# Punch and Judy/Punch's Pranks

PUNCH'S PRANKS.
In a previous part of this chapter, we have established, that Dr. Faustus was a principal character in puppet-shows of that date; and every body knows from the old Romance and from Goethe's Drama, if not from Marlow's ​tragedy, that that renowned conjuror had entered into a similar bond with the potentate of the infernal regions. There may be, therefore, some link of connection between Powell's performance and that upon which the preceding ballad has been framed, which in the lapse of a century has been lost. In our day, we hear nothing of such a compact; but the Devil is brought in to carry away the hero to the punishment merited by his boasted crimes. In this respect, we should rather have taken Punch for a Frenchman than an Italian, according to the opinion of old Heylin; who, speaking of our near neighbours, and of that vanity which, when he wrote, made them vaunt of their vices, exclaims, in a sort of uncharitable rapture, "foolish and most perishing wretches, by whom each several wickedness is twice committed: first in the act, and secondly in the boast!"
* ↑ In this stanza, the writer (we regret that so pleasant an effusion should be anonymous) seems to have had in his mind Spenser's Squire of Dames ("Fairy Queen," Book 3, canto 7), who had been commanded by his mistress to go forth a "colonelling" against the virtue of the female sex. He returned in less than a year, with tokens of three hundred conquests; and she then set him a penance to bring testimonies of as many women who had resisted his arts and entreaties. In three years he had only found three."The first which then refused me," said he, "Certes was but a common courtesane, Yet, flat refused to have a-do with me, Because I could not give her many a Jane." (Thereat full heartily laugh'd Satyrane.) "The second was an holy nun to chose, Which would not let me be her chapelaine. Because she knew, she said, I would disclose Her counsel, if she should her trust in me repose." "The third a damsel was of low degree, Whom I in country cottage found by chance, &c."
* ↑ This sounds like an ignorant vulgarism; but it is, in fact, only an abbreviation, per illipsin, of his own. We find it applied to the pronoun her in George Chapman's "Humorous Day's Mirth," a comedy printed in 1599, sign: G. "What shall I do at sight of her and her'n?"
* ↑ "To kill the Devil," and "to drive the Devil into his own dominions," cacciar il Diavolo nell' inferno, meant the same thing in Italian, as is fully explained in Boccacio, as well as Sacchetti, (Novel 101,) and in Bandello, (Novel 9, vol. 1, edit. Venice, 1566.) It is only used in English in its literal sense, and it is, of course, so to be understood in this ballad. In its figurative application, perhaps no hero, not even Don Juan himself, oftener was the death of his Satanic Majesty than Punch. More we cannot say.
* ↑ Mountford, the stage Adonis of his day, in 1697, wrote what was at that time called "a Farce," on the Life and Death of Dr. Faustus, in which Harlequin and Scaramouch both figured, but nothing is said of Punch in it. Lee and Jevon, two distinguished comic performers, took the parts of Harlequin and Scaramouch, and it seems to have met with success, as, after having been acted in Dorset Gardens, it was revived at the Theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields.
* ↑ An elegant reprint of it, under the care of Mr. Thoms, has recently made a scarce and curious work very accessible. We will take this opportunity of pointing out an error in the Introduction (p. 8) where Marlow's Tragedy is spoken of as if it had first appeared in 1610. Marlow was killed in 1593, (before the date assigned by Mr. Thoms to "the Second Report of Dr. Faustus," and his play was printed in 1604. We know of no edition in 1610.
* ↑ "France painted to the Life"—London, 1656, p. 53. with the motto Quid non Gallia parturit ingens. Dante was no great admirer of the French, whom he thinks only just better than the people of Sienna:————Hor fugiammai Gente si vand coma la Sanese? Certo non la Francesca si d' assai. Inferno, chap. 29.
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