I always hold up the wooden actors as instructive object-lessons to our flesh-and-blood players. The wooden ones, though stiff and continually glaring at you with the same overcharged expression, yet move you as only the most experienced living actors can. What really affects us in the theatre is not the muscular activities of the performers but the feelings they awaken in us by their aspect; for the imagination of the spectator plays a far greater part there than the exertions of the actors. The puppet is the actor in primitive form. Its symbolic costume, from which all realistic and historically correct impertinences are banished, its unchanging star, petrified (or rather lignified) in a grimace expressive to the highest degree attainable by the carver's art, the mimicry by which it suggests human gesture in unearthly caricature – these give to its performance an intensity to which few actors can pretend, an intensity which imposes on our imagination like those images in immovable hieratic attitudes on the stained glass of Chartres Cathedral, in which the gaping tourists seem like lifeless dolls moving jerkily in the draughts from the doors, reduced to sawdusty insignificance by the contrast with the gigantic vitality in the windows overhead.

-George Bernard Shaw

As soon as a child occupies itself with a doll and acts out its own little scenarios, it is poetically and dramatically portraying that scene. The child puts itself in the place of the doll and is both the artist and audience at the same time. Herein lies the basis of all theatre and the puppet show in particular and is in itself a prime example of the universal originality of imagination. One could argue that the invention of the stocking or crude bag was at the same time the genesis of glove puppets, for as any parent will tell you, socks make very handy distractions when used as a glove puppet.

Richard Pischel in The Home of the Puppet Play (1902) seeks the origins of the puppet show in India and from there through Persia to Europe. This is an extremely unlikely hypothesis not only because of the simplicity of the puppet theatre in its simplest forms but also because we have evidence that puppets were commonly known of in Athens in 421BC. One of the first recorded mentions of puppets is from the "Symposium of Xenophon" which describes a dinner party. A man from Syracuse was hired to put on entertainments for the guests and although no puppetry was performed, when asked by Socrates what he was most proud of, the Syracusan replied "Fools, in faith. For they give me a livelihood by coming to view my puppets." Even if the showman was metaphorically referring to his artistes, this still shows that puppets were a common entertainment at this time.In Deipnosophists, Ahtenaeos reproaches the people of Athens because they handed over the theatre of Dionysos to the puppets of Potheimos and took more delight in these than in the plays of Euripides.

Marcus Aurelius also mentions puppets; he, like Horace, makes a comparison between the puppets strings and manÕs free will.

The Indian Mahabharata also mentions the string-controlled marionettes, and compares their servile condition to human beings. In the tenth century AD, Rajah Sekhara has two moveable puppets in one of his dramas

There are very few direct references to puppets or puppet theatres and of those, most are inferences that we take from the context of the writer. Nothing is written about what sort of puppets were used but much can be learned from the metaphors used and indeed the nouns used for puppeteers. The Greek for a puppet showman is neuropastes and in India, Sutradhara which both mean string-puller. It is probably safe to assume that string-controlled marionettes were known and used by these cultures but as I show later on, the earliest illustrations and direct references are to glove or hand puppets.

It can therefore be inferred from passages by Chaucer: "He in the waist is shaped as well as I; This were a popet in an arm to embrace for any woman small and fair of face" and comments like LutherÕs calling the Papacy a "public puppet show" and his referring to the Vatican as "the holy puppets" that puppetry was common enough to be an obvious metaphor from the middle ages through to the sixteenth century and, of course, beyond.

The earliest known illustrations of the puppet theatre appear in Li Romans du Bon Roi Alixandre (The Romance of Alexander) which was written in 1338 and illuminated by Jehan de Grise in 1344 (to be found in the Bodleian Library, Oxford). These consist of two miniatures, both showing a puppet booth. These have a rounded roof (?) or backcloth showing a rainbow and a plain front cloth. Both pictures show, at the two front corners of the booth, crenellated turrets, projecting slightly forward in one, this extends right across the stage to connect the two turrets. There is no other indication of scenery.

The first picture shows three women (girls?) watching a show with two puppets, one male the other female and the male is holding a club. Some scholars have tried to connect this with Punch and Judy but there is little else to back this theory up and Punch doesnÕt appear anywhere in Europe before the late seventeenth century.

The second miniature shows four men watching a show where two soldier puppets are hitting each other with swords and two more are looking on. This would indicate that there are two puppet controllers in order to manipulate four puppets. Whilst an invaluable reference piece, it must be noted that these are still only miniature illuminations (no reference to them is made in the text) and not a very clear source.

It is likely the puppet shows that travelled from fair to fair and were fully portable would have been glove puppet shows and indeed in Hugo von Trinbergs poem Der Renner (1300AD) he relates that the jugglers used to bring small puppets from under their cloaks. These were undoubtedly glove puppets.

Writing in the mid-sixteenth century, Gerolamo Cardano describes a marionette show where the puppets were able to "fight, hunt, dance, play at dice, blow the trumpet and perform most artistically the part of the cook." Nearly a hundred years later a learned Jesuit, Francesco Saverio Quadrio writes at some length about the marionette theatres that he has seen. He also refers to the glove puppets that commonly performed in the piazzas and on the crossroads of Italy, with their rounded figures fitting into the tips of the fingers of a man concealed in a castello. It is these that he says were the most popular and usual puppet of his day. So we can see that both marionettes and glove puppet shows were well known by the medieval, renaissance and reformation audiences.

George Speaight, in his History of the English Puppet Theatre, speculates that it is in times and areas of social stability that the more static marionette theatres are found. Whereas in times of social unrest and in the areas (and indeed classes) less able to support a more permanent structure the predominant style was that of the glove puppet show.

By the late sixteenth century when the likes of Marlowe, Shakespeare, Nash, Greene and Jonson are writing about the many different facets of society, we find that there are more and more references to puppets and puppet theatre. Indeed, Ben Jonson in Bartholemew Fair (1614) includes the puppet play of Hero and Leander and we can glean many facts about puppetry in this period. The puppet show is in a small room where a penny is the usual charge for those wishing to enter, and the puppets themselves are glove puppets. The showman (Leatherhead) stands in front of the stage and partly narrates and partly interacts with the puppets. The plot of the puppet play is a ridiculous mixture of two classical legends that were well known to the Elizabethans. The point of the joke is the transplanting of these legends into a setting of low life seventeenth century London. There are some hints however, that suggest that it was written some fifteen years earlier, perhaps for the real puppet stage.

It wasnt just the lower echelons of society that enjoyed the puppet "motions". In 1561 Lady Katherine, Duchess of Suffolk recorded in her household accounts the payment of 6s 8d. to "two men who played upon the puppets." The magistrates in Bridport had occasion to evict from the county, a troupe of players who "wander up and down the country with blasphemous shows and sights which they exercise by means of puppet-playing, not only by day but late in the night. . . so that the townsmen cannot keep their children and servants in their houses."

Shakespeare writes in Two Gentlemen of Verona "O excellent motion! O exceeding puppet! Now he will interpret her." A "motion" being the Elizabethan term for a puppet or puppet play, although the term was very loosely applied and would also include automata, toys and peepshows. In 1573 the Privy Council requested the Lord Mayor of London to permit "certain Italian players to make show of an instrument of strange motions." In this case it is difficult to tell whether this was a show consisting of a mechanical device or a puppet show, but without doubt the vast majority of "motions" were indeed puppets.

We find records for puppet showmen right across the country and these motion men joined the great army of vagrants who were milling across Britain at this time. The old charity of the monasteries was gone and the people of the countryside were terrified at the prospect of swarming bands of rogues descending upon them. The result of this being the Elizabethan Vagrancy Acts. These were chiefly aimed at the thieves and beggars, but every kind of travelling entertainer was a potential vagabond. In order to avoid the sometimes, horrific punishments carried out there was an attempt by many of these companies to gain (or claim) noble patronage. This trend however, never became general and its function was taken over by the Master of the Revels, who was authorised to grant a licence to all travellers presenting "any play, show, motion, feats of activity and sights whatsoever," and the possessors were enabled to escape the Vagrancy Laws.

These licences became so valuable that they were sold from one company to another. A case in Banbury (1633) involved an actor who had obtained a "Commission from the Master of the Revels" hired it to two men who "went with it with a puppet-play until they had spent all"; they then pawned the commission for four shillings; another actor finally redeemed it for twenty shillings down, and either ten or twenty pounds to follow. When they could not be obtained honestly or bought second-hand these licences were often forged. In Worcester (1630) a man was tried for showing a "motion with divers stories in it" with a forged licence.

On arrival in a new town the players first duty was to present himself with his licence at the town hall and obtain permission to perform. It was often the custom for the showman to perform for the mayor and aldermen and receive such payment, as they thought proper, before setting up his show in an inn or street pitch. The usual amount to be paid was between ten and twelve shillings, sometimes dropping to as low as 2s 4d, one instance was much higher (Gloucester paid Her Majesties Puppet Players 22s) and in one case (Dover) the puppet player was paid 1 shilling to go away without performing! As there are no direct references to permanent puppet theatres in England at this time, but many accounts of puppets being well-known enough for popular metaphors to be commonly employed, it is fair to assume that most puppet players were itinerant and their stages and equipment portable enough to carry. However, we can only make an educated guess as to how they were constructed and what they looked like. In a watercolour by Marcellus Laroon the Elder (c.1690) we see a very crude puppet show as the backdrop for his Mountebank (see above).

Whilst no such building as a puppet theatre existed the puppet shows were presented in these temporary booths in hired rooms at fairs, inns and on busy street corners. Sir William Davenants poem The Long Vacation in London where he is describing the popular entertainers of the town, gives us an intriguing glimpse at how these booths were constructed:

And man in chimney hid to dress
Puppet that acts our old Queen Bess
And man that while the puppets play,
Through nose expoundeth what they say. . .

When he describes them as a "chimney" he is referring to a long narrow booth with no top or canopy. So unlike todays Punch and Judy where the puppet master has his head behind a screen and the puppets in front of him, the glove puppets are held above the showmans head for the duration of their scene.

Before the seventeenth century when paper was cheap enough for papier-mache to be used as a medium the puppets heads were carved from wood with bodies made from cheap coarse stuff usually linen or wool.

In September 1642 the outbreak of civil war allowed the puritans to close down the theatres. In 1647 when the fighting was over, severe laws were passed ensuring that they remained so. But despite these measures, the lowly puppet plays continued unhindered. Whether it was because they were considered to base for legal interdiction or that they were considered to be harmless, or that they were not considered at all we cannot tell. Only that the puppet show continued where its more illustrious cousin, the theatre, was harshly put down.

After the restoration many foreign imports were seen on the stages of Britain, and amongst these there came the character Pulcinello. He rose very quickly as the new star of the puppet stage and transformed into the Punch we know today. His story and that of the puppet theatre afterward are ultimately entwined, and there are many books and sources that cover this far better than I could do here. For more information there is a complete bibliography on our links page.