This crown of the laughing man, this crown of rose wreaths: you my brothers, I throw this crown to you!
Laughter I declare sacred: you higher man, for my sake learn - to laugh!
(Nietzsche, "An Attempt at Self-Criticism", 1886)
Punch
is a social symbol for the lower classes, that asserts the
transcendental truth of the human need for freedom.
The
figure of the puppet Punch has undergone several transformations and
it has been used as a symbol with different connotations by both the
lower and the upper classes.
Punch
first appeared in the British scene as a marionette that accompanied
Italian itinerant troupes. Puppet plays were an expression of the
popular and the carnivalesque.
After
the closure of theatres in London by Parliament in 1642, puppet plays
would enjoy a privileged position which would last at least for a
couple of centuries; puppetry had been considered too low and simple
to be of concern to the Puritan zeal against the pernicious influence
of theatre, so it managed to escape its censorship. Puppet shows were
staged in miniature theatres and flourished in the market place, the
inn yards, the fairs and the streets. These miniature puppet theatres
became quite fashionable in the cultural sphere of London Society,
providing a form of amusement for the upper classes. Puppet plays
abounded, representing examples of legitimate
drama, and adding to
them the elements of burlesque and satire. Soon venues were purposely
built for marionette theatre, one of them being, of course, the
Punch's Theatre in Covent Garden, established by Martin Powell at the
beginning of the 18th
century. By the middle of the century, however, the popularity of the
puppet theatres started to decline (Evans, 1977, Shershow 1995,
Speaight 1970)
Punch
came back with renewed strength as a glove puppet at the turn of the
19th century, taking over the streets of London along with
an emergent social class, the working-class, who would suffer the
oppressions of industrialisation. Punch & Judy shows were a means
of survival for many people, and their performances were to some
extent also a way to express and condemn several of the oppressive
factors to which a whole social class was subject. (Deller, 2006, p.
10) Punch re-emerged as a true expression of the carnivalesque, and
as such it appealed to all audiences from all social backgrounds.
Shershow (1995) contends this subversive role of Punch by stating
that the show merely reproduces “the impulse of domination against
which it otherwise seems to rebel.” acting as a bridge between
popular and elite forms of culture (p. 170) However, I agree with
Deller in seeing Punch as “the eternal clown of the angry
underclass who felt trapped by the circumstances” and who “was
able to transcend all cages of society most riotously” (p. 13)
It
was this carnivalesque character which the Victorian middle and upper
classes found so appealing to their own disciplined bodies. The
Dionysian nature of Punch instinctively awakens the anarchic spirit
inherent in human condition and incites it to rebel against all that
represses its freedom. However, as it also represents a threat to the
hegemonic forces, it is also necessary to suppress it.
In
1839, the Metropolitan Police Act forced the showmen progressively
away from the streets of London and street performers struggled to
survive. They moved to the seaside resorts, where they would find an
audience willing to pay for the entertainment they offered (Crone,
2006, p. 1068) On the other hand, despite representing a threat to
the bourgeois values “Punch was actually invited into the very
institution he threatened to destroy: the respectable middle-class
family. And, at the same time, the show was repositioned as an
entertainment to pacify children” (p. 1070)
Drawing
on Raymond Williams(1980) theories on “dominant, residual and
emergent cultures”, Punch and Judy shows represented both a
residual and an emergent culture. Residual because it represented a
culture from the past which at some point had been incorporated
within the dominant culture and eventually discarded; emergent
because it was a form of expression that had re-emerged with new
challenging values directly oppositional to the dominant culture. It
is therefore understandable that the bourgeois system of values,
seeing the wild energy of Punch as a threat, would do anything
possible to either destroy it or incorporate to their own system by
domesticating its content and practice.
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