PUNCH, ANCIENT AND MODERN.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3227, 2 November 1881, Page 4

PUNCH, ANCIENT AND MODERN.

In the familiar spectacle of our streets and alleys the effect of the national fireside ideal of life in modifying an important type is not less strongly exemplified than in the highe? walks- of art. For , -while, on Pulcinello 's native' soil, his hachelor escapades and mishaps in courtship and wooing furnish the favourite entertainment of his luzzaroni audience, it is the privacy of Mr Punch's hearth and home ifiafc is laid hare for the edification of the British'public, and the somewhat strained state of* Bis family relations that froms the subject of the drama at which they are invited to assist. Thus, even this disreputable wanderer, by appearing before us in the sacred character of husband and father, and transforming himself into what our French neighbours call tin homme a" interieur, casts a balo of Fnglish respectability over the doubtful antecedents of his vagrant career that not even his slightly exaggerated notions of conjugal discipline and mistaken views on nursery management altogether sufiice to dissipate. But our vagabond friend, if we may believe antiquarians, can lay claim to our respect on another and more unexpected ground—that of classical and aristocratic antiquity of descent. And as in other pedigrees tbe mere fact of remoteness is held to ennoble ancestors whose deeds might not otherwise seem a title to honour, we may by excused from looking too closely into the character' of the early Oscan dramas or Atellan farces, in which our popular hero is supposed to have his prototype.Suffice it to say that they were ancient rustic performances, depending very much for their power to amuse on rude buffoonery and wit of the broadest sort. Having survived in remote districts, from pre-historical down to classical times, they were introduced to Eoman audiences from the Campanian town of Atella, the modern Aversa, close to which is Acerra, the traditional home of the Neapolitan Pulcinello. A conspicuous figure in these rustic farces was a character called Maccus, and in a small bronze statue of this personage discovered in Rome in 1727, but only known to tts now from engravings, we recognise the deformed figure, exaggerated nose, and staring eyes so familiar to us on our puppet stage. But it is a singular circumstance that these characteristics are much more distinctly traceable in the expatriated Punch than in his Neapolitan , original, who is simply a blundering clown, clad in a loose white blouse or smock frock, and wearing a black mask over the lower part of his face. As Andrea Perrucci, the writer of » book published in Naples in 1699, claims the creation of this part for a comedian named Silvio Fiorillo, who lived some time previously, when the original of the English Punch mußt have already started or been about to start on his travels, we may perhaps conclude that this actor developed or improved upon a previously existing type preserved unchanged in the more primitive drama of the wandering showman. Punch, with many other foreign visitors of still more questionable character, made his first appearance in England shortly after the Restoration. We may safely.conclude that " the famous Italian puppet-play" witnessed by Pepys at Covent Garden, on May 9, 1662, where he says there was " great resort of gallants," and by John Evelyn five y»ars later, was no other than the drama of which the immortal hunchback is the hero. In neither of these records, indeed is he mentioned by name ; but under a later date, April 30, 1669, the following passage occurs in Pepy's diary : " Among poor people there in the alley, did hear them call their fat child Punch, which pleased me mightily, that word being become a word of common use for all that is thick and short." And in Aubrey'B " Surrey," in descibing a room in Sir Samuel Lely's house at Whitehall, he

says,•" On the top was a Punchinello holding a dial"—two instances of the use of the word which leave no doubt that the character was already familiar to the English public. We next find our hero about the year 1703, at Bartholomew Fair, enlivening by h's wit a puppet-play representing the " Creation of the World," a survival of the old miracle or mystery plays. At a similar spectacle at Bath, in 1709, Punoh and his wife danced in the ark with spirts unsubdued by the cosmic catastrophe of the deluge, which formed the subject of the drama, and the incorrigible jester, putting his head out to survey the rising waters, remarked aside to the patriarch, "It is a little foggy, Mr Noah."—Cornhill Magazine.