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1. 1. Errors
1. 1.1. Using Errors
2. 1.2. Capturing Errors by their subtypes
3. 1.3. Throwing useful errors
4. 1.4. Throwing custom errors
5. 1.5. Handling JSON parsing errors
2. 2. Working with HTML
1. 2.1. Accessing a Given Element and Finding Its
Parent and Child Elements
2. 2.2. Traversing the Results from querySelectorAll()
with forEach()
3. 2.3. Adding Up Values in an HTML Table
4. 2.4. Problem
5. 2.5. Finding All Elements That Share an Attribute
6. 2.6. Accessing All Images in a Page
7. 2.7. Discovering All Images in Articles Using the
Selectors API
8. 2.8. Setting an Element’s Style Attribute
9. 2.9. Inserting a New Paragraph
 JavaScript Cookbook
THIRD EDITION

With Early Release ebooks, you get books in their earliest form—the author’s
raw and unedited content as they write—so you can take advantage of these
technologies long before the official release of these titles.

John Paxton, Adam D. Scott, and Shelley Powers

JavaScript Cookbook, 3E

By John Paxton, Adam D. Scott, and Shelley Powers

Copyright © 2021 John Paxton, Adam Scot, Shelley Powers. All

rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway

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O’Reilly books may be purchased for educational, business, or

sales promotional use. Online editions are also available for
most titles (http://oreilly.com). For more information, contact
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Editors: Simon St. Laurent and Brian MacDonald

Production Editor: Kara Ebrahim

Copyeditor: Jasmine Kwityn

Proofreader: Kara Ebrahim

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Interior Designer: David Futato

Cover Designer: Ellie Volckhausen

 Illustrator: Rebecca Demarest
July 2010: First Edition

February 2015: Second Edition

November 2020: Third Edition

Revision History for the Early Release

2020-06-03: First release

See http://oreilly.com/catalog/errata.csp?isbn=9781491901885
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The O’Reilly logo is a registered trademark of O’Reilly Media,

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While the publisher and the authors have used good faith
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contained in this work are accurate, the publisher and the
authors disclaim all responsibility for errors or omissions,
including without limitation responsibility for damages resulting
from the use of or reliance on this work. Use of the information
and instructions contained in this work is at your own risk. If
any code samples or other technology this work contains or
describes is subject to open source licenses or the intellectual
property rights of others, it is your responsibility to ensure that
your use thereof complies with such licenses and/or rights.

978-1-492-05568-6
Chapter 1. Errors
A NOTE FOR EARLY RELEASE READERS
With Early Release ebooks, you get books in their earliest form—the author’s raw and unedited
content as they write—so you can take advantage of these technologies long before the official
release of these titles.

This will be the fourth chapter of the final book. Please note that the GitHub repo will be made
active later on.

Errors. Everyone has them. No one is perfect. Things go

wrong. Sometimes the error could have been anticipated, other
times, not so much. To modify a cliche, it’s not so much the
error as what you do with it that matters.

What should we do with our errors, then? The default behavior

is for JavaScript to die at the point of the error, exiting with a
stack trace. We can capture an error, react to it, modify it, re-
throw it, even hide it if we choose. Returning to a theme of
this cookbook: just because we can, does not mean we should.
Our guiding light is effective, efficient, reusable JavaScript
programming. Let’s look at Errors under this light.

JavaScript is not robust at error handing in general. The

language has the Error object, which is flexible enough. But
catching errors with try-catch lacks features found in other
languages. We cannot catch errors by their type. We cannot
(easily) filter by error. Further, in the browser, it is rare that we
can recover from an error. Rare enough that the recipes below
deal with the few common error situations from which an
application can recover. In Node.js, throwing errors causes
enough problems that an entirely different pattern of error
handling involed. We will look at Node’s peculiar form of error
“handling” as well.

Our goal should be to make our programming experience

better. Instead of our JavaScript engine dying horribly with an
incomprehensible error, we can add and modify information
about the error, illuminating the path for the person (likely
ourselves) tasked with fixing the error. Allow the failure to
happen, but clarify why the error occurred and who raised it.

1.1 Using Errors

JavaScript has eight Error types. The parent type is the aptly-
named Error. There are seven subtypes, which we will look
at in the next recipe. What does an Error give us? We can
count on three properties: a constructor, name, and message.
These are all available to subclasses of Error as well. We also
have access to a toString() method which will usually
return the message property. If we are using the V8
JavaScript engine (Chrome, Node.js, possibly others), we can
use captureStackTrace() as well. More on this soon. Let’s
start with a standard JavaScript Error object.
Problem
You want to create, throw, and catch a standard error

Solution
Create an instance of Error, or a subtype, throw it, and catch it
later on. Perhaps that is too brief a description. Start by
creating an instance of Error. The constructor takes a string as
an argument. Pass something useful and indicative of what the
problem was. Consider keeping a list of the various error
strings used in the application so that they are consistent and
informative. Use the throw keyword to throw the instance you
created. Then catch it in a try-catch block.

function willThrowError() {
if ( /* something goes wrong */) {
// Create an error with useful information.
// Don't be afraid to duplicate something
from the stack trace, like the method name
throw new Error(`Problem in ${method},
${reason}`);
}
}

// Somewhere else in your code

try {
willThrowError();
// Other code will not be reached
} catch (error) {
 console.error('There was an error: ', error);
}

Discussion
We can create an error either with the new keyword before the
Error or not. If Error() is called without new preceding it,
Error() acts as a function which returns an Error object. The
end result is the same. The Error constructor takes one
standard argument: the error message. This will be assigned to
the error’s message property. Some engines allow for
additional non-standard arguments to the constructor, but
these are not part of a current ECMAScript spec and are not on
track to be on a future one. Wrapping the code that will throw
an error in a try-catch block allows us to catch the error
within our code. Had we not done so, the error would have
propagated to the top of the stack and exited JavaScript. Here,
we are reporting the error to the console with
console.error. This is more or less the default behavior,
though we can add information as part of the call to
console.error.

1.2 Capturing Errors by their subtypes

JavaScript has seven subtypes of Error. We can check for a
subtype of error to determine the kind of error raised by a
problem in our code. This may illuminate the possibility of
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recovery, or at least give us a little more information about
what went wrong.

The seven Error subtypes:

EvalError: thrown by use of the built-in function eval()

InternalError: Internal to the JavaScript engine; not part of

the ECMAScript spec, but used by engines for non-standard
errors

RangeError: A value is outside of its valid range

ReferenceError: Raised when encountering a problem trying

to dereference an invalid reference

SyntaxError: A problem with the syntax of evaluated code,

including JSON

TypeError: A variable or parameter is of an unexpected or

wrong type

URIError: Raised by problems with encodeURI() and

decodeURI()

Problem
How do we catcn errors by their subtype?
Solution
In your catch block, check the specific error type

try {
// Some code that will raise an error
} catch (err) {
if (err instanceof RangeError) {
// Do something about the value being out of
range
} else if (err instanceof TypeError) {
// Do something about the value being the
wrong type
} else {
// Rethrow the error
throw err;
}
}

Discussion
We may need to respond to specific subtypes of Error. Perhaps
the subtype can tell us something about what went wrong with
the code. Or maybe our code threw a specific Error subtype on
purpose, to carry additional information about the problem in
our code. Both TypeError and RangeError lend themselves to
this behavior, for example. The problem is that JavaScript
permits only one catch block, offering neither opportunity nor
syntax to capture errors by their type. Given JavaScript’s
origins, this is not surprising, but it is nonetheless
inconventient.
Our best option is to check the type of the Error ourselves. Use
an if statement with the instanceof operator to check the
type of the caught error. Remember to write a complete if-else
statement, otherwise your code may accidentally swallow the
error and suppress it. In the code above, we assume that we
cannot do anything useful with error types that are neither
RangeErrors nor TypeErrors. We re-throw other errors, so that
code higher up the stack than this can choose to capture the
error. Or, as is appropriate, the error could bubble to the top of
the stack, as it normally would.

We should note: handling errors, even by their subtype, is

fraught with difficulties in JavaScript. With rare exceptions, an
error raised by your JavaScript engine cannot be recovered
from in a meaningful sense. It is better to try to bring useful
information about the error to the attention of the user, rather
than to try to bring JavaScript back into a correct state (which
may, in fact, be impossible!).

For example: Consider an EvalError. What are we, as coders,

going to do if there’s an EvalError or a SyntaxEror? It seems
that we should go an fix our code. What about a
ReferenceError? Code cannot recover from trying to
dereference an invalid referent. We might be able to write a
catch block that returns something more informative than
“Attempted to call getFoo() on undefined”. But we cannot
determine what the original code intended. We can only
repackage the error and exit gracefully (if possible). In the
next section, we will look at two error types that offer the
possibility of recovery, as well as throwing our own, more
useful error types.

1.3 Throwing useful errors

Given the limits of JavaScript and error handling, are there
Error subtypes worth using? Several of the subtypes of Error
are limited to very specific cases. But two, the RangeError, and
the TypeError show some promise.

Problem
You want to throw useful Error subtypes

Solution
Use TypeError to express an incorrect parameter or variable
type

function calculateValue(x) {
if (typeof x !== 'number') {
throw new TypeError(`Value [${x}] is not a
number.`);
}

// Rest of the function

}

Use RangeError to express that a parameter or value is out of

range
 function setAge(age) {
const upper = 125;
const lower = 18;
if (age > 125 || age < 18) {
throw new RangeError(`Age [${age}] is out of
the acceptable range of ${lower} to ${upper}.`);
}
}

Discussion
If you are going to use Errors to express incorrect states for
your application, the TypeError and RangeError hold some
promise. TypeError covers issues where the expected value
was of the wrong type. What constitutes a “wrong” type?
That’s up to us as the designers. Our code might expect one of
JavaScript’s “primitive” values returned by a call to typeof. If
our function receives an unantipated value type, we could
throw a TypeError. We can say the same with instanceof for
object types. These are not hard limits on when we might
throw a TypeError, but they are good guidelines.

Going further, if our function received the right kind of value

but it was outside of an acceptable range, we can throw a
RangeError. Note that RangeErrors are specifically bound to
numeric values. Put another way, we should not throw a
RangeError when expecting a string and receiving one that is
too short or too long. In the case of either RangeErrors or
TypeErrors, make sure your error message is informative.
Include the given value and information about the expected
value.

Do not use errors for to validate forms or other input. Errors

often do not show up in the HTML of a page, as they are re-
routed to the console. Even if they do show up in the visible
part of the page, they often contain impenetrable and weird
content which will confuse and annoy the common user. And if
they are not anticipated as part of your rendered content, they
can throw off the rendering of the rest of the view. Invalid user
data should be an expected state of your code, and should be
handled in a user-friendly manner. There are both native APIs
for form validation, as well as customizable, event-based hooks
for validation. Use those instead. Errors in JavaScript indicate a
state where your code received input that is just wrong and
should be corrected.

1.4 Throwing custom errors

The Error type might be too broad. Most subclasses are too
specific, or too limiting. What if we want to create our own
Error types? How should we subclass Error?

Problem
How do we create our own Error subtypes?
Solution
Create a subtype of Error by subclassing Error using the
ECMAScript 2015 class inheritance syntax

class CustomError extends Error {

constructor(customProp='customValue',
...params) {
super(...params);

if (Error.captureStackTrace) {
Error.captureStackTrace(this, CustomError);
}

this.name = 'CustomError';
this.customProp = customProp;
}
}

Discussion
When subclassing Error, we should keep in mind two possibly
competing concerns: stayign within the bounds of a typical
JavaScript error, and expressing enough information for our
customized error. In the former case, do not attempt to
recreate the errors or exceptions of your second favorite
language. Do not over-extend JavaScript’s Error type with extra
methods and properties. A later programmer using your new
Error subtype should be able to make reasonable assumptions
about the subtype’s API. They should be able to access
standard information in the standard way.

Your subclass constructor can take custom properties, which

should be distinct from the standard argument of an error
message. Keep in mind that Firefox and some other browsers
expect the first three arguments to the Error constructor to be
a message string, a filename, and a line number. If your
subclass’s constructor takes custom arguments, add the to the
front of the parameters list. This will make capturing standard
arguments easier, as we can use ECMAScript 2015’s rest
parameter feature to vaccuum up any remaining arguments.

In the constructor for your custom error, call super() first,

passing any standard parameters. Because your code might
run on V8 (either Chrome or Node.js), properly set this Error’s
stack trace. Check for the captureStackTrace method, and,
if present, call Error.captureStackTrace passing it a reference to
the current instance (as this) and your CustomError class.

Set the name property of your custom error subclass. This

ensures that, when reporting to the console, your error will
carry the name of your subclass, instead of the more generic
Error class.

Set any custom properties as necessary.

1.5 Handling JSON parsing errors
JavaScript Object Notation has become a popular, portable
data format thanks in part to the popularity of JavaScript.
There are two native functions availabe for JSON processing:
for JavaScript-to-JSON conversion, use
JSON.stringify(jsObject). To deserialize a JSON string
into a JavaScript object (or string, or array, etc.) use
JSON.parse(jsonString). Conversion of JavaScript to a
JSON string should not raise any errors, barring issues with the
JavaScript engine implementing JSON.stringify. On the
other hand, converting a JSON string into JavaScript has many
potential issues. The JSON could be malformed, or could just
not be JSON at all! JavaScript raises error with JSON parsing as
SyntaxErrors, which is sub-optimal. A SyntaxError is raised
when JavaScript tries to interpret syntactically invalid code.
While technically accurate, this lacks detail in the case of JSON
parsing.

Problem
How should we handle parsing of bad or malformed JSON
data?

Solution
Create a custom subtype of SyntaxError which is raised on
issues with JSON parsing.
 class JSONParseError extends SyntaxError {
constructor(...params) {
super(...params);

if (Error.captureStackTrace) {
Error.captureStackTrace(this,
JSONParseError);
}

this.name = 'JSONParseError';
}
}

function betterParse(jsonString) {
try {
JSON.parse(jsonString);
} catch (err) {
if (err instanceof SyntaxError) {
throw new JSONParseError(err);
} else {
throw err;
}
}
}

Discussion
We would like to log a specific error type when JSON.parse
encounters an error. We can create a class,
JSONParseError, which is a subclass of SyntaxError, for
problems with JSON parsing. The class itself does not do
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much, other than establishing the name and type
JSONParseError. But consumers of this API can now test for
JSONParseError as opposed to the too-general SyntaxError.
Logging will improve as well.

Remembering to re-throw SyntaxErrors as JSONParseErrors

anytime we parse JSON strings is tedious. Instead, we will call
betterParse(jsonString) which does the work for us.
The betterParse function wraps the call to JSON.parse()
in a try block, safely catching any SyntaxErrors. If a
SyntaxError is raised, we will re-package it as a
JSONParseError. If some other error is raised (it could happen),
we will pass that error along as-is, with no modification or re-
packaging.
Chapter 2. Working with
HTML
A NOTE FOR EARLY RELEASE READERS
With Early Release ebooks, you get books in their earliest form—the author’s raw and unedited
content as they write—so you can take advantage of these technologies long before the official
release of these titles.

This will be the thirteenth chapter of the final book. Please note that the GitHub repo will be
made active later on.

In 1995 Netscape tasked software developer Brendan Eich with

creating a programming language designed for adding
interactivity to pages in the Netscap Navigator browser. In
response, Eich infamously developed the first version of
JavaScript in 10 days. A few years later, JavaScript has became
a cross-browser standard through the adoption of the
ECMAScript standardization.

Despite the early attempt at standardization, web developers

battled for years with browsers that had different JavaScript
engine interpretations or features. Popular libraries, such as
jQuery effectively allowed us to write simple cross-browser
JavaScript. Thankfully, today’s browsers share a near uniform
implementation of the language. Allowing web developers to
write “vanilla” (library-free) JavaScript to interact with an HTML
page.

When working with HTML, we are working with the Document

Object Model (DOM), which is the data representation of the
HTML page. The recipes in this chapter will review how to
interact with the DOM of an HTML page by selecting, updating,
and removing elements from the page.

2.1 Accessing a Given Element and Finding

Its Parent and Child Elements

Problem
You want to access a specific web page element, and then find
its parent and child elements.

Solution
Give the element a unique identifier:

<div id="demodiv">
<p>
This is text.
</p>
</div>

Use document.getElementById() to get a reference to

the specific element:
 const demodiv =
document.getElementById("demodiv");

Find its parent via the parentNode property:

const parent = demodiv.parentNode;

Find its children via the childNodes property:

const children = demodiv.childNodes;

Discussion
A web document is organized like an upside-down tree, with
the topmost element at the root and all other elements
branching out beneath. Except for the root element (HTML),
each element has a parent node, and all of the elements are
accessible via the document.

There are several different techniques available for accessing

these document elements, or nodes as they’re called in the
Document Object Model (DOM). Today, we access these nodes
through standardized versions of the DOM, such as the DOM
Levels 2 and 3. Originally, though, a de facto technique was to
access the elements through the browser object model,
sometimes referred to as DOM Level 0. The DOM Level 0 was
invented by the leading browser company of the time,
Netscape, and its use has been supported (more or less) in
most browsers since. The key object for accessing web page
elements in the DOM Level 0 is the document object.

The most commonly used DOM method is

document.getElementById(). It takes one parameter: a
case-sensitive string with the element’s identifier. It returns an
element object, which is referenced to the element if it exists;
otherwise, it returns null.

NOTE
There are numerous ways to get one specific web page element,
including the use of selectors, covered later in the chapter. But
you’ll always want to use the most restrictive method possible,
and you can’t get more restrictive than
document.getElementById().

The returned element object has a set of methods and

properties, including several inherited from the node object.
The node methods are primarily associated with traversing the
document tree. For instance, to find the parent node for the
element, use the following:

const parent =
document.getElementById("demodiv").parentNode;
Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
 These early motions or drolls were a combination of dumb show,
masques and even shadow play. Flögel explains that the masques
were sometimes connected with the puppets or given sometimes as
a separate play. “These masques,” he writes, “consist of five
tableaux or motions which take place behind a transparent curtain,
just as in Chinese shadows. The showman, a silver-covered wand in
his hand and a whistle for signalling, stands in front of the curtain
and briefly informs the audience of the action of the piece.
Thereupon he draws the curtain, names each personage by name as
he appears, points out with his wand the various important actions
of his actors’ deeds, and relates the story more in detail than
formerly. Another masque which Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair
describes is quite different, for here the puppets themselves speak,
that is, through a man hidden behind the scenes, who like the one
standing out in front is called the interpreter.”
As early as 1575 Italian pupazzi appeared in England and
established themselves there. An order of the Lord Mayor of London
at the time authorizes that, “Italian marionettes be allowed to settle
in the city and to carry on their strange motions as in the past and
from time immemorial.” Piccini was a later Italian motion-man, but
very famous, giving shows for fifty years and speaking for his Punch
to the last with a foreign accent.
There is little doubt, despite much discussion, that the
boisterous English Punch is a descendant of the puppet Pulcinello,
brought over by travelling Italian showmen. Isaac d’Israeli writes of
his ancestry, in the second volume of Curiosities of Literature, “Even
Pullicinella, whom we familiarly call Punch, may receive like other
personages of not greater importance, all his dignity from antiquity:
one of his Roman ancestors having appeared to an antiquary’s
visionary eye in a bronze statue: more than one erudite dissertation
authenticates the family likeness, the long nose, prominent and
hooked; the goggle eyes; the hump at his back and breast; in a
word all the character which so strongly marks the Punch race, as
distinctly as whole dynasties have been featured by the Austrian lip
or the Bourbon nose.”
 The origin of the name Punch has given rise to various theories.
Some claim it is an anglicizing of Pulcinello, Pulchinello or
Punchinello; others that it is derived as is Pulcinello from the Italian
word pulcino, little chicken, either, some say, because of the squeak
common to Punch and to the chicken or, others aver, because from
little chicken might have come the expression for little boy, hence
puppet. Again, it is maintained that the origin is the English
provincialism punch (short, fat), allied to Bunch.
The older Punchinello was far less restricted in his actions and
circumstances than his modern successor. He fought with allegorical
figures representing want and weariness, as well as with his wife
and the police. He was on intimate terms with the Patriarchs and the
champions of Christendom, sat on the lap of the Queen of Sheba,
had kings and lords for his associates, and cheated the Inquisition as
well as the common hangman. After the revolution of 1688, with the
coming of William and Mary, his prestige increased, and Mr. Punch
took Mrs. Judy to wife and to them there came a child. The
marionettes became more elaborate, were manipulated by wires and
developed legs and feet. Queen Mary was often pleased to summon
them into her palace. The young gallant, Punch, however, who had
been but a garrulous roisterer, causing more noise than harm, began
to develop into a merry but thick-skinned fellow, heretical, wicked,
always victorious, overcoming Old Vice himself, the horned, tailed
demon of the old English moralities. A modified Don Juan, when Don
Juan was the vogue, he gradually became a vulgar pugnacious
fellow to suit the taste of the lower classes.
During the reign of Queen Anne he was high in popular favor.
The Tatler mentions him often, also The Spectator; Addison and
Steele have both aided in immortalizing him. Famous showmen such
as Mr. Powell included him in every puppet play, for what does an
anachronism matter with the marionettes? He walked with King
Solomon, entered into the affairs of Doctor Faustus, or the Duke of
Lorraine or Saint George in which case he came upon the stage
seated on the back of St. George’s dragon to the delight of the
spectators. One of his greatest successes was scored in Don Juan or
The Libertine Destroyed where he was in his element, and we find
him in the drama of Noah, poking his head from behind the side
curtain while the floods were pouring down upon the Patriarch and
his ark to remark, “Hazy weather, Mr. Noah.” In one of Swift’s satires,
the popularity of Punch is declared to be so enormous that the
audiences cared little for the plot of the play, merely waiting to greet
the entrance of their beloved buffoon with shouts of laughter.
 Punch hangs the Hangman
From a Cruikshank illustration of Payne-Collier’s Tragical
Comedy of Punch and Judy

At the beginning of the nineteenth century when Lord Nelson, as

the hero of Abukir, was represented upon every puppet stage, he
and Mr. Punch held the following dialogue:
“Come to my ship, my dear Punch, and help me defeat the
French. If you like I will make you a Captain or a Commodore.”
“Never, never,” answered Punch. “I would not dare for I am
afraid of being drowned in the deep sea.”
“But don’t have such absurd fears,” replied the Admiral.
“Remember that whoever is destined from birth to be hanged will
never be drowned.”
Gradually a sort of epic poem of Punch grew up, and there were
regular scenes where the dissolute, hardened fellow beats his wife
and child, defies morality and religion, knocks down the priest, fights
the devil and overcomes him. In 1828 Mr. Payne-Collier arranged a
series of little plays called The Tragical Comedy of Punch and Judy.
In this labor he was assisted by the records of the Italian, Piccini,
who, after long years of wandering through England, had
established his Punch and Judy show in London. The series was
profusely and delightfully illustrated by Cruikshank. These pictures
and those of Hogarth have perpetuated for all times the funny
features of Punch and Judy.
“With real conservatism,” writes Maindron, “the English have
preserved the figure and repertory of Punch almost as it was in the
oldest days of Piccini and his predecessors.” And it is thus one might
find Punch on the street corner to-day, maltreating his long-suffering
wife, teasing the dog, hanging the hangman. Mr. W. H. Pollock tells
us of stopping with Robert Louis Stevenson to watch a Punch and
Judy show given by a travelling showman in “bastard English and
slang of the road.” Stevenson delighted in it, and Mr. Pollock himself
exclaimed: “Everybody who loves good, rattling melodrama with
plenty of comic relief must surely love that great performance.”
But to return to the shows and showmen of other times. In the
Elizabethan period the motions were very prominent. The puppets
sometimes took over plays of the day, and satirized them cleverly
upon their own stages, the dolls costumed as nearly as possible like
the prominent actors whom they imitated. Later, when for a time the
Puritans abolished the theatres, the marionettes were allowed to
continue their shows, and thus the entire repertory of the real stage
fell into their hands. Permanent puppet stages grew up all over
London: people thronged to the puppets.
In Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair he allows the showman,
Lanthorn Leatherhead, to describe his fortunes: “Ah,” he said, “I
have made lots of money with Sodom and Gomorrah and with the
City of Norwich but Gunpowder Plot, that was a veritable gift of God.
It was that that made the pennies rain into the coffers. I only
charged eighteen or twenty pence per head for admission, but I
gave sometimes nine or ten representations a day.” Captain Pod, a
seventeenth century showman mentioned in other writings of Ben
Jonson, had a large repertory including, among other plays, Man’s
Wit, Dialogue of Dives, Prodigal Son, Resurrection of the Saviour,
Babylon, Jonah and the Whale, Sodom and Gomorrah, Destruction
of Jerusalem, City of Nineveh, Rome and London, Destruction of
Norwich, Massacre of Paris with the Death of the Duke de Guise and
The Gunpowder Plot. In 1667 Pepys records in his Diary that he
found “my Lady Castlemane at a puppet play, Patient Grizell.” The
Sorrows of Griselda, indeed, was very popular at the time, also Dick
Whittington, The Vagaries of Merry Andrew and The Humours of
Bartholomew Fair. The marionettes, indeed, grew so much the
vogue, and the rivalry was felt so keenly by the regular theatres,
that in 1675 the proprietors of the theatre in Drury Lane and near
Lincoln’s Inn Fields formally petitioned that the puppets in close
proximity be forbidden to exhibit, or be removed to a greater
distance, as they interfered with the success of their performances.
But not alone the theatres objected to the competition of the
puppets. One may read in The Spectator, XVI, that young Mr. Powell
made his show a veritable thorn in the flesh of the clergy. It was
stationed in Covent Garden, opposite the Cathedral of St. Paul, and
Powell proceeded to use the church bell as a summons to his
performances, luring away worshippers from the very door of the
church. Finally the sexton was impelled to remonstrate. “I find my
congregation taking the warning of my bell, morning and evening, to
go to a puppet show set forth by one Powell, under the Piazzas, etc.,
etc. I desire you would lay this before the world, that Punchinello
may choose an hour less canonical. As things are now, Mr. Powell
has a full congregation while we have a very thin house.”
This same Powell was the most successful motion maker of his
day. He originated the Universal Deluge in which Noah and his family
enter the ark, accompanied by all the animals, two and two. This
show was given fifty-two consecutive nights, and was repeated two
centuries later by the Prandi brothers in Florence. Powell had booths
in London, Bath and Oxford, and played to most fashionable
audiences. The Tatler and The Spectator mention him frequently. It
was his Punch who sat on the Queen of Sheba’s lap, who danced
with Judy on the Ark, and made the famous remark to Noah
concerning the weather. He gave numerous religious plays, such as
the “Opera of Susannah or Innocence Betrayed,—which will be
exhibited next week with a new pair of Elders.” In 1713 he
presented Venus and Adonis or The Triumphs of Love, a mock opera.
As another attraction to his shows, the ingenious marionettist
invented a fashion model, the little puppet, Lady Jane, who made a
monthly appearance, bringing the latest styles from Paris. The ladies
flocked to the puppets when she was announced on the bills.
A well known competitor of Powell was Pinkethman, in whose
scenes the gods of Olympus ascended and descended to strains of
music. Crawley was another rival. He advertised his show as follows:
“At Crawley’s Booth, over against the Crown Tavern in Smithfield,
during the time of Bartholomew Fair, will be presented a little opera
called the Old Creation of the World, yet newly revived, with addition
of Noah’s Flood, also several fountains, playing water during the
time of the play. The last scene does present Noah and his family
coming out of the Ark with all the beasts, two and two, and all the
fowls of the air seen in a prospect sitting upon trees: likewise over
the Ark is seen the sun rising in a glorious manner; moreover a
multitude of angels will be seen in a double rank, which presents a
double prospect, one for the sun, the other for the palace where will
be seen six Angels ringing bells. Likewise Machines descend from
above, double and treble, with Dives rising out of Hell and Lazarus
seen in Abraham’s bosom, besides several figures dancing jigs,
sarabands, and country dances to the admiration of the spectators:
with the merry conceits of Squire Punch and Sir John Spendall.”
After these motion makers, came other showmen with many
inventions. Colley Cibber wrote dramas for marionettes, and his
daughter, the actress, Charlotte Clarke, founded a large puppet
theatre. Russell, the old buffoon, is said to have been interested in
this project also, but it finally failed. When the Scottish lords and
other leaders of the Stuart uprising of 1745 were executed on Tower
Hill, the beheading was made a feature by the puppet exhibitions at
May Fair and was presented for many years after. Later Clapton’s
marionettes offered a play of Grace Darling rescuing the crew of the
Forfarshire, “with many ingenious moving figures of quadrupeds.”
Boswell tells us in his Life of Johnson about Oliver Goldsmith, who
was so vain he could not endure to have anyone do anything better
than himself. “Once at an exhibition of the fantoccini in London,
when those who sat next to him observed with what dexterity a
puppet was made to toss a pike, he could not bear that it should
have such praise, and exclaimed with some warmth, ‘Pshaw! I could
do it better myself!’” Boswell adds in a note, “He went home with Mr.
Burke to supper and broke his shin by attempting to exhibit to the
company how much better he could jump over a stick than the
puppets.” Dr. Johnson was a great admirer of the fantoccini in
London, and considered a performance of Macbeth by puppets as
satisfactory as when played by human actors.
At the end of the eighteenth century, Flockton’s show displayed
five hundred figures at work in various trades. Browne’s Theatre of
Arts, 1830–1840 travelled about at country fairs showing The Battle
of Trafalgar, Napoleon’s Army Crossing the Alps and the Marble
Palace of St. Petersburg. Some marionettes of the nineteenth
century became satirical, attacking literature and politics with
mischievous energy. Punch assumed a thousand disguises; he
caricatured Sheridan, Fox, Lord Nelson. William Hazlitt wrote
seriously in praise of puppet shows.
There are gaps in the history of English puppets which seem to
imply a decline in the popularity of that amusement. One comes
upon occasional records of shows straggling through the
countryside, and giving the old, timeworn productions of Prodigal
Son or Noah, or Pull Devil, Pull Baker. During the reign of George IV,
puppets were found at street corners, dancing sailors, milkmaids,
clowns, but Punch, as ever, the favorite.
Even now, puppets on boards may be seen in the streets of
London. Of the old shows, one resident of that city relates: “When I
was a child, marionettes used to go about the streets of London in a
theatre on wheels about as big as a barrel organ, but I dare say I
am wrong about size, because one cannot remember these things. I
remember particularly a skeleton which danced and came to pieces
so that his bones lay about in a heap. When I was properly surprised
at this he assembled himself and danced again. I was so young that
I was rather frightened.”
There is to-day one of the old professional marionette showmen
wandering about in England, Clunn Lewiss, who still has a set of
genuine old dolls, bought up from a predecessor’s outfit. For fifty
years he has been traveling along the roads, like a character strayed
out of Dickens. He has interested members of artistic coteries in
London, who have been moved by the old man’s appeals for help,
and some attempts have been made to revive interest in his show.
Surely Clunn Lewiss deserves some recognition.
Altogether unconnected with popular puppets were the highly
complicated mechanical exhibitions of Holden’s marionettes. The
amazing feats performed by Holden’s puppets astonished not only
England, but all the large Continental and American cities where
they were displayed. They were tremendously admired. The
surprising dexterity of manipulation, and the elegance of the settings
had never been surpassed. In Paris, however, de Goncourt wrote of
them: “The marionettes of Holden! These creatures of wood are a
little disquieting. There is a dancer turning on the tips of her toes in
the moonlight that might be a character of Hoffman, etc.
“Holden was more of an illusionist than a true marionettist. He
produced exact illusions of living beings, but he was lacking in
imagination. The fantoches of Holden were certainly marvels of
precision, but they appeal to the eye and not to the spirit. One
admired, one did not laugh at them. They astonished, but they did
not charm.”
 Old English Puppets
Used by Mr. Clunn Lewiss in his wandering show
[Courtesy of Mr. Tony Sarg]

There have been several interesting amateur marionette shows

within the last decade. There are the Wilkinsons, two clever modern
painters who have taken their puppets from village to village in
England and also in France. They traveled about with their family in
a caravan and wherever they wished to give a show, they halted and
drew forth a stage from the rear end of the wagon. Their dolls are
eight inches high or more and they require four operators. They are
designed with a touch of caricature, and they perform little plays and
scenes invented by the Wilkinsons, very amusing and witty. Not long
ago Mr. Gair Wilkinson gave a very successful exhibition of his show
at the Margaret Morris Theater in Chelsea for a short season.
The Ilkely Players, of Ilkely, Yorkshire, are a group of young
women who produced puppet plays for some five or six years,
touring through England. Their dolls were rather simple,
mechanically; only the arms were articulated, for the most part; the
heads were porcelain dolls’ heads. Nevertheless this group of
puppeteers deserves the credit they attained by reviving the classic
old show of Doctor Faustus, at Clifford’s Inn Hall, Chelsea. They also
gave very interesting productions of Maeterlinck’s The Seven
Princesses, and Thackeray’s The Rose and the Ring, dramatized by
Miss Dora Nussey, who was the leader of the group. Inspired by
their success, Miss Margaret Bulley of Liverpool produced a puppet
play of Faustus before the Sandon Studio Club. Miss Bulley’s puppets
were quite simple wooden dolls with papier-maché heads and tin
arms and legs, each worked with seven black threads. The costumes
were copied after old German engravings of the eighteenth century
and the production proved very effective.
Most highly perfected, and most exquisite of English puppets to-
day are those of the artist, Mr. William Simmonds, in Hampstead.
They originated in a village in Wiltshire as an amusement at a
Christmas party given by Mr. and Mrs. Simmonds every year to the
village children. The audience was so delighted that the next year
more puppets were made with a more attractive setting. Friends
then became so enthusiastic that the creators of the puppets
realized what might be done, and in London, the following Spring,
they began giving small private shows.
 Mr. Gair Wilkinson and Assistant at Work on the Bridge of their Puppet
Theatre [Reproduced from The Sketch, 1916]

The productions are only suited to a small audience of forty or

fifty. The puppets are mostly fifteen inches high, some smaller; the
stage is nine feet wide, six deep, and a little over two feet high. The
scenery is painted on small screens. At present there are three
scenes, a Harlequinade, a Woodland Scene and a little Seaport
Town. The puppets are grouped to use one or the other of these
scenes. They do not do plays but seem to find their best expression
in songs and dances connected with various by-play and “business”
and a slight thread of episode which is often varied, never twice
alike. Mr. Simmonds manipulates the puppets entirely alone and
cannot work with anyone close. He frequently operates a puppet in
each hand, all with the utmost dexterity and delicacy, and manages
others by means of hanging them up and moving them slightly at
intervals, at the same time singing, whistling, improvising dialogue
or imitating various noises! People generally expect to find half a
dozen manipulators behind the scenes.
Mr. Simmonds himself carves the heads, hands and feet of his
marionettes in wood (usually lime) and paints them in tempera to
avoid shine. They are beautifully done. Some are dressed, some
have clothes painted on them. Some are quite decorative, others
impressionistic or frankly realistic. Not contented with the little-bit-
clumsy doll, Mr. Simmonds has perfected his puppets with great
technical skill until they move with perfect naturalness, some with
dignity, some with grace, some with humor, each according to its
nature.
In the Harliquinade the scene is hung with black velvet, lighted
from the front, which gives the effect of a black void against which
the figures of Harlequin, Columbine, Clown, Pantaloon and others
appear with sparkling brilliancy and vivid color. In the Seaport Town,
a medley of characters appear,—a sailor, a grenadier, a fat woman,
an old man, the minister, etc. There are songs used in this to give
variety. Particularly clever is an English sailor of the time of Nelson
who comes out of a public house and dances a jig, heel-tapping the
floor in perfect time, his hands on his hips and his body rollicking in
perfect character while he sings, “On Friday morn when we set sail.”
Another excellent dancing doll is the washerwoman of the old sort,
short and stout and great-armed, jolly and roughfaced.
In the Woodland Scene, creatures of the wood appear,—faun,
dryad, nymph, young centaurs, baby faun, hunted stag, a forester, a
dainty shepherd and a shepherdess, etc. The little sketch is entirely
wordless, having only musical accompaniment played by Mrs.
Simmonds upon a virginal or a spinet, or an early Erard piano (date
1804). The sound is just right in scale for the puppets; anything else
would seem heavy. The fauns in this scene are most popular,
particularly the Baby who has an extraordinary tenderness, and skips
and leaps with the agility of a live thing. The act of extreme
dreaminess and beauty is described thus by one who was privileged
to witness it. “In one scene a man went out hunting. He hid behind
a bush. A stag came on. He shot the stag which lay down and died.
Then there came one or two creatures of the wood, who could do
nothing, and at last a very beautiful nymph, lightly clothed in leaves.
She succeeded in resuscitating the stag, who got up and bounded
away. When they had gone, the hunter who had watched it all from
behind the bush came out, and that was all. Music all the time. No
words. The stag was quite astonishing.”
Although he is now living and working in Florence, Mr. Gordon
Craig must not be omitted from any account of English marionettes
and advocates of the puppets. Quite apart from the class of artistic
amateurs and equally remote from the usual professional
marionettist of to-day, Mr. Craig stands rather as a new prophet of
puppetry, recalling in stirring terms the virtues of the old art, and
adding his new and individual interpretation of its value.
Puppets are but a small portion of the dramatic experiment and
propaganda which Mr. Craig is so courageously carrying on in
Florence. But they are not the least interesting branch of his
undertakings. He has assembled a veritable museum of marionette
and shadow play material from all over the world. Pictures of some
parts of his collection appear regularly in “The Marionette.” There
are also delightful puppet plays appearing in this pamphlet. But this
is not all.
With the marionette used as a sort of symbol, Mr. Craig has been
conducting research into the very heart of dramatic verities, and
producing dramatic formulas which should apply on any stage at any
time. He has invented his marionettes to express dramatic qualities
which he deems significant, and in his puppets he has attempted to
eliminate all other disturbing and unnecessary qualities. Thus he
creates little wooden patterns or models for his artists of the stage,
and he applies in actual usage Goethe’s maxim: “He who would work
for the stage ... should leave nature in her proper place and take
careful heed not to have recourse to anything but what may be
performed by children with puppets upon boards and laths, together
with sheets of cardboard and linen.”
 At the beginning of his experiments with marionettes Mr. Craig
and his assistants constructed one large and extremely complicated
doll which was moved on grooves and manipulated by pedals from
below, with a small telltale to indicate to the operator the exact
effect produced. But this marionette was not satisfactory for Mr.
Craig’s purposes.
He then directed his energies in an exactly opposite direction,
toward simplification. The result was small, but very impressive
dolls, carved out of wood and painted in neutral colors,—the color of
the scenes in which they moved, to allow for the fullest and most
variable effects produced by lighting. Most interesting, too, the
manner in which Mr. Craig applied his theories concerning gesture
with these little puppets. Each marionette was allowed to make one
or two gestures,—no more. But these gestures had to be exact,
invariable, and the perfect indication of whatever meaning they were
intended to convey. Before inventing the action of a puppet, Mr.
Craig would study, for days or weeks, watching various people
making the movement and expressing the emotion he desired to
portray. Then he would extract from these observations the general
and essential qualities of this particular gesture; all else, due to the
peculiarities of individuals, was left out as irrelevant for the stage.
Hence when Mr. Craig’s puppet moves, it moves simply, significantly
and—one more essential—surely. For nothing is left to chance. The
gesture, once selected, is produced with infinite care and is made
invariable. No whim of the manipulator, no accident of chance, can
alter it. One motion of the finger operates the figure, and the result
is assured.
Naturally a character may be required to exhibit varied
succeeding emotions, not encompassed by one or two motions. In
that case the figure is taken off the stage and replaced by another
similar in appearance but differently articulated for a different
purpose. There are sometimes as many as six or eight puppets for
one character. Mr. Craig has experimented with his marionettes in
many plays, some comedy, some tragedy. It is not recorded whether
he has ever given one finished puppet production: it is immaterial.
The idea embodied in these little puppets is immense,—a valuable
and lasting contribution to constructive dramatic criticism.
 The Marionettes in America
“They come from far away. They have been the joy of
innumerable generations which preceded our own; they have
gained, with our direct ancestors, many brilliant successes;
they have made them laugh but they have also made them
think; they have had eminent protectors; for them celebrated
authors have written. At all times they have enjoyed a liberty
of manners and language which has rendered them dear to
the people for whom they were made.”
Ernest Maindron

How old are the marionettes in America? How old indeed! Older than
the white races which now inhabit the continent, ancient as the
ancient ceremonials of the dispossessed native Indians, more
indigenous to the soil than we who prate of them,—such are the first
American marionettes!
Dramatic ceremonials among the Indians are numerous, even at
the present time. Each tribe has its peculiar, individual rites,
performed, as a rule, by members of the tribe dressed in prescribed,
symbolic costumes and wearing often a conventionalized mask.
Occasionally, however, articulated figures take part in these
performances along with the human participants. Dr. Jesse Walter
Fewkes has published a minute description of a theatrical
performance at Walpi which he witnessed in 1900, together with
pictures of the weird and curious snake effigies employed in it.
The Great Serpent drama of the Hopi Indians, called Palü
lakonti, occurs annually in the March moon. It is an elaborate
festival, the paraphernalia for which are repaired or manufactured
anew for days preceding the event. There are about six acts and
while one of them is being performed in one room, simultaneously
shows are being enacted in the other eight kivas on the East Mesa.
The six sets of actors pass from one room to another, in all of which
spectators await their coming. Thus, upon one night each
performance was given nine times and was witnessed by
approximately five hundred people. The drama lasts from nine p.m.
until midnight.
Dr. Fewkes gives us the following description of the first act: “A
voice was heard at the hatchway, as if some one were hooting
outside, and a moment later a ball of meal, thrown into the room
from without, landed on the floor by the fireplace. This was a signal
that the first group of actors had arrived, and to this announcement
the fire tenders responded, ‘Yunya ai,’ ‘Come in,’ an invitation which
was repeated by several of the spectators. After considerable
hesitation on the part of the visitors, and renewed cries to enter
from those in the room, there was a movement above, and the
hatchway was darkened by the form of a man descending. The fire
tenders arose, and held their blankets about the fire to darken the
room. Immediately there came down the ladder a procession of
masked men bearing long poles upon which was rolled a cloth
screen, while under their blankets certain objects were concealed.
Filing to the unoccupied end of the kiva, they rapidly set up the
objects they bore. When they were ready a signal was given, and
the fire tenders, dropping their blankets, resumed their seats by the
fireplace. On the floor before our astonished eyes we saw a
miniature field of corn, made of small clay pedestals out of which
projected corn sprouts a few inches high. Behind this field of corn
hung a decorated cloth screen reaching from one wall of the room to
the other and from the floor almost to the rafters. On this screen
were painted many strange devices, among which were pictures of
human beings, male and female, and of birds, symbols of rain-
clouds, lightning, and falling rain. Prominent among the symbols was
a row of six circular disks the borders of which were made of plaited
corn husks, while the enclosed field of each was decorated with a
symbolic picture of the sun. Men wearing grotesque masks and
ceremonial kilts stood on each side of this screen.
Marionettes employed in Ceremonial Drama of the American
Indians
 Upper: Serpent effigies, screen and miniature corn field
used in Act I of the Great Serpent Drama of the Hopi
Katcinas
[From A Theatrical Performance at Walpi, by J. Walter
Fewkes, in the Proceedings of the Washington Academy
of Sciences, 1900, Vol. II]
Lower: Drawing by a Hopi Indian of articulated figurines
of corn maidens and birds
[From Hopi Katcinas, by J. Walter Fewkes]

“The act began with a song to which the masked men, except
the last mentioned, danced. A hoarse roar made by a concealed
actor blowing through an empty gourd resounded from behind the
screen, and immediately the circular disks swung open up-ward, and
were seen to be flaps, hinged above, covering orifices through which
simultaneously protruded six artificial heads of serpents, realistically
painted. Each head had protuberant goggle eyes, and bore a curved
horn and a fan-like crest of hawk feathers. A mouth with teeth was
cut in one end, and from this orifice there hung a strip of leather,
painted red, representing the tongue.
“Slowly at first, but afterwards more rapidly, these effigies were
thrust farther into view, each revealing a body four or five feet long,
painted, like the head, black on the back and white on the belly.
When they were fully extended the song grew louder, and the
effigies moved back and forth, raising and depressing their heads in
time, wagging them to one side or the other in unison. They seemed
to bite ferociously at each other, and viciously darted at men
standing near the screen. This remarkable play continued for some
time, when suddenly the heads of the serpents bent down to the
floor and swept across the imitation corn field, knocking over the
clay pedestals and the corn leaves which they supported. Then the
effigies raised their heads and wagged them back and forth as
before. It was observed that the largest effigy, or that in the middle,
had several udders on each side of the belly, and that she apparently
suckled the others. Meanwhile the roar emitted from behind the
screen by a concealed man continued, and wild excitement seemed
to prevail. Some of the spectators threw meal at the effigies,
offering prayers, amid shouts from others. The masked man,
representing a woman, stepped forward and presented the contents
of the basket tray to the serpent effigies for food, after which he
held his breasts to them as if to suckle them.
“Shortly after this the song diminished in volume, the effigies
were slowly drawn back through the openings, the flaps on which
the sun symbols were painted fell back in place, and after one final
roar, made by the man behind the screen, the room was again silent.
The overturned pedestals with their corn leaves were distributed
among the spectators, and the two men by the fireplace again held
up their blankets before the fire, while the screen was silently rolled
up, and the actors with their paraphernalia departed.”
There are some acts in the drama into which the serpent effigies
do not enter at all. In the fifth act these Great Snakes rise up out of
the orifices of two vases instead of darting out from the screen. This
action is produced by strings hidden in the kiva rafters, the winding
of heads and struggles and gyrations of the sinuous bodies being the
more realistic because in the dim light the strings were invisible.
In the fourth act two masked girls, elaborately dressed in white
ceremonial blankets, usually participate. Upon their entrance they
assume a kneeling posture and at a given signal proceed to grind
meal upon mealing stones placed before the fire, singing, and
accompanied by the clapping of hands. “In some years marionettes
representing Corn Maids are substituted for the two masked girls,”
Dr. Fewkes explains, “in the act of grinding corn, and these two
figures are very skillfully manipulated by concealed actors. Although
this representation was not introduced in 1900, it has often been
described to me, and one of the Hopi men has drawn me a picture
of the marionettes.”
 “The figurines are brought into the darkened room wrapped in
blankets, and are set up near the middle of the kiva in much the
same way as the screens. The kneeling images, surrounded by a
wooden framework, are manipulated by concealed men; when the
song begins they are made to bend their bodies backward and
forward in time, grinding the meal on miniature metates before
them. The movements of girls in grinding meal are so cleverly
imitated that the figurines moved by hidden strings at times raised
their hands to their faces, which they rubbed with meal as the girls
do when using the grinding stones in their rooms.
“As this marionette performance was occurring, two bird effigies
were made to walk back and forth along the upper horizontal bar of
the framework, while bird calls issued from the rear of the room.”
The symbolism of this drama is intricate and curious. The effigies
representing the Great Serpent, an important supernatural
personage in the legends of the Hopi Indians, are somehow
associated with the Hopi version of a flood; for it was said that when
the ancestors of certain clans lived far south this monster once rose
through the middle of the pueblo plaza, drawing after him a great
flood which submerged the land and which obliged the Hopi to
migrate into his present home, farther North. The snake effigies
knocking over the cornfields symbolize floods, possible winds which
the Serpent brings. The figurines of the Corn Maids represent the
mythical maidens whose beneficent gift of corn and other seeds, in
ancient times, is a constant theme in Hopi legends.
The effigies which Dr. Fewkes saw used were not very ancient,
but in olden times similar effigies existed and were kept in stone
enclosures outside the pueblos. The house of the Ancient Plumed
Snake of Hano is in a small cave in the side of a mesa near the ruins
of Turkinobi where several broken serpent heads and effigy ribs (or
wooden hoops) can now be seen, although the entrance is walled up
and rarely used.
The puppet shows commonly seen to-day in the United States
are of foreign extraction or at least inspired by foreign models. For
many years there have been puppet-plays throughout the country.
Visiting exhibitions like those of Holden’s marionettes which
Professor Brander Matthews praises so glowingly are, naturally, rare.
But one hears of many puppets in days past that have left their
impression upon the childhood memories of our elders, travelling as
far South as Savannah or wandering through the New England
states. Our vaudevilles and sideshows and galleries often have
exhibits of mechanical dolls, such as the amazing feats of Mantell’s
Marionette Hippodrome Fairy-land Transformation which advertises
“Big scenic novelty, seventeen gorgeous drop curtains, forty-five
elegant talking acting figures in a comical pantomime,” or Madam
Jewel’s Manikins in Keith’s Circuit, Madam Jewel being an aunt of
Holden, they say, and guarding zealously with canvas screens the
secret of her devices, even as Holden himself is said to have done.
Interesting, too, is the story of the retired marionettist, Harry
Deaves, who writes: “I have on hand forty to fifty marionette
figures, all in fine shape and dressed. I have been in the manikin
business forty-five years, played all the large cities from coast to
coast, over and over, always with big success; twenty-eight weeks in
Chicago without a break with Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a big hit. The
reason I am selling my outfit is,—I am over sixty years of age and I
don’t think I will work it again.” How one wishes one might have
seen that Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Chicago! In New York at present
there is Remo Buffano, reviving interest in the puppets by giving
performances now and then in a semi-professional way with large,
simple dolls resembling somewhat the Sicilian burattini. His are plays
of adventure and fairy lore.
Then, too, in most of our larger cities from time to time crude
popular shows from abroad are to be found around the foreign
neighborhoods. It is said that at one time in Chicago there were
Turkish shadow plays in the Greek Colony; Punch and Judy make
their appearance at intervals, and Italian or Sicilian showmen
frequently give dramatic versions of the legends of Charlemagne.
 In Cleveland two years ago a party of inquisitive folk went one
night to the Italian neighborhood in search of such a performance.
We found and entered a dark little hall where the rows of seats were
crowded closely together and packed with a spellbound audience of
Italian workingmen and boys. Squeezing into our places with as little
commotion as possible we settled down to succumb to the spell of
the crude foreign fantoccini, large and completely armed, who were
violently whacking and slashing each other before a rather tattered
drop curtain. Interpreted into incorrect English by a small boy glued
to my side, broken bits of the resounding tale of Orlando Furioso
were hissed into my ear. But for these slangy ejaculations one might
well have been in the heart of Palermo. A similar performance is
described by Mr. Arthur Gleason. It was a show in New York, the
master of which was Salvatore Cascio, and he was assisted by Maria
Grasso, daughter of the Sicilian actor, Giovanni Grasso of Catania.
 Italian Marionette Show Operated in Cleveland for a season.
Proprietor, Joseph Scionte [Courtesy of Cleveland Plain Dealer]

“For two hours every evening for fifty evenings the legends
unrolled themselves, princes of the blood and ugly unbelievers
perpetually warring.” There was, explains Mr. Gleason, some splendid
fighting. “Christians and Saracens generally proceeded to quarrel at
close range with short stabbing motions at the opponent’s face and
lungs. After three minutes they swing back and then clash!! sword
shivers on shield!! Three times they clash horridly, three times retire
to the wings, at last the Christian beats down his foe; the pianist
meanwhile is playing violent ragtime during the fight, five hidden
manipulators are stamping on the platform above, the cluttered
dead are heaped high on the stage.” When one considers that such
puppets are generally about three feet high and weigh one hundred
pounds, armor and all, and are operated by one or two thick iron
rods firmly attached to the head and hands, what wonder that the
flooring of the stage is badly damaged by the terrific battles waged
upon it and has to be renewed every two weeks!
Far removed from these unsophisticated performances, however,
are the poetic puppets of the Chicago Little Theatre. I use the
present tense optimistically despite the sad fact that the Little
Theatre in Chicago has been closed owing to unfavorable conditions
caused by the war. But although “Puck is at present cosily asleep in
his box,” as Mrs. Maurice Browne has written, we all hope that the
puppets so auspiciously successful for three years will resume their
delightful activities, somehow or other, soon.
At first the originators of the Chicago marionettes travelled far
into Italy and Germany, seeking models for their project. Finally in
Solln near Munich they discovered Marie Janssen and her sister,
whose delicate and fantastic puppet plays most nearly approached
their own ideals. They brought back to Chicago a queer little model
purchased in Munich from the man who had made Papa Schmidt’s
Puppen. But, as one of the group has written, the little German
puppet seemed graceless under these skies. And so, Ellen Van
Volkenburg (Mrs. Maurice Browne) and Mrs. Seymour Edgerton
proceeded to construct their own marionettes. Miss Katherine
Wheeler, a young English sculptor, modelled the faces, each a clear-
cut mask to fit the character, but left purposely rough in finish. Miss
Wheeler felt that the broken surfaces carried the facial expression
farther. The puppets were fourteen inches high, carved in wood. The
intricate mechanism devised by Harriet Edgerton rendered the
figures extremely pliable. Her mermaids, with their serpentine
jointing, displayed an uncanny sinuousness. Miss Lillian Owen was
Mistress of the Needle, devising the filmy costumes, and Mrs.
Browne with fine technique and keen dramatic sense took upon
herself the task of training and inspiring the puppeteers as well as
creating the poetic ensemble.
Marionettes at the Chicago Little Theatre