PUPPET, a name (derived from the Lat. pupas, a child or boy, Fr, poupee, a doll) signifying a childlike image. The Italic funtoccini (from fantino, a child), and the French marionettes (q.v.) are other names for puppets. Puppet-plays, or exhibitions in which the parts of the different characters are taken by miniature figures worked by wires, while the dialogue is given by persons behind the scenes, are of very ancient date. Figures with movable limbs have been found in the tombs of ancient Egypt and Etruria: Originally intended to gratify children, they ended in being a diversion for adults. In China and India they are still made to act dramas either as movable figures or as shadows behind a curtain ("ombres chinoises"). In Italy and France puppet-plays were at one time carried to a considerable degree of artistic perfection, and'even Lessing and Goethe in Germany thought the subject worth their serious attention. In England they are mentioned under the name of motions by many of our early authors, and frequent allu sions occur to them in the plays of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and the older dramatists. The earliest exhibitions of this kind consisted of representations of stories taken from the Old and New Testament, or from the lives and legends of saints. They thugs seem to have been the last remnant of the moralities of the 15th century. We learn from Bea Jouson and his contemporaries that the most popular of these exhibitions at that time were the Proligal Son, and _Nineveh with Jonas and the Whale. Even the Puritans, with
all their hatred of the regular stage, did not object to be present at such representation:. In the reign of queen Elizabeth, puppet-plays were exhibited in Fleet street and Holborn bridge—localities infested by them at the period of the restoration. The most noted exhibitions of the kind were those of Robert Powell in the beginning of the 18th century. (See Chambers's Book of Days, vol. ii. 167.) So recently as the time of Goldsmith, scrip tural " motions" were common, and, in She Stoops to Conquer, reference is made to the display of Solomon's temple in one of these shows. The regular performances of the stage were also sometimes imitated; and Dr. Samuel Johnson has observed that puppets were so capable of representing even the plays of Shakespeare, that Macbeth might be represented by them as well as by living actors. These exhibitions, however, much degenerated, and latterly consisted of a wretched display of wooden figures barbarously formed, and decorated without the least degree of taste or propriety, while the dialogues were jumbles of absurdities and nonsense.
The mechanism of puppet-plays is simple. The exhibitor is concealed above or below the stage, works the figures by means of wires, and delivers the dialogues requisite to pass between the characters. The exhibition. of Punch (q.v.) is perhaps the only example of this species of acting which exists in this country at the present time.