny Fields, Harry Lauder, R.G. Knowles, Vesta Tilley, Little Tich,

and possibly George Robey. By permission of the British Library.

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:35 AM Page 184

both Christy Minstrels and “The Amazing and Comic Variety Artistes.”

The traditional acts were probably there, but the special announcements

are for “Mr Grace, the All-England Eleven Cricketer, in the National

Song of the game, ‘The Cricketeers,’” and Sinbad Jack in “The Death

of Nelson.”72 Topicality was becoming more and more important, and

marionette programs featured well-known entertainers performing the

songs for which they were celebrated. W. and E. D’Arc specialized in a

line-up of stars of the British music hall for their show. As replicas of

live performers (especially vocalists) proliferated, many of the older acts

and trick puppets fell by the wayside.

By the time they ceased to function in , McCormick’s Mario-

nettes were presenting audiences at Butlin’s holiday camp with a mar-

ionette Gracie Fields, Gary Glitter, a Scotsman in a kilt (who probably

went through some of the Harry Lauder repertoire), and a recycled

nineteenth-century female figure who now appeared as Elton John.

Fantoccini and Variety

070 c7 (140-185) 8/4/04 10:35 AM Page 185

Chapter 8 :

Presenting the Show

�The Stage Front

Victorian reviewers gave scant attention to minor theatres and even

less to marionette shows. For this reason, the detailed press coverage

of the Brigaldi Royal Marionettes in and of Bullock’s perfor-

mances in London in is invaluable. Louis de Moranges’s pamph-

let about Holden in Paris in (Thomas Holden et ses fantoches) also

helps us form an impression of what a performance was really like.

The occasional bill or poster provides information that allows us to

reconstruct something of the order of the performance. Bullock, emu-

lating the more up-market live theatres, used a much fuller printed

program at the Queen’s Hall in Liverpool and for subsequent London

appearances of his company.1 Full-color illustrated posters were used

by many theatres in the late nineteenth century, and this practice was

adopted by a few marionette proprietors, notably Britton Pettigrove

and the Holdens. Marionette acts also featured on the lengthy bills

printed for the variety theatres.

Live theatre was the constant point of reference. When Britton

Pettigrove established his “New Grand National Marionettes” in

he boldly informed prospective audiences: “This show will be absolutely

the largest as regards Figures, Stage and Scenery ever exhibited to the

Public. The Machinery, Stage and Scenic effects, Dresses etc. are equal

to those of a first class theatre.”2

Complete marionette stages were placed upon the stages of variety

theatres, whose large and ornate proscenium arches required additional

scaling down to the proportions of the puppet. James Holden took this

a step further, sometimes using live performers at the front of the stage

with marionette ones farther back, creating a sense of deep perspective,

080 c8 (186-209) 8/4/04 10:36 AM Page 186

. Pettigrove bill.

Theatre Museum,

London, V & A Picture

Library.

080 c8 (186-209) 8/4/04 10:36 AM Page 187

since the realistic marionettes were barely distinguishable from the live

performers.

The focal point of the Victorian theatre was the elaborate proscenium

arch, which, with its gilding and stucco work, became more and more

like a picture frame. When Billy Purvis, after trouble with his live actors,

turned to wooden actors for his dramatic repertoire, his new stage was

“modelled after the old theatre of Newcastle.”3 Delvaine’s stage was

flanked by boxes inhabited by “audience” members who themselves

were a part of the show and with an orchestra of a dozen or so puppet

musicians in front.4 These were not marionettes but were worked by

rods from the side.5 The Victorian marionette performance took place

on a stage that had its own elaborate front. When this was placed on the

stage of a theatre, it continued the framing of the proscenium arch,

drawing the eye farther and farther in. Delvaine’s company used a spe-

cial cut cloth with painted drapes, which was dropped in front of their

own stage. This had the practical function of masking the top and sides,

but also scaled down the much larger proscenium arch of the theatre

where they were performing. Their fit-up had a twenty-foot-high

painted front, which was flown into place behind the tabs, while the

stage was pushed forward on casters and then screwed down to the floor.

Some proscenium arches received highly elaborate decorative treat-

ment, with painting, gilding, and relief work. When Wycherley’s

Original Imperial Marionettes were put up for sale in as a going

concern, the advertisement mentioned a “Handsome Carved Wood

Proscenium, Heavily gilded, Carved by Alfred Bedford ft wide and

ft high, opening ft by / ft.”6 Richard Barnard’s front was in

papier-mâché and decorated in cream and gold, but later this was

replaced by velvet drapes.7 Surviving photographs of his fit-up on the

stage of the Grand Theatre, Leeds, in show a late Victorian fram-

ing, complete with generous swags of drapery. In Chester and Lee

began to announce their “elegant crimson plush proscenium and

draperies of the same.”8 This was in keeping with the development of

plush and velvet in the live theatre of the time, but it also indicates a

move away from the painted stage fronts of an earlier period. The elab-

orate solid fronts may have remained with the portable theatres but were

possibly too cumbersome for use on the music-hall stage.

A Victorian theatre commonly had a proscenium opening some thirty

feet wide and twenty-five high, but this was scaled down by wings and

Presenting the Show

080 c8 (186-209) 8/4/04 10:36 AM Page 188

borders. The height of the front border had to be sufficient to allow for

sightlines from the upper galleries. The gallery inhabitants saw the front

part of the stage, where most of the action happened, but borders pro-

duced sightlines that prevented them from seeing more than the bot-

tom of the backcloth. For the inhabitants of the stalls the effect was

reversed, and the stage space seemed disproportionately high.

The marionette stage was generally wider than it was high, but it did

not have the enormous depth of many actors’ theatres or the same range

of sightlines. Like the live theatre, the marionette stage drew the eye in

with a series of framing devices in the form of borders and wings. When

placed on a real stage, the marionette stage front had to reconcile the

vertical lines of the frame in which it was placed with its own more hor-

izontal reality. To allow room for manipulators on a bridge above the

puppets, the stage opening was seldom more than twice the height of

the figures, whereas in actors’ theatre, outside the gaffs and booths, it

was rarely less than three times the height of the actor.

The relationship of the marionette figure to the scenic space usually

leaves us with an impression that the marionette is larger than it really

is. That is because of the relative sizes of properties (which are scaled

Presenting the Show

. Delvaine stage front, still in use in the s.

Archival photo. Desiree Delvaine Collection.

080 c8 (186-209) 8/4/04 10:36 AM Page 189

down) and because the puppet fills up a disproportionately large amount

of the stage picture. This is partly a question of optical illusion but also

relates to the real dimensions of the stage. Brown’s little theatre in Hull

had a proscenium opening measuring by feet ( m by m ),

but a border lowered this to feet ( m ). The marionettes were also

relatively small, measuring between and cm. It is very easy for us

to think of live actors on a large proscenium-arch stage. Many stages,

however, were not that vast. Mayhew mentions visiting a penny gaff

where the “stage” was about feet square and “could admit of no sce-

nic embellishment.”9 In other words, in smaller theatres, and especially

the portable ones, the live performer might be magnified every bit as

much as the marionette. Since many marionette showpeople presented

a mixed bill or “combination,” audiences had to get used to oversized

human performers on a small stage followed by marionette actors

appearing within the same overall frame.

Presenting the Show

. Barnard stage, with Richard Barnard, showing painted act-drop. Leeds,

. Archival photo. Ken Barnard Collection.

080 c8 (186-209) 8/4/04 10:36 AM Page 190

The average booth was close to m (circa feet) wide, and the

stage front inserted into this measured to m. The remaining space

at either side was closed off with screens or curtains. Richard Barnard’s

stage opening was feet wide and high.10 An advertisement of

gives a good idea of the dimensions of a fairly average portable mari-

onette stage: “Marionette Exhibition for sale, suitable for booth or small

halls. Twelve feet high and fourteen feet wide. Very portable. Scenery.

Side Wings, Borders and everything else quite complete.”11

Where live actors had a predisposition to line up as close to the foot-

lights as possible, marionettes lined up in front of the backcloth, and

the area in which they operated was defined by the length of arm stretch

of the figure-workers. In most theatres there was only a single bridge,

positioned behind the backcloth. In a limited number of cases there was

a second one, positioned directly behind the proscenium, from which

the operators (backs to the audience) worked the figures. A third bridge

was used only with a very deep stage. Harry Wilding remembered his

proscenium as feet wide and feet deep, which might suggest a three-

bridge fit-up.12 There are a few references to swing bridges, but clearly

they were not in common use. Split in the middle and working on some

sort of cantilever principle, the swing bridge allowed a figure to move

from the very back to the front of a deep stage without the strings or

wires encountering any obstacle. Leon Pierre remembered Barnard’s

using such a stage: “The stage had three bridges from which the oper-

ators worked, the one nearest to the curtain being worked backwards,

marionettes facing the audience under the bridge. One bridge was a

swing bridge so that, not only did the puppet move across the stage, but

the operator moved too.”13

The only photograph of backstage at Barnard’s dates from and

shows a single bridge on what looks like a rather rickety touring fit-up.

The operators are standing on a bridge which is high enough for a cut

cloth to be placed in front of it to allow for a deep scene; but the bridge

itself, as was generally the case, is only a little above the tops of the heads

of the figures. The area under the bridge was known as the “discovery”

space. Although figures could not be worked there, a tableau could be

set up; it did provide a means of extending the depth of the stage in

more spectacular scenes and producing a greater sense of perspective,

distancing the marionettes a little from the painted perspective of the

backdrop.

Presenting the Show

080 c8 (186-209) 8/4/04 10:36 AM Page 191

�Scenery

The scenery was one of the attractions of the Victorian marionette

show. In Wycherley’s advertisement described a fairly standard set

of stock scenery for a traveling fit-up: “Scenes, Wings, Borders. . . . Two

Entire Pantomimes, Harlequinade and Transformation (with Real

Water Cascade), Act Drop, Large Damask curtain.”14 Scenery is hard to

store and often left in outhouses, where it suffers from damp and ver-

min. As a result, no large collections of scenery have survived in Britain

or Ireland. In Waldo Lanchester acquired eight scenes that had been

painted for the Barnard theatre: “) Marble palace scene back cloth and

cut cloth, highlighted with tinsel; ) Restaurant scene; ) Chinese street;

) Palace of the dragons; ) Oak corridor; ) The Crystal Palace; ) Under

the sea (gauze transparent cloth with tinsel; and ) Circus interior

scene.”15 In Henri Renaud, from whom Lanchester had bought the

Presenting the Show

. Backstage view of Barnard’s. Royal Magazine, .

George Speaight Collection.

080 c8 (186-209) 8/4/04 10:36 AM Page 192

material, had offered only six scenes to Lanchester but seemed to be work-

ing from a hazy memory. He mentioned that he had some other scenes,

including a toyshop and a couple of act-drops, but that these had been

ruined by being left out in the rain.

Some backcloths have survived from the Tiller and Clowes compa-

nies and are now in the Theatre Museum. The Delvaine company also

kept some scenery, but this is all twentieth century, and much of it

in a simplified style more evocative of than of Victorian scene-

painting. In Sam Baylis was trying to dispose of a marionette stage

and scenery. The material included five drops measuring by feet.16

This suggests a comparatively high stage and bridge. Marionette back-

cloths were wider than they were high. The few surviving Barnard

backcloths measure feet by feet inches.17 The exact date of these

cannot be established, but they are probably from the s or s.

A photograph of the Barnard theatre harlequinade, taken at the Grand

Theatre, Leeds, in , shows a stage opening scaled down by a series

of borders. Three sets of wings lead the eye in toward the backcloth

Presenting the Show

. Barnard stage with harlequinade scene, showing use of cut cloth. Leeds,

. Archival photo. Ken Barnard Collection.

080 c8 (186-209) 8/4/04 10:36 AM Page 193

and diminish the spectator’s awareness of the real size of the puppets.

In the best traditions of nineteenth-century scene-painting, the color-

ing of the distance is lighter and hazier, thus giving an even greater

sense of depth. In one of the scenes the discovery space was used for

added depth and framed by a cut cloth, which depicted a London street

with a railway bridge, over which a train is passing.

�Transformation Scenes

The fullest resources of the scene-painter went into the transfor-

mation scene. Audiences were amazed by the way in which a whole

scene seemed to melt away or be transformed literally in front of their

eyes. This effect was part of the stock in trade of the operatic stage

but by the later eighteenth century had become common in pan-

tomimes and harlequinades. At its simplest the transformation scene

depended on a series of gauzes lit from the back. Each had a curtain

behind it, which blocked its transparency until the appropriate

moment. Victorian theatre made the grand transformation scene a

sine qua non of pantomimes and extravaganzas. The scene-painter

William Beverley was so famous for his transformation scenes that he

was sometimes perceived as having invented the genre.18 In the last

decades of the century, the big transformation scene was a must, and

at Drury Lane the cost of such a scene could be well over a thousand

pounds.19 All the major later Victorian marionette companies pos-

sessed at least one transformation scene.

Water (generally in the form of fountains and cascades, designed to

catch light and sparkle) was a fundamental element in most of the

grand transformations. In Glennie’s Anglo American Marionettes

boasted: “The Stage is no ordinary platform but consists of every

mechanical requisite for spectacular display being replete with star

traps, Real Water, Fountains and waterfall of the most novel descrip-

tion and newest designs elaborately carried out.”20

In an interview with the -year-old Harry Wilding in , Gerald

Morice led the discussion to the transformation scene:

We discussed the transformation scenes which were almost indis-

pensable to touring shows of the period. The transformation was

extraordinary, six changes with gauzes and all cut work. When it came

to the last scene, the gauze went up and there was a waterfall com-

Presenting the Show

080 c8 (186-209) 8/4/04 10:36 AM Page 194

ing down. It used to take seven minutes to work the transformation

scene. A man in Birmingham by the name of Stone, and another one

Tom Hall, used to paint the transformation scenes and there was also

a London artist, a Mr. Rogers, who worked for the Duke’s Theatre

which stood in Holborn. They would charge up to £, for there was

much labour attached to the job.21

For the Nottingham Goose Fair of (in October), John Holden

advertised his “grand Christmas Pantomime”: “The Coral Cave in the

Haunted Isle! – Grand Fairy Ballet! – The Beautiful Diamond car

drawn by Birds of Paradise! – Descent of the Lotus Bowers! – The

Palace of Precious Stones in the Valley of the Humming Birds! – The

leaping cascade of Bubbling Waters! – Eminently Magnificent Trans-

formation Scene, and Brilliant Finale.”22

In Radford, Chappell, and Dugard were offering a Grand Comic

Pantomime terminating each evening with a fairy ballet and transfor-

mation scene.23 In Britton Pettigrove declared that his show was

modeled on the spectacular actors’ theatre and included an elaborate

transformation scene.24 In D’Arc’s Marionettes had a two-week sea-

son at the Irish Exhibition at Olympia. The final item of the program

was a pantomime of Bluebeard, which was followed by a harlequinade

and transformation scene: “‘The Fairy’s Dell and the Home of the Silver

Swan’ concluded the pantomime; and, with lotus bowers, a glade in fairy

land, embellished with golden lattices and jewels, stalactite grottoes, ‘daz-

zling corruscations,’ and the fairy queens in their chariot drawn by silver

swans, a very pretty and striking effect was produced.”25

In November James Holden received particular praise for his

transformation scene: “A very beautiful transformation scene is the con-

cluding item in Mr. Holden’s repertoire. We get an idyllic picture of

some of nature’s most entertaining glories; rocks shimmering with the

golden rays of the sun, rivulets flashing forth their magnificence as they

wind through a glade made picturesque by variegated leaves and bushes

and shrubs and overhanging branches. Altogether a delightful repre-

sentation of rugged grandeur.”26

In Walter Tiller’s Marionettes and Varieties presented a scene

called “The Ruler of the Seas,” executed by Sid Tiller. The delighted

audience gave it three encores.27

Advertisements for disposal of the material of a marionette company

often list a “transformation scene” without any specification as to what

Presenting the Show

080 c8 (186-209) 8/4/04 10:36 AM Page 195

it might be. This implies that prospective buyers knew exactly what they

might be getting. So important was the transformation scene that it

could become an item on its own, completely divorced from any sort of

dramatic context. In the s James Holden, on a program for a per-

formance in Vienna in the Blumen-Säle of the Gartenbau Gesellschaft,

concluded his variety bill with a “Grand transformation and closing

apotheosis” in twelve scenes.

�Scene-Painters

Scene-painters were in heavy demand for marionette shows. When

members of the company did not have the requisite skills, the propri-

etors turned to outside professionals. When Bullock’s advertised for “a

good scene painter” in , it was by no means alone.28

Sam Baylis came to marionettes via his work as a scene-painter. He

mentions painting a sea-scene for Thorne’s portable theatre before join-

ing Purvis in , when one of his first jobs was to paint a new front.

He worked for Purvis in this capacity on several occasions before start-

ing his own show.29 In he temporarily suspended his marionette

activities to paint the scenery and decorations of his brother’s New

Grand Concert Hall, the Colosseum Music Hall, Stockwell Place, Glas-

gow.30 Another scene-painter who worked for Purvis was Wardhaugh

Nichol, who painted his booth fronts and later “got up a few scenes”

when Purvis set up his theatre for live actors.31 In Purvis gave a

benefit performance for Nichol, at Hexham. For this occasion Nichol

“got up some beautiful dioramic scenery with moving figures; among

the rest was a splendid view of the Rialto, with the ‘Bridge of Sighs,’

and the waters of the Adriatic. Gondolas passing and repassing, specta-

tors on the quay and bridges, carriages and so forth.”32 This sounds like

some sort of optical show or teatrum mundi.

In Walter Calver, performing at the Leeds Fair, drew atten-

tion to his “new Sensational Pantomime, with new tricks and

Scenery, painted by Mr. Ben Whitley, showing the New Infirmary of

Leeds, and other local streets and buildings; also the Market Place,

Hull, and the Statue of King William the Third.”33 Apart from giv-

ing us the name of the scene-painter, this advertisement is interest-

ing for its emphasis on the representation of local topography, a

practice common in harlequinades and melodramas such as The

Streets of London.

Presenting the Show

080 c8 (186-209) 8/4/04 10:36 AM Page 196

Other scene-painters whose names have survived include W.

M’Culloch, who was with Glennie’s in , and Signor Berlerie, who

is mentioned in . When Arthur Milton set up his theatre in ,

he had new scenery painted by Mr. W. Corbould of London.34

“Corbould” is probably Carbold, scene-painter of the People’s Palace in

Peckham, who painted “entirely new scenery” for Chester and Lee in

.35 Thomas Rogers created new scenery for John Holden when his

“Mammoth Mannikins” appeared at the London Pavilion and the

Forresters’ Hall in January . He produced a grand transformation

scene entitled “Home of Undine under the Sea.” With a great deal of

noisy publicity, Britton Pettigrove announced his new fit-up in ,

declaring that the “splendid scenery” was by Messrs. Alex Hart and

Sons, Parry White, and Moon.36 Barnard’s backcloth of the Crystal

Palace was painted by Hart, while the Marble Palace and accompany-

ing cut cloth were the work of Hart and Francis Bull.37

�Lighting

Painters were in the habit of painting light and shadow on the back-

cloths; but the stages also required illumination, which was generally

provided by a row of footlights, initially oil and later gas. Where the

depth of stage from proscenium arch to backdrop was about . m the

footlights sufficed for most performances. One of the great effects of

eighteenth- and nineteenth-century staging was to have an archway or

cut cloth upstage and to position bright lights behind this. On the mar-

ionette stage, no doubt, extra lights could sometimes be found at the

sides of the discovery space or deeper scene.

It has already been suggested that Holden’s company achieved some

effects by making the fullest use of the play of light on the faces of the

puppets. They took great pains to reduce the visibility of the strings by

a combination of the designs of the background against which the pup-

pets appeared and the way in which they handled the lighting.

When Wycherley’s company advertised their theatre for sale in

, they specified: “Fit up and all requisite Wood and Gas Works

etc. Everything thoroughly complete and ready to open with at a

moment – Also Limelight Apparatus, Two Lenses, Boxes, Jets, Gas

Bags and Pressure Boards.”38

Limelight, focused through lenses, provided the first spotlights in the

nineteenth-century theatre. It was a means of obtaining very intense

Presenting the Show

080 c8 (186-209) 8/4/04 10:36 AM Page 197

light and producing striking theatrical effects. The brightly lit stage was

an added attraction in itself and felt to be worth advertising. If we are

to judge by frequent advertisements for a “limelight man,” limelight

was a crucial element of the marionette theatre, most notably of the

grand transformation scenes. Limelight was used in the theatres from

the s onward to produce a very strong beam of light. It could be dif-

ficult and dangerous to use, since it involved applying pressure to bags

of hydrogen and oxygen, mixing the gases which were ignited, and pass-

ing the resultant flame over a cylinder of lime.39 When Richard Barnard

visited Spain, he brought with him a cousin: “to stay with the show and

keep the scenery in order. He being a scenic artist. He brought with him

several articles for use, and chemicals for making Lime Light, coloured

fire etc. used in our transformation scene.”40

Electric lighting was probably used for the first time at the Princess’s

Theatre, London, as a floodlight for the pantomime of Bluff King Hal

in .41 The carbon arc lamp was developed as a spotlight, rather like

limelight, but initially less reliable. Electricity was also used for special

effects of light rather than for illumination. Electricity did not come

into full use for stage lighting until the s but, in the following years,

rapidly replaced gas. Ever since the Renaissance, light had been used in

theatre to arouse a sense of wonder in the spectator. Transformation

scenes, with their gauzes, aimed at this effect, and lighting was a major

component. Limelight was extremely important, but by the end of the

century the bigger marionette shows had switched to electricity. The

traveling ones had their own generators.

Accidents with lights were a major hazard of every aspect of

nineteenth-century theatre, and the proximity of naked flames and

flammable materials created an omnipresent risk on the marionette

stage. Barnard had grave worries in Spain when his cousin, who had a

penchant for alcohol, neglected the limelight equipment. Barnard found

the gas-bags leaking and had to improvise new ones out of goat-skins.

He persuaded some of the men in the theatre to sit on the boards that

pressurized the gas, a horrendously dangerous operation, since any

naked flame could lead to an explosion. The Bullock show was destroyed

by fire in , and the D’Arc’s show was lost when stage lighting set

fire to scenery in Australia in . Harry Wilding claimed to have had

his show burned down no less than three times through accidents such

as knocking over lamps, while Chester and Lee lost much of their equip-

ment in fires on two separate occasions.42

Presenting the Show

080 c8 (186-209) 8/4/04 10:36 AM Page 198

�Costume

Victorian marionettes had extensive wardrobes, and the costumes

were one of the attractions of the show. Nobody expected to see the same

figures in the same costumes day after day. The figures we find in muse-

ums today are like refugees, with only the clothes on their backs (if

that).43 To understand the scale of the wardrobes of Victorian mari-

onettes, we have to look at the enormous collections of puppet costumes

that survive in some continental collections. A rich wardrobe gave sta-

tus to a marionette company. During a visit to a town, companies

expected many spectators to see several shows. Changes of costume pro-

vided variety and helped a company get by on a relatively limited num-

ber of figures. Richard Barnard, referring to the period he spent with

his great-uncle Charles, mentions spending two or three hours each day

preparing as many as fifteen figures and changing the costumes of the

male figures (an interesting relic of division of labor).

Costume provided information of a general nature but was rarely

designed for a single production, as it would be today. According to

Barnard, Charles Middleton’s costumes were stored in chests divided

into compartments, each one of which contained garments of a partic-

ular type or style.44 The rustic or simpleton was usually identifiable by

his cotton smock, trousers tied below the knees, and a felt hat; the lead-

ing juvenile woman by light floral cotton or muslin, as opposed to the

young “lady,” who would be more likely to wear lace-trimmed silk or

satin. The “swell” or “masher” was dressed with conspicuous cheap ele-

gance. Older figures of the poorer classes (as they usually were) had bald

heads and waistcoats for men and white hair with mob caps and aprons

for women. Gentlemen of the upper classes tended to have black frock

coats, whether they were heavies or leading men or even juvenile leads.

Broadly, costumes fell into two categories: historical and modern.

“Historical” generally meant the late sixteenth or seventeenth century.

It also spread over into the fantasy costumes for pantomime. A range of

variety figures retained some form of seventeenth-century costume,

with doublet, trunk-hose, and neck ruff.45 Most puppet acrobats were

dressed in this way, with a little bolero waistcoat. Only the bolero and

the emphasis on shiny silks and bright sequins and paillettes made them

any different from a vague notion of historical costume. This was the

classic costume of circus acrobats until quite late in the nineteenth cen-

tury. Trunk-hose were perceived as more modest than tights, which

Presenting the Show

080 c8 (186-209) 8/4/04 10:36 AM Page 199

developed slowly (Léotard gave his own name to his costume). From a

practical point of view, it was easier to make a convincing marionette

dressed in the classic manner.

As the dramatic repertoires dwindled, the need for costume changes

also disappeared. The stock roles remained and could be adapted to a

range of similar dramas, but the delight in creating extensive wardrobes

and using these as a way of differentiating between roles played on suc-

cessive nights had disappeared. By the early s many companies were

reduced to a handful of dramatic pieces – Arden of Faversham, Maria

Marten, The Babes in the Wood, and a few pantomimes. The puppet

became less and less a stock actor, capable of playing any part. Reduced

to a single role, a puppet was directly identifiable with that role.

Once regular costume changing ceased, costumes were often sewn on

or attached more permanently. At an earlier period they had been made

in a way that facilitated easy changing and allowed them to be washed

or valeted from time to time. Female costumes were frequently in two

parts. The skirt had a deep slit down the back and was usually held up

by a drawstring. This drawstring ran through a cotton waistband. Men’s

trousers were attached in the same way. The cotton waistband was quite

a common dress-making technique among the poorer classes in the

nineteenth century, to prevent too much bunching of heavy fabric at

the waist. The more complex tailoring procedures of gores, pleats, or

darts were also used to shape puppet costumes, and a flat waistband fas-

tened at the back with a hook and eye (or, less frequently, a button) was

employed. Sleeve ends or breeches were occasionally fastened with but-

tons, but a common form of fastening was a simple pin. Where strings

had to go through a skirt or trouser leg, the hole through which they

passed was sometimes reinforced by careful buttonhole stitching.

Shirts and bodices might have buttons on the front, but the actual

opening was down the back. The back was completely open, so that the

garment did not have to pass over the head and could be fastened by

hooks and metal eyes or loops of cotton.

Fabrics were usually light, although one can find amazingly heavy

blue serge (often used for policemen) and red flannel. Cottons and cam-

brics were much used, while variety figures, historical ones, and upper-

class women wore a range of silks, satins, and velvets. Extra relief was

given by gathering and ruching and the use of braid edgings and lace

trimmings. Ric-rac braid and petersham ribbon were often used to out-

Presenting the Show

080 c8 (186-209) 8/4/04 10:36 AM Page 200

line edges and to create designs and patterns. Further highlighting was

produced by embroidery, metallic fringing, and lines of sequins. This

decoration corresponded to Victorian fashion and also to the theatre cos-

tumes of the days before electricity, which tended to be strong in color;

sequins, glass paillettes, beads, and metallic braids picked up light and

drew the eye.

The variety figures and the characters of the harlequinade had cos-

tumes that were identified with the puppet’s function in the program.

This was the case with Harlequin’s lozenged costume, which often had

the pattern outlined with strips of braid or sequins. Columbine became

a short-skirted ballerina, more recognizable by context than by any

specific signifiers. Pantaloon remained distinguished by a doublet and

hose reminiscent of the early Jacobean period. Clown wore a vaguely

seventeenth-century outfit devised by Joe Grimaldi, with rows of

flounces sewn onto his white breeches and sleeves and edged in red

braid.

Costumes were generally made by the female members of the com-

pany. Charles Middleton was fortunate in that his sister, Mrs. Terry, had

been involved with theatrical wardrobes earlier. Many costumes showed

a high degree of skill in the dress-making; there was a strong awareness

that these were theatre costumes and that the movement of the figure

was all important. Shirts were often finely made with cartridge pleat-

ing, and many garments were carefully lined. This helped the hang and

gave body to flimsy fabrics. Fine needlework was also in evidence in

female underwear; petticoats were often carefully shaped both to help

the hang of the skirts and to facilitate movement. Men’s sleeves were

cut in two shaped pieces, as is normal in tailoring, while the breeches

were relatively full and generally had a shaped crotch. There was no fly,

and the back-fastening was concealed by the coat or upper garment.

Recycled elements of human clothing (which already had tucking,

pleating, and lace trimming) were often employed. Stockings were worn

by both male and female characters and were usually made from cut-

down silk, cotton, or wool ones. They covered the lower leg from the

ankle to the knee; but in the case of acrobats or historical costume, they

were extended upward to give an effect of tights. English marionettes

rarely had leather shoes. A shaped and painted wooden foot is most com-

mon. Where boots were required, waxed cotton leggings were attached

to the lower leg. Dancers and acrobats often wore silk or velvet pumps.

Presenting the Show

080 c8 (186-209) 8/4/04 10:36 AM Page 201

�Marionette Theatres and Musicians

Just as every actors’ theatre had its orchestra, a marionette show was

unthinkable without music. The size of the band in a Victorian theatre

could range from a full orchestra to “a single cornet and fiddle or a

wheezy harmonium when luck ran out.”46 In the s Jerome K.

Jerome, as a fit-up actor, recalled visiting towns where a piano would be

hired to represent the orchestra.47 The same was true of the marionette

theatres. A picture of a fantoccini performance for children at Arundel

Castle in shows a single musician playing a concertina, but quite

large bands also existed.

Street musicians of the nineteenth century played a wide variety of

instruments. A satirical plate in the Judy of July depicts play-

ers of the tambourine, banjo, bagpipes, drums, cornets, flute, violin,

accordion, glass tubes, the inevitable barrel organ, and a harp.48 The

harp was common in the streets and occasionally found its way into the

band of a marionette show. In G. Noakes’s Marionettes advertised

for “a Fiddle and a Harp player (Double handed preferred),” adding,

“Glad to hear from old friends. Will Mr. Clements write in.”49 Clunn

Lewis was celebrated for his use of a harp to collect an audience for his

marionette show. His small team included William Middleton, who

played the cornet and dulcimer.

The Era carried as many advertisements for musicians as for figure-

workers. Versatility was desirable. In Simms advertised for “a good

Euphonium worker” and also for “a young man to speak and work fig-

ures and to be generally useful.”50 To this he added the requirement that

“both must be used to building,” a reminder of the need to help with

the erection and dismantling of the booth. Richard Barnard’s father, the

shoemaker Richard Barnard, had joined James Middleton’s booth as a

musician and subsequently become a cornet-player for Sanger and

Powell’s Circus. His son recalled what might be expected of a musician,

especially a member of the family:

My Grandfather having a large family of sons and daughters, used

to vary the performance by some of the young ones, giving comic

songs, duets besides some very clever performing troop etc. between

the Marionette turns this class of Variety proving very popular. My

uncles and aunts, had been tutored in singing, dancing, and music,

Presenting the Show

080 c8 (186-209) 8/4/04 10:36 AM Page 202

the four brothers Alfred, James, Edwin and William, formed their

own small brass band, for parading etc. Whilst for the music inside,

for the performance each of them was expert with the Dulcimer,

Violin etc. When either of them was not required behind the scenes

they would each take their place in the Orchestra to play, for the

play’s singing etc.51

Barnard also mentions employing a “lady singer” on one occasion

and refers to Springthorpe’s employing “actors and singers to speak

and sing for the pantomime.”52 There are many references to the songs

for Holden’s shows. All of this suggests that, where the showpeople’s

family did not suffice, it was common practice to hire singers as well

as musicians.

In William Case was looking for a band of five.53 In July he

specified a brass band and offered a salary of thirty shillings to the

leader, whose job, like his counterpart in the actors’ theatre, was to select

and arrange the music. In a small band the leader both played an instru-

ment and conducted. Other musicians would receive a salary of twenty-

five shillings. Case also offered rail expenses for any musician needing

to travel over twelve miles and, as added inducement, assured prospec-

tive applicants that the show never remained less than a week in any

one place.

�The Brass Band and the Pianoforte

The big development in popular music in nineteenth-century

Britain was the brass band, which evolved in the s out of earlier

wind bands.54 Brass bands flourished in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire,

Lancashire, West Yorkshire, Durham, and Northumberland – areas

principally dominated by the coalfields and the textile industry. Outside

London, these same areas saw both the development and flowering of

the music hall and also some of the most concentrated marionette activ-

ity after .

One of the features that distinguish the British marionette theatres

from other European marionette theatres is the extensive use of the

brass band. By the s an average brass band would consist of ten to

twelve members. This might amount to five cornets, one horn, one bari-

tone, one euphonium, one trombone, one piccolo, and one drum.55 By

Presenting the Show

080 c8 (186-209) 8/4/04 10:36 AM Page 203

the s the cornet, together with the trombone, had become the basis

of the British brass band.56 Most marionette companies could boast

three to five musicians, while an exceptionally large one, such as

Holden’s, might manage the full complement. In John Holden

Junior was looking for two musicians and a harmonium player, and a

year later he was in search of a euphonium player.57 The bombardon,

also in frequent demand, was the E flat bass. In (John) Holden’s

Champion Marionette Theatre, describing itself as “[t]he largest and

best travelling,” advertised for a “solo cornet player to complete band

of eight.”58

In the absence of a band, a solo instrument (often a violin or

pianoforte) might be used to provide both incidental music and entr’acte

pieces. By the s and s the piano, which carried connotations of

respectability, was losing its somewhat exclusive status and had already

made inroads into the homes of the weavers of Yorkshire and

Lancashire, beginning to displace the more popular melodeon and con-

certina as a parlor instrument.59 For a marionette company a piano was

a useful and versatile instrument.60 The pianist was known as the “jog-

ger” or “joggerohmy.” In Richard Barnard joined the Cassidy

Company, which consisted of “three or four workers and a pianist,”

whose name was Henri Page.61 In Thomas Holden was advertis-

ing for a “First-class Pianist, as Musical Director. Must be able to use a

baton.”62 In we find him preparing a French tour and looking for

a brass band of ten musicians, plus a pianist, which suggests that the

piano was the basis for much of the incidental music.

In a picture of the Tiller booth in Harriet Clowes identified the

various members of the company (mostly family).63 On the parade bal-

cony was Arthur Bartholomew (the pianist), then her two brothers,

Edward Clowes (with a cornet) and John Clowes (with a tenor horn).

The fourth figure was Bert Bowden, depicted holding a slide trombone.

She commented on their musical skills. After the company ceased to

function, Edward Clowes became bandmaster for the British Legion

Band in Littlehampton.

�Mechanical Music

The Illustrated London News of December illustrates one

of the first large street organs to appear in London. It was a “stratar-

Presenting the Show

080 c8 (186-209) 8/4/04 10:36 AM Page 204

monica” made by Louis Gavioli of Modena, and its repertoire appears

to have included airs from Rossini and Bellini.64 Part of the interest

of this organ is the group of figures (musicians) on it. In the last quar-

ter of the nineteenth century it became quite common for organs to

appear in fairgrounds. At first they were not associated with any one

sideshow but used simply to draw attention to the fair. Some mari-

onette showpeople then acquired their own as a form of outside music.

In Pettigrove’s announced the sale of a booth, including “[a]

large new Powerful Organ, by Enoff and Mukel.”65 In the last years

of the nineteenth century the Testo family troupe was noted for its

organ. An eyewitness of a performance in Durham in the s said:

“Testo’s show was a two-wagon front with the organ enclosed level

with the right side living wagon. The trumpets were there all right

but in place of the whistles under the trumpets stood a row of glass

bottles all filled to different depths with coloured liquids. On these

bottles at the front were mechanical hammers, more of the piano ham-

mer pattern, which played automatically onto these bottles. The effect

of the sound was similar to the dulcimer.”66

A picture of the interior of Colonel Clark’s Ghost Show, circa ,

shows an organ being used for inside music.67 It is quite likely that the

organ may have been used in a similar fashion by some marionette pro-

prietors. In the twentieth century the gramophone was used for “inside”

music, especially as troupes dwindled and could not really afford to pay

musicians. It also allowed the audience to hear the recorded voice of the

live artiste coming out of the mouth of the marionette.

�Inside and Outside Music

The terms “inside” and “outside” music appear with considerable

frequency in advertisements. Outside music attracted attention and

served for publicity; inside music accompanied the show. Mayhew’s

description of a penny gaff near Smithfield around mentions a

“theatre” with a band outside to draw custom, while inside there was

an old grand piano and a violinist.68 Cardoni’s marionette show appears

to have had an “orchestra” that consisted of an old man who played

the piano and a young one who played the fiddle.69 A drawing of Mum-

ford’s theatre or “geggie” by D. Small depicts three rather depressed

outside musicians playing brass instruments. The brass band was

Presenting the Show

080 c8 (186-209) 8/4/04 10:36 AM Page 205

ideal for outside business. In , when Case advertised for musi-

cians for “inside business,” he was looking for strings – a bass and a

violin.70

The drum and trumpet had been the oldest means of attracting atten-

tion to a fairground show. A brass band offered new possibilities, and its

potential as a crowd-puller was exploited by fairground showpeople.

Wombwell’s menagerie, celebrated for its band, entered Nottingham for

the Goose Fair in , “preceded by an open light wagon, containing

an excellent brass band, which played several enlightening pieces.”71

Likewise, Kelsall’s waxworks in the s was fronted by a brass band.

The bigger marionette showpeople were not slow in following this lead.

Charles Middleton in the s kept a light cart on which a band of five

or six musicians could parade through the streets, with a man throwing

out handbills.72 Norwich Fair in coincided with the local assizes in

the castle; as a result of the proximity to the fairground, showpeople

were forbidden to use brass bands, drums, or organs.73

Advertisements in the Era often look for “two-handed” or “double-

handed” musicians. This meant musicians able to play two instruments,

one of which was generally brass. When Holden’s company advertised

for a solo cornet/violinist they were looking for the main instruments

for both outside and inside music combined in a single “double-

handed” performer.74 In they advertised for a “Solo Cornet and

E Flat Tenor, the latter to combine with violin.”75 For a tour in France

in , John Holden was in search of a “Leader, Solo Cornet, Tenor,

Horn, Euphonium, First Trombone and Double Drummer.” He noted

a preference for “Double Handed and steady men” (the last being a

reference to sobriety).76 The emphasis on what was effectively outside

music suggests that he must have used his brass band to accompany the

show. For the numbers of a variety and circus show, accompanied by a

lively pantomime, the musical needs were not exactly those of a tear-

jerking melodrama.

�Theatre Music and the Marionette Stage

Music was a quintessential part of theatrical entertainment in the

nineteenth century. In addition to overtures and pieces between the acts,

it accompanied much of the performance, especially in the case of pan-

tomimes and melodramas. Every theatre had an orchestra; as David

Presenting the Show

080 c8 (186-209) 8/4/04 10:36 AM Page 206

Mayer has pointed out: “Whenever theatrical managements could

afford the services of a composer-conductor and a theatre orchestra for

him to conduct, melodrama was scored and elaborately orchestrated,

and the score was carefully integrated with the text and with dramatic

action during performance.”77

Percy Fitzgerald in The World behind the Scenes talks about the use

of music to “reflect the dramatic passion of the situation” and observes

how an obscure orchestra leader can devise “a truly dramatic ‘leit

motive.’”78 By the s the very extensive use of music had ceased in

the serious drama of the London stage (but continued in the provinces

and with traveling theatres – not to mention marionette ones). Prior to

this it had been common for any long speech of particular interest to be

accompanied by music, and for certain characters to make their entrance

to a specific melody. A classic example is the ghost melody in The

Corsican Brothers (), but Henry Irving was still using music in this

way many years later. Mayer has shown the expressive variations that

could be made using a limited number of musical themes: “In the melo-

dramatic score these themes are stated, repeated, quoted on these occa-

sions for reasons of sentiment, subliminal association with other actions

or characters, or for deliberate irony or mockery, transposed in major

and minor keys, varied in tempi and volume, and above all, performed

in various combinations by strings, woodwinds, brasses and percussions

to give to the play colour and variety and bold or subtle shifts in mood.”79

There were composers who wrote specially for the theatre, such as

Henry Bishop, whose work included the score of Black Ey’d Susan, or

Michael Connolly, who provided a score for The Silver King. In most

cases, however, the conductor of the band selected and adapted pieces

of music as appropriate and distributed the parts to the musicians. In

the later years of the century Henry Sprake composed music for four-

teen of the twenty-five melodramas written or partially written by

George R. Sims, but his official function was as conductor for the Royal

Adelphi theatre. His job, as Mayer points out, included “auditioning and

engaging musicians, conducting musical rehearsals, composing and

orchestrating incidental music for any Adelphi piece lacking music,

engaging and supervising the music copyists who produced duplicate

band-parts, and conducting one or two performances nightly.”80 In a

scaled-down way, this is exactly what the leader of the band for a mar-

ionette theatre would do.

Presenting the Show

080 c8 (186-209) 8/4/04 10:36 AM Page 207

We can only guess at the possible score for a nineteenth-century

marionette production; even this would have differed from one com-

pany to another, depending upon who was organizing the music and

what the band consisted of. Full scores exist for only a handful of melo-

dramas. In any case, theatre music is subject to fashion. Even if music

existed for a given play, this does not necessarily mean that it was

always played or that a drama of the s performed in the s

would have had its original music. The Duncombe edition of Jerrold’s

Black Ey’d Susan makes no mention of Bishop’s original score but sim-

ply has a note: “The music throughout this piece is chiefly selections

from Dibdin’s Naval Airs.”

We do know of pieces of music associated with particular plays that

were part of the marionette repertoire, but that does not tell us how (or

if) that music was used or what additional music might be introduced

to underscore entrances and exits and create atmosphere. Since at least

the eighteenth century, theatre music has tended to incorporate airs that

were already familiar to audiences. The Beggar’s Opera and its many

imitations showed how well-known tunes could be provided with new

words or fitted into a new theatrical context. Bullock’s Little Red Riding

Hood did precisely this.81

By the later nineteenth century, companies such as Carl Rosa’s had

popularized opera, and many operatic airs found their way into local

pantomimes.82 Audiences became familiar with them without neces-

sarily knowing from whence they came. When we consider the extent

to which the marionette theatres followed the repertoires of the actors’

theatres and realize that they too had their own orchestras, we can fairly

safely assume that virtually all music that had percolated down to the

popular theatrical repertoire would also have been used in the mari-

onette theatres.

The bulk of nineteenth-century theatre music (in the form of band

parts written out for individual musicians) has disappeared, often a vic-

tim of theatre fires but also probably carried off by musicians or left in

a corner until it was eventually cleared out. We may also have to allow

for the fact that many musicians played by ear and may not have used

sheet music at all.

Piano arrangements are the most common way for theatre music to

survive. Davidson’s Musical Treasury offered, for example, “vocal and

instrumental pieces founded on Uncle Tom,” and these may well have

Presenting the Show

080 c8 (186-209) 8/4/04 10:36 AM Page 208

been used at key moments of the many marionette performances of this

popular piece. They included “The Slave Auction” (Henry Russell),

“The Slave Mother,” “Eva’s Song of the World to Come,” “Uncle Tom’s

Lament for the Old Folks at Home” (“New song and chorus with the

Music of Christy’s celebrated Negro Melody, ‘The Old Folks at Home’”),

“The Slave Ship” (Henry Russell), “Little Topsy Polka and the Topsy

Turvy Polka,” “Uncle Tom Waltz and Galop,” “Uncle Tom’s Quadrille”

(“containing all the Newest and Best Negro Melodies”), and “The Uncle

Tom March.” All of these could be purchased for d except “The Slave

Ship,” which cost d; or the whole lot could be bought in a volume with

a lithographic frontispiece for s d. Another Davidson publication was

the “Ghost Melody” from The Corsican Brothers.

By the end of the century it was possible to hire music for popular

plays. Samuel French, as late as , published a list of “Music on Hire”

in the Alphabetical Catalogue of the Principal Plays.83 A piano score cost

s, while “Full Orchestration” cost s. These included a number of

melodramas, together with an indication of the number of band-parts.

In this list were Black Ey’d Susan (), The Colleen Bawn (), The

Corsican Brothers (), Lost in London (), Luke the Labourer (), and

The Miller and His Men (). All of these plays were performed on the

marionette stage, and the ample evidence of direct use of Dicks and

later French’s plays as basic texts suggests that the showpeople might

also have obtained their music from the same source.

James Glover in the s mentions music directors traveling with a

book of “agits,” a sort of vade mecum that contained a variety of short

pieces designed to create the atmosphere for specific situations.84 As late

as an advertisement in Samuel French’s catalogue of music for hire

mentions “Incidental music suitable for Lively Rise of Curtain,

Entrance of Characters etc., Hurry, Combat, Apparitions, Pathetic situ-

ations, Martial, etc., etc.” Some of the most important pieces of music

were known as “segue” pieces. Their function was to link scenes and

cover scene changes or to introduce a scene by giving it a specific emo-

tional coloring.85 Where the musicians of the marionette theatre did not

simply improvise, such books of “agits” may well have proved useful.

Presenting the Show

080 c8 (186-209) 8/4/04 10:36 AM Page 209

Chapter 9 : Apogee & After

�The End of a Tradition?

These were the old and palmy days

Of simple joys and homely ways.

The crowd had never learned to roam

To plays in flick’ring monochrome,

And little boys had never seen

The “penny dreadful” on the screen.

Lord of a worn-out caravan,

You’re quite forgotten, Puppet Man!

But, no! Shall it be said that we

Have let our childhood mem’ries flee,

And do not love the hand that gives

The touch by which the puppet lives?

Then let our heartiest applause

Make innovators wisely pause

Ere they old English pleasures ban;

We love you still, old Puppet Man!

Clunn Lewis blamed the cinema for dwindling audiences in the

s. The last verses of the sentimental poem with which this book

began reflect changing times.

Marionette activity in Britain had peaked in the s, but this was

followed by a surprisingly rapid decline. A changing society meant that

many of the older ways of doing things were becoming difficult. The

First World War certainly had its impact, but it is easy to overstate its

significance. Many were already dropping out of the profession for

purely economic reasons. The mobilization of younger men halted the

activities of some companies. “Clowes and Sons Excelsior Marionettes”

ceased to function in , when the sons (Ted and Bert) and the assis-

tant enlisted. Ted died during this period; after the war, Bert simply had

stalls at fairs.

090 c9 (210-224) 8/4/04 10:37 AM Page 210

The low spending power of many people and the Depression years

of the s militated against the larger shows, and companies were

generally reduced to husband and wife teams. Variety programs pre-

dominated, but something of the dramatic repertoire persisted. As late

as the winter of a correspondent for the World’s Fair recorded see-

ing a show in a packed hall in Brigmanor, with a queue waiting for the

next performance. The admission charge was still children one penny,

adults twopence. The bill included two pieces obviously from the older

repertoire, The Haunted Inn and The Woodcutter’s Daughter, and the

children “shouted warnings to Tim Bobbins.”1

The association between marionettes and the music hall has already

been commented on. The chronological parallel is also striking. Toward

, as the music hall was developing into variety theatre, large out-

fits such as Holden’s performed on music hall stages rather than in reg-

ular theatres. Because of this perception of marionettes as a music-hall

number, many artistes took up puppets between and , only to

abandon them as they became a less profitable way of earning a living.

The chains of mammoth variety theatres established by Oswald Stoll

and others heralded the end of the music hall itself, while cinema also

began to offer competition as a form of popular entertainment. By the

s people were already looking back nostalgically to the great days

of the music hall. During these years, old puppeteers were being inter-

viewed as representatives of a disappearing world, and the puppets

themselves were being rescued by a small number of enthusiasts.

In the s Waldo Lanchester acquired the material of the Barnard

and Chester and Lee troupes,2 H. W. Whanslaw had his collection of

Clowes figures, which he used as models for technical illustrations of

“old-time marionettes” in his books. During the Second World War

George Speaight and Gerald Morice acquired some fifty figures from

Mrs. Lucy Bowden (née Tiller). Speaight subsequently set to work to

restore the figures, and they were put back into use for a program in

Battersea Park during the Festival of Britain in .3

Sheila Jackson, author of a book on puppets, recalled in a recent

interview how her family had acquired (around ) a complete

troupe of some fifty figures, probably dating from before . These

were found in a pub in Stoke-on-Trent where they had been abandoned

by a company years before and were in terrible condition. Today only

two of these figures survive, and we know nothing whatsoever about

Apogee and After

090 c9 (210-224) 8/4/04 10:37 AM Page 211

the troupe. This is true of most of the surviving Victorian marionettes.

Odd figures turn up in auctions or antique shops but are usually devoid

of any context.

The collection of Victorian marionettes that poses the greatest

enigma is the Munich one. Their Englishness is attested by details of

construction and the presence of characters who, collectively, point to

an English troupe. They range from the early part of the nineteenth

century to quite late and show the hand of a variety of makers. Certain

very specific details or stylistic features link them to figures in other col-

lections. Some of the costumes are probably original; others point to

redressing by the subsequent owner(s). Many are misleadingly equipped

with a German type of vertical control from around the s.4 The

acquisitions catalogue shows that they were bought from a dealer

(Stolpers) in Amsterdam in , but there is no further information as

to their provenance.

Our hypothesis is that these figures came from the troupe of John

Holden, who gave up business in and advertised his puppets for

sale in Brussels that year. He is known to have visited Ghent in ,

, and finally . There was an enormous amount of puppet activ-

ity in Belgium at the time, and the acquisition of a group of puppets of

this quality would have been a godsend to one of the many troupes.

Among the marionettes is a Pierrot who looks quite unlike any English

Pierrot but remarkably like the Pierke of Ghent.5 The association of

Pierke with Ghent leads to speculation that the acquirer of the figures

could have been J. De Doncker, who operated there and was known to

have used marionettes controlled by strings at a time when the head rod

was the norm in Belgium.6 This might also explain how the figures

eventually fell into the hands of a Dutch dealer.

�Continuation

We cannot conveniently cut off the Victorian marionette tradition

with the death of the queen or the First World War. Its limits are less a

chronological matter than a way of doing things. Ambrose Tiller’s

“Excelsior Marionettes” was continued by his widow, Eliza, who added

the showing of films around and traveled in East Anglia under the

title of (Mrs E.) “Tiller’s Marionettes and Bioscope.” By Walter

Tiller described his show as “Walter Tiller’s Marionettes and Bioscope”

Apogee and After

090 c9 (210-224) 8/4/04 10:37 AM Page 212

and then as “Tiller’s Electric Pictures and Marionettes.” Shortly after

his death, the show (which had been continued by his widow and son

Sid as “Walter Tiller’s Electric Palace of Varieties”) was destroyed by a

storm at Broadclyst, Devon, in December . Performances ceased

when Sid joined the army; but upon demobilization in , he restarted

the show and continued to perform mostly in the West Country until

the s.7

The younger Ambrose Tiller’s show had become “Ambrose Tiller’s

Mannikins and Bioscope” by January . In three of his sons

went into the war, and the company ceased to function. An additional

reason for this pause in activity, and one that affected other traveling

companies, was the limitation on the fuel that they needed for the

traction engines that pulled their caravans and heavy trailers of equip-

ment. With the end of the war the Tillers’ bioscope began again, but

it is not clear whether the marionettes were revived. Ambrose and his

sons acquired a site in Long Sutton, where they pitched their booth.

In they built the Alexandra picture house there. Ambrose II

played both violin and cornet, and his sons were also musicians. Having

played for the marionettes, they now provided a four-man band to

accompany the silent movies.8 The Alexandra was sold in .9 When

interviewed, the octogenarian James Tiller (one of the sons) main-

tained that the cinema kept up a mixed program and that marionette

performances continued to be given between the films, which were

the major part of the bill.10

For a brief period in the s Jim Tiller returned to the family mar-

ionettes, which he refurbished and put back into use.11 In he pre-

sented two seasons at Great Yarmouth, with a production of Coppelia,

in which he used both his grandfather’s figures and ones of his own

making.12 In his later years he found work painting and gilding fair-

ground organs and attractions and also cut music for organs.

Between and the World’s Fair mentions only a few com-

panies besides Tiller’s. This suggests that there were not too many other

traveling shows. The economic situation had become so bad that in

Tiller’s warned other travelers to avoid Warsop Vale, near Shirebrook;

on a Monday they took s d, on Tuesday s d, and on Wednesday had

to cancel the show.13

For a time D’Arc’s maintained a sort of double existence between the

Far East and Wales. While the rest of the family were away on their

Apogee and After

090 c9 (210-224) 8/4/04 10:37 AM Page 213

extended tour, Lambert’s wife, Anne, continued the waxworks and mar-

ionette shows at the Victoria Rooms, Mary Street, Cardiff. After

Lambert’s death, it was known as Madame D’Arc’s, and she managed

it until (she died in at the age of ninety). George and his wife

returned to Cardiff in . They appeared in Dublin with a new pan-

tomime of Robinson Crusoe at the Rotunda that Christmas. They called

their company George Lambert D’Arc’s. In February they were on their

way back to China, stopping to perform in Calcutta, Bombay, and Siam.

In they were caught up in the Boxer rising. Later they abandoned

the puppets and opened a hotel in Tientsin.14 William J. D’Arc had

returned to England with his sister Ethel, and from to they

worked the halls with “D’Arc’s Marionette Empire of Stars.” In

they paid a visit to Australia but after this appeared only sporadically

with marionettes.15

Five of Harry Wilding’s six sons joined up to fight in the First World

War. Wilding packed up his show and went to work at the pithead at

West Cannock Colliery. When his sons returned (only one wounded),

they went down the mine.16 Wilding himself died on January ,

at the age of eighty-four. His son Bert Wilding revived the company as

“Wilding’s Crown Marionette Theatre” in and presented variety

acts. He was still functioning in the s.

Seaside resorts catered for holidaymakers who needed to be enter-

tained. Sam Baylis had realized this when he worked in Blackpool and

Scarborough in the s and s. By the later years of the century,

the Royal Aquarium in Brighton and a number of pier pavilions at sea-

side towns hosted marionette shows or acts, while the people on the sands

and in public gardens near the promenades also provided ready audi-

ences. Joe Randel Hodson, son of Joe Hodson, who had traveled with

both marionettes and a variety combination in the later nineteenth and

early twentieth century, had a successful career in variety and pan-

tomime (where he played the Dame). In , finding himself less fully

employed, he turned to his father’s old puppets.17 For eight years he func-

tioned as a seaside entertainer as “De Randel’s Marionettes” at

Heysham. The posters used by De Randel’s were in fact old Thomas

Holden posters that he had acquired and over-printed.

Ireland was less directly affected by the two world wars, but the gen-

eral economic level was low. This may explain why portable theatres

and fit-ups continued there rather longer than in Britain – more prof-

Apogee and After

090 c9 (210-224) 8/4/04 10:37 AM Page 214

itable alternative employment was less easily available. McCormick’s

company presented marionettes as part of a combination until ,

when they ceased to travel.18 In the s and s a number of cine-

mas offered a ciné-variety program, where marionette performers con-

tinued to do what they had previously done in the booths turned

biographs. Irish department stores at Christmas were among the last

places where Victorian marionettes could be seen in action. Some also

had a slot in the annual pantomime.

The last really significant avatar of the Victorian marionette show is

Delvaine’s. Daniel Fanning, its long-lived founder, remained active until

close to his death at the age of ninety-nine years eleven months, in .

The company was a family one, with three generations performing in

the s. At the start of the Second World War the team consisted of

five family members, two assistants, and a driver. Daniel operated the

show with his stepson, Ted Delvaine; Ted’s wife, Jenny; their daughter

May; and Ted’s other son, Danny. After the death of Daniel, Danny

joined the Australian air force. Ted died in . Jenny and May con-

tinued the show in a reduced form until , when Jenny became ill,

and a very good contract with Bernard Delfont (£, a week) had to

Apogee and After

. Finale at Delvaine’s, Second World War. Archival Photo. Desiree

Delvaine Collection.

090 c9 (210-224) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 215

be turned down. At this point the show was packed up and put into store

for many years.

In later years Delvaine’s company concentrated on pantomimes and

variety numbers, and the dramatic repertoire fell into disuse. They

shared the bill with leading artistes, were regarded as a major attrac-

tion, and were often given the final slot after the main comedian’s num-

ber. In the company first appeared as part of a live pantomime,

and a half-hour panto slot became a regular feature. Without question

Delvaine’s went out of business with a bang, not a whimper. By the

Second World War their John Bull (Grand Turk) had become the patri-

otic grand finale.19 It was set on the deck of a battleship, and three addi-

tional characters were introduced to the routine: Hitler, Mussolini, and

Churchill. The cloth was a gauze lit from behind to show portholes and

guns fired.

�Victorian Marionettes in Perspective

The marionette theatre was affected in much the same way as actor’s

theatre, as popular audiences sought in cinema the novelty and vicari-

ous experience that theatre had provided. For three centuries the mar-

ionette theatre had been one of the popular forms of transmission of

narrative and dramatic material and in this sense was a significant part

of the oral culture of Britain (and most of Europe). Marionettes, unlike

glove puppets, had been perceived as a lesser form of theatre but still as

theatre. This explains the jealousy of managers of the various theatres

royal from time to time when they objected to puppets performing the

dramatic repertoire, which they saw as their special preserve.

The nineteenth-century melodrama proved a goldmine to mari-

onette proprietors, with its exciting plots and even more thrilling situ-

ations and stage effects. By the s the early melodrama, with its

cruelty, violence, and exaggerated emotions, already had become a bit

of a joke and the subject of parody. Audiences continued to lap it up,

however, just as today’s television audiences lap up a very similar diet.

The appropriateness of simplified emotions and strong gestures to the

marionette stage allowed the genre to survive longer in that context than

it could on the live stage. The dramatic material performed by the aver-

age nineteenth-century marionette troupe is a useful gauge of extra-

metropolitan theatrical tastes. Being a part of the popular culture of the

period (even if audiences frequently included middle-class elements)

Apogee and After

090 c9 (210-224) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 216

did not really imply that it was anything but conservative. Marionette

proprietors subscribed to Victorian notions of respectability. If some of

the plays had a whiff of populism, this was good box-office, but was cer-

tainly no more revolutionary than today’s tabloid press.

The newer and more socially involved drama of the later years of the

century, with less action and more psychology, was less suited to the pup-

pet stage. Naturalistic stage effects could be managed, but the newer

acting styles did not lend themselves so well. Where “realism” was a

criterion, it seemed difficult to compete with cinema. The relative sim-

plicity of the marionette show seemed to have little to offer. More seri-

ously, there was no renewal. The old repertoire had lost any real potential

for development and was completely out of touch with what might be

happening in London. The new showbiz ethos did not fit happily with

the older tradition, and one result of this was an increasing divide

between those rural companies that perpetuated the dramatic reper-

toire and the more urban ones that abandoned it in favor of pantomimes

and variety. The fantoccini acts had once been the novelty numbers to

complete the bill after the drama or to provide a short street or fair-

ground show. Once they displaced the dramatic material, a large part of

what had been fundamental to marionette theatre for three centuries

began to fade.

The variety acts continued, but with very little evolution or change

– virtually the same set of acts could be found in every company.

Delvaine’s company was more up to date than many, but most of the

numbers were familiar. Vestiges of the harlequinade remained in a rou-

tine involving the antics of two clowns with a donkey and cart and a

policeman, with the sudden transformation of the cart into a sailing

boat at sea to the tune of “A Life on the Ocean Wave.” We still find some

of the circus acts, including trapeze and slack-rope acrobatics. Alabama,

one of the oldest marionettes, was the token survivor of the minstrel

show and performed a big-boot dance. Delvaine’s three “cures” (later

reduced to two) had appeared first as policemen, later as guardsmen,

and finally as sailors, while the tap dance duo was provided with a piano

and converted into the well-known entertainers Bob and Alf Pearson.

They had an ostrich that laid an egg out of which came a snake (and

later Mickey Mouse) and, alternately, a goose that laid an egg out of

which hatched goslings (the goose-girl was also made to look like the

popular entertainer Fanny Fields). The egg-laying ostrich sounds

remarkably like a number we find in German companies at the very

Apogee and After

090 c9 (210-224) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 217

beginning of the nineteenth century. The disjointing skeleton and the

Grand Turk in the form of John Bull remained among their most pop-

ular acts, but the Old Woman and her children and Scaramouche

dropped out of use when there was only a twenty-minute slot.20

A complicated Delvaine number, subsequently abandoned, was a

sequence involving a German airman in a black uniform and an English

one in white. First there was a fistfight between the airmen – won, of

course, by the British one. He then proceeded to transform into an air-

plane, of which he was the pilot, and fly off the stage.21 This act was the

only one to offer real novelty, but it too was merely a more modern ver-

sion of the transformation figures that existed in the later eighteenth

century.

Audiences that were faced with far more choice, not to mention quan-

tity, of entertainment probably did not want to see the same acts again

and again. Marionettes and popular culture in Britain were ceasing to

belong together. This was less true of Punch and Judy, which still

enjoyed a degree of freedom in the rapid and often improvised dialogue

between the central figure and the audiences. Indeed, as marionette

shows became increasingly visual, it was the verbal contact that main-

tained Punch. This may help explain why Punch remained in people’s

memories as representing the Victorian puppet tradition, while mem-

ories of the marionette shows rapidly vanished.

In recent years puppet and theatre festivals have sometimes presented

“traditional” marionette theatre, but the real or implied quotation

marks always suggest a backward look at something which, however

interesting, has lost its currency. Relevance is not everything, but the

absence of virtually any point of reference in their own experience has

made it difficult for modern audiences to watch a revived performance

of a nineteenth-century melodrama with figures from the period. This

has been tried; but the complete absence of an authentic performance

context, the outmoded (and usually second-rate) nature of the material

being performed, and our own rather different expectations all conspire

to prevent a serious suspension of disbelief.

�New Departures

Britain did not enjoy the close link between puppets and education

of the young that assured much official support in Eastern Europe.

While the last companies continued much as they had done in the nine-

Apogee and After

090 c9 (210-224) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 218

teenth century, a renaissance was on the way. Fundamental to it was an

attempt to move in new directions. It was an amateur movement to begin

with, consisting largely of artists and people with artistic leanings. In

Harry Whanslaw published the first of a series of books on pup-

petry, Everybody’s Theatre. In these books he gave free rein to his pro-

fessional talents as an illustrator.

Whanslaw had seen the Jewell-Holden company at the Victorian Era

Exhibition of and become fascinated by the art of puppetry. He

devoted much of his life to collecting puppets and documentation about

the puppet theatre. In he became one of the founders of the British

Puppet and Model Theatre Guild; and in , together with Waldo

Lanchester, he created an amateur puppet group. By this had

become the London Marionette Theatre, with premises in a Hammer-

smith mews. The company performed to invited audiences and took

occasional engagements. It lasted until , when Waldo Lanchester

married and moved to Malvern, where he set up as a puppeteer on

his own.22 Whanslaw, Lanchester, Jan Bussell, Doris Bickerdike, and

others can best be described as amateurs in the fullest sense of the

term – people who loved puppets. They did not come from a culture of

entertainers, but without question they helped create a new puppet

culture in Britain, informed by the work of the traveling Victorian

companies.

Holden’s had already initiated a move away from the canon of vari-

ety acts, and the delicacy, balance, and sense of proportion of the Holden

figures appealed to Whanslaw and Lanchester. They also set out to cre-

ate a new repertoire, narrative in form but no longer an echo of the reg-

ular repertoire of the live theatre. Following such artists as Paul Brann,

creator of the Munich Artists’ Marionette Theatre, every figure was

made for a specific role in a specific scene or piece. It was no longer an

“actor” who could play a variety of parts. Lanchester created an insect

act, The Grasshopper and the Beetle, while Bussell worked on puppet ver-

sions of Luigi Pirandello’s The Man with a Flower in His Mouth and a

Decameron story.

Whanslaw and Lanchester simplified and stylized, in the same way

that the avant-garde theatre of the time in Europe was simplifying and

stylizing. Unlike their slightly younger and often undervalued contem-

porary Olive Blackham, they did not go as far as the experiments of the

Bauhaus or Sophie Taeuber-Arp, where figures were reduced to geo-

metric shapes that evoked rather than represented human or animal

Apogee and After

090 c9 (210-224) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 219

bodies. They were in tune with their period, however, in a new focus on

underlying structure and mechanics. They had a great interest in artis-

tically carved figures and used wood as the main construction material.

A point of reference for the carving and jointing of figures, and the

achievement of realistic proportions, was the artist’s manikin or lay fig-

ure. Quality wooden joints were important, and delicate balancing was

achieved by addition of lead weighting to parts of the bodies of the fig-

ures. The London Marionette Group tried to find a more subtle and

“realistic” movement than that favored for the stronger melodramatic

style of acting prevalent in the Victorian marionette theatre. Enormous

attention went into observation of everyday movements such as walk-

ing and sitting, not to mention very subtle gradations of head move-

ment and pieces of quasi-naturalistic acting, handling props such as

telephones in a convincing manner. There is a degree of irony in that

their search for a more “realistic” mode of puppet acting was actually

continuing the idea of the marionette as an actor in miniature.23

The great realism versus stylization debate in theatre of the earlier

twentieth century seems almost irrelevant when we discuss puppet the-

atre today. Realism, ultimately, is a purely relative concept and boils

down to what an audience will or will not accept. Seventeenth-century

French theatre audiences happily accepted the “vraisemblable” or prob-

able. Theatrical illusion has far more to do with stimulating the imag-

ination than with reproducing reality, and the puppet by its nature has

a much greater degree of freedom than the actor does. Gordon Craig

used puppets to explore some of his ideas about the reduction of acting

to certain minimalist gestures. At one period he had a set of figures

designed to make only one or two gestures each, and these gestures were

a sort of distillation of qualities he had observed in individuals. For more

complicated emotions, he preferred to use several similar figures, each

provided with one or two gestures.24 In “The Actor and the Über-

Marionette” Craig looks forward to the perfect actor with a new form

of acting consisting principally of what he calls “symbolic gesture”:

“Today they impersonate and interpret; tomorrow they must represent

and interpret; and the third day they must create.”25

Craig loved puppets but refused to accept them as surrogate actors

impersonating the characters of a realistic drama. As a figure made of

wood, rags, and possibly papier-mâché, the marionette was never seri-

ously in a position to impersonate but could represent and interpret, and

Apogee and After

090 c9 (210-224) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 220

this is its intrinsic strength. The transformation came when the mod-

ernist puppeteer recognized this and gave up any attempt at pretending

that the figures were miniaturized human beings. The puppet has its

own compelling reality and, like objects in the world of Jean-Paul Sartre,

is defined by what it does.

The proprietors of Victorian marionette shows took for granted the

invisibility of the puppeteer and the means of control, which con-

tributed to the illusion that the puppet was a living being existing in

its own real world through the proscenium arch. Twentieth-century

puppeteers began to emerge from behind the curtains that concealed

them and to appear directly onstage with their puppets. This allowed

them to dispense with cumbersome set-ups, especially when the mar-

ionette act was restricted to about ten minutes. Marionettes also began

to appear in such places as cruise liners and cabarets, with a performer

in evening dress. This was a practical consideration and owed nothing

to Brechtian theories of demystification. In Britain Frank and Maisie

Mumford (no known connection with the Glasgow showman) repre-

sented this trend. Audiences were now reminded that the puppet is a

figure operated by a human performer, and that visible performer has

become a de facto part of the show. A new theatrical dynamic has been

created from the interaction between puppet and performer. This has

had far-reaching consequences in terms of modern puppetry, although

it is almost the exact antithesis of what the Victorian marionette the-

atre thought it was about.

A further problem today is that the relatively clear-cut generic dis-

tinctions of the nineteenth century have become blurred. Marionettes

and glove puppets are sometimes mixed in the same performance or

even combined with other forms such as the rod-puppet. The most pop-

ular type of puppet today, after the glove puppet, is probably the table-

top one, which is a simplified version of the Japanese Bunraku. This

means that audiences cannot even go to a puppet show (provided it is

still called that) with any clear-cut notion of what type or types of pup-

pets they will see. Individual performers also work with several types of

puppets. Such was the case of Barry Smith, one of Britain’s finest pup-

peteers of the second half of the twentieth century.

Today many puppeteers choose the type of puppet they will use

according to the nature of the production. A few have remained res-

olutely with marionettes. Stanley Parker was presenting a marionette

Apogee and After

090 c9 (210-224) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 221

variety program in the late s that in essence differed little from

shows offered a hundred years earlier, except that it had simpler stag-

ing, with visible manipulators. Eric Bramall and his partner Chris

Somerville offered classic marionette performances of Gilbert and

Sullivan operas in their theatre in North Wales. This was still a minia-

turized version of theatre and close in spirit to the Victorian marionette

show. One of the most interesting recreations of the portable theatre is

Gren and Juliet Middleton’s “Moving Stage Marionettes.” This is a canal

barge converted into a theatre with seating and a proscenium arch. Their

program is predominantly a dramatic one but differs from that of the

average Victorian troupe in that each production is written for mari-

onette performance. The repertoire has ranged from an adaptation of

Coleridge’s poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” to new work spe-

cially commissioned from the contemporary British playwright Howard

Barker. Other fine marionette artists include Christopher Leith and

Stephen Mottram. Both have developed the marionette as an art form

and used it in a way that places it firmly and unapologetically in the con-

text of contemporary performance.

The Victorian drama, with actors or marionettes, depended heavily

on the spoken word. The modern marionette theatre, especially in its

more avant-garde manifestations, has moved away from the spoken

word, becoming a predominantly plastic medium, with points of refer-

ence in the visual arts, mime, dance, and music. The transformation is

fascinating, but this has entailed changes in critical criteria, many of

which have become irrelevant for an examination of the Victorian mar-

ionette theatre. Where a dramatic structure has remained (predomi-

nantly in work for children), it seldom takes the form of adaptations of

live theatre. Most marionette performers write or commission their own

material and do not turn to theatre scripts, and the puppets are never

perceived as reduced actors.

There is more than enough evidence to indicate that the Victorian

marionette theatre, in its own time, was a major cultural phenomenon,

which touched the lives of countless thousands of people. It provided

access to worlds of fiction and the imagination and was a vital element

of the entertainment culture of its day. To understand the Victorian

marionette theatre requires a degree of imaginative transposition,

since we have to look for relevance in terms of its own audiences and

not in terms of today’s values. A poor relation of the live theatre, it has

Apogee and After

090 c9 (210-224) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 222

left fewer ephemera and seldom been seriously recorded by the press.

Its “actors” had no biographies to be written; and, even more impor-

tantly, its audiences no longer exist. We cannot reproduce a Victorian

marionette performance any more than we can reproduce a Greek

tragedy with its original performance context. The Victorian Mario-

nette theatre can still be a vital source of inspiration for today’s pup-

pet theatre, however, and elements of it provide surprise and delight

to modern audiences.

Apogee and After

090 c9 (210-224) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 223

090 c9 (210-224) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 224

Notes

. Quennell, , p. .

. A number of Tiller figures were also seen in the Museum of Popular

Entertainment, Whaplode. These have now been acquired by the Theatre

Museum.

. . Signed “Jonathan Stump, ..,” this poem was found among the

papers relating to the marionette showman Clunn Lewis at the Musée

Gadagne, Lyon.

. Interview, Morning Chronicle, Monday, February .

. The French collector Léopold D’or bought the Clunn Lewis figures from

his widow. These were exhibited in and eventually came into the

collections of the Musée Historique de la Ville de Lyon (Musée Gadagne).

Apparently there was a considerable amount of accompanying docu-

mentation, but little of this remains.

. E. Gordon Craig, “Puppet and Poets,” Chapbook, A Monthly Miscellany,

no. , February , p. .

. Craig, , pp. –.

. Published in Iliffe and Baguley, , p. . Wombwell’s Wild Beast Show,

established by George Wombwell (b. ) and later acquired by the

Bostock family, was the most celebrated traveling menagerie of the nine-

teenth century. In , as well as exhibiting elephants, it also showed a

mermaid.

. Cutting dated October , Nottingham Public Library.

. Monday, October .

. Nottingham Daily Guardian, October . Such trains may have been

running from a much earlier date.

. For his Irish tour, Horman advertised for “a young man, or a man and his

wife, that have been accustomed to marionettes” (Era, January ).

. Era, June . An advertisement of for “Harmon’s” marionettes

may refer to him or his successor.

. “The Ghost! The Ghost!! The Ghost!!!” (unpublished article by John

Phillips, January ).

. Honri, , pp. , –.

. See Toulmin, , p. .

100 nts (225-254) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 225

. Era, June .

. Era, April and July . The last Era advertisement for Ashington’s

“Living Picture and Marionette Exhibition” is in . He died in .

. World’s Fair, December . Lawrence’s interest in cinematography

led to making a film of Oliver Twist.

. Southdown, “A Few Long Shorts,” World’s Fair, July . As late as

“Messrs E. Lawrence and Son” were touring in Derbyshire with a

much reduced marionette fit-up.

. See, for example, Sheridan, , part II: “Pantomime and Poverty.”

. Nottingham and Midland Counties Daily Express, October .

. Arthur, , p. .

. George Speaight collection.

. Terry, , p. .

. Nottingham and Midland Counties Daily Express, Sunday, October .

. Guildhall Library, MS .

. Morley, , p. .

. Information provided by Paul Newman, a descendant of Thomas

Lawrence.

. Reports of the accident are given in the Western Morning News and Daily

Western Mercury, March . See also MS (photocopy in National

Fairground Archive, Sheffield). “No Personality – the recollections of an

obscure civil servant” by the grandson of Morris Lawrence.

. Speaight, , p. .

. J. M. Bulloch, in Scottish Notes and Queries, June , pp. –.

. Glasgow Constitutional, July .

. Altick, , p. .

. Ian McCraw, “Stairway to Tragedy,” in Scots’ Magazine, May , pp.

–.

. Barnard and Barnard, , p. .

. Era, May .

. Dublin Advertising Gazette, July .

. Era, July . The address was given as the Music Hall, and “applica-

tions” were invited to a certain A. Litra at the Rotunda, Dublin. “A. Litra”

looks more like an anagram than an actual name and certainly appears in

no other context.

. Era, April .

. Era, December .

. . Nottingham and Midland Counties Daily Express, Thursday, October

. This advertisement is specially valuable, since Middleton’s show was

Notes to Pages ‒

100 nts (225-254) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 226

not deemed worthy of mention in the review of the fair published a few

days later.

. Letter to World’s Fair, November . Clowes and Sons came to an

abrupt end in , when the men went to the war, after which they retired

from show business.

. In the s they claimed that they possessed a bill dated , but unfor-

tunately this has not survived.

. Barnard and Barnard, , p. .

. The combination may make us smile. Around , however, the Church

of England Temperance Society advertised a concert with Professor Louis

Glennie’s marionettes, which had to share the bill with a lecture on tem-

perance (undated leaflet).

. These were written with the help of J. P. Robson and published in

Newcastle-upon-Tyne in . The third edition was published in .

. Robson, , p. .

. Race meetings have always been a place for puppet shows. After Era

regularly carried advertisements inviting showpeople to apply to give per-

formances at such events.

. Purvis indicates that the rent of the Assembly Rooms was normally half

a guinea, but that the lady who rented it was persuaded to let him have it

for five shillings. Robson, , p. .

. Robson, , p. .

. “Whappers” and “trappers” probably mean adults and children. In dialect

“whapper” can mean a large person. “Trapper” may relate to the dialect

word “treapy,” meaning slight and probably related to the French “trapu”

(short and squat). “Trapper” was also a term used for boys working in the

mines, operating the trapdoors through which the trams passed. Purvis

was mainly operating in areas where there were coal mines, and the word

may have been in more general use for boys.

. These figures were a skeleton, a sailor, and an old woman smoking her

pipe (letters at the back of Arthur, , pp. , ).

. Era, July .

. Era, September . The “speaking figure” sounds like a ven-

triloquist act. “Galvanic and Electromagnetic Experiments” are exam-

ples of the use of popular scientific displays for entertainment purposes,

while the “dancing Automaton” probably refers to a mechanically

operated figure, perhaps with a clockwork mechanism, and not to a

puppet.

. Era, November . This is a single entry and not repeated.

. Era, October . Baylis gives his permanent address as being in

Preston.

Notes to Pages ‒

100 nts (225-254) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 227

. Arthur, , p. . McPharlin, , p. , indicates that he appeared

at Miner’s Bowery Theatre, Broome Street, New York, in August .

This might just be a reference to his son Samuel, who ran away to America

with Sam Haigh’s Marionettes in (Era, May ).

. A copy of this document is with the Clunn Lewis puppets at the Musée

Gadagne.

. Press cutting of among the Clunn Lewis material, Musée Gadagne.

PUNCH’S ADDRESS ON HIS MASTER’S RECENT IMPRISON-

MENT We have received the following doggerel lines from a

Correspondent at Minster, in allusion to the recent imprisonment of

MIDDLETON for performing without leave of the Magistrates of

that portion of the County.

What is this I hear? sure it can’t be true!

Such things before, faith I never knew!

My master taken – sent to jail –

Refused the privilege of bail –

There to trudge and labour hard

Before he has in court been heard;

This can’t be right, else I’m much mistaken,

And by reason surely am forsaken.

T’is true I’ve never studied much the law,

But trust I’ve always understood,

The maxim too, I think is good, –

“That innocent each man is thought

Until to trial he is brought”

But in this case my master is detained

And punished, whilst his character’s unstain’d.

What’s the indictment? O, let me see!

Thus runs the matter, nearly as may be:

“A certain interlude, or play,

Was acted on a certain day.”

This did my master, so says p . . . f,

But proof they have not got as yet;

And if old Punch ought of thee know,

No play is this, no, it’s call’d a show.

But what surprised me more than all is this –

That I so long should travel hit or miss:

I’ve travelled full a hundred years,

Exciting mirth, dispelling cares;

Notes to Pages ‒

100 nts (225-254) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 228

My duty in each place I’ve done,

With Frisby and with MIDDLETON;

Both Lawyer, Doctor, Magistrate and Cit

Their sides have held when I’ve displayed my wit.

What have I done, for clearly it was me

Committed these trocious acts, not thee:

My family, with heads of wood,

Performed a play of moral good;

Those who know the play can’t this deny;

It’s name, The Maid and the Magpie.

Consult your law-books pray, and there you’ll find

That plays were made to please the human mind.

My friends will all believe me when I say

My family are moral in their way;

If wooden heads can, by their art,

A moral lesson now impart;

And strive with virtue’s advocate

All bad practices to eradicate;

Take this for granted, tho’ some may chop them,

Now only wooden heads will try to stop them.

OLD PUNCH.

. Bill in Lanchester scrapbooks, Douglas Hayward Collection.

. McPharlin, , pp. –, suggests that Henry James Middleton, his

wife, and Elizabeth Case (also an ex-member of the Bullock company)

appeared in Philadelphia for a month in with a company calling itself

“The Royal Oriental Marionettes.”

. McPharlin, , pp. –.

. Ken Barnard put together a family tree which indicated that Henry was

the father of Alfred, James, Edwin, and William and that James was mar-

ried to Sarah Jane (Holden). He may be conflating the two family lines

and thinking of James’s sons not as brothers of his great-grandmother but

as her first cousins.

. McPharlin, , p. .

. Era, June .

. Speaight, in Barnard and Barnard, , p. , presents a family geneal-

ogy that shows Henry, brother of Charles and James I, as grandfather of

a Frederick Charles Middleton, the father of Elizabeth Jane, who married

first Philip Clark and later Richard Barnard. One of Richard Barnard’s

sons was called Frederick. Advertisements of the s show the existence

of an F. (probably Frederick) Middleton as a marionette performer.

Notes to Pages ‒

100 nts (225-254) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 229

. Barnard and Barnard, , pp. –.

. Era, September .

. Barnard and Barnard, , p. . An advertisement for Case’s and

Ranford’s marionettes at Leicester fair appeared in Era, October .

Ranford is not a well-known name, but Radford was. It is also unclear

whether there was a brief partnership before the entire fit-up was adver-

tised for sale in .

. Era, February .

. Era, February . In Frank Walton (then a photographer in

Leeds) advertised the sale of the Case’s Marionette exhibition.

. The marionettes were divided among her grandsons, James and Ambrose

III (sons of Ambrose II), and her daughter Lucy Bowden.

. Neville McKinder, a grandson of Ambrose Tiller, studied these diaries and

also worked from a series of taped interviews between his father and Jim

Tiller, Ambrose’s eldest son. The information is based on his findings.

. In the autumn of John Holden’s company was in Belgium. In

September D’Arc’s “Fantoches” followed them at the Alhambra, Antwerp,

and were at pains to assert that they were “not outdistanced by them.”

D’Arc’s popularity can be measured by Holden’s perception of them as

serious rivals. By October a rumor, probably originating with Holden’s,

circulated that D’Arc’s company had been the recipients of charity some

twenty years earlier. Lambert D’Arc refuted this and added that the

charity (£) was bestowed upon “a gipsy family which travelled at that

time through England with a glass-blowing booth,” a snide reference to

Holden’s and its fairground glass-blowing. D’Arc’s perceived themselves

as respectable artists (wax-modelers) and slightly despised Holden’s as

mere fairground showpeople. (See Era, October .)

. In July a J. W. Holden placed an advertisement in Era for the sale of

a “first class portable theatre, Parade Wagons, Stage ditto (to fold up),

Gallery, Brackets, nearly new. Can be fitted in twenty minutes. New Back

Front feet high (in Oil). Stage front and Orchestra to match (in Oil)

Back shutters high, good wardrobe, Splendid Drum, Lamps etc.” This

sounds like a theatre for live actors but may have been used for marionettes

as well. The identity of J. W. is not clear. It might be James, possibly a

brother of John, the marionette proprietor. The booth in question might

be an older one used by the glass-blower/marionettist, James. The adver-

tisement indicates that J. W. Holden has “other business to attend to.” A

J. W. Holden was appearing in the pantomime of Dick Whittington in

Rochester (as Guy Gobblemgrim) in and was still working as a stage

actor five years later.

Notes to Pages ‒

100 nts (225-254) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 230

. Era, and March . They were advertising for musicians.

. Era, April .

. Era, October , and January .

. Era, December .

. And, , pp. –. Thomas and James Holden visited Istanbul in

March , , and , while James had further visits in and

finally in .

. James Holden reportedly was buried with his most famous marionette,

Salome. Most of the figures were burned in the s, but a few were res-

cued by the grandchildren, who used them as dolls.

. Phillips, , is of crucial importance for sorting out the rather complex

history of the Holden family from the s on.

. Nottingham Daily Guardian, October .

. Era, October, October, October, October, and November .

. Era, February and March .

. See McPharlin, , pp. ff.

. McPharlin, , pp. –.

. For a detailed account of Bullock’s company in America, see McPharlin,

, ch. , “The Odyssey of the Royal Marionettes,” pp. –.

. From Weekly Ceylon Observer (Colombo), May , p. .

. This chronology for Charles Webb’s career was established by Richard

Bradshaw.

. Bradshaw, , pp. –.

. Harry Wilding, “A Marvellous Marionette Manipulator,” World’s Fair,

March .

. Bradshaw, .

. For more on D’Arc’s in Japan, see Mizote, , pp. –; and Blundall,

and .

. Era, January .

. Era, February and May . Some further confusion is caused by the

fact that the Life and Travelsdoes not mention earlier seasons at the Crystal

Palace.

. There may be some family connection, but this is not indicated.

. Perhaps this should be “fifth.” Apart from lapses in memory, there are a

number of cases in the Life and Travels where mistakes have obviously

been made in copying from handwriting.

. Era, July , announces a season at the Apollo Theatre (New York) for

April .

. Era, July . The American manager who approached him was a Mr.

Jarrett of New York.

Notes to Pages ‒

100 nts (225-254) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 231

. Report of the case in the Liverpool Daily Post, August .

. Era, July . Mr. and Mrs. Donnelly, Mr. and Mrs. Clarke, Mr. and

Mrs. Marlow, James Shaw, Mr. Cleghorn, and C. Evans are all advertising

for work, having terminated their agreement with Bullock.

. Era, January and October . By this point they were an act

on a mixed bill at the Princess’s Palace.

. Era, March .

. According to Harry Wilding (Era interview, November ), Cooper

had been a manager at Astley’s.

. Era, May .

. Era, February .

. Era, May .

. Era, October and November .

. Daniel Fanning acquired a set of Bullock figures, but it is not clear whether

this was at the death of Bullock or a little later. It sounds as if the origi-

nal D’Arc figures were lost in , but perhaps only some of them were.

Information provided by Desiree Delvaine. Only one Bullock figure

remains in the Desiree Delvaine Collection. Some may have been lost or

destroyed. Equally, most of them may have ended up with Harry Fanning

when he and his brother Daniel decided to establish separate troupes.

. A rather fuzzy photograph of his proscenium front (together with eleven

figures including Harlequin, Columbine, and Pantaloon) appeared in

World’s Fair, November .

. Daniel Fanning married the widowed Anna Maria Matthews, an accom-

plished bare-back rider and daughter of John Wilson of Wilson’s Circus.

Her son Edward (Ted), who took the name of Ted Delvaine, worked with

Daniel, his own wife (Jenny Godden), and later his children May (Maisie)

and Dennis (Danny).

. H. L. L., “Personal Interests: Marionettes,” B.J.B. News (Bayliss Jones

Bayliss Ltd. Newsletter), no. , vol. (April ), –.

. Era, December . Memories of his son, Henry Wilding.

. Era, November .

. Era, April . When Harry Wilding was married on April at

West Bromwich, he and his father both gave their professions as “musi-

cian.” One of the witnesses was Walter William Case.

. Information communicated by Val Chilton (a great-granddaughter of

Harry Wilding) and by Reg Wilding (grandson of Harry Wilding). Val

gives his birthdate as , Reg Wilding as . It is assumed that Charles

was the father of Harry. Charles was married to a Mary Brandon from

Suffolk.

. Obituary, World’s Fair, January .

Notes to Pages ‒

100 nts (225-254) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 232

. Letter of September , Theatre Museum, London, Gerald Morice

Papers, box .

. Gerald Morice Papers, box .

. Letter of June , Gerald Morice Papers, box .

. Letter of December , Gerald Morice Papers, box .

. Phillips, , mentions that D’Arc’s had been at the St. George’s Hall

(Cheltenham) with waxworks until April . During this period “a

splendid set of Marionettes with Stage and Scenery all complete” was

offered for sale. It is possible that Donnelly’s acquired this.

. Era, August . Todd may have been the proprietor of the Sunderland

marionette theatre.

. , , . See P. Kavanagh, The Irish Theatre (Tralee: Kerryman), pp. –.

. A rejected watercolor for James Winston’s Theatric Tourist () depicts

this building, which still exists. See Ranger, , p. .

. First located by Paul McPharlin and mentioned in an article, “An

Unknown Puppet Theatre in the North of England,” in Puppetry, vol.

(New York: Puppeteers of America, –). See also Speaight,

.

. Era, November . Todd’s address is given as New Grey Street.

. Peterson, .

. Era, and April .

. Worsdall, , reproduces a long account of the fair from the Glasgow

Herald ( July ). With the decline of the fair, the Mumfords became

auctioneers.

. Quennell, , pp. –.

. Sheridan, , is valuable, but does not refer to puppets.

. McKechnie, , p. . His source is vaguely referred to as a “periodical”

thirty years later than William Hone’s Every-Day Book reference to

Candler’s Fantoccini.

. Greater London Record Office, MR/LMD /, Michaelmas quarter

sessions, (dated October).

. Sheridan, , p. , reproduces a print of Bianchi’s gaff, with a per-

formance by live actors.

. “The Show Business in Court,” Era, November .

. Russell, , p. .

. Kift, , p. .

. Era, October .

. Era, December .

. Era, January .

Notes to Pages ‒

100 nts (225-254) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 233

. Era, July . He gave the patent number as ,, and also men-

tioned taking out a copyright for his music: reg. no. ,, Stationer’s Hall.

. Built in , the Adelaide Gallery became what R. D. Altick calls “the

first direct English progenitor of the modern science and technology

museum.” By the s it was used for variety entertainments and exhi-

bitions (Altick, , p. ).

. The Ballroom, of the same size and situated underneath it, also cost £.

A smaller Exhibition Room ( feet by feet), cost £, while two smaller

rooms cost £.. The largest space, the Round Room ( feet in diame-

ter, with a gallery), cost £ a week (advertisement in Era, October

). The Rotunda (Rotundo) rooms are a part of Dublin’s Rotunda

Hospital and were created in the eighteenth century to provide funds for

the running of this early maternity hospital. The hospital, created by Dr.

Bartholomew Mosse, opened in . Gardens were created in the s,

and the Rotundo, based on London’s Ranelagh, was built in the s,

with subsequent developments in the s. It is possible that D’Arc’s may

sometimes have used the Round Room. George William Middleton, who

spent fifteen weeks with the company in the early s, recalled the wax-

works in the smaller rooms around the main hall.

. The Egyptian Hall had been built by another William Bullock, probably

a relative, at the beginning of the century.

. Era, January .

. Speaight, .

. Gyngell had been active since the late eighteenth century. He died in ,

but the show continued for a few more years.

. The Chester and Lee company originated in the late s. The partners

were Clarence Lee and H. Chester. Advertisements began to appear in

Era in , when they visited Birmingham, Wellington, and Blackpool.

They advertised “French Marionettes and Negro Varieties” as well as

“Pantomimes.” Their show was primarily adapted to the variety circuit,

and they ranged from the south of England to Scotland, Ireland, and

Wales. In , after what he said was a partnership of sixteen years,

Chester separated from Lee. The show retained its original name, lasting

into the s.

. This account, dated June , was among the John Phillips papers. So far

it has not been possible to identify the source. A plan of Cremorne Gardens,

with a sketch of the façade of the theatre, is to be found in Wroth, .

. Quennel, , p. .

. McPharlin, , p. . When he reached America, Lano did not have a

stage, merely a red plush curtain with a scene from Orlando Furioso that

he hung up behind the marionettes when he performed indoors.

Notes to Pages ‒

100 nts (225-254) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 234

. Newspaper cutting from Harrogate (n.d., possibly , when Candler was

seventy-one years old). The Cruikshank drawing of Candler’s Fantoccini

is reproduced in Speaight, , p. .

. Illustrated London News, January . Reproduced in Speaight, ,

p. .

. Era, April .

. Robson, , p. . The year he gives is .

. Robson, , p. . Purvis mentions that a local farmer pulled them out

but insisted on being paid seven shillings first.

. Reproduced in Cameron, , p. .

. Robson, , p. .

. Barnard and Barnard, , p. .

. Era, November (Leeds Fair).

. Purvis specifically mentions bringing tiered seating from Newcastle for a

colleague, James Scott, who had a booth for actors. Purvis arrived too late;

Scott had already purchased his seating in Glasgow. Purvis was able to use

Scott’s planks, however, which undoubtedly represented an economy for

him.

. Barnard and Barnard, , p. .

. World’s Fair, October .

. Robson, , p. .

. Era, and May and and June .

. Barnard and Barnard, , p. .

. Billy Purvis mentions a dispute at Houghton Feast in over the pay-

ment of fair dues, which led to the confiscation of his steps (presumably

to make it difficult for audiences to get into the show) and he specifically

refers to his steps being furnished by a joiner at Kilmarnock in

(Arthur, , p. ). He also records a disaster when his overcrowded

parade space collapsed (fortunately without serious injuries) but was set

up again with the loan of three trestles.

. Museum of London. Reproduced in Cameron, , p. .

. Robson, , p. .

. Era, September .

. Era, February .

. Era, April . The sale was handled by A. E. Burford, Show Front

and Carriage Builder, , New North-road, London.

. Era, January .

. Era, July .

. City of Nottingham Committee Minute Books, CA, CM (Markets).

Nottingham Goose Fair employed a police officer to collect rents for stalls,

but by the late s there was a special employee to carry out this job.

Notes to Pages ‒

100 nts (225-254) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 235

. . Jurkowski, , p. . He is speaking primarily of the twentieth-cen-

tury puppet, and his emphasis on the iconic rather than the indexical

nature of the puppet is crucial.

. See, for example, Gilles, .

. And, , p. .

. The French director Gaston Baty (–) formed a puppet company

in the s. As a very devout Roman Catholic, he had his figures blessed

to avoid the transmission of any possible evil forces through them.

. Leon Pierre, interviewed in World’s Fair, May .

. To a lesser extent this did happen in the popular theatre and theatres of

the day. Dion Boucicault, playing one of his own comic characters (such

as Conn the Shaughraun), totally subverted the rather silly conventional

serious plot and transformed these plays into comic melodramas.

. See Jurkowski, , p. .

. See Booth, , pp. –.

. Among the Clowes-Tiller figures now in the Theatre Museum which

relate to this list are the following: a leading man (young middle-aged and

heavily bearded), at least two candidates for the leading juvenile man

(beardless young face), a “heavy” or villain (moustache and hint of upper-

class elegance), a first old man (bald crown and heavy gray/white side-

burns), and one or two possible “walking gentlemen” (a confidant and a

youngish figure). Female figures include a leading woman, a leading juve-

nile woman, a first old woman, a maid, and a “walking lady.” In Sid

Tiller (son of Walter) was thinking of selling his figures to Waldo

Lanchester, and there was an exchange of correspondence (kept in

Lanchester scrapbooks). He listed fourteen dramatic figures : Heavy, Lead,

Juvenile Lead, Comedy, Old Man, Leading Lady, Chamber Maid, Slavey,

Old Woman, Boy, Girl, “Chinaman,” Angel, Character.

. Booth, , p. .

. National Library of Ireland. This bill also provides the last mention we

have of Stretch’s marionettes (Stretch himself had died in the s).

. Mother Shipton, smoking her pipe, had a comparable role as a jocular con-

versationalist.

. Speaight, , p. .

. B. E. Ayres, in World’s Fair, July .

. Peterson, .

. One of the various small figures produced by the Barnard old woman was

Ally Sloper (still in the possession of Ken Barnard).

. James Byrne had introduced the “new” Harlequin to Drury Lane in the

– season.

Notes to Pages ‒

100 nts (225-254) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 236

. Joseph Grimaldi (–) performed at Sadler’s Wells and later Drury

Lane and Covent Garden. He originally interpreted Punch but later, under

the name of “Joey,” made the clown the central figure of the harlequinade

and created the prototype of the English circus clown. Joey also appears

in the Punch and Judy show.

. A dismembering policeman can be found in the John Blundall Collection.

. This exotic detail may hark back to some elaborate circus parades. In

Hughes’s Circus parade included the Burmese Imperial Carriage and

Throne, pulled by two elephants (reproduced by Speaight, , p. ).

. Translated into English by the dramatist and novelist Thomas Holcroft

in in a three-volume edition and in a more popular edition in ,

which was reprinted through the nineteenth century (th edition, ).

. “De l’inutilité du théâtre au théâtre,” in Tout Ubu (Paris: Livre de Poche,

), pp. –.

. Moranges, , p. .

. Many of these ideas derive from John Bulwer’s Chirologia ().

. Siddons, , p. and plate .

. The same distinction is made by Pasqualino, , pp. –, in his study

of the gestural codes of the Sicilian pupi.

. Siddons, , p. .

. Siddons, , p. .

. Siddons, , p. , illustrated plate XIII.

. Siddons, , p. .

. Old Stager [Charles Gerty], The Actor’s Handbook (ca. ).

. Old Stager, The Actor’s Handbook, p. . On p. Old Stager speaks of man-

agement of the voice and emphasizes the care of the voice, suggesting

various recipes to help (including a piece of prunella, an anchovy, an egg

beat up in a glass of Madeira, and, above all, barley water). He also men-

tions brandy as a very temporary restorative.

. World’s Fair, March .

. . McPharlin, , pp. –.

. Era, October .

. Era, January .

. Era, November .

. Era, February . Years later he mentioned making figures for

J. Holden, but this was almost certainly a slip. See an undated article from

a temperance newspaper, reprinted in the Caravan (n.d.), National

Fairground Archive, Lawrence file.

. Taped interview with Neville McKinder, grandson of Ambrose Tiller II.

Notes to Pages ‒

100 nts (225-254) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 237

. Whanslaw had access to a number of Clowes figures, many of which are

sketched in his various books.

. World’s Fair, March . Jewell had died in February.

. An example of Bonini figures that reached Britain were the Martinek

ones, purchased by Lanchester and now in the collection of Ricky de Loro

(McCormick).

. Catalogue apparently published in the early s.

. Letter among assorted papers relating to the Théâtre Pitou, Musée

Gadagne, Lyon.

. See Speaight, , pp. –. I am inclined to think that there may be

some linguistic confusion where Speaight refers to Samuel Foote’s fig-

ures as being of flat cardboard and that in fact they were large, three-

dimensional papier-mâché figures.

. See Speaight, , p. .

. The smaller set includes figures used for that company’s immensely pop-

ular Arden of Faversham.

. These figures may have been from a set that Lewis used before he acquired

the Middleton ones. Richard Barnard mentions visiting an aunt and uncle

in , however, and going to Cremorne to collect and pack some mari-

onette figures and scenery which the uncle had bought. If that is the case,

these could be some of the remnants of the Brigaldi Royal Marionettes

that thus found their way into the Middleton troupe. “I found out that the

effects had belonged to a company of Italians, who had been induced to

visit London with their entertainment. They had rented a space and

erected a small Theatre thereon, in the celebrated Cremorne Gardens. It

was at these gardens the things had been seized for debt, and sold by auc-

tion” (Barnard and Barnard, , p. ). Chester and Lee also claimed

that they had got their figures from Cremorne and that these were Bullock

ones. It would seem that we are into the realm of myth-making or con-

fusion here. As far as we know, Bullock was never involved with Cremorne.

. See Betty Cadbury, Playthings Past (Newton Abbot: David and Charles,

), pp. –.

. Quoted by Fawdry and Fawdry, , p. .

. World’s Fair, April .

. Letter of November (assorted Pitou papers, Musée Gadagne,

Lyon).

. See Booth, , pp. –.

. The Powell dolls in the Museum of Childhood (Bethnal Green) have these

dots. The technique is found with other puppet traditions, notably that of

Rajastan.

Notes to Pages ‒

100 nts (225-254) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 238

. In France, according to Polichinelle performer Philippe Casidanus, there

was, and still is, a convention that heroes and “good” characters have blue

eyes.

. Whanslaw, , p. , expressed his own dislike of the body covered with

fabric or wash-leather, with sawdust stuffing, vulnerable to vermin and

damp, a state in which many disused puppets were encountered. For many

years this attitude led to a degree of prejudice about the construction of

the Victorian marionette.

. Ambrose Tiller introduced a third section to the middle of the body of his

dancers, which increased flexibility. Normally the upper and lower sec-

tions of the body were simply linked by a cotton tube, which was tied in

the middle to create more of a waist.

. Twentieth-century puppeteers, using all-string figures, often place some

lead in the pelvis. The added weight counteracts the weight of the legs

and helps the puppet sit on a chair more easily.

. See, for example, Fawdry and Fawdry, , p. .

. The combination of a back spring, slightly large papier maché heads, and

glass eyes suggests that Jim Tiller or his father, Ambrose II, may have

acquired some Bullock figures in , when the last of the Bullock mate-

rial was sold. A single “Negro” figure in Munich (not part of the main

English collection) has similar characteristics and, coupled with the style

of head modeling, looks remarkably like yet another D’Arc figure or else

one made by Harry Fanning.

. Desiree Delvaine (interview, ) could remember her father fixing such

a spring in a puppet.

. When Bullock’s performed in London in the Times reviewer wrote

on August: “Be it understood, they are not common dolls. Their bodies,

as they confess, are wooden, but their heads are mostly of wax or papier

maché, flexible material has been used in the manufacture of their arms

and legs, and withal they are furnished with springs and other expedi-

ents, which enable them to comply with the will of the most capricious

director.” North Italian companies of the period sometimes used watch

springs as knee-joints for dancers. No examples survive in Britain, but this

could also explain the mention of springs here and with reference to

Thomas Holden.

. Sicilian pupi have a special neck joint that allows the head to be detached

easily. This is not generally the case in England.

. Pretini, , p. .

. Delvaine’s drilled large holes in the lower legs and filled them with cork

to reduce weight still further.

Notes to Pages ‒

100 nts (225-254) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 239

. To prevent such joints from moving too far in the wrong direction, a small

staple placed in the bottom of the upper leg acts as a stop. A restraining

slip of cloth or leather is sometimes used for the same purpose. This is also

found at the elbows, when both parts of the arm are of wood.

. The carving of the feet and the quality of the ankle joints lend weight to

the supposition that the Munich figures may have originated in a Holden

company.

. Whanslaw, , p. .

. The illustration of Samuel Foote and his puppets in Macaroni and

Theatrical Magazine in February (reproduced in Speaight, ,

p. ) shows a female figure with a wire to the head and strings to the

hands and a male figure who also has leg strings.

. Clunn Lewis figures, Musée Gadagne. A heavily restored and restrung

figure of an old woman with a head rod is in the London Puppet Centre

Trust collection (see fig. ).

. Some of the trick figures in the Borromeo collection on the Isola Madre,

which go back to the earlier part of the nineteenth century, are operated

by strings alone.

. Quennell, , p. .

. See Speaight, , p. .

. Era, May .

. Many surviving figures have obsolete center head staples combined with

strings, or points of attachment for strings, at the sides of the head.

. Maindron, , p. .

. Delvaine’s used it until the s, and Harry McCormick until the s.

McPharlin’s sketches for Nelson and Hayes are invaluable, since they are

based on the horizontal bar control, although his concern is with using

this type of control for new puppets and not looking at it from a histori-

cal perspective. In the United States, Daniel Meader and Walter Deaves,

both of whom had worked with the “Royal Marionettes,” continued to

use two horizontal bars for controls.

. McPharlin, , p. .

. Holes drilled in the bars for tying on strings may have been a late devel-

opment. The use of round section doweling for control bars probably indi-

cates a twentieth-century replacement, as does the addition of screw-eyes

either for attaching strings or for allowing them to run through.

. The Munich figures equipped with a T-bar may have their original con-

trols. Among the Clunn Lewis figures there is one bar with the remains

of a center rod, cut off and bent over, and this looks as if the original con-

trol was a rod with a cross bar.

. Times, February .

Notes to Pages ‒

100 nts (225-254) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 240

. Era, July .

. Whanslaw, , p. . He added: “Sometimes a marionette would ‘float’

not only forwards across the stage but backwards to the opposite side like

the swing of a pendulum.”

. , , . Jonathan Stump, February .

. Bill in the George Speaight collection. The Sheep Stealer is almost cer-

tainly a version of the medieval French farce Master Pierre Pathelin,

which survived in English marionette repertoires.

. Era, September .

. Advertisement in the Aberdare Times (date uncertain, but either or

).

. MS by Harriet Clowes, Theatre Museum, Gerald Morice Collection, box

.

. Barnard and Barnard, , p. . The most complete list of plays per-

formed by Victorian marionette companies is to be found in Speaight,

, pp. –.

. “The Old Puppet Man” (an interview with Clunn Lewis), Daily

Chronicle, Monday, February .

. “The Old Puppet Man.”

. Letter of Tuesday, August , to Gerald Morice (Theatre Museum,

Gerald Morice Collection, box ).

. Theatre Museum, London.

. In actors’ fit-ups this was common practice, often at quite short notice.

Agnes Sullivan (a member of an Irish fit-ups family) relates that on the

night when a show finished she would read through the text of the next

piece to be performed (even a new play), go through rehearsal the fol-

lowing day, and perform in it the day after.

. As late as the s the Irish traveling showman Ben Bono bought a set

of figures for The Babes in the Wood in London.

. Tiller scripts, Theatre Museum, London. There are two notebooks con-

taining parts of the Babes in the Wood. One seems to have been written by

Harry Wilding.

. Marionette versions also omit the comic figure of the “tutor” Apathy, Sir

Rowland’s pimp, parasite, and general factotum.

. These notebooks are in the Theatre Museum, with the Tiller scripts.

. Some useful information about the play is to be found in M. L. Wine’s edi-

tion of The Tragedy of Master Arden of Faversham (London: Methuen,

).

. See Rosenfeld, , pp. – and .

Notes to Pages ‒

100 nts (225-254) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 241

. Speaight, , pp. –, lists nineteenth-century dramas and the

companies performing them.

. Bullock’s, Wilding’s, and Middleton’s all had this play in their repertoire,

and it was also performed at Brown’s theatre in Hull in the s.

. Dicks plays, no. . The “Imp,” a Mephistophelean figure, was origi-

nally played by O. Smith, an actor who excelled in parts with a large ele-

ment of mime, such as the Monster in Frankenstein.

. A hint of this is given by an s drawing of Mumford’s “geggie” in

Glasgow, which shows The Bottle Imp as being announced.

. From the list of characters of The Bottle Imp (London: Dicks, n.d.).

. Daily Chronicle, Monday, February .

. Era, July .

. Burton, , p. .

. Era, June . This may be a straightforward puff, but it indicates the

emphasis on the scenic spectacular.

. First performed at the Britannia Theatre in ; published by Dicks, no.

.

. This version concludes a bit abruptly just after the children have recog-

nized their father and does not include the final arrest of the real mur-

derer. It is in a notebook with a stamp on the cover; but the name,

unfortunately, is illegible: “John . . . Ghost Entertainment open every

evening,” an interesting reminder that scripts could circulate from one

performer or company to another and that a ghost show might also pre-

sent marionettes.

. Either a costume change happened backstage or, more probably, a dupli-

cate puppet was used. The marionette character now looked as follows:

“White long wig. Black Hat. Black coat long. Top boots.”

. It has also been surmised that some of the plays from the toy theatre reper-

toires of Green, Skelt, and others may have been used by the marionette

companies. This is a tempting supposition, but there is no real evidence

to substantiate it.

. “Mr. Harry Wilding Remembers,” World’s Fair, November .

. Typescript appended to Speaight’s copy of The Factory Girl of

Manchester and dated December . Speaight indicated that he

was not able to compare it to Douglas Jerrold’s unprinted The Factory

Girl ().

. The script indicates for scene the setting of a “Backwood or Abbey.”

Since the plot does not demand this setting, this is probably an indication

of the backcloth that was used for the scene.

. Era, December , the Colosseum, Deansgate, Manchester.

. Era, January and January .

Notes to Pages ‒

100 nts (225-254) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 242

. Bill in the George Speaight Collection.

. Era, January .

. Era, January .

. See Ashton, n.d., pp. –. The real Sir Richard Whittington was a

prosperous merchant, three times lord mayor of London, who died in .

His origins were not humble, and even the historical accuracy of his cat

is in doubt.

. The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. Henry B. Wheatley (London: George Bell

and Son, ), p. .

. Moranges, , pp. –.

. Era, January .

. Moranges, , p. .

. Reproduced by Gerald Morice in World’s Fair, December .

. McPharlin, , pp. –, describes the production according to this

book of words. It is not entirely clear whether Bullock reworked the script

or simply took over the D’Arc one. Fragments of the Clowes-Tiller script

for Little Red Riding Hood in the Theatre Museum seem to be simply a

handwritten copy of the Bullock text.

. Printed by Azzopardi, Hildreth & Co., Melbourne. This text was provided

by Richard Bradshaw. Steel may be the Steel who was manager of the

Reading Opera House, who found himself in the thick of the legal dis-

pute between Bullock and McDonough and Earnshaw.

. Little Red Riding Hood, p. .

. Era, August .

. Moranges, , pp. – (my translation).

. Letter from C. G. Fagg, June , to Waldo Lanchester (Lanchester

scrapbook). Fagg was remembering performances of some forty years ear-

lier at the Crystal Palace.

. Sydney Race Diary, Nottingham Library, M,/A/.

. Quennell, , p. .

. Quennell, , p. .

. Jonathan Stump, February .

. Daily Chronicle, Monday, February .

. McPharlin, , p. .

. Unmarked newspaper cutting, Musée Gadagne. It describes Lewis enter-

taining a children’s party for G. K. Chesterton.

. . Whanslaw, , p. .

. The Italian fantoccino, the diminutive of fantoccio, can be a generic

term for a puppet but usually refers to one operated by rods or strings and

Notes to Pages ‒

100 nts (225-254) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 243

resembling a miniaturized human figure. The word itself was associated

with fante, meaning a boy, and of course with the English word “infant.”

. Hoste, , p. .

. Information provided by Iris Tunnicliff, Museum of Popular Entertain-

ment. A similar dragon is in the John Blundall collection. In the s

Maffey’s brought to London a table that turned into a dragon (Speaight,

, p. ).

. General Advertiser, September .

. Hone, , p. .

. McPharlin, , p. .

. Speaight, , p. . The “original” Mother Shipton was born in

and particularly associated with Knaresborough in Yorkshire. Supposedly

her father was the devil, and eighteenth-century chapbook illustrations

depict her in conversation with witches and even, Faustlike, conjuring dev-

ils from within a magic circle. She worked a number of wonders, all of a

jocular nature, and was known for her gifts of prophecy. She died in .

Her life and prophecies were published in as The Prophesie of Mother

Shipton in the Raigne of Henry the Eighth: Foretelling the Death of

Cardinal Wolsey, the Lord Percy and Others, as Also What Should Happen

in Issuing Times. She first reached the stage in a comedy by Thomas

Thompson, The Life of Mother Shipton (), which focused on the mar-

riage of her mother, Agatha Shipton, with the devil and her final escape

thanks to an angel, leaving a furious Pluto and his devils to return empty-

handed to hell.

. Speaight, , p. . The Clunn Lewis collection includes a papier-

mâché head of Mother Shipton. A head that belonged to the Clowes

Excelsior troupe is in the Theatre Museum.

. An obvious Mother Shipton in Munich was, upon acquisition, labeled

“Judy.”

. A. R. Philpott, A Dictionary of Puppetry (London: MacDonald, ),

p. . La Mère Gigogne is still in use in Bordeaux at the Guérin theatre.

She could be found in the main traveling marionette theatres at the

end of the nineteenth century – Horward, Levergeois, L. Roussel, Garat,

and Borgniet (see Groshens, , p. ). The Borgniet Mère Gigogne

was acquired in and is dressed as a peasant. Nine little figures were

hidden under her skirts. Pulling up a string released these figures for

instant birth.

. George Speaight Collection.

. Strand Magazine, January–June . John Phillips examined this char-

acter in an article of , published in the British UNIMA Bulletin.

Notes to Pages ‒

100 nts (225-254) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 244

. In the s De Veres’, makers of ventriloquists’ dolls and marionettes,

included “la Mère Cigogne [sic] et sa nombreuse famille” in its catalogue

of Holden-style figures. E.Le Mare also advertised an “Old woman and

Children.”

. Speaight, , p. .

. The transformable Pulcinella in the Borromeo collection on the Isola

Madre, Lago Maggiore, operates on this principle.

. Speaight, , p. . See the Public Advertiser, January to May

.

. Reeves bills, Royal Irish Academy.

. Speaight, , p. . From a description of Bartholomew Fair, signed

J. J. A. F. (Fillingham).

. The word “jingoism” came from the popular music hall song of

“MacDermott’s Warsong.”

. Published by H. D’Alcorn (London, ); words by F. C. Perry, music by

J. Blewett. Stead’s dance was probably on the lines of the performance of

the early black-face entertainer Thomas Dartmouth Rice, who created

the character of Jim Crow, with its exaggerated dance, jumping up and

down.

. Scaramuzzia (meaning skirmish) appeared as the companion to Pulcinella

in Naples in the later sixteenth century. As a Commedia dell’Arte figure

he was similar to the (Spanish) Capitano. The seventeenth-century Italian

performer Tiberio Fiorelli was a famous interpreter of this character and

is said to have had an influence on Molière.

. Thomas Elrington, manager of the Theatre Royal in Smock Alley, saw

Stretch’s puppet show as a serious rival and endeavored to have it closed

down. A prologue delivered by Mrs. Sterling on the stage of Smock Alley

on March refers to the craze for puppets and to “Signior

Scaramouch and Punchinello.”

. Reproduced by McPharlin, , p. .

. McPharlin, , pp. –. The puppeteer’s name is not recorded.

. Every-Day Book, August , pp. –.

. Douglas Hayward Collection.

. Quennell, , p. . In the John Payne Collier/Giovanni Piccini ver-

sion of Punch and Judy there is a scene where Punch strikes off

Scaramouche’s head. The character does not reappear (in this version of

the text). Mayhew’s Punchman does not have this scene, but almost at the

end of the show he mentions a headless Scaramouche appearing, who

frightens Punch and “does a comic dance, with his long neck shooting up

and down with the actions of his body, after which he exaunts [sic]”

Notes to Pages ‒

100 nts (225-254) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 245

(Quennell, , p. ). Piccini had a separate courtier figure with an

extending neck.

. McCormick’s marionettes were still using a single-headed Scaramouche

when they ceased to function in the s. A Delvaine Scaramouche is a

single-headed figure in a tailcoat and a flat hat. The body stretches up

from the waist, and the flat hat extends into a high top hat.

. Scaramouche’s body was a cylinder, which contained the head(s).

Sometimes it consisted of no more than two or three cane hoops covered

by the costume, but it could also be more rigid.

. This figure, in the Detroit Institute of Arts Collection, is shown in Bell,

, p. . It is misleadingly labeled the “Grand Turk.” It was originally

labeled the “terrible Turk,” probably because the striped cotton used over

the head, when twisted, half-evoked a turban.

. Baird, , p. . Baird’s comments applied to Tony Sarg watching the

James Holden company.

. Toole-Stott, –, reproduces an engraving of twenty-four feats per-

formed by the famous Polander (vol. , plate ). The original is in the

British Library in the Perceval collection of ephemera relating to Sadler’s

Wells, BM Crach tab b ( vols. of scrapbooks, –).

. Bill for Youghal, probably from , National Library of Ireland. This

appears to be a company from Sadler’s Wells visiting Ireland. The pro-

gram also included the former Stretch marionettes.

. Quennell, , p. .

. Whanslaw, , p. . He restored it heavily and performed with it on tel-

evision at the Alexandra Palace. He also replaced with a more modern

type of control the two or more likely three bars to which strings would

have been attached. The figure probably originated in a Clowes troupe.

. Delvaine’s linked the arms in front of the chest with a string, which pre-

vented them from moving back too far behind the body.

. The Detroit Institute of Arts catalogue includes a small Indian juggler

figure (reproduced in Bell, , p. ). Another is in the Archibald col-

lection (see Puppet Master [Journal of the British Puppet and Model

Theatre Guild] , no. [Autumn ], ). Both of these look as if they

may have been commercially made figures. De Vere’s included a juggler

in its catalogue circa ; but it is not given a name, and the sketch does

not imply an Indian figure.

. Quennell, , p. .

. Nelson and Hayes, , p. .

. The surviving examples are probably commercially made figures. There

is one in the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts, and another, almost

identical, in the collection of the British Puppet and Model Theatre Guild

Notes to Pages ‒

100 nts (225-254) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 246

in the Theatre Museum, London. A photograph of the latter appears in

Michael Dixon’s “Update on Our Archives Clown,” Puppet Master , no.

(Autumn ), .

. Quennell, , p. . No example of this had been found among sur-

viving collections of Victorian marionettes; however, such a figure is still

in use with the Slovak puppeteer Anton Anderle.

. Pitou’s drawing of the construction of the torso under the costume is also

probably by guesswork. It is more like a French marionette than an English

one.

. Speaight, , p. .

. Interview with Desiree Delvaine, .

. McCormick’s marionettes used this term until the s.

. World’s Fair, July .

. Letter of November (Pitou documents, Musée de la Marionnette,

Lyon).

. Dering et al., , p. .

. Mayhew’s fantoccini man was particularly proud of the costume and of

the jointing of the knees of this figure: “all the joints are countersunk –

them figures that shows above the knee. There’s no joints to be seen, all

works hidden like, something like Madame Vestris in Don Juan”

(Quennell, , p. ).

. Era, March . When Bullock took over the show he published the

words of the song on his program for St. James’s Great Hall, London.

McPharlin, , p. , reprints this song. Roger Charles Tichbourne dis-

appeared at sea in . He “re-appeared” in Wagga Wagga, Australia, in

, returned to England, and laid claim to his baronetcy (a claim sup-

ported by his mother). In the ensuing court case he was found to be Arthur

Orton, son of a Wapping butcher. The diminutive music-hall comedian

Harry Ralph, born , was nicknamed “Little Tich,” with reference to

the rather corpulent claimant.

. William Chappell, Popular Music of the Olden Time, (London: Cramer,

Beale and Chappell, –), pp. –.

. In Munich there is a female marionette (possibly eighteenth-century),

also without legs, but with a stick attached to the torso to act as a spacer

between the trunk and the ground.

. Quennell, , p. .

. This public statement about the indecency of the Barnard show led

Richard Barnard to take legal action for slander against the member of

the council. See Barnard and Barnard, , pp. –.

. Published by Z. T. Purday, London (communicated by Oliver Davies). On

this copy is noted: “Miss S. Carter, Augst th, .”

Notes to Pages ‒

100 nts (225-254) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 247

. The London Society for the Suppression of Mendicity was formed in

to deal with the growing problem of beggars on the streets.

. Reproduced in Russell, , facing p. .

. See Russell, , pp. –.

. Published as no. of The Musical Bouquet (London, n.d.). One is

inclined to see in the coupling of names a parody of Isaac Bickerstaff and

Thomas Arne’s Thomas and Sally (Covent Garden, ).

. World’s Fair, August , quoting from Horne, .

. Gerald Morice Papers, box , Theatre Museum, London.

. Quennel, , pp. –.

. Times, April .

. The first mention is in the Dublin Advertising Gazette for February

. The rest of the program was composed of The Mistletoe Bough and

the pantomime of Bluebeard.

. Letter from C. G. Fagg, June , Lanchester scrapbooks.

. A list of acts and music for Clunn Lewis’s show is on a piece of paper

attached to the box for the figures, now in the Musée Gadagne. The list is

as follows: “Pole balancer: Waltz, Countryman: Jig, Little Nigger: Coon

Jazz, Fairy Dancer: Schotoche [schottische], Acrobat: Waltz, Clowns:

Comic tune, Four Quadrille Dancers: Quadrille, Non-descript: Comic

Tune, The Cure: Cure, Chinese Juggler: Chinese tune.”

. Samuel French’s acting editions of the period sometimes advertise

makeup. This is basically rouge, white, and various pencils but also

includes prepared burnt cork for “Negro” minstrels.

. Clifford Essex, a singer and banjoist, liked the idea of the French Pierrot

costume and makeup and used it for all the performers. Apart from the

costume, this entertainment has nothing to do with the Commedia

dell’Arte tradition of Pierrot. See Pertwee, , p. .

. Era, June .

. Era, January .

. Bullock’s program for performances at the Town Hall, Crewe, in April .

. . McPharlin, , p. . This was sold for sixpence. Charles Middleton

once gave a performance in aid of the hospital in Cambridge with a dis-

tinguished audience, for which he provided a special program printed on

silk (Barnard and Barnard, , p. ).

. Era, November .

. Robson, , p. .

. Whanslaw, , p. , mentions seeing Delvaine’s performance at

Barnard’s Music Hall in Chatham sometime before its destruction by fire

Notes to Pages ‒

100 nts (225-254) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 248

in . He comments on the stage audience and orchestra and also on

the quality of the manipulation, especially for the more specialized turns.

. McPharlin, , p. suggests that Deaves in America introduced the

idea of a stage upon a stage for vaudeville acts. The Lupi company in Turin

had been doing this since the s, with its “Bijou” theatre. Delvaine’s

may well have derived the idea from working with D’Arc’s and Bullock’s,

and this raises the possibility that it was a part of the Bullock show pre-

sented in America.

. Era, February . The address was Herbert Wycherley, , Belham

Street, Camberwell. As well as the show he also hoped to sell “a Splendid

Pantechnicon van, nearly new, ft long, High wheels, Large Well and

Patent Axles.” This would have contained the full length of his stage-

front and of the backcloths of the theatre.

. Typed note in Lanchester scrapbooks, Douglas Hayward Collection.

. Era, July .

. Quennell, , p. .

. Leon Pierre in interview given to Waldo Lanchester. Typescript of notes

of this interview, probably circa , in Lanchester scrapbooks, Douglas

Hayward Collection.

. Era, July . This was advertised by a P. Tylor of , Seven Sisters

Road, Holloway. The lot also included “forty figures quite new.”

. “Mr. Harry Wilding Remembers,” World’s Fair, November .

. Typed note in Lanchester scrapbooks.

. Era, February .

. Letter from Henri Renaud to Waldo Lanchester, April , Lanchester

scrapbook. An earlier letter from Renaud of April also has some

useful details.

. Era, May .

. Henri Renaud (who also went under the professional name of Harry

Vernon) purchased the Barnard scenery for £. In Lanchester even-

tually bought eight Barnard backcloths for the sum of £. The three sur-

viving backcloths are now in the collection of Purves International Puppet

Theatre, Biggar, Scotland.

. Rosenfeld, , pp. –.

. Castle, , p. . Castle was the grandson of Bruce (“Sensation”) Smith,

one of the major scene-painters at Drury Lane after Beverley. He is best

remembered for his train crash in The Whip ().

. Era, October .

. “Mr Harry Wilding Remembers,” World’s Fair, November .

. Nottingham Daily Guardian, October .

. Era, November .

Notes to Pages ‒

100 nts (225-254) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 249

. Era, November .

. Era, July .

. Era, November , p. , col. .

. Era, July . This took place when the theatre was at Cannington.

. Era, December .

. Arthur, , pp. –. Letters from Sam Baylis, and September

(also a reference to a third letter).

. Era, November .

. Arthur, , p. .

. Robson, , p. .

. Era, November .

. Era, December . Madame Pollinta, in Liverpool in , advertised

“magnificent scenery” by Nicholas Hinchley (Era, December ).

. Era, July .

. Era, November .

. Letter from Henri Renaud to Waldo Lanchester, April , Douglas

Hayward Collection.

. Era, February .

. See Rees, , ch. .

. Barnard and Barnard, , p. .

. Rees, , p. .

. The second was in Herne Bay in , when a “Mammoth Benefit” was

given for them at the Palace Theatre.

. A handful of hats and accessories can still be found with the Clunn Lewis

figures in Lyon.

. Barnard and Barnard, , p. .

. The Munich figures have a preponderance of historical costumes. Some

of these may be no more than acrobats’ costumes, with trunk hose and a

bolero. Extra costume elements have been provided, however, especially

cloaks. This suggests that some of these figures started out as trick figures

but ended up as dramatic ones.

. Mayer, , p. .

. Jerome, , p. .

. Reproduced by Russell, , facing p. .

. Era, April .

. Era, April .

. Barnard and Barnard, , p. .

. Barnard and Barnard, , p. .

. Era, January .

. Russell, , p. .

Notes to Pages ‒

100 nts (225-254) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 250

. Russell, , p. , quoted from an article in Brass Band News ().

. Russell, , pp. –.

. Era, July . The euphonium was the B flat bass member of the

saxhorn family, a group of what Dave Russell calls “improved bugles,”

which were developed by the Paris instrument-maker Alfred Sax and

widely adopted in Britain in the s (Russell, , pp. –).

. Era, June .

. Russell, , p. .

. The piano was also used for ghost shows.

. Barnard and Barnard, , p. .

. Era, February .

. Letters from Harriet Clowes to Gerald Morice, October and

January , Theatre Museum, Gerald Morice Papers, box .

. See Ord-Hume, , pp. and .

. Era, April .

. Leo Scott, World’ s Fair, December . Testo’s company also combined

films with marionettes. At one point their show was known as “The

Egyptian Manikins.” They were best remembered for their spine-chilling

Sweeney Todd.

. A postcard in the National Fairground Archive, Sheffield, shows the inte-

rior of Clark’s booth, complete with organ (see Fig. ).

. Quennell, , p. .

. McKechnie, , p. .

. Era, September .

. Nottingham Guardian, October .

. Barnard and Barnard, , p. .

. Barnard and Barnard, , p. .

. Era, July .

. Era, September .

. Era, June .

. Mayer, , p. .

. The World behind the Scenes (London, ), p. . Quoted by Mayer,

, pp. –.

. Mayer, , p. .

. Mayer, , p. .

. Specific songs and melodies utilized in Little Red Riding Hood were

“Down in the Coal Mines,” “Few Days,” “Amaryllis,” “If Ever I Cease to

Love,” “Chilperic Quadrilles,” “We Are So Volatile,” “March of the

Pigmies,” and “Mollie Darling.”

. Russell, , p. .

Notes to Pages ‒

100 nts (225-254) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 251

. Alphabetical Catalogue, pp. –; Mayer, , p. , footnote .

. Glover, , pp. –. Quoted by Mayer, , p. .

. Mayer, , p. .

. . B. E. Ayres, World’s Fair, July .

. The Chester and Lee show had continued to function for some years

after the death of Clarence Lee in , at the age of eighty-four.

Some of the figures were exhibited at the British Theatre Exhibition in

.

. They appeared from time to time for a number of years then went to

Munich for an extended stay. They eventually returned to Britain in the

late s, were purchased by John Phillips, and found their way into the

Theatre Museum after his death.

. McCormick and Pratasik, , mistakenly assumed that these controls

were English. If they were not attached by a Dutch or German puppeteer,

it is just possible that the puppets arrived in the museum without controls

and were simply attached to whatever was available.

. Neither the costume nor the head (which may not be the original one for

the figure) looks like the Pierrot of the English Pierrot show, who had a

fullish costume, inspired by the French Paul Legrand (successor of Jean-

Baptiste Deburau). As a character, Pierrot had not been one of the char-

acters in the English pantomime.

. For a note on De Doncker, see Hoste, , p. .

. Mrs. Walter Tiller came from another showpeople’s family, the Campbells.

It is uncertain exactly when Sid Tiller ceased to perform, but by he

had retired.

. Local newspaper cutting of September , Museum of Entertain-

ment Collection, Whaplode Saint-Catherine.

. This building (with its corrugated-iron roof), which burned down in ,

was rebuilt and renamed “The Gem.” It eventually closed down in .

. This information came from Iris Tunnicliff, Museum of Entertainment,

who bought James Tiller’s marionettes.

. Copy of an article of February in the Isle of Ely and Wisbech

Advertiser.

. When he finally ceased to perform, Jim Tiller sold his part of the collec-

tion to the Museum of Entertainment at Whaplode Saint Catherine,

Lincolnshire.

. World’s Fair, June .

. For this part of the family history, see Power, . Desmond Power is a

grandson of George D’Arc.

Notes to Pages ‒

100 nts (225-254) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 252

. D’Arc’s last recorded appearance was at the Empire, Stratford (London),

in . He died in . See Phillips, , p. .

. World’s Fair, July .

. From a -page typescript of memoirs of Joe Randel Hodson, “ Years

in Theatre” (n.d., but presumably circa –). The name “Randel”

came from Randel Williams, a friend of his father’s. See also Harry

Wilding, “A Veteran of the Road” (on Joseph Charles Hodson), in World’s

Fair, , vol. . Born in at Teignmouth, Devon, J. C. Hodson was

associated with the Ashington marionette company in . The special

attraction was a sketch called “Down in a Coal Mine.” Later Hodson aban-

doned the music halls to tour with his own portable theatre, “Hodson’s

Varieties,” in Yorkshire and Lancashire. Over the years he moved back

and forth between a variety show and a marionette one. The figures men-

tioned here may have come from the Simms troupe, whose equipment

was bought up by Hodson in , presumably after the death of Simms.

He probably never used the figures.

. The main figure in the combination was Colm McCormick. His brother

Harry was the puppeteer. After Harry was employed as a redcoat at

Butlin’s holiday camp near Drogheda and performed there until .

. Marionette shows were quite ready to express patriotic sentiment on

appropriate occasions. In Ambrose Tiller’s combination during the early

part of the First World War, his daughter Minnie sang a recruitment song

he had composed:

Go, boys, go and be a soldier,

Go and be a soldier to the king.

A call to arms again, don’t wait then call in vain.

But show our foes we nobly respond,

Don’t wait until our country press them,

One volunteer can beat a dozen pressmen,

Be British one and all, respond to England’s call,

And go and be a soldier of the king. (World’s Fair, December )

. Both these puppets, probably made around , still exist. The Scara-

mouche is redressed in nineteenth-century costume, complete with a top

hat that extends in the same way as the rest of the figure.

. This was probably borrowed from a popular number presented by the

German Schichtl troupe. The Theatre Museum possesses the Schichtl fig-

ure and has also made a video, with the help of Ken Barnard and a descen-

dant of the Schichtl family. It requires about an hour to pack the puppet

ready for the transformation.

. “The Book of the London Marionette Theatre” by H. W. Whanslaw (

pages) was communicated in typescript form by Douglas Hayward. It

Notes to Pages ‒

100 nts (225-254) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 253

describes the years of the group, including television engagements in

.

. From a technical point of view, this often required an increased number

of strings. Where a Victorian dramatic marionette might have five to seven

strings, their figures tended to average nine to twelve. To cope with this,

they introduced a vertical control based on ones they had seen in Papa

Schmid’s “Munich Marionette Theatre.” Thanks to Whanslaw’s books,

the vertical control gradually replaced the “old English” horizontal bars.

Whanslaw’s technical drawings are invaluable; but as a modern puppeteer,

working in a slightly different idiom, he “improved” the stringing, which

leaves problems for today’s researcher. In some of his books, nineteenth-

century English figures are redrawn with a vertical control and anachro-

nistically equipped with screw eyes.

. See Joseph, , pp. –. Various puppeteers prefer to have a figure

strung to carry out one or two specific movements and to use other figures

if a wider range of movement is desired. This makes for more precise

movement and avoids unnecessarily complicated stringing.

. Craig, , p. .

Notes to Page

100 nts (225-254) 8/4/04 10:38 AM Page 254

Glossary

Apotheosis: Religious term often used for a final scene in which the soul of a

dead character is carried to heaven by angels. More loosely, a grand and

spectacular final transformation.

Automata: Figures worked by a mechanism, often clockwork. Very popular

in the late eighteenth century.

Backcloth: Scene at the back of the stage painted on a cloth which can be

lifted or dropped for changes.

Benefit: Special theatre performance where an actor (or deserving cause)

receives the profits.

Big-boot dance: Popular music-hall act for which the performer wore boots

of an exaggerated size.

Bill: Short for “playbill.” A printed sheet used to publicize theatrical per-

formances since the seventeenth century.

Bohemia: Geographical area which, together with Moravia, constitutes

today’s Czech Republic.

Booth: Small screen stage which contains the performer for a Punch and

Judy show or a similar self-contained show; temporary structure used by

marionette showpeople. See also Portable theatre.

Border: Strip of painted cloth crossing the top of the stage and concealing

lighting and other stage equipment that functions as a scenic element.

Bottler: Person who collected money for a street show. This was often done

with a bottle, which made it more difficult for any of the collected

money to be stolen.

Boxes: Partitioned compartments dividing up a theatre auditorium. Those

on either side of the stage are known as stage boxes.

Bridge: Area on which the marionettist stands, often raised above the stage.

Broadsheet: Sheet of paper printed on one side used for ballads and songs

and often sold in the streets.

Bunraku: Japanese form of puppetry dating back to the seventeenth century

that combines storytelling with theatre. It is distinguished by the fact

that the main figures are operated by three visible manipulators.

Busker: Street entertainer dependent on contributions from passersby.

Butt joint: Joint created when two ends of pieces of wood meet but do not

interlock.

Call: See Swazzle.

110 glos (255-258) 8/4/04 10:39 AM Page 255

Chapbook: Short printed text costing about one penny and sold by eighteenth-

century peddlers known as “chapmen” in the streets and marketplaces or

fairs.

Combination: Traveling show of the later nineteenth and early twentieth

century that combined plays, sketches, songs, and other acts, including

marionettes.

Crutch: Showpeople’s term for the control of the marionette.

Cut cloth: Backcloth with parts cut out to reveal further scenery behind.

Diorama: Optical show using lighting and transparencies, developed by

Louis Daguerre in the early nineteenth century.

Droll: Fairground dramatic performances, usually of curtailed plays and

generally of a burlesque nature, on the fairgrounds of the seventeenth

and eighteenth centuries; also loosely applied to cover marionette shows.

Encaustic: Originally a form of painting in wax which was fixed by heat.

Application of this technique to puppet heads produced a glaze and could

give the impression that the head was made of wax.

Entr’acte: French term for the interval between two acts of a play.

Extravaganza: Burlesque entertainment of a spectacular and fantastic

nature, with singing and dancing, popular in the nineteenth-century

theatre.

Fantoccini: Word for marionettes introduced to Britain in the late eighteenth

century by Italian performers.

Figure-worker: Manipulator of marionettes.

Fit-up: Traveling show, sometimes with its own tent or booth.

Footlights: Row of lights along the floor at the front of the stage.

Gaff: Originally a fair or place of amusement; by the nineteenth century

used in relation to low-class theatres.

Galanty: Street shadow show popular around , performed on a small

stage with a screen lit from the back with a candle. Popular pieces

included The Broken Bridge.

Gauze: Painted cloth with an open weave which allows it to become trans-

parent when lit from behind.

Geggie: Glasgow term for the booth of a fairground sideshow or gaff.

Gesso: From “gypsum.” A plaster base for painting, also used in the decora-

tion of picture frames. With puppet heads, this was usually a mix of

glue-size and whiting.

Glove puppet or hand puppet: Term used today to describe a puppet worked

from below and usually consisting of a solid head worn on one or more

fingers. The puppeteer’s hand, covered by a costume, forms the body.

Jigging doll: Jointed figure, often held on the end of a stick over a board that

is tapped to make it vibrate. The vibration makes the figure dance.

Glossary

110 glos (255-258) 8/4/04 10:39 AM Page 256

Jumping Jack: Flat figure jointed at the shoulders and thighs. One hand

holds the figure suspended, while the other pulls down a string. This

action causes the arms and legs to jerk upward in a single and simultane-

ous movement.

Lake liner: Dark, earthy red makeup stick, particularly used to produce

effects of aging.

Manikin: Traditionally an undersized human; it became a popular term for

a marionette in the late nineteenth century.

Mortise: Cavity into which the end of another part of a structure is fitted to

form a joint.

Music hall: Initially a room or hall with a platform where vocal or instru-

mental concerts were given. Some became concert halls, but many

remained attached to drinking establishments. After they began to

develop into theatres offering variety entertainment. The American

equivalent was the vaudeville theatre.

Outfit: Generally used to mean a show or company with its equipment.

Pan (pandean) pipes: Musical instrument made of a series of reeds of differ-

ent lengths to produce different notes when blown.

Parade: Show or display. By extension used to describe a balcony in front of

a fairground theatre where some sort of performance took place to attract

spectators inside. Also a procession through the town, often with a band.

Peep-show: Box that has a small hole with a magnifying lens to look through

at one end. Inside was a scene arranged in vanishing perspective, often

with figures. A common fairground and street attraction in the eigh-

teenth and nineteenth centuries.

Perch: Term used by showpeople for the control of the marionette.

Petersham: Ribbon usually of ribbed or corded silk, often used for hatbands.

Pitch: Site on which a booth or temporary theatre is erected.

Portable theatre: Theatre booth of wood and canvas, including seating and a

stage, designed to be erected on a fairground or other site and dismantled

for removal to the next site.

Proscenium: Originally the front part of the stage; later used for the “prosce-

nium arch” or frame surrounding the front curtain.

Pupi (sing. pupo): Marionette figures used in the south of Italy and Sicily

and operated by a rod to the head. Especially known for their perfor-

mances of medieval material relating to Charlemagne, Orlando, and

others.

Pyrotechnics: Fireworks.

Quadrille: Square dance of French origin performed by sets of couples. Very

popular in nineteenth-century Britain and Ireland both on the stage and

in dancing at all social levels.

Glossary

110 glos (255-258) 8/4/04 10:39 AM Page 257

Ric-rac: Narrow braid woven in a zigzag pattern, commonly used for trim-

ming dresses.

Size: Preparation made from animal glue and used for priming surfaces for

painting.

Slangs: Strings of the marionette. “Slang” could also refer to a fairground

sideshow.

Slapstick: Broad farce with a strong physical element. Derives from

Harlequin’s baton or Punch’s stick, which is split to make a loud crack

when used in fights.

Staple: Piece of wire bent into a U shape, both ends of which are driven into

a piece of wood. Used both for joints and for run-through strings.

Stock company: In the eighteenth and early nineteenth century a permanent

company attached to a theatre or provincial circuit. Began to decline after

because of touring productions sent out from London.

Sugar paper: Coarse paper used for wrapping sugar.

Swazzle: Instrument made of two small plates of metal (usually German sil-

ver), with a membrane between and bound with cotton. Inserted against

the palate and used to produce the high-pitched squeak associated with

Punch. Also known as a “call.”

Teatrum mundi: Machine with moving figures, often worked by clockwork,

popular in Renaissance courts. Later it passed into the hands of showpeo-

ple, who gave it a more theatrical appearance, with flat figures moving in

front of a background. It was sometimes fused with optical shows and

panoramas.

Tempera: Water-based paint sometimes given extra resilience and durability

by the addition of egg white.

Tenon: Projection that fits into a cavity (see Mortise) to form a joint.

Tilt: Old English word for an awning or roof of coarse canvas.

Trunk-hose: Short, full breeches worn over tights in the early seventeenth

century.

Utility actor: Actor with a very small speaking part.

Ventriloquist doll: Puppetlike figure, usually with articulated eyes and

mouth. The performer throws his or her voice to give the illusion that the

doll is speaking and often holds conversations with it.

Whiting: Finely powdered chalk preparation used for whitewashing.

Wing: Painted strip of canvas or flat at the side of the stage that completes

the stage picture and prevents the audience from seeing offstage.

Glossary

110 glos (255-258) 8/4/04 10:39 AM Page 258

Bibliography

Altick, R. D. . The Shows of London. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard

University Press.

And, Metin. . Karagöz: Turkish Shadow Theatre. rd ed. Istanbul: Dost.

Arthur, T. . The Life of Billy Purvis, the Extraordinary, Witty and

Comical Showman. Newcastle-on-Tyne. Facsimile reprint, Newcastle

upon Tyne: Frank Graham, , Queen’s Terrace, .

Ashton, John. n.d. Chapbooks of the Eighteenth Century. London: Skoob

Books. (Based on Chatto and Windus edition of .)

Bailey, Peter. . Popular Culture and Performance in the Victorian City.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bailey, Peter (ed.). . Music Hall: The Business of Pleasure. Milton

Keynes: Open University Press.

Baird, Bil. . The Art of the Puppet. New York: Macmillan.

Baker, Michael J. N. . The Rise of the Victorian Actor. London: Croom

Helm.

Barker, Kathleen. . Bristol at Play. Bradford-on-Avon: Moonraker Press.

Barnard, Kenneth, and Richard Barnard. . The Life and Travels of

Richard Barnard, Marionette Proprietor. Ed. George Speaight. London:

Society for Theatre Research.

Bell, John. . Strings, Hands, Shadows: A Modern Puppet History.

Detroit: Detroit Institute of Arts.

Bennett, A. R. . London and Londoners in the 1850s and 1860s. N.p.

Blundall, John. . “The D’Arc Marionettes and the Japanese Theatre.”

British UNIMA Bulletin (November), –.

———. . “The D’Arc Marionettes in Japan.” British UNIMA Bulletin

(March), –.

Booth, Michael R. . Victorian Spectacular Theatre 1850–1910. London:

Routledge and Kegan Paul.

———. . Theatre in the Victorian Age. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

——— (ed.). . Victorian Theatrical Trades. London: Society for

Theatre Research.

Bradshaw, Richard. . “Webb’s Royal Marionettes – The Australian

Puppets That Visited Russia in .” UNIMA Australia (September),

–.

120 bib (259-264) 8/4/04 10:39 AM Page 259

———. . “D’Arc’s Marionettes in Australia.” Australian Puppeteer

(Spring).

Bratton, J. S. . Music Hall: Performance and Style. Milton Keynes:

Open University Press.

Brooks, Peter. . The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James,

Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Burton, Brian J. . The Murder of Maria Marten or the Red Barn. Rev.

ed. Birmingham: Cambridge.

Cameron, A., and A. Scullion (eds.). . Scottish Popular Theatre and

Entertainment. Glasgow: Glasgow University Library Studies.

Cameron, David C. . The English Fair. Thrupp: Sutton Publishing.

Castle, Dennis. . Sensation Smith of Drury Lane. London: Charles

Skilton.

Cockrell, Dale. . Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and

Their World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Craig, Edward Gordon. . On the Art of the Theatre. London:

Heinemann.

Dering, Florian, Margarete Gröner, and Manfred Wegner. . Heute

Hinrichtung. Munich: Christian Brandstatter.

Disher, M. Willson. . Fairs, Circuses and Music Halls. London: Collins.

Era. Various dates.

Fawdry, Kenneth, and Marguerite Fawdry. . English Dolls and Toys.

London: Ernest Benn. Reprinted, Leicester: Promotional Reprint

Company, .

Fillinham Public Gardens Collection (Guildhall Library, London).

Findlater, Richard. . Joe Grimaldi: His Life and Theatre. nd ed.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fitzgerald, Percy. . The World behind the Scenes. London: Chatto and

Windus.

Gilles, Annie. . Le jeu de la marionnette: L’Objet intermédiaire et son

métathéâtre. Nancy: Université de Nancy.

Glover, James. . Jimmy Glover, His Book. London: Methuen.

Goodfellow, Caroline. . The Ultimate Doll Book. London: Dorling

Kindersley.

Groshens, Marie-Claude. . Des marionnettes foraines aux spectacles de

variétés. Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux.

Harrison, B. H. . Drink and the Victorians. London: Faber.

Harrison, William H. . Mother Shipton Investigated. London:

W. H. Harrison.

Harrop, Jo. . Victorian Portable Theatres. London: Society for Theatre

Research.

Bibliography

120 bib (259-264) 8/4/04 10:39 AM Page 260

Hone, William. . The Every-Day Book. London: Hunt and Clarke. (st

ed. .)

Honri, Peter. . Working the Halls. Glasgow: Futura.

Horne, Thomas. . Humorous and Tragic Stories of Show Life. London:

Era Publishing Company.

Hoste, Lode. . Gent, Poppenspelstad. Ghent: Imschoot.

Iliffe, Richard, and Wilfrid Baguley. . Victorian Nottingham: A Story in

Pictures. Vol. . Nottingham: Nottingham Historical Film Unit.

Jackson, Russell. . Victorian Theatre. London: A and C Black.

Jackson, Sheila. . Simple Puppetry. London: Studio Vista.

Jerome, Jerome K. . On the Stage and Off: The Brief Career of a Would-

Be Actor. London: n.p.

Joseph, Helen Haiman. . A Book of Marionettes. New York: Huebsch.

Jurkowski, Henryk. . A History of European Puppetry. Vol. : From Its

Origins to the End of the Nineteenth Century. Lampeter: Edwin Mellen

Press.

———. . A History of European Puppetry. Vol. : The Twentieth

Century. Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press.

———. . Métamorphoses. Charleville Mézières: Institut International

de la Marionnette.

Kift, Dagmar. . The Victorian Music Hall: Culture, Class and Conflict.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

King, Elspeth. . The People’s Palace and Glasgow Green. Edinburgh:

W. and R. Chambers.

Maindron, Ernest. . Marionnettes et guignols, les poupées agissantes et

parlantes à travers les âges. Paris: Félix Juven.

Mayer, David. . “The Music of Melodrama.” In D. Bradby, L. James,

and B. Sharratt (eds.), Performance and Politics in Popular Drama, pp.

–. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

——— and Matthew Scott. . Four Bars of Agit: Incidental Music for

Victorian and Edwardian Melodramas. London: Samuel French.

Mayhew, Henry. . London Labour and the London Poor. London: n.p.

McCormick, John, and Bennie Pratasik. . Popular Puppet Theatre in

Europe 1800–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

McKechnie, Samuel. . Popular Entertainment throughout the Ages.

London, Sampson, Low Marston and Co., Ltd.

McPharlin, Paul. . The Puppet Theatre in America: A History,

1524–1948. Boston: Plays, Inc.

Mizote, Eri. . “The D’Arc Troupe and Its Successors: A Study of the

History of the Japanese Puppet Theatre” (Da-ku ichiza to sono Keisho:

Nihon nongyogekishi no hitosuno kokoromi). In Children’s Culture:

Bibliography

120 bib (259-264) 8/4/04 10:39 AM Page 261

Present and Traditional (Jidobumka no dento to genzai), pp. –.

Kyoto: Minerva.

Moranges, Louis de. . Thomas Holden et ses fantoches. Paris:

E. Perraux.

Morley, Henry. . Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair. London: Chatto and

Windus.

Nelson, Nicholas, and J. J. Hayes. . Trick Marionettes: Puppetry

Handbook VI. Illustrated by Paul McPharlin. Birmingham, Mich.:

Puppetry Imprints.

Old Stager [Charles Gerty]. n.d. The Actor’s Handbook. London: John Dicks

[ca. ].

Ord-Hume, Arthur W. J. G. . Barrel Organ: The Story of the

Mechanical Organ and Its Repair. London: Allen and Unwin.

Parliamentary Papers. . () XVI Select Committee Report on

Theatrical Licences and Regulations.

Parliamentary Papers. . () XVIII Select Committee Report on

Theatres and Places of Entertainment.

Pasqualino, Antonio. . L’Opera dei pupi. Palermo: Sellerio. Revised ed.

.

Pertwee, Bill. . Pertwee’s Promenades and Pierrots: One Hundred Years

of Seaside Entertainment. North Pomfret and Newton Abbot: David and

Charles.

Peterson, Archer E. . “End of a Quest.” Puppet Master (Journal of the

British Puppet and Model Theatre Guild, London) , no. (July).

Phillips, John. . “Light on D’Arc.” Animations (London, Puppet

Centre) , no. , .

———. . “Mr Sam Baylis’s Living Shadows and French Marionettes.”

British UNIMA Bulletin (November), – and .

———. . “D’Arc’s in Dublin.” Theatre Notebook: Journal of the

Society for Theatre Research (London) , –.

———. . “The Origin and Progress of W. J. Bullock’s Royal

Marionettes.” In The Puppetry Yearbook, vol. , pp. –. Lewiston,

New York: Edwin Mellen Press.

———. . “A Survey of Victorian Marionettists.” In The Puppetry

Yearbook, vol. , ed. James Fisher, pp. –. Lewiston, New York:

Edwin Mellen Press.

———. . “Some Victorian Marionette Companies in Scotland

–.” British UNIMA Bulletin (March), –.

Power, Desmond. . Little Foreign Devil. Vancouver: Pangli Imprint.

Pretini, Giancarlo. . Facanapa e gli altri. Udine: Trapezio.

Quennell, Peter (ed.). . Mayhew’s Characters. London: Spring Books.

Bibliography

120 bib (259-264) 8/4/04 10:39 AM Page 262

——— (ed.). . Mayhew’s London. London: Spring Books.

Ranger, Paul. . Theatre in the Cotswolds. London: Society for Theatre

Research.

Rees, Terence. . Theatre Lighting in the Age of Gas. London: Society

for Theatre Research.

Robson, J. P. . The Life and Adventures of Billy Purvis, Continued to the

Time of His Death. rd ed., improved. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: John

Christie. (st ed. .)

Rosenfeld, Sybil. . Strolling Players and Drama in the Provinces

1660–1765. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

———. . The Theatre of the London Fairs in the Eighteenth Century.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

———. . A Short History of Scene Design in Great Britain. Oxford:

Basil Blackwell.

Russell, Dave. . Popular Music in England 1840–1914: A Social History.

Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Sala, G. A. . “Things Departed.” Household Words (London),

January.

Scharf, George. British Library (Print Room): Drawings of Street

Fantoccini.

Sheppard, Thomas. . Evolution of the Drama in Hull and District. Hull:

A. Brown and Son.

Sheridan, Paul. . Penny Theatres of Victorian London. London: Denis

Dobson.

Siddons, Henry. . Practical Illustrations of Rhetorical Gesture and

Action. London: Sherwood, Neely, and Jones.

Smith, M. B. . “Victorian Entertainment in the Lancashire Cotton

Towns.” In S. P. Bell (ed.), Victorian Lancashire. Newton Abbott: David

and Charles.

Speaight, George. . “The Devil in the Puppet Show.” In Puppetry:

International Yearbook of Puppets and Marionettes. New York:

Puppeteers of America.

———. . “Puppets in the Gardens.” Puppet Master (Journal of the

British Puppet and Model Theatre Guild, London) , no. (May).

———. . A History of the Circus. London: Tantivy.

———. . “A North of England Marionette Theatre in the s.”

Theatre Notebook (London, Society for Theatre Research) , no. ,

–.

———. . The History of the English Puppet Theatre. Revised ed.

Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. (Originally published

.)

Bibliography

120 bib (259-264) 8/4/04 10:39 AM Page 263

Storch, Robert D. (ed.). . Popular Culture and Custom in Nineteenth-

Century England. London: Croom Helm.

Terry, Ellen. . The Story of My Life. Woodbridge: Boydell Press.

Thétard, Henri. . La merveilleuse histoire du cirque. Paris: Julliard.

Toole-Stott, Raymond. –. Circus and the Allied Arts: A World

Bibliography. Derby: Harpur and Sons.

Toulmin, Vanessa. . “Telling the Tale: The Story of the Fairground

Bioscope Shows and the Showmen Who Operated Them.” In Film

History, vol. , pp. –. New York: Taylor and Francis.

Tuer, Andrew. . Pages and Pictures from Forgotten Children’s Books.

London: Leadenhall Press. (“A Month’s Vacation,” pr. for William Cole,

ca. .)

Whanslaw, H. W. . Everybody’s Marionette Book. Redhill: Wells

Gardner, Darton.

———. . Everybody’s Theatre. Redhill: Wells Gardner, Darton.

(Originally published .)

———. . A Bench Book of Puppetry. Redhill: Wells Gardner, Darton

and Co., Ltd.

Whanslaw, H. W., and Victor Hotchkiss. . Specialised Puppetry.

Redhill: Wells Gardner, Darton.

World’s Fair. Fillinham Gardens Collection (Guildhall Library, London).

Worsdall, Fred. . A Glasgow Keek Show. Glasgow: Drew.

Wroth, Warwick. . Cremorne and the Later London Gardens. London:

Elliot Stock.

Bibliography

120 bib (259-264) 8/4/04 10:39 AM Page 264

Ainsworth, Harrison, ,

Aladdin,

Alexander, John Henry,

Ali Baba. See The Forty Thieves

Allingham, J. T.,

Alonzo the Brave,

The Arabian Nights, ,

Arden of Faversham, , , , ,

, ,

Arne, Thomas,

Arnold, Samuel, ,

Arrah na Pogue,

Ashington family, , , , ,

The Babes in the Wood, , , , ,

, , ,

Babil and Bijou,

Barker, Howard,

Barnard family, , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , ,

Barnum and Bailey,

Bartholomew, Arthur,

Basket Biddy,

Baylis family, , , , , , , ,

, , ,

Beauty and the Beast, , , , ,

,

Bedford, Alfred, ,

La belle Roxalana,

Berlerie, Signor,

Beverley, William, ,

Bey, Emin,

Bianchi, Peter, ,

Bickerdike, Doris,

Bickerstaff, Isaac, , ,

Bilking a Reckoning,

Bishop, Henry, , ,

Black Ey’d Susan, , , , , ,

Blackbeard the Pirate,

Blackham, Olive,

Blanchard, Sophie,

Bleak House, , , –,

Block, Ben,

Blondin, ,

Blondin, Charles,

Blondin, “Madame,”

Bluebeard (Blue Beard), , , , ,

, ,

Bluff King Hal,

Index

As most of the Victorian marionette companies were family affairs, family rather

than individual names are given below. The index also includes relevant show-

people, musicians, scene-painters, titles of plays (and adapted novels), and authors.

Well-known popular entertainers or figures, many of whom also appeared as

marionettes, are included under their stage names, as are names of stock types and

significant acts.

130 index (265-272) 8/4/04 10:39 AM Page 265

Bobbin, Tim, , , , ,

Bonamici, Arthur,

Bonini, ,

Bono, Ben,

Borgniet family, ,

Borromeo collection,

Bostock, , . See also Wombwell

The Bottle Imp, ,

Boucicault, Dion, , , , , ,

,

Bowden, , , , . See also Tiller

Braddon, Mary Elizabeth,

Bramall, Eric,

Brann, Paul,

Brigaldi company, , , , ,

, , , ,

The Brigand Chief,

The British Puppet and Model Theatre

Guild, ,

Brown brothers, , , , ,

Buckstone, J. B.,

Bull, Hart and Francis,

Bullock, C. P.,

Bullock, William, ,

Bullock, William J., , , , , ,

, , , , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , ,

, , , , , ,

Bullock’s theatre,

Burford, A. E.,

Bussel, Jan,

Buxton, Henry, ,

Calver family, , , , , , ,

Campbell family,

Candler family, , , , , , ,

, ,

Carbold, W.,

Cardoni, ,

Carter’s waxworks,

Case family, , , , , , , ,

, , , ,

Cassidy, G. W.,

The Castle Spectre,

Chappell,

The Charcoal Burner,

Charles Peace,

Cheadle, ,

Chester, H., , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , ,

,

Children in the Wood. See Babes in the

Wood

Chipperfield, ,

Chorus Tommy, , ,

Christy Minstrels, , , , , ,

,

Cinderella, , , ,

Clark, Phillip, , ,

Clark’s Ghost Show, ,

Clarkson,

Cleghorn,

Clements,

Clowes family, , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , . See

also Tiller

Clown, , , –, –, ,

, , , ,

The Cobbler of Preston,

Colla, ,

The Colleen Bawn, , ,

Collins, Lottie,

Collins, P.,

Collyer, Henry,

Index

130 index (265-272) 8/4/04 10:39 AM Page 266

Columbine, , –, –,

–, –, , ,

Commedia dell’Arte, , , , ,

, , ,

Connolly, Michael,

Cooper, Sidney, , ,

Coppelia,

Corbould, W. See W. Carbold

The Corsican Brothers, , ,

Craig, Edward Gordon, , , , , ,

,

Creation of the World,

Crippen,

Cross, J. C.,

Crow, Jim,

Cure, , –, ,

Dame Crump,

D’Arc family, , , –, , , ,

, , , , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , , ,

, –, , , , –,

, –, , , ,

Davison, Mr.,

De Doncker, J., ,

De Randel, , , , ,

De Vere, , , , , , ,

Deaves, Edwin,

Deaves, Walter, ,

Deburau, Jean-Gaspard,

Delfont, Bernard,

Delvaine company, , , , , ,

, , , , , , ,

–, , , , , ,

–, , –, , –.

See also Fanning

Dibdin, Charles, ,

Dick Turpin, ,

Dick Whittington and His Cat, , ,

, ,

Dickens, Charles, , , ,

Dicks, John, , , , , , ,

, ,

Dog Toby,

Donnelly, R. C and Mrs., , , , ,

Duffy,

Dugard,

Dumas, Alexandre,

Earnshaw, H. A., , , , , , ,

, ,

East Lynne, , , ,

Egan, Pierce, ,

Elton John,

Engel, Johann Jakob,

Ethiopian Serenaders, ,

Evans, C.,

The Factory Boy,

The Factory Girl of Manchester, ,

The Factory Lad,

Fair Rosamund,

The Fairy of the Golden Cloud,

Fanning family, , , , , , ,

, . See also Delvaine

Faust, , ,

Ferguson, J.,

Fields, Fanny,

Field, Gracie,

Fiorelli, Tiberio, ,

Fitzball, Edward, ,

The Floating Beacon, ,

Flockton,

The Football Match,

The Forest of Bondy,

Fortune’s Frolic. See Robin Roughhead

The Forty Thieves,

Fossett, , ,

Index

130 index (265-272) 8/4/04 10:39 AM Page 267

Fox, G. H.,

French, Samuel, , ,

Frisby, , ,

Gallici,

Garat,

Garrick, David, , ,

Genoveva,

Girard family,

Girolamo,

Glennie, Louis, , ,

Glitter, Gary,

Gompertz,

Grace, W.,

Grand Turk, , , , , ,

Grant,

The Grasshopper and the Beetle,

Green (painter),

Green, J. K., ,

Grey, , , , , , , ,

Grimaldi, Joe, , , , , , ,

, . See also Clown

Guignol, ,

Guy Mannering,

Gyngell, , , ,

Haigh, Sam,

Haines, J. F.,

Hall, Tom,

Hanswurst,

Harlequin, , , , –, –,

–, , , , , ,

Harlequin and Little Red Riding Hood,

Harlequin and Mother Goose,

Harlequin Little Tom Tucker,

Harlequin O’Donoghue,

Harlequin Shepherd,

Harlequinade, , , , , , ,

Hart, Alex,

The Haunted Inn,

Hill, Aaron,

Hinchley, Nicholas,

Hodson family, , , , , , ,

, ,

Holcroft, Thomas,

Holden family, , –, , –, ,

, –, –, –, –, ,

, , , , , , , –,

–, , –, , , ,

–, , , , , –,

–, , –, –, ,

–, , , –, ,

–, –

Holland, A.,

“Home of Undine under the Sea,”

Homer and the Moor,

Horman, Eugene, , ,

Horward,

Howlett, Carl,

Hudson,

Hughes, Miss,

Hughes’s Circus,

Hunt, Edward and Eliza, , ,

The Hunter of the Alps,

Irving, Henry, , ,

Jack and the Beanstalk, , ,

Jack Sheppard (Jack Shepherd), ,

Jack the Giant Killer,

Jarrett,

Jennion, , ,

Jerrold, Douglas, , ,

Jesson,

Jewell, –3, , , , –, ,

,

Joan,

John Bull, , ,

Index

130 index (265-272) 8/4/04 10:39 AM Page 268

Jones, Davy,

Jones, Henry Arthur,

Judy, , , , , , , , , ,

, , , ,

Judy Callaghan,

Kean, Charles,

Kelly, Michael,

Kelsall, , ,

Kikugoro,

King,

Lacy,

Lady Audley’s Secret,

Laird, James,

Lanchester, Waldo, , , , ,

, , , , , ,

Lano family, ,

Lauder, Harry,

Lawrence family, –, , , , –,

, , , , , ,

Le Mare, ,

Lee, Clarence, , , , , , ,

, –, , , , , ,

, , ,

Legrand, Paul,

Leichner,

Leith, Christopher,

Léotard, Jules, , ,

Levergeois,

Lewis, Mrs. Clunn,

Lewis, Thomas Clunn, , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , ,

Lillo, George,

Litra, A.,

Little Red Riding Hood, , ,

–, ,

Little Tich,

Loïe Fuller,

London by Night,

The London Marionette Group,

Lost in London,

Luke the Labourer, ,

Lupi, , ,

Maeterlinck, Maurice,

Maffey,

Magic Sultan. See Grand Turk

The Maid and the Magpie,

Mammoth Mannikins,

The Man with a Flower in His Mouth,

Maria Marten, , , , , , ,

Marler, William,

Marlow, Mr. and Mrs.,

Marshall,

Martinek,

Matsune, Suekichi,

Matthews, ,

Mayhew, , –, , , , ,

, , , , , , –,

, , , , , , –,

McCormick, , , , , , ,

, –,

McDonough, John E., , , , , ,

, , ,

McKinder, Neville, ,

M’Culloch, W.,

Meader, Daniel, , , ,

Mère Gigogne, , , ,

Mickey Mouse,

Middleton family, , , , , , , ,

, , , , , –4, , –,

, , , , , , , , ,

–, , , , , , ,

Index

130 index (265-272) 8/4/04 10:39 AM Page 269

Middleton family (continued)

, , , , , , , ,

–, , , ,

Middleton, Gren and Juliet,

Miles, James,

The Miller and His Men, , –,

Milner, H.,

Milton, Arthur, ,

The Miser and Three Thieves,

The Mistletoe Bough, ,

Moncrieff, William T.,

Montague, H., ,

Moon,

Morell,

Morley, ,

Morton, Thomas, ,

Mother Goose, , ,

Mother Shipton, , , , , ,

–, ,

Mottram, Stephen,

Mumford, , , , , , ,

Mumford, Frank and Maisie,

Murder in the Red Barn. See Maria

Marten

Murray, W. H.,

My Poll and My Partner Joe, ,

Nichol, Wardhaugh, ,

Noakes, G.,

Obi,

Obraztsov, Sergei,

O’Donoghue,

The Old Curiosity Shop, ,

Old Darby,

Old Waxy, ,

Orlando Furioso,

The Padlock, ,

Page, Henri,

Pantaloon, , , , –, –,

, , ,

Parker, Stanley,

Parsloe,

Peake, Richard Brinsley,

Pettigrove family, , , , , , ,

, ,

Piccini, Giovanni,

Pierke,

Pierrot, , , –, , ,

Pirandello, Luigi,

Pitou, Emile, , , , –, ,

, , , , , , ,

Pitt, George Dibdin,

Planché, James Robinson,

The Ploughman Turned Lord,

Pocock, Isaac,

Polander, , ,

Pole, Andrew,

Policeman, –, , , –, ,

,

Pollinta, “Madame,”

Poor Jo(e), the Crossing Sweeper. See

Bleak House

Powell, Martin, ,

Pratt, W. W.,

Princess Badora,

The Prophesie of Mother Shipton in the

Raigne of Henry the Eighth,

Pulcinella, , ,

Punch, , , , , –, , –,

, , , , , , ,

–, ,

Purvis, Billy, , , –, –,

–, , , , , ,

Radford, John, , ,

Ravensburg, Duke,

Rebecqui, J., ,

Redington, John,

Reynolds, Alfred J.,

Index

130 index (265-272) 8/4/04 10:39 AM Page 270

Reynolds, Charlie,

Rice, Thomas Dartmouth,

Richardson show, ,

Rime of the Ancient Mariner,

Rob the Gardener,

The Robbers of Bohemia,

Robert-Houdin,

Robin Roughhead (Robin Rough Head),

,

Robinson Crusoe, ,

Rogers, Thomas, ,

Rookwood,

Rost, Ernst,

Roussel, L.,

Russell, Henry,

Salmon,

Samee, Ramo,

Sandrone,

Sanger and Powell,

Saqui, “Madame,”

Sarg, Tony,

Sax, Alfred,

Scaramouch(e), , –, , , ,

–, , , –,

Scaramuzzia, ,

Schichtl family, , ,

Schmid, “Papa,”

Scott, Walter, , , ,

Seward, Samuel, ,

Shakespeare, William, ,

Shaw, George Bernard, , ,

Shaw, James, , ,

The Sheep Stealer, ,

Sheridan, Thomas, ,

Siddons, Henry, –

The Silver King, ,

Simms, John, –, , , , ,

Simpson,

Sims, George R.,

Sinbad (Sinbad the Sailor), ,

Skeleton, , , , , , , , ,

, , ,

Skelt, ,

Sloper, Ally, ,

Smith, Albert, ,

Smith, Barry,

Smith, Bruce “Sensation,”

Smith,

Smith marionettes, ,

Smith, O.,

Somerville, Chris,

Sprake,

The Sprightly Sprites of the Demon’s

Cave,

Springthorpe family, –, , ,

–,

Stanislavsky, Konstantin,

Stead, J. H., , ,

Steel, Silas, ,

Stone,

Stowe, Harriet Beecher,

The Streets of London,

Stretch, , , , –

Sue, Eugène,

Sullivan, Agnes,

Sweeney Todd, , ,

Sylvester, ,

The Taming of the Shrew,

Tchantchès,

Ten Nights in a Bar Room,

Terry, , . See also Middleton

Terry, Ellen, , , ,

Testo family, ,

There He Goes,

Thomas and Sally, ,

Thompson, Harry,

Thompson, Thomas,

Thorne,

Thurmond, John,

Index

130 index (265-272) 8/4/04 10:39 AM Page 271

Tichborne Claimant,

Till, John,

Tiller family, , , –, , , , ,

, , –, –, , , ,

–, –, , , ,

–, , , , , , ,

, , , –, , –,

, , , –

Tim Bobbin(s), , , , ,

Todd, James, , ,

Tracked by Wireless. See Crippen

Tranka, , , ,

Tray,

Trotter, Charles,

Turk. See Grand Turk

Turpin, Dick, ,

Tussaud, Marie, ,

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, , –,

–

Valentine and Orson, ,

Valentine, Thomas,

The Vampire,

Van Lier, Abraham,

Virginia Serenaders,

Wadforth, Henry,

Walker, John,

Walton, Frank, , , ,

The Waterman,

Waters, Billy,

Webb, Charles, , , –, ,

Whanslaw, , , , , , ,

, , –, , , ,

–

The White Horse of Killarney. See

O’Donoghue

White, Parry,

Whitley, Ben,

The Wife of Seven Husbands,

Wiggins,

Wilding family, , , –, , ,

, , , , , –, ,

–, , , , , –,

, , ,

Williams, Randel, ,

Wilson,

Wombwell, , ,

The Wood Demon,

Wood, Mrs. Henry,

The Woodcutter’s Daughter,

Wycherley, Herbert, , , , , ,

,

Yorkshire Bob, , ,

Zilbach, Benedict

Index

130 index (265-272) 8/4/04 10:39 AM Page 272

Studies inTheatre History & Culture

Actors and American Culture, ‒9

By Benjamin McArthur

The Age and Stage of George L. Fox, ‒: An Expanded Edition

By Laurence Senelick

American Theater in the Culture of the Cold War

Producing and Contesting Containment

By Bruce McConachie

Classical Greek Theatre: New Views of an Old Subject

By Clifford Ashby

Embodied Memory: The Theatre of George Tabori

By Anat Feinberg

Fangs of Malice: Hypocrisy, Sincerity, and Acting

By Matthew H. Wikander

Marginal Sights: Staging the Chinese in America

By James S. Moy

Melodramatic Formations: American Theatre and Society, ‒

By Bruce A. McConachie

Meyerhold: A Revolution in Theatre

By Edward Braun

Modern Czech Theatre: Reflector and Conscience of a Nation

By Jarka M. Burian

Modern Hamlets and Their Soliloquies

An Expanded Edition

By Mary Z. Maher

Othello and Interpretive Traditions

By Edward Pechter

Our Moonlight Revels: A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the Theatre

By Gary Jay Williams

The Performance of Power: Theatrical Discourse and Politics

Edited by Sue-Ellen Case and Janelle Reinelt

140 after index (2-pages) 8/4/04 10:39 AM Page 273

Performing History: Theatrical Representations of the Past in

Contemporary Theatre

By Freddie Rokem

The Recurrence of Fate: Theatre and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia

By Spencer Golub

Reflecting the Audience: London Theatregoing, ‒

By Jim Davis and Victor Emeljanow

The Roots of Theatre: Rethinking Ritual and Other Theories of Origin

By Eli Rozik

Shakespeare on the American Yiddish Stage

By Joel Berkowitz

The Show and the Gaze of Theatre: A European Perspective

By Erika Fischer-Lichte

Textual and Theatrical Shakespeare: Questions of Evidence

Edited by Edward Pechter

The Theatrical Event: Dynamics of Performance and Perception

By Willmar Sauter

The Trick of Singularity: Twelfth Night and the Performance Editions

By Laurie E. Osborne

The Victorian Marionette Theatre

By John McCormick with Clodagh McCormick and John Phillips

Wandering Stars: Russian Emigré Theatre, ‒

Edited by Laurence Senelick

Writing and Rewriting National Theatre Histories

Edited by S. E. Wilmer

140 after index (2-pages) 8/4/04 10:39 AM Page 274