Read Online The Transfiguration of Mister Punch by Mark Beech, Charles Schneider, D P Watt, Cate Gardner - Free Book Online
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spoiling the performance. It’s the march of hintellect wot’s a doing all this—it is sir.”
A Punch and Judy showman of the eighteen-fifties
Sometimes a ferocious crocodile, replete with loudly snapping red mouth, appears and devours ‘old Red-Nose.’ Punch almost stands in rags. His killing-stick is really the Staff of Priapus. He stands upon a crocodile, ‘like Hoor-pa-Kraat... beyond by-coming...’ He may as well have a wine-skin, so linked is this rebel to Bacchus and Dionesiac frenzy of life and death. The popular stock reptilian character began a modern revival, or unlikely beginning, as a dragon, in the eighteen-sixties. Punch enjoyed his role in a St. George parody. Soon, the dragon was replaced by the ancient crocodile symbol, who stuck. Audiences of all ages loved the klackety-klack of the snapping wooden jaws so threatening, it makes the heart race! The deeper meaning of this will be left to the initiate to appreciate. As the course, adult shows of well over two-hundred years gave way to more children’s-oriented parlour playlets, so have both the overt and secret meanings of the drama been submerged, crossed-out, shelved. It is easy to write Punch and Judy off as harmless, knockabout ‘slapstick’ with no deeper meanings, yet these same meanings insist on revealing themselves, despite our sober resistance. Here he is as the Three Stooges, as every pie in face and poke in eye and fall on arse. He hurts others for us because we are not supposed to. They die over and over so that we can live, over and over, in one lifetime.
Could that crocodile be a terrifying manifestation of Judy, as is the ghost character? One of Punch’s greatest eternal struggles is that of banishing his victims from his conscience. The impossible spirit to exorcise is that of Judy. She returns over and over to snap at him, to goad him, to make him scream. Now she is a skeleton. Now a reptilian thing with a massive maw ringed with slavering teeth. And now, could it be that the devil, whom Punch destroys, is also a fiendish embodiment of his late, lamented woman?
Who is Playing Whom?
The last realization is that Mr. Punch is who he is for a reason. We need not attempt modern analytical methods to look him in his gleaming, manic eyes and see ourselves. We have been kept in shadows, we have been told we could not do it. So we got angry, and became scary and our loved ones looked at us with dismay and horror. We have watched others share beauty and laughter, while we suffered. When will it be our turn to wear the gayly coloured cap, the scarlet and yellow and the big buttons? When will it be our turn to sing:
Oh! I do like to be beside the seaside
I do like to be beside the sea!
I do like to stroll upon the Prom, Prom, Prom!
We crossed the River Styx so many times that we heard the Yawn of Charon. We were destroyed as children, found birth and death in our Mothers, our loves, our Judy’s. We were corralled and bullied, told where to go and how to be before we were formed, before our branches could be carved. The chemicals in Mr. Punch’s brain were formed differently at his inception. Something dreadful happened to him that tore him asunder, crushed his innocence, made him long to be the star of his own show. The father of a family. He found it all too much to handle.
When the pressure is on, and you stand on centre stage, you best have resolved some of your past. Punch never will. His past is our future and it can hurt and be joyous at the same time. In the end he remains isolated, alone with his hump, hooked nose and frozen grin. The beady, blue eyes never blink. To blink would be to bring down the curtain for an instant. This would risk losing his audience. The stage curtain might shut by human claw, but the curtain of Mr. Punch’s vision remains open until the final curtain blacks out the stars.
Punch’s story is our own, veiled in slapstick, heightened pretend violence. He tries to love and tend but fails and kills
A Punch and Judy showman of the eighteen-fifties
Sometimes a ferocious crocodile, replete with loudly snapping red mouth, appears and devours ‘old Red-Nose.’ Punch almost stands in rags. His killing-stick is really the Staff of Priapus. He stands upon a crocodile, ‘like Hoor-pa-Kraat... beyond by-coming...’ He may as well have a wine-skin, so linked is this rebel to Bacchus and Dionesiac frenzy of life and death. The popular stock reptilian character began a modern revival, or unlikely beginning, as a dragon, in the eighteen-sixties. Punch enjoyed his role in a St. George parody. Soon, the dragon was replaced by the ancient crocodile symbol, who stuck. Audiences of all ages loved the klackety-klack of the snapping wooden jaws so threatening, it makes the heart race! The deeper meaning of this will be left to the initiate to appreciate. As the course, adult shows of well over two-hundred years gave way to more children’s-oriented parlour playlets, so have both the overt and secret meanings of the drama been submerged, crossed-out, shelved. It is easy to write Punch and Judy off as harmless, knockabout ‘slapstick’ with no deeper meanings, yet these same meanings insist on revealing themselves, despite our sober resistance. Here he is as the Three Stooges, as every pie in face and poke in eye and fall on arse. He hurts others for us because we are not supposed to. They die over and over so that we can live, over and over, in one lifetime.
Could that crocodile be a terrifying manifestation of Judy, as is the ghost character? One of Punch’s greatest eternal struggles is that of banishing his victims from his conscience. The impossible spirit to exorcise is that of Judy. She returns over and over to snap at him, to goad him, to make him scream. Now she is a skeleton. Now a reptilian thing with a massive maw ringed with slavering teeth. And now, could it be that the devil, whom Punch destroys, is also a fiendish embodiment of his late, lamented woman?
Who is Playing Whom?
The last realization is that Mr. Punch is who he is for a reason. We need not attempt modern analytical methods to look him in his gleaming, manic eyes and see ourselves. We have been kept in shadows, we have been told we could not do it. So we got angry, and became scary and our loved ones looked at us with dismay and horror. We have watched others share beauty and laughter, while we suffered. When will it be our turn to wear the gayly coloured cap, the scarlet and yellow and the big buttons? When will it be our turn to sing:
Oh! I do like to be beside the seaside
I do like to be beside the sea!
I do like to stroll upon the Prom, Prom, Prom!
We crossed the River Styx so many times that we heard the Yawn of Charon. We were destroyed as children, found birth and death in our Mothers, our loves, our Judy’s. We were corralled and bullied, told where to go and how to be before we were formed, before our branches could be carved. The chemicals in Mr. Punch’s brain were formed differently at his inception. Something dreadful happened to him that tore him asunder, crushed his innocence, made him long to be the star of his own show. The father of a family. He found it all too much to handle.
When the pressure is on, and you stand on centre stage, you best have resolved some of your past. Punch never will. His past is our future and it can hurt and be joyous at the same time. In the end he remains isolated, alone with his hump, hooked nose and frozen grin. The beady, blue eyes never blink. To blink would be to bring down the curtain for an instant. This would risk losing his audience. The stage curtain might shut by human claw, but the curtain of Mr. Punch’s vision remains open until the final curtain blacks out the stars.
Punch’s story is our own, veiled in slapstick, heightened pretend violence. He tries to love and tend but fails and kills
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