Shakespeare, in the quotation we have made from his "Winter's Tale," mentions that of the "Prodigal Son." Perhaps, none was more popular than "Nineveh, with Jonas and the Whale:" it is noticed by Ben Jonson twice in the same play, ("Every Man out of his Humour,") and not less than twenty other authors speak of it. From a passage in Cowley's "Cutter of Coleman Street," (Act 5, sc. 2,) we collect that even the Puritans, with all their zealous hatred of the "profane stages," did not object to be present at its "holy performance." The motion of "Babylon" is also frequently noticed; but "London" and "Rome" likewise figured in the metropolis at the same time, Fleet street and Holborn Bridge, both great thoroughfares, were the usual places where puppet-plays were exhibited in the reign of Elizabeth;[1] and the authority of Butler has been quoted by Mr. Gifford (Ben Jonson, v. 2, 46, note) to show that Fleet Street continued to be infested by "motions" and "monsters" at least down to the Restoration. Scriptural motions were not wholly laid aside within the last fifty or sixty years; and Goldsmith, in his comedy, "She Stoops to Conquer," refers to the display of Solomon's Temple in a puppet-show. The current joke (at what date it originated seems uncertain) of Punch popping his head from behind the side curtain, and addressing the Patriarch in his ark, while the floods were pouring down, with "hazy weather, master Noah,"[2] proves that, at one period, the adventures of the hero of comparatively modern exhibitions of the kind were combined with stories selected from the Bible.
The late Mr. Joseph Strutt, in his "Sports and Pastimes of the People of England," thus speaks of the puppet-shows in his time. "In my memory these shows consisted of a wretched display of wooden figures, barbarously formed and decorated, without the least degree ofPage:Punch and judy.djvu/33
PUNCH.]
PUPPET-PLAYS IN ENGLAND.
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