Mr. Punch in the Arts: "La Gran Tragedie di Ariosto"

La Gran Tragedie di Ariosto
Naples, Nineteenth Century
The Victoria & Albert Museum

This illustration comes from Naples and dates to the Nineteenth Century. It’s unusual in that it shows the development of the Punch & Judy Show. As we know, Mr. Punch came to the U.K. from Italy where he had his roots in the Italian character, “Pulcinella.”


The drawing depicts a Pulcinella show, however, we can clearly see that the puppets look more like the popular Nineteenth Century Mr. Punch than they do Pulcinella. So popular was Punch that many Italian “Professors” styled their own puppets after the British Red Nose as opposed to their own masked Pulcinella.

We see, depicted here, an audience watching a puppet show in Naples. The title of the performance (as depicted on the front of the fit-up) is "la gran tragedie di Ariosto.” The title refers to “Orlando Furioso,” an epic poem by Ludovico Ariosto. This poem was a popular subject for traveling puppet shows.