True performers of Punch & Judy are called Professors. It is a tradition that when a Punch & Judy Professor dies, his puppets are burned or buried with him. Of course there are a lot of people that have bought or made a Punch & Judy puppet set, that are not true Professors, just as there are many people that buy a few magic tricks and call themselves magicians.
People claim Punch & Judy to be British. In a way this is true, but its origins are in Italy in the 1500s. Punch was taken to England in 1688 by an Italian puppeteer. He was at that time a marionette or string puppet. He soon changed into a glove puppet and met up with his wife Judy. The play and characters have remained the same since then. The stories being passed down father to son over the years, They can still been seen & heard today almost word for word as they would have been hundreds of years ago.
Punch is a bad tempered ugly brute with a big nose a hump back, and of course his famous stick, which he used to beat & kill every one from his wife & baby, the policeman & the doctor to name a few. He even manages to hang the hangman Jack Ketch on his own gallows. He is what is known as a loveable rogue. The kids all love him and to put it mildly he gets away with murder. He gets his come-uppence in the end from the crocodile.
The Professor uses what is known as a swazzle to produce the squeaky voice that he is renowned for. You only have to hear the word “That's the way to do it" being shouted out using a swazzle, and there can be no doubt that somewhere close at hand, Punch & Judy are entertaining another generation of kids. You will hear Punch shouting out “Oh! No I didn't" and the kids responding “Oh, yes you did" over and over again.
In today's society of course he is very much politically incorrect, but it would be like trying to change Shakespeare to change the story or characters of Punch & Judy. I have made a few changes, not so much to the story line, but I do not have him kill anyone only chases then off using his stick. With his baby instead of him whacking the baby because it was crying, then throwing the body out the window, I have him rocking the baby in his arms trying to stop it crying, then he accidentally drops the baby out of the window, having it land on a trampoline. As the baby keeps bouncing up into view he is trying to catch it before his wife Judy returns. At that moment she comes back from shopping for his sausages, she asked where the baby is, he tells her it has been put to bed, she does not believe him, so asks the children where it is. They of course tell her that he dropped it out of the window. This of course starts another lot of “Oh! no I didn't" with the response of “Oh! yes you did" from the kids. As she is looking out the window for the baby, he gives her a smack on her bottom with his stick, knocking her out the window. Now there is her and the baby bouncing up and down, with her shouting she is going to call a policeman. And so it goes on, we use the policeman to give an anti-violence message as do several other characters in the play. This way we can stick to the true story line, but turn it into an anti-violence play, so keep everyone happy.
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