at length visits the fugitive, but Punch lays about his skeleton carcase so lustily, and makes the bones of his antagonist rattle so musically with a bastinado, that "Death his death's blow then received." Last of all comes the Devil; first, under the appearance of a lovely female, but afterwards in his own natural shape, to drag the offender to the infernal regions, in purgatory to expiate his dreadful crimes. Even this attempt fails, and Punch is left triumphant over Doctors, Death, and the Devil. The curtain falls amid the shouts of the Conqueror, who on his victorious staff lifts on high his vanquished foe."
We do not see, exactly, how the whole of such a plot could have been made out in a puppet show, and we cannot avoid thinking, that this critic, like many others, has here found out "meanings never meant," and which could never have entered the head of any ordinary exhibitor.[1] With the exception of the skeleton, all the other characters are familiar; and only supposing that the writer has a little disturbed the ordinary course of the events, for his own purpose of making out "more than meets the ear" in an allegory, the whole is very easily explained and understood.
The disregard of the unities of Time and Place is common to all the exhibitions of Punch we ever saw or have heard of, in this or any other country; and it may be the boast of Italy, that, while her regular drama wore these burdensome and useless fetters, under the patronage of the higher classes and the learned, they were thrown off in her commedie à soggetto, under the patronage of the lower classes and the unlearned. It is not to be supposed, however, that in Italy the impromptu comedies- ↑ Casti, in his tale "La Pace di Pasquale," (Nov. 43, vol. 3, Edition 1804,) mentions a friar who had per le buffonerie raro talento, and who was able, especially, fare a maraviglia il Pulcinella. Mr. D'Israeli also speaks of "a philosopher and a man of fortune," of his acquaintance, who delighted in performing "Punchinello's little comedy." We know several instances of fathers, who, for the amusement of their families, go through the part of the puppet-show man. These individuals might have sufficient invention for such a fable, but still it would not be easy to represent it intelligibly by puppets.
