puppet

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Puppet, inanimate figure controlled by human agency, which can be larger than life or only a few inches high. It is probably as old as the theatre itself, and it is possible that many of the wonder-working idols of pagan times were in effect immense puppets controlled by their officiating priests; but in its modern sense a puppet is a semblance of a creature—man, bird, beast, fish—given movement and the appearance of life by direct human assistance.

There are several different kinds of puppet, among them the hand- or glove-puppet, the rod-puppet, the marionette, all of which are rounded figures, and the flat puppets of the shadow-show and the toy theatre. Because of the popularity of the Punch and Judy show the hand-puppet is the best known in England. The successful hand-puppet play—or motion, as it was called in England—concentrates on broad, simple effects, humorous dialogue, and knockabout comedy. Many of the popular national puppet characters are hand-puppets, carried across Europe by wandering showmen. Apart from the English Punch there is the French Guignol, a generous, bibulous, and witty Lyonnais silk-weaver; the German Kasperle, a slyly astute peasant; the Russian Petrushka; and the Italian Pulcinella, the father of them all. There are hand-puppets in China not very dissimilar from the European types; in India, where they were once very common, they survive mainly in Kerala.

An extension of the hand-puppet, still to be found in India, is the rod-puppet, a full-length rounded figure supported and controlled from below. Its movements are comparatively slow and limited, but the control is absolute, and broad gestures of rare beauty with the arms can be obtained. The most famous and beautiful rod-puppets are found in Java. Some striking effects with rod-puppets were achieved in Vienna, where the stage was seen through a convex lens which enlarged the figures, lending them an aura of enchantment and mystery. The simplest from of rod-puppet is the Fool's marot or bauble, a replica of his own head with its cap and bells, fastened to a stick. The Bread and Puppet Theatre in New York, a radical political protest group founded in the 1960s, used giant puppets manipulated by both internal and external operators with rods sometimes as long as 30 feet; they were effectively used in street theatre.

The most elaborate form of puppet is probably the string puppet or marionette, originally controlled from above by rods or wires running to the centre of the head and to each limb, as in the Sicilian puppets used in productions of Ariosto's Orlando furioso. Between 1770 and 1870 they were entirely manipulated by strings, thus allowing far more flexibility in limb and head movements. A standard marionette has a string to each leg and arm, two to the head, one to each shoulder (which take the weight of the body), and one to the back—nine strings (actually fine threads) in all. An elaborate figure can have two or three times this number. All the strings are gathered together on a wooden ‘crutch’ or control, held in one hand by the manipulator, while with the other he plucks at whatever strings are required. The figures vary in size from 12 to 18 inches for home use and up to 2 or 3 feet for public performances. The bunraku puppets of Japan, seen in London in 1968 during the World Theatre Season, are about two-thirds life-size. They are sometimes strung like marionettes, but more often manipulated by as many as three operators to each figure, working in full view of the audience, and controlling their charges by means of wires and levers in their backs. Indian string puppets, now mostly used for the Tamil ‘dance of the dolls’, are manipulated somewhat differently.

The Italian Fantoccini puppets, who appeared in London at the Restoration, and the Puppet Theatre in the Piazza in Covent Garden between 1710 and 1713, were all marionettes, as were those used by Samuel Foote for satirical purposes in 1733, and by Charles Dibdin, who erected a puppet theatre at Exeter in 1775. The fortunes of the marionette then waned, but there was a revival of interest in the early 20th century, fostered by Gordon Craig with his emphasis on the actor's role as an ‘Über-marionette’. This led to an artistic flowering which bore fruit in the work of such groups as the Hogarth Puppets and John Wright's marionettes at the Little Angel Theatre in Islington. But in spite of the foundation in 1925 of a British Puppet and Model Theatre Guild, puppets in England have a limited appeal and are often thought of only as educational. In the United States, where there was no tradition of puppetry, they were also slow to establish themselves, and still attract only a minority audience. The true home of the puppet-theatre is the Far East and Eastern Europe, where it covers everything from elementary education in backward areas to sophisticated cabaret shows in the big cities.

puppet A figure, usually human or animal, moved by human agency, used in a theatrical show. Puppets are thus to be distinguished from dolls, clockwork automata, and other toys. They come in several varieties: glove or hand puppets are hollow bodies, usually made of cloth, into which the performer inserts a hand, with the fingers and thumb manipulating the usually wooden head and hands; marionettes are full-length figures moved from above by strings or wires; rod puppets are large, and manipulated by rods to the head and hands; shadow puppets, common in Java, Bali, and Thailand, are flat figures held between a light and a translucent screen. There are many other less familiar types, for instance living marionettes; bodies attached to the actual head of the performer, with either legs or arms manipulated by rods from behind; and ‘held’ puppets — figures carried about by one or several operators, like the characters in Japanese Bunraku theatre.

The origins of puppetry lie with ritual magic. Puppet theatre has featured in almost all civilizations. In Europe there are written records of it from the fifth century bc, and puppets certainly figured in the repertoire of medieval jongleurs. In sixteenth-century Italy they were closely linked with the characters of the commedia dell'arte, though in England they played mainly folk stories and popular Old Testament stories. The introduction of Punch into England in the seventeenth century united these two traditions. Puppet theatre has customarily been a form of folk theatre, often featuring a comic character, such as Petroushka in Russia or Pulcinella in Naples.

Occasionally, however, puppet theatre has become a fashionable, élite entertainment. In the eighteenth century, various operas were composed for puppets; Alessandro Scarlatti wrote works for Cardinal Ottoboni's theatre in Rome, as did Joseph Haydn for Count Esterhazy. The puppet theatre occasionally provided a fine vehicle for parody, as in early Hanoverian England, when Powell's Covent Garden theatre attained celebrity by sending up the vogue for Italian opera, and Henry Fielding, Samuel Foote, and other comic writers presented puppet shows to burlesque contemporary fashions.

In the nineteenth century, various artists and writers sought to turn the puppet theatre into a serious medium. In Germany, an essay by Heinrich von Kleist, written in 1810, was a forerunner of this move; in France, George and Maurice Sand directed a home puppet theatre in the 1860s that inspired many imitators; in Belgium in the 1890s, Maurice Maeterlinck wrote symbolist plays to be performed by marionettes; in England in 1907, Gordon Craig hailed the übermarionette as the ideal actor. Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi (1888), originally written for puppets, has been viewed as a precursor of the theatre of the absurd. In the 1920s the German Lotte Reiniger exploited film techniques to produce remarkable silhouette shows based on shadow figures. In Communist Eastern Europe, state subsidies led to work of great technical accomplishment and artistic sophistication. This highbrow interest, however, has been rather limited, and, for the public at large, puppets in modern culture have typically been regarded as children's entertainment — notably the Punch and Judy show.

Recent years have seen revived use of puppets for political satire, as in the British television show Spitting Image. Puppets have also served as an educational medium in the American TV programme Sesame Street and they are employed in child psychiatry as surrogate figures.

Roy Porter

Bibliography

Speaight, G. (1955). The history of the English puppet theatre. G. G. Harrap, London.
Baird, B. (1965). The art of the puppet. Macmillan, New York.

puppet human or animal figure, generally of a small size and performing on a miniature stage, manipulated by an unseen operator who usually speaks the dialogue. A distinction is made between marionettes, moved by strings or wires from above, and hand puppets, in which the hand of the operator is concealed in the costume of the doll. Popular forms of the puppet show include the Punch and Judy shows of England and the Guignol in France. Puppet theaters have been established in the Americas; old epic dramas, often based on the Chanson de Roland and other medieval and modern pieces, have drawn crowded houses. The Greeks of the 5th cent. BC were familiar with it; in Java, China, and Japan it is almost immemorial; in the Europe of the Middle Ages it was the most popular form of entertainment for the masses; and it is a constituent in many folk cultures.

From the end of the 16th cent. to the end of the 18th, puppet or marionette shows, sometimes called motions, reached the summit of their vogue on the Continent and in England. During Puritan times in England they flourished after the theaters were prohibited. On the Continent great writers such as Goethe and major composers including Mozart and Haydn wrote for them. Avant-garde theater, such as Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi (1896), used puppets in reaction against naturalistic conventions; Manuel de Falla composed a puppet opera, El Retablo de Maese Pedro (1926). In 18th-century Japan the most celebrated dramatists wrote plays for the bunraku, or puppet theater. Nonetheless, puppets have primarily been used in popular entertainment.

Puppets have enjoyed something of a renaissance in late 20th-century America. For instance, during the 1950s in the United States, Burr Tilstrom's hand-puppet show Kukla, Fran, and Ollie was a popular television series. In the 1960s, Jim Henson created a group of madcap educational and entertaining puppets, known as Muppets, that appeared in the television series Sesame Street and their own feature films. During the Vietnam War and after, the Bread and Puppet Theatre utilized larger-than-life puppets in their political theater pieces. At the end of the 20th cent. and the beginning of the 21st a new generation of creative puppeteers, including Roman Paska, Julie Taymor, and Basil Twist, were producing a variety of innovative new works and updated classics.

The art of ventriloquism (making the voice appear to come from a source other than the speaker) has also been associated with the puppet. The manipulator, in full view, converses with the "dummy," a large doll usually held in the lap of the manipulator. The dummy's words appear to issue from its own mouth. Skillful ventriloquists are able to speak the doll's words without moving their lips and to "throw" their voices so that their dummies appears to speak.

Bibliography: See S. Bemegal, Puppet Theatre around the World (1961); P. Fraser, Puppets and Puppetry (1972); G. Speaight, The History of the Puppet Theatre (2d ed. 1990); E. Blumenthal, Puppetry: A World History (2005).

pup·pet / ˈpəpət/ • n. a movable model of a person or animal that is used in entertainment and is typically moved either by strings controlled from above or by a hand inside it. ∎ fig. a person, party, or state under the control of another person, group, or power: the new Shah began his reign as an Anglo-Soviet puppet. DERIVATIVES: pup·pet·ry / -trē/ n.

puppet † doll; (human) figure jointed and moving on strings or wires XVI; lathe-head XVII. Earlier in deriv. puppetry; var. of POPPET.

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