Under the Punches’ Canvases

The exhibition Under the Punches’ Canvases presents a selection of one hundred and twenty graphic works, including engravings, paintings and drawings, documenting puppet booth (castelet) performances across Europe from the fourteenth to the late nineteenth century. It emerges from a three-year research project by Anastasia Puppis and Léandre Simioni, which has assembled a corpus of more than three hundred high-definition digital reproductions, cross-referenced with archival and bibliographic sources.

This article provides the exhibition’s theoretical framework. It starts from a simple observation: the iconographic abundance of these performances contrasts with the scarcity of scholarly studies on the subject. The images, however, have much to tell. They document a scenic configuration whose underlying principles - a single puppeteer, a puppet booth scaled to one person, an artificial swazzle voice, a showman, a standing audience in public space - have remained remarkably stable across centuries and borders.

The analysis explores the reasons for this stability. It proposes that the physical and economic constraints inherent to this form - two hands, a portable booth, an unequipped space - give rise to convergent technical, dramaturgical and social solutions across Europe. It examines in turn the voice and gesture, the custom-making of performance tools, the presence of these shows in public space, the role of the showman, and the principles of dramatic composition that follow from these.

The perspective is that of contemporary practitioners of this art. Identifying the invariants of this theatrical form serves a dual purpose: to bring recognition to an iconographic heritage that remains largely unexplored, and to enrich current practice in booth puppetry, in the making of puppets and booths, in writing for puppet performances, in audience relations, and in the art of performance.

Introduction

The title of the exhibition, Sous les toiles des Polichinelles (Under the Punches’ Canvases) , plays on several meanings referring at once to the fabric concealing the puppeteer, to the cloth that dresses the figures, and to the graphic works, engravings, paintings and drawings, that make up the body of this exhibition. In each case, what these elements share is the act of covering, and the surface upon which artistic work comes into being: the canvas on which paint is applied, the support and space in which performance unfolds. The invitation, therefore, is to unveil, to dig deeper, to look beyond the first impression, to see the hidden puppeteer, the manipulation, the craftsmanship concealed beneath the fabric, and to seek out within the images the details that form a constellation of clues. This dimension is not merely conceptual. Since the printed images are mounted on display structures that also serve as puppet booths, visitors may themselves step behind them and inhabit, briefly, the puppeteer’s point of view. As for the term Polichinelles, used here in the plural, it is chosen to assert the iconographic complexity and richness of the various protagonist figures represented across the corpus.

This article examines in detail the puppet booth show, defined by the following characteristics:

• overhead manipulation by a single performer
• a portable puppet booth
• performance given in a public space, freely accessible
• the presence of an audience
• the European continent, up to the end of the nineteenth century

The analysis is bounded by the limits of the European continent, even though similar practices appear in Asian iconography of the same period (see appendix: Asian Examples), and would equally deserve close examination. It also stops at the nineteenth century, although the art form is still practised in several regions of Europe today. This period was chosen because, within the iconographic corpus, which aims to compile all historical imagery relating to puppetry, booth theatre shows are the only narrative form represented during this era (alongside jigging puppets, a musical display of dancing figures without narrative or dramaturgy. See appendix: Jigging Puppets).

From the late eighteenth century and through the nineteenth, a distinct use of the glove puppet emerged: overhead manipulation by several performers, within a large puppet booth exceeding one metre in width, fixed or semi-fixed. Performances were then given in enclosed or dedicated spaces, and developed a close relationship to written and scripted text. In France, this practice is known as marionnette à gaine, or gaine lyonnaise (Lyon-style glove puppetry), owing to the prominence Guignol acquired within the French artistic landscape, particularly in shows for children.

Historically, puppet booth shows have been named in various ways, depending on period and place. In early documents, from the late medieval period onwards, bibliographic sources group puppeteers within the broader category of bateleurs (related to the Italian bagatto, as in the Tarot figure known in English as The Magician or The Magus, denoting a mountebank, sleight-of-hand or itinerant artist), a term encompassing a range of skills including conjuring, physical virtuosity, sleight of hand and animal training. To give the appearance of life to objects made of wood and cloth is at once a feat of bodily skill and an act of illusion.

The troubadour Guiraut Riquier complained to King Alfonso X of Castile about this blurring of trades in 1274:

Car hom aquels menssona ses autre nom joglars, ni sels que trasgitars es lor us, ses als far, ni cels que fan joglar cimis ni bavastels, ni d’autres, que capdels bos non lur es donatz.¹

Even when the text specifically addresses puppet animation, the type of manipulation is often left unspecified: string puppets, rod or glove puppets, marottes, automata, jointed figures... All are grouped together within a single category and are difficult to tell apart.

Iam si enumerem quot quantaque statuis ligneis parvis, Magatellos vocat vulgas, dies me deficiet. Nam ludunt, pugnant, venantur, saltant, tuba canunt, coquinariam exercent artem, atque haec omnia ut mirabilia sunt, ita nullius ut dixi utilitatis, et cum resciveris rationem qua oculos fallunt, ea autem duobus constat, instrumentis varijs ad hoc paratis manumque agilitate... ²

The words bagatelle³, magatelle et bavastel appear in early texts to refer to the acts of bateleurs or to puppets in general.⁴ The words guarattelle et bagatelle are found today in Naples, where they specifically denote Pulcinella puppet booth shows. As Anna Leone notes in her glossary:

Bagatelle, plur. fém. : nom du théâtre des marionnettes à gaine napolitaines, utilisé notamment dans des écrits (en italien ou en napolitain) du XVIe siècle au XIXe siècle. Ce mot — dérivé de l’italien bagattelle indiquant plutôt des jeux d’adresse — était employé exclusivement au pluriel. Tout comme le terme guarattelle, il indique généralement le théâtre des marionnettes à gaine plutôt que les marionnettes elles-mêmes.⁵

The images in the corpus, like the texts, reflect real practice, yet are also subject to misunderstanding, imagination and the creative liberties of their makers. This study is based on the patterns observable across the corpus as a whole, without seeking to interpret isolated cases. Where an image presents features that no other representation corroborates, those elements are set aside: without confirmation, they cannot be taken as evidence of practice.

In this study, the term «puppet booth shows,» as termed by Didier Plassard⁶, refers to the genre of performances documented in Western iconography, involving both an audience and a vertical puppet booth.

The word castelet (French for puppet booth) means “small castle”, and is the diminutive form of castel, itself derived from the Latin castellum, a diminutive of castrum, tracing a line from the Roman fort to the medieval castle, down to the puppeteer’s booth. In the quotation from Giraut de Calanson of 1202–1212 (see footnote), the term bavastel is followed by the phrase: «E fay los castels assalhir,» meaning the puppets lay siege to the castles. In thirteenth and fourteenth-century iconography, the booth is decorated with battlements, towers and crenellations. In French today, the word “castelet” designates any structure that conceals the puppeteers while leaving the puppets in view.

Considering the full range of images surveyed, puppet booth shows share a remarkably consistent set of characteristics. This study explores how this singular professional ecosystem has manifested across different periods and places. The aspects examined are: technique, tools, the relationship to the environment, and integration within an economic system. The aim of this study is to bring recognition to this heritage, and to open new paths and fresh perspectives for contemporary puppet performance and writing.

1. Voice and Hands

This first section focuses on what is visible within the performance frame, the space in which the puppets act. Each of the puppeteer’s hands can carry a puppet, which frequently produces a duo on stage. One of the two puppets, likely carried by the dominant hand⁷, displays across the iconographic corpus a set of remarkable physical characteristics. These features are not universally present, but together form a base set of attributes that recur independently of period and place. It is thus possible to draw up a list of traits:

• humps (back and belly)
• prominent nose (sometimes masked or coloured)
• tall hat
• carrying a stick
• bells
• ruff collar

These elements reflect a particular fashion and culture, but above all serve a visual purpose. The prominent nose acts as a directional indicator, allowing the audience to instantly grasp the orientation of the head and the direction of the gaze. The humps function as a secondary vector of movement, amplifying the gestural vocabulary and contributing to a silhouette that is immediately recognisable. The hat, often tall and sometimes pointed, extends and enlarges the figure without adding weight to the puppet, and varies across representations, bearing witness to the character’s historical plasticity. The mask, or the stylised face rendered in saturated, contrasting colours (red, black, white), completes this system of visual signals designed for legibility at a distance and in motion. The bells give an acoustic identity to gestures, and recall the figure of the Fool. The ruff collar, for its part, serves to conceal the join between the costume and the puppet’s neck. To carry this analysis further, it is necessary to lift the cloth of the burattino, and to explore how this gestural repertoire is constructed.

The puppet booth show rests on a simple and fundamental constraint: the puppeteer has two hands. And it is from these two hands and their movements that the audience’s interest in the show is born.

Ecci di novo una femina delle nostre d’Italia, la qual giuoca ogni dieci, quindeci, venti, vinti-cinque (né mai passa i trenta) anni a fraccurradi⁸, & fa per Eccellenza l’arte del maestro mucchio.⁹ & va torno facendo vedere queste sue prove.(...) Fraccuradi è uno certo trattenimento da brigate spensierate, il qual gioco si fa con certi fantocci, su per le punte delle dita, & si pigliano l’uno l’altro, giostrano, scherzano, s’ammazzano, si tolgono l’uno a l’altro certi castegli: & questa Donna maneggia lei questi fraccurradi, hora toglie in mano l’uno, & hora l’altro, & gli fa azuffare, questo anno l’è venuta, & fa questo giuoco benißimo: onde ciascuno corre per veder questi bei passatempi; ma il vedere bene è, quando questa femina gli viene à noia il gioco, lo getta via la patienza: & i fraccurradi alla mall’hora, che l’ha tenuto un pezzo in seno: & ne toglie de gli altri di nuovo.¹⁰

Like other bateleurs, puppeteers draw a crowd through the skill of their movements¹¹ and feats of dexterity. Even if the audience believes in the life of the puppets, two hands remain two hands. Scenes are written by their movements. The entire grammar of animation is dictated by the possible movements of the fingers, the hand, the wrist, the arms and the body of the performer, who, standing upright, enjoys considerable freedom of movement. The puppeteer can make figures appear and disappear, spin them around, and compose movement through every joint of the body. The dissociation technique, the skill of conveying the illusion of life in the puppet, combined with the presence of the booth, causes the audience to forget the human presence behind it. The hand, being subject to different physical laws than the body as a whole, opens up a dual line of enquiry: on the one hand, it may attempt to imitate the human, while on the other, it holds its own distinct potential. The puppet can transcend certain limits, such as death, pain, gravity, speed.

The efficacy and exceptional character of puppet booth shows cannot be understood without taking into account the artificial voice of the protagonist. To produce it, puppeteers use an instrument known today as the pratique or sifflet pratique in French, pivetta in Italian, and swazzle in English. The instrument is pressed against the palate; the puppeteer holds it there with the tongue and blows through it, producing a vibration. Contrary to what scholars once believed^12,13, , this instrument does not alter the puppeteer’s voice but generates a sound of its own, which is then articulated by the movement of the mouth. The instrument is not visible in the iconography; however, numerous passages in the literature refer to it.

« Burattini : Intende quei figurini di rilievo, che son fatti muover da uno, che a tal’effetto s’asconde in un castelletto di legno, coperto di panno: e gli fa operare, mettendosegli sopra alle punta delle dita, e con un certo fischio gli fa parlare. »¹⁴

The use of the swazzle is well documented^{15,16,17,18,19}, along with all the mystery and mythologising surrounding it, both for booth puppeteers and for marionette operators:

« De par le Roi, & de l’Ordonnance de Messire Nicolas René Berryer, Chevalier, Conseiller du Roi en ses Conseils, Maître des Requêtes ordinaire de son Hôtel, Lieutenant Général de Police de la Ville, Prevôté & Vicomté de Paris. (...) permettons aussi aux maîtres de loges de Marionnettes, de représenter ainsi qu’ils ont accoutumé, des piéces & des Pantomimes sur leurs Théâtres ; à la charge de se servir du sifflet appellé Pratique, & de se conformer au surplus à ce qui est prescrit pour les Danseurs de Corde, sous les mêmes peines »²⁰

The artificial voice, a central element of puppet booth shows, possesses above all a remarkable acoustic power, capable of attracting and holding the attention of crowds. The universality of this sound is one of its essential qualities: since it is produced independently of the operator’s vocal cords, as the performer simply blows through the instrument and shapes the sound it produces²¹, this voice is shared by all protagonists. The same character can thus appear simultaneously in different places, in different countries, and when a father dies, his son can carry the character forward without interruption, conferring on the puppet a form of immortality. Neither clearly masculine nor feminine, this voice blurs gender distinctions. Swazzle-voiced characters cannot embody ordinary figures; they are necessarily marginal, singular and extraordinary. This may explain why historians have struggled to establish the lines of descent connecting all the European characters who share this feature: what they have in common resides precisely in this artificial voice, which itself gives rise to a whole constellation of associated traits. The mystery (and the technical incomprehension) surrounding how this voice is produced maintains, even today, a dimension of magic, drawing the puppeteer close to the illusionist.

The difficulty of being understood gives rise to a need for gestural, visual, musical and choreographic expressiveness²². The iconography shows, moreover, that puppeteers are frequently accompanied by musicians, who punctuate the puppet’s dances, the songs, and the percussive sound of wooden hands striking the playboard of the booth²³.

The presence of a showman alongside the booth thus fulfils an essential function: he attempts to interpret the protagonist’s words for the audience and can play on their ambiguity²⁴, for instance to circumvent censorship, while these misunderstandings may themselves generate new meaning or laughter. The gap between what the operator intends and what the audience understands echoes the very logic of the puppet: the character, like its speech, is constructed in interaction with the spectators. Sometimes the audience understands something quite different from what the protagonist intended, and what the audience understood, however mistakenly, becomes part of the next performance’s scenario. Dramatic meaning emerges from these approximations. The voice, with its variable intelligibility, thus becomes the driving force of a collective dramaturgy.

It is by keeping in mind the primacy of gesture and the strangeness of the protagonists’ artificial voice that one can approach the heroes of the puppet booth repertoire. Through their voice and their extraordinary physical capabilities, they are already characters in themselves, before any qualification or adornment, before even bearing a name or a defined costume..

Across Europe, these figures take on different guises, known today chiefly under the following names: Polichinelle, Pulcinella, Punch, Kasperl, Petrushka, Jan Klaassen, though they have carried other names over time. These Polichinelles are connected figures and embody multiple figures such as the fool, the servant, the sacred clown. Their social function varies across cultures, while remaining ambiguous, fluid and unclassifiable entities. They are homologous figures; they share a common theatrical form, and display a set of fundamental traits: the artificial voice, the codified gesture, the function of the ambiguous popular hero.

The Polichinelles have diversified a shared inheritance according to local cultural contexts, while preserving their deep kinship. The protean hero is defined by his very indeterminacy. Neither entirely human nor entirely animal, neither fully inscribed within a social class nor wholly outside of it, he offers a universal point of identification. The audience, through its interpretation and expectations, largely determines the character of this figure. This plasticity accounts for its persistence across centuries and borders.²⁵

The Polichinelles, as ambiguous popular heroes, share notable similarities with the medieval figure of the Fool, whose place they may have taken. Invested with a licentious and carnivalesque role, they inhabit a world of transgression in which morality gives way to liberating buffoonery. The Fool embodied a form of social licence: he could transgress hierarchies, criticise the powerful, and utter obscene truths under the cover of madness. This liminal position, between the rigid social categories of pre-modern European societies, permitted a unique freedom of movement.²⁶

The Polichinelles encompass these functions too. Socially mobile, they can successively play the roles of servant, lover, criminal, king, while retaining their defining traits. They elude fixed social positions, a quality all the more valuable in societies where social categories remained largely impermeable until the nineteenth century.

The attributes of the European Polichinelles and those of the medieval Fool resonate across a number of shared motifs: gallinaceous features, the presence of humps, bells, the company of a donkey, and the use of the fool’s bauble. This stick surmounted by a human head prefigures a dialogue between its bearer and an objectified double, much like that between the puppeteer or the showman and the puppet. This kinship is further expressed through the ambiguity between humanity and animality, through the themes of hatching from an egg and of exuberant fertility, in which children, miniaturised doubles, burst from the humps, are scattered or hatched. The iconography also bears witness to a multiplied existence of these figures, who frequently appear in groups of fools or Polichinelles, figures in full proliferation, dissolving the individual into an abundant collective presence.

Finally, the Polichinelle puppet characters all exist beyond the booth: commedia dell’arte, theatre, string puppets, toys, icons, advertising. All this proliferation has naturally influenced the puppet form just as the puppet has influenced other spheres, but it is the specificities of glove puppet booth shows that remain the focus of this study.

2. Made to Measure

The iconographic corpus reveals a remarkable stability in the form of the puppet booth and in the size of the puppets: the booth can be carried by a single person, and the full set of puppets fits into a small basket.

Until the Industrial Revolution, material production followed the logic of making each object to fit its user. This economy of custom-making structured the whole of society: objects were made for a specific use, and circulated through inheritance, reuse and adaptation. Standardisation did not exist. The working tool was configured according to the anthropometric measurements and gestural habits of the person who used it, bearing the imprint of the body that handled it. This relationship of mutual adjustment, in which the craftsman shapes the tool which in turn disciplines the gesture, finds in the puppet and its booth a particularly intense expression, since the virtuosity of the performance itself depends directly on the quality of the tools employed.

The primary function of the puppet booth is to conceal the operator while keeping the puppets in full view. The iconography reveals a remarkable formal consistency across Europe. The structures are lightweight, consisting of a wooden frame covered with fabric.

The puppet booth is made up of four parts:

• the lower section serves to conceal and surround the puppeteer while allowing the voice to pass through; it stands at the full height of the puppeteer;
• the playboard, serving as stage edge and performance surface, a ledge for props, and a percussive element against which the blows of the stick and the wooden parts of the puppets resound;
• the puppets’ playing space, calibrated to the puppeteer’s arm span, extending from the front of the playboard to the back of the booth;
• the roof, which defines the scenic space and protects the interior of the booth from rain and sun.

The puppet booth serves further functions besides. It is the central scenic element of the show, and considerable care is given to its appearance: the various fabrics are carefully matched, and it is frequently decorated with fringes, decorative panels, painted motifs, and so forth. It is sometimes fitted with curtains, pockets and slits, enabling dramatic entrances and exits, surprise effects, and moments of apparent magic. It conceals the identity of the operator, and serves as a backstage shelter for the puppeteer and their materials.

Placed on the ground or on a trestle stage, the castelet is a complete working instrument, whose lightness is a strategic necessity: it allows the performer to move on quickly, to shift location according to opportunity or circumstance, and to live within the constitutive mobility of street performance trades. Ergonomics and economics converge: the object must be both effective for puppet manipulation and viable for itinerant life²⁷.

As regards the puppet itself, the equation between weight, size and gestural possibility obeys the same physical laws as those that govern, for instance, the making of musical instruments or juggling: the better the instrument is fitted to the musician’s hand, the better-balanced the balls, the more technical mastery can be deployed.

Glove puppets are composed of:

• a head and neck carved in wood, hollowed to receive the index finger;
• two hands, likewise in wood;
• a costume nailed or sewn to the neck and wrists of the puppet;²⁸
• any additional decorations, wigs, hair, or accessories.

Puppeteers work with small puppets, sized to fit the hand that must glove and animate them.²⁹ A puppet of the right fit allows for swift movements, rhythmically precise fights, accurate choreography, and spares the operator from fatigue, injury and premature strain.

The techniques used to make puppet booths and puppets remained unchanged throughout the period under study. Making a puppet draws on three distinct craft skills: carving the heads and hands in wood, decorative painting, and sewing the costumes. These three areas correspond to well-established trades in the economy of the period, woodcarvers, painters, tailors and seamstresses, whose skills circulated widely across urban and rural communities.

Several English representations show puppeteers repairing or adjusting their figures and booths, revealing at the very least a capacity for upkeep and maintenance, if not full mastery of the fabrication process itself.

Before industrialisation, production drew on local materials (regional timber species, wool or linen fabrics, mineral or plant-based pigments) and incorporated repairability as a structuring principle. This durability answered an economic necessity: objects were costly and had to last. In a world where materials represented a significant share of costs, repair remained consistently less expensive than replacement. The puppet booth show belongs fully within this principle: durable objects, repairable, transportable by human effort alone.

This conception of the object - fitted to the body, repairable, mobile - remains fundamental for contemporary practitioners of this art. The right fit is a technical necessity: one can only perform well with tools made to one’s own measure.

3. Performance Space

The graphic representations of puppet booth performances are predominantly in landscape format, composed of a puppet booth, a gathered audience, and the surrounding public space. The booth rarely occupies the foreground; it is the space itself that dominates, together with the audience, buildings, monuments, passers-by and other concurrent activities. This pictorial choice reflects the profoundly public nature of this art: the performance exists by virtue of, and within, the space that receives it.

Painters, like writers, show a particular interest in the audience, in its enthusiasm for these bagatelles, and in the effect the performance produces upon it, rather than in the puppet stage itself.

Quando Gaetanaccio attraversava le vie della città col suo casotto sulle spalle era un correre, un affollarsi di gente da tutte le parti. Al suono della sua pivetta si fermavano non solo gli artigiani, i rivenduglioli, i carrettieri, ma anche le persone della più civil condizione. L’accigliato causidico, il severo esculapio, il superbo professore di lettere non avevano difficoltà di mescolarsi fra i suoi uditori. Perfino i signori, i signori di baldacchino, fermavano spesso le loro carrozze pel gusto di assistere alle sue rappresentazioni.³⁰

In the public space, spectators stand throughout the performance, as no seating is provided; furthermore, the dirt underfoot and the difficulty of laundering clothing must have acted as a further deterrent to sitting on the ground. The only figures shown seated in the iconography are those on horseback and beggars. This configuration gives rise to a remarkable mixing of social ranks.

Non manca Zan dalla vigna di farsi innanzi ancora lui, e con diverse bagatelle trattenere la brigata facendo passar per arte, e per parte di mastro muchio, ove la brigata scoppia dalle risa, vedendo i gesti di simia, gli atti da babuino, & le diverse scaramelle di mano, che fà alla presenza di tutti, & di ciò la nobiltà ride, la plebe sgrigna, il villano creppa a veder tanti motivi di corpo, tante destrezze di mano, tante fusarie, che fà, e che dice in un fiato solo.³¹

As this passage makes clear, and as the iconography confirms, the performance takes place before all, and each finds an interest in it: women, men, children, infants, the elderly, peasants, bourgeois, nobles, soldiers, clergy, beggars, thieves, street vendors. Addressing a broad public is an economic necessity, since the generosity of the audience (and occasionally theft by accomplices³²) constitutes the principal source of income for these artists.

The audience numbers a few dozen people, fifty at most, to judge by the iconographic representations, which corresponds to the carrying range of the human voice and to the size of puppets, which requires the audience to remain within close viewing range. An audience of this scale is small enough to allow a direct relationship between performer and audience, and large enough to constitute a collective event.

The question of visibility lies at the heart of theatre. Glove puppets are manipulated overhead, above the heads of the spectators, so that even a dense standing crowd does not obstruct the stage. This technical characteristic offers a significant advantage in unequipped public spaces, where other performers must erect and mount trestles in order to be seen: the puppet booth functions, in itself, as a miniature raised stage.

The illustrations highlight several types of space in which puppet booth shows take place: the town square (Largo del Castello in Naples, Piazza San Marco in Venice...), the fair (Cannstatt, The Hague...), the street, and rural settings. The fair draws an audience already in search of entertainment, and therefore more inclined to stop and watch a show; the street and the square confront the artist with the challenge of capturing the attention of hurrying passers-by. In both cases, the acoustic and attentional environment is saturated: hawkers, charlatans... All compete for attention amid the urban din.³³

Ces cochers ont beau se haster, Ils ont beau crier gare, gare, Ils sont contraints de s’arrester Dans la presse, rien ne démare. Le bruit de penetrans sifflets, Des flustes & des flageollets, Des cornets, hauts-bois & muzettes, Des vendeurs & des achepteurs, Se mesle à celuy des sauteurs Et des tambourins à sonnettes Des ioueurs de Marionnettes Que le peuple croit enchanteurs.³⁴

The rural or peripheral setting constitutes a third terrain, with its own rhythms and its own audiences.

The performance venue is not a fixed location; the show takes place wherever an audience is to be found. It is not the spectators who go to the theatre, but the theatre that comes to meet them. Even in the squares where puppet shows are regularly documented, the iconography reveals different performance locations and different booths (see appendix: Venice and Naples). Some puppeteers were strongly attached to a particular city, yet performed in various locations within it, while others were itinerant, moving from city to city and country to country.³⁵ The impulse to move on could stem from several factors: finding new audiences for an existing repertoire, following the fairs and major public festivals, or fleeing for social or political reasons, such as censorship. The itinerancy of these artists and the lightness of their booths account, among other things, for the few traces they left of their presence, as they required no licence to perform in public spaces.³⁶ It is paradoxically through attempts to prohibit and censor them that institutions have given these artists a posthumous existence:

Un Bando della Gran Corte della Vicaria, pubblicato il 22 gennaio 1581, ordinava : « a tutte e qualsivogliano persone (...) che da oggi in avanti non ardiscano nè presumano di recitar comedie in luoghi pubblici ed ordinarii, nè fare altri giuochi, nè bagattelle, sotto la pena la prima volta di once 25 e d’un mese di carcere, la seconda volta di quattro tratti di corde al pubblico agli uomini, o di due anni d’ esilio da questa città di Napoli, territorio e distretto da esigersi irremissibilmente contro tragressori »³⁷

The portable booth enables mobility and a degree of protection from censorship, yet at the same time it encloses the puppeteer, who is cut off visually from the public space and cannot attend to the audience or to the contingencies of the street while performing. It is for this reason that one or more accomplices are found around the booth, fulfilling either an active role or simply providing a steadying presence.

4. The Human Figure

One or more human figures appear consistently alongside the puppet booth. Either the figure remains discreet, playing an observational role without openly taking part in the performance, or he or she assumes the active role of showman.³⁸ The latter is depicted turned towards the audience, gesticulating, pointing to the puppets; he appears to comment, explain and call out to the crowd. Or he plays music, sells remedies, or performs other sleight-of-hand tricks. Historical texts and bibliographic sources give him various names: bonimenteur, charlatan, public entertainer, spalla (Italian for «shoulder»), showman, barker.³⁹ His role is both artistic and economic.

A puppet measures roughly fifty centimetres: a painted wooden head and a fabric costume. The showman, through his human presence, directs the audience’s gaze towards the booth by his pointing gestures, and designates the puppet as worthy of attention. He allows the audience to believe, and to be carried along by the life of this small object. This act of legitimation is pragmatic: in a public space saturated with stimuli, the artificial voice intrigues passers-by, but a human body is needed to signal that something here is worth stopping for, setting one’s affairs aside, worth one’s attention, and one’s coins.

His role extends beyond pointing: he contextualises the action. In an essentially visual theatre, he can situate the action, name and speak with the characters, and address the audience to create a sense of complicity. As an intermediary between the stage and the street, he transforms passers-by into spectators. He is himself at once spectator and performer, fulfilling the function of a third party, neither fully within the fiction nor entirely a witness to it, and it is this liminality that opens a space for commentary and reflexivity.

Many iconographic representations depict the showman holding instruments: drum, trumpet, violin, accordion⁴⁰. Music serves to pace the puppets’ action, to underscore dramatic moments, and to create the musical setting of the performance. It also functions as a call to the public, signalling that a show is about to begin.⁴¹

Beyond this dramatic role, the showman fulfils an economic function. The puppeteer, invisible to the audience, remains a human being with material needs. It is the showman, or showmen, who ensure the economic viability of these performances.

The relationship between the booth and the showman is reciprocal: the showman serves the show, but equally the show serves the showman. Many also sold their own wares and services: remedies, talismans, palm readings, tooth extractions.⁴² The performance could function either as an attraction in its own right, with payment by collection, or as a draw for some other service.

Entertainment was the key. To sell his wares the quack had to pull a crowd, and to do that he had to offer some spectacle. Showmanship and salesmanship went hand-in-hand. The stage was the marketplace, and the marketplace a stage.⁴³

The showman embodies this hybridity: half artist, half salesman, he moves across several registers of activity. An open performance, with no admission charge, served as an investment: drawing a crowd was the precondition for taking a collection and making sales. The attraction could be highly varied, alternating puppets, music, patter and sales, producing a diverse form of entertainment well suited to public squares. This organisation sheds light on the professional world of street performance: its networks, its strategies of collaboration.

The puppeteer and the showman could be two people each working independently, who might collaborate without being permanently linked.⁴⁴ An itinerant puppeteer might form a local partnership with a showman familiar with the language and customs of a given place. This flexibility would account for the rapid spread of certain performances across Europe⁴⁵ : no knowledge of the local language is required to manipulate puppets, so long as a partner takes charge of speaking to the crowd.

The iconography occasionally shows the puppeteer stepping out of the booth to take on the role of showman.

Written sources record the presence of women puppeteers.⁴⁶ Inside the booth, with the swazzle, the performer’s gender is entirely concealed: one may suppose that some of those performing were women. In the iconography, women are visible outside the booth: playing music, collecting from the audience, nursing infants, keeping watch over the crowd..

5. Dramaturgy and Perspectives

Puppet booth theatre persists across the centuries and displays a set of constants: performance venues, play, and audience reception. It emerges as a form of spectacle deeply bound to gesture and movement. The concrete technical and physical realities of the form appear to exercise a decisive influence on the theatrical outcome. The movements of the hands, and more broadly of the puppeteer’s body, govern all the kinetic possibilities of the puppets and, combined with the voice, produce the full range of expressive possibilities available to the characters.

The fact that a single puppeteer animates all the characters shapes the dramaturgy. The performance is an episodic composition of scenes in which two characters meet.⁴⁷ In the extant scenario outlines from the period (and equally across contemporary practices that maintain an oral link to this tradition), the dramatic action develops around a single protagonist. He is constantly present on stage, occupying the puppeteer’s dominant hand throughout the performance. The other hand carries the remaining characters, who appear one after another. The plot follows the adventures of one hero.

Particular mention must be made of the presence of animals on stage. Puppeteers, like other bateleurs and charlatans, long took advantage of the public’s appetite for trained animals performing alongside the puppets. Small dogs, cats and monkeys were integral to the show, placed on the playboard at the same level as the puppets and interacting with them.⁴⁸ At the scale of a puppet, a small dog suddenly appears enormous. Animal trainers were associated with puppeteers; bibliographic and iconographic sources from before the eighteenth century record snake-handlers and bear-leaders performing alongside the booth⁴⁹.

Beyond characters and animals, puppeteers exploit the dramatic potential of objects. The most fundamental and universal of these is the stick⁵⁰ : nothing lends itself more naturally to a hand than a stick, or a handled tool (a sword, a broom...). Other objects observed include boxes and gallows.

Given the dramaturgical structure, and the constraints of space and voice, the performance’s hold on the audience rests on a form of virtuosity, and its effectiveness lies in brief, visually driven dramatic situations rather than in sustained dramaturgical writing. Performances are not given from written texts but improvised from scenario outlines, as in the commedia dell’arte. The puppet lends itself to the learning of gestural sequences (which some puppeteers today call routines), which take on different meanings depending on the character, the puppet acting on the puppeteer’s fingertips.⁵¹ The hand, unlike the actor’s body, has a far more limited expressive range of its own: the face cannot change expression, and the hand operating the puppet has fewer joints than the human body as a whole. The booth and the technique of manipulation offer a range of expressive means that greatly enriches the wooden actor’s performance, while its physical constraints direct the form towards effective gestural sequences rather than complex texts or elaborate dramaturgy..

(...) sì che un Uomo girando attorno col suo Castello, o Casotto, desse sulle pubbliche vie, o piazze agli oziosi sollazzo, con nascondersi dentro a quello; e fuori da un apertura, o quasi finestra della sommità, quasi da proscenio, mostrando i suoi fantocci, agir gli facesse, parlando egli, come se essi parlassero. Questa è nel vero la più usitata maniera, con che sogliono i Burattini, o Pupazzi venir nelle Piazze adoperati; dando poi loro parole, e gesti convenienti alle faccende, e agli affetti, che rappresentano; onde pajano persone vive, parlanti, e destre negli affari, e negozii mondani. A questo fine compariscono ne’ Crocicchj, o Piazze tali Giocolatori sopra un banco; e dentro un finto Castello di tela nascosi con la persona, a quelle loro figurine, che solo alzano a veduta del popolo, fanno far gesti, e dir parole di curioso, e piacevole trattenimento. Nel vero non ordinario diletto sentono le persone non pur grossolane, ma le scienziate ancora a quella faceta e lepida imitazione, massimamente se l’Attore, o Cyritto, al maneggiare a tempo, e con destrezza i fantocci, accompagni una qualche favoletta bene a filo trattata.⁵²

The repertoire performed on the puppet booth stage is shaped by the grammar of hand gesture and by the economy of public space. To attract an audience, scenes of bold physical and dramatic content prove most effective: fights, fornication, vulgarity, violence. The extant scenario outlines are built around vivid physical actions designed to reach the crowd directly. The puppet allows the staging of the extreme situations of human existence with a certain degree of detachment, through laughter.

The show’s protagonists were the subject of much fantasy and projection during the twentieth century. As institutions sought to assert strong national and regional identities, the various characters were cast into rigid stereotypes of personality and appearance. Scholars, practitioners and enthusiasts then drew on these fixed identities in an attempt to trace a common origin for the Polichinelles.

The iconography challenges this vision of puppet booth theatre with striking details. Pulcinella, for instance, regarded today as an exclusively Neapolitan figure, performed in Venice, Rome and across Italy for several centuries. The costume of the French Polichinelle and the English Punch bears a closer resemblance to that of the northern European Fool than to the white dress of the Italian Pulcinella, who in terms of costume more closely recalls Pierrot, or Pierke.

The popularity of the Polichinelles is best understood through the ontological bond these performances hold with their audiences. Unlike the world of theatre proper, in which sweeping evolutions, movements and fashions are readily observed, puppet booth shows change little. They project popular figures into the role of protagonist, of everyday hero. The character should not be understood through the traits that depend primarily on the individual puppeteer, but as a hero co-constructed with the audience, and therefore with its time, always of the present.⁵³

Puppet booth shows must be analysed — and any account of them written — with an awareness not only of the gestures bound to words (even when those words are never set down in writing), but, as the draughtsmen and painters of the entire iconographic corpus seem to affirm, each in their own way, of all the constitutive elements of a performance: the audience, the venue, the booth, the showman, the puppets, and what remains invisible: the voice, the puppeteer, and the economics of the form. The iconography rejects the close-up because the close-up would lie: it would artificially isolate what exists only in relation to the space that contains it.

Three years of close study of this iconographic corpus have allowed us to understand, across societies from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century, the techniques and practices of these performances and the patterns of their geographical diffusion. This study attempts to convey what we have been able to observe through this process of iconographic gathering. The full body of material would merit more systematic and thorough scholarly study, to quantify with greater precision the variables and constants of these performances. The complete database, with the information pertaining to each image, is not yet finalised, but is already available to all those who wish to engage with this subject.

Appendices

A - Individual Image Analyses

• Image Analysis No. 1
• Image Analysis No. 2
• Image Analysis No. 3
• Image Analysis No. 4

B - Image Groupings

• Venice
• Naples
• Puppets and Bear-Leaders
• Puppets and Pickpockets
• Puppets and Animals

C - Out-of-Frame Images

• String Puppets
• Jigging Puppets
• Asian Examples
• The Transition to the “marionnette à gaine”

D - Exhibition Cartel

A - Individual Image Analyses

Image Analysis No. 1

This etching, by the Flemish artist Cornelis de Wael (1617–1667), shows a street scene in Rome, where the painter lived. The Roman setting is identifiable from the baroque architecture, a church and gateway visible in the background, and the Vatican coat of arms.

The composition falls into three distinct zones: in the foreground, the assembled audience; to the left, the castelet with its vaulted roof⁵⁴ ; beyond, the square opens out with its architecture and concurrent activities (stalls, passers-by, prayer). The puppet show is part of the broader economic life of the street, not set apart in a dedicated space.

The viewpoint allows the eye to take in at once the intimacy of the performance and its place in the life of the city. The castelet occupies only around 10% of the total picture surface; the social event outweighs the performance itself. The ground is bare earth with scattered stones. The audience stands in a dense group before the castelet; 25 spectators can be identified, among them 3 women and 4 children; 2 figures overlook the scene from above (probably on horseback, given their dress). Dress varies conspicuously: wide-brimmed hats (bourgeoisie), plainer hats (lower classes), civilian clothing, merchants and military figures (a sword is visible). All eyes are on the castelet, and some figures appear to be commenting on the action. Static postures suggest sustained attention. There is no movement within the crowd; it forms a compact, solid block. Social classes appear mixed.

The castelet has a standard vertical box-like structure; only the rounded roof is distinctive, protecting the stage from the elements. Estimated height: approximately 2.20 to 2.40 m. The structure is clearly light and elegant (fringes), suggesting a degree of professionalisation. The puppeteer operates above the spectators’ heads, invisible, concealed within the booth..

Two puppets are clearly visible above the playboard: a man wearing a plumed hat (unmasked) and a woman. They face each other, suggesting dialogue or confrontation. The puppets are small.

To the right of the castelet, a male figure holds a stick pointed at the puppets: the bonimenteur. Dressed in dark clothing, his bearing is one of direct address. Clearly distinguished from the crowd, he confirms his structural role in the show.

No musician is visible in this image.

Image Analysis No. 2

This engraving was made by Boetius A. Bolswert in Antwerp and published by Hendrik Aertssens in 1627 as an illustration for the book Duyfkens en Willemynkens pelgrimagie tot haren beminden binnen Iervsalem (The Pilgrimage of Duyfken and Willemynken to their Beloved in Jerusalem). The image illustrates a passage from the 1627 Flemish text.

During their pilgrimage, Willemynken stops before a puppet show. She is so entertained that «mijn ooghen tranen» (her eyes stream with laughter). Duyfken rebukes her: it is a waste of time; she ought to think of the heavenly joys that await them. But Willemynken asserts her right to pleasure: «den boogh en can soo altijdt niet ghespannen staen» (the bow cannot always remain drawn). She refuses a life devoid of joy and entertainment.

The vertical format follows the book’s layout. The image is organised into two registers: in the foreground, the castelet and its audience; in the background, a woman (Duyfken) waits at a distance. A peacock displaying its tail occupies the central left of the composition, an allegorical element tied to the pilgrimage narrative.

The castelet occupies roughly 25% of the picture surface. The tight framing creates a narrative closeness: the image aims to illustrate a moment from the literary text, not to document urban space..

Nineteen spectators are identifiable, among them at least three women and three children. Social diversity is suggested by the clothing, ranging from plain dress to modest bourgeois attire. Most gazes are directed towards the castelet. Willemynken, the principal character of the narrative, is absorbed by the show; a man addresses her. The structure of the castelet itself is not clearly identifiable: it may be a larger structure within which a castelet has been placed, or it may reflect artistic licence on the engraver’s part. No comparable castelet structures appear elsewhere in the iconography. The two visible puppets emerge from an opening sheltered by a canopy.

The puppet on the right wears a bell on either side of its hat, attributes characteristic of the medieval Fool. Facing it stands a female puppet dressed in an elaborate costume with pronounced false hips, typical of the bourgeois fashion of the period. The two figures are positioned face to face, suggesting dialogue or interaction. The medieval Fool is traditionally identified by his attributes: bells, donkey’s ears, hump, a two-coloured costume. The presence of these bells possibly identifies the character as belonging to this type. On the booth platform, a performer in full action, wearing a tall hat of the kind seen in Callot⁵⁵, gestures towards the puppets with one hand while turning to address the audience with the other.

Image Analysis No. 3

This etching was made by George Cruikshank in 1827 for the first edition of The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Punch and Judy. The version shown here is taken from the 1928 reprint by George Allen & Unwin Ltd.

A remarkable viewpoint: the image shows the booth from behind in the foreground, with the audience visible in the background watching the performance. The spectators’ faces appear above and behind the booth frame. This perspective lays bare the workings behind the show. Inside the booth, the puppeteer is visible. The booth stands on a raised structure, so the puppeteer operates from an elevated position rather than at ground level. On the inner sides, the puppets hang by their heads, forming a reserve of characters available for the show.

The puppeteer is operating Punch and Judy, who are visible in the upper opening of the booth, facing the audience.

A trumpet or brass instrument protrudes clearly from the side of the showman/bottler-musician.

Twelve to fifteen spectators are visible. The dress is varied: top hats marking the middle classes, caps worn by working-class onlookers, women in shawls, and children. Their faces are turned towards the performance, their gazes directed at the puppets. All maintain attentive postures. The bottler (collector) is visible on the right-hand side, wearing a top hat and a dark coat, facing the audience.

Image Analysis No. 4

This intaglio engraving was produced by Jacques-Philippe Le Bas after a drawing by Charles Parrocel in 1736. It depicts a Venetian fair with its street entertainments and characteristic architecture.

The image is organised into three zones: on the left, fairground structures with their performances; in the background, Venetian architecture with its bell tower; on the right, a further activity. The performance area occupies roughly 30% of the image surface on the left. The ground is bare earth. A dog is visible in the foreground.

On the left stands a two-storey fairground structure. On the upper level, a puppet booth with visible puppets. On the lower level, a fortune-teller and a barker. An audience of roughly thirty identifiable figures is gathered in front of the performing platform, mostly standing, with the exception of one spectator on horseback and a seated woman. Marked social diversity is apparent: elegant dress alongside working-class attire, women accompanied by children. Several distinct groups can be identified: spectators of the puppet booth at the centre and left, groups to the right near a stall and around a street hawker. The varied postures suggest movement and the flow of people through the space.

B - Image Groupings

Venice

Naples

Puppets and Bear-Leaders

Puppets and Pickpockets

Puppets and Animals

C - Out-of-Frame Images

String Puppet

This snuff box is one of the few pre-nineteenth-century images of string puppetry. In this image, the layout of the rooms where performances took place is clearly visible. It is a rare and valuable resource for anyone wishing to undertake similar iconographic research on string puppetry. The audience appears more affluent (admission was charged), and the scene includes two musicians, a singer, and four puppets, suggesting the presence of at least two puppeteers, a considerably larger company than the booth puppeteers discussed in this article.

Jigging Puppets

An example of jigging puppets.

Asian Examples

Chinese representations from the fourteenth century (Zhu Yu, «Street Scenes in Times of Peace») and from the eighteenth century (the album «Streets of Peking») show configurations with striking similarities to European performances: overhead manipulation, a vertical booth, a musician, a pair of characters, and a varied audience. The eighteenth-century Peking album notably depicts a protagonist-and-animal pairing which, in the European corpus, is not attested before the same period. These formal convergences, whether they stem from historical contact or from independent responses to similar constraints, would merit a dedicated comparative study that falls beyond the scope of this article.

Transition to the « marionnette à gaine »

An example of “gaine”: Kasper and his large puppets.

D- Exhibition Labels

(Translation in progress)

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Production : Compagnie UEUEUE

Exhibition curators: Anastasia Puppis & Léandre Simioni

Scientific committee: Cristina Grazioli, Anna Leone, Didier Plassard

Acknowledgements:

Egon Adel, Albert Bagno, Federica Anemarte, Eve Arachtingi, Bénédicte Auriault, Jean Bankofski, Gauthier Bazelles, Pierre Blaise, Delphine Bois, Anaïs Britton, Walter Broggini, Laurette Burgholzer, Massimo Cali, Philippe Casidanus, Cristina Cason, Claudia Contin Arlecchino, Fantine Devin, Iris Djedra, Veronika Door, Luca Fantinutti, Marie-Do Fréval, Stefano Giunchi, Rémi Gousse, Gabriel Hermand Priquet, Françoise Houtteman-Flabat, Joël Huthwohl, Madeleine Jacomet, Nathan Jeger-Madiot, Jérôme Krasnopolsky, Evelyne Lecucq, Bruno Leone, Richard Le Menn, Audrey Matel, Maurizio Montecchi, Emmanuel Naulleau, Gaspare Nasuto, Aurélie Oudin, Maurizio Pisani, Nadège Prugnard, Enzo Puppis, Manuel Reimann, Oliver Reimann, Renaud Robert, Paolo Saldari, Robin Summa, Melchior Simioni, Tommaso Simioni, Roberta Situlin, Maria Signorelli, Jean-Marie Songy, George Speaight, Caterina Vitiello, et toutes les personnes avec qui nous avons échangé pour préparer cette exposition sur le terrain à Aurillac, Avignon et Chalon-sur-Saône, ainsi que toutes les personnes du public qui ont échangé avec nous sur cette histoire et pratique.

Our thanks also to all the museums, archives, libraries and documentation centres whose collections made this research possible, and to all those who work within them (curators, archivists, librarians, registrars), to the photographers who produced the images, to the collectors, and to all lovers of puppetry.

Castelet construction: Paolo Saldari

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