Toby

Toby.
1. The dog of the Punch and Judy show, who is a purely English character, like Clown, having no connection with the commedia dell'arte or the harlequinade. The name seems to have come into use with the introduction of a live dog somewhere between 1820 and 1850, either because the first dog to be employed was already so called, or from association with the biblical Tobias, a favourite subject for a puppet-play, in which Tobias and the angel were accompanied by a dog. Toby is usually a small, quick-witted mongrel terrier. Wearing a ruff round his neck, he sits on the sill of the puppet-booth window and takes no part in the action, unless Punch pets him or, alternatively, urges him to bite the other characters. After the show he goes round among the audience, with whom he is a firm favourite, collecting pennies in a little bag which he holds in his mouth.

2. A stock character in the folk theatre of the United States, who represents the country bumpkin triumphing over the ‘city slickers’. Deriving from a mixture of the commedia dell'arte, the Shakespearian clown, the conventional stage ‘silly boy’, and the Yankee comedian, he has a freckled face with a blacked-out front tooth, and wears a rumpled red wig, battered hat, calico shirt, baggy jeans, and large ill-fitting boots or shoes. He first emerged in the 1900s, and Frederick R. Wilson from Horace Murphy's Comedians was the first of a long line of actors to specialize in Toby roles, which include generous use of the topical ‘ad-lib’, and of such theatrical gymnastics as the pratfall, glides, splits, and rubber-legs. It is traditional in revivals of Uncle Tom's Cabin for the Toby-comedian of the troupe to don blackface and a gunnysack costume to impersonate Topsy. Toby sometimes has a feminine counterpart named Susie. Although there are still a number of small-time Toby shows in remote areas, the last of any importance closed in Wapello, Iowa, in 1962, after nearly 50 years under the same managers.