Punch and Judy is a glove-puppet show performed in a tall narrow striped booth, traditionally on a beach or at a fête, in which a hook-nosed puppet with a stick assaults nearly everyone he meets and gets away with it. It has been performed in Britain for over 360 years.
The first recorded performance
Samuel Pepys watched an Italian puppeteer perform in Covent Garden on 9 May 1662 and recorded it in his diary as “an Italian puppet play… the best that ever I saw”. That date is now celebrated as Punch’s birthday, and the anniversary is marked with a service at St Paul’s Church in Covent Garden — the Actors’ Church — attended by puppeteers in costume.
The character came from the Italian commedia dell’arte figure Pulcinella, anglicised to Punchinello and then Punch. He began as a marionette and became a glove puppet in the nineteenth century, which allowed a single performer to work alone with a portable booth.
What happens
The plot is loose and the violence is constant. Punch is left holding the baby, mishandles it, is berated by his wife Judy, and hits her with his stick. A sequence of characters then arrive and are dealt with in turn — a policeman, a crocodile, a doctor, a string of sausages, sometimes the Devil.
Punch triumphs over all of them, and after each victory delivers the catchphrase in his strange rasping voice: “That’s the way to do it!”
The swazzle
Punch’s voice is produced by a swazzle — two small strips of metal bound around a reed, held in the roof of the performer’s mouth. It gives the harsh buzzing quality that no other character has, and it takes years to learn to speak intelligibly through one.
Performers are traditionally called Professors, and the craft has been passed down through families and apprenticeships. Swallowing the swazzle is an occupational hazard, and professionals keep a spare tied to a thread for exactly that reason.
The uncomfortable part
Punch and Judy is a show in which a man beats his wife and is applauded for it, performed for small children. This has been noticed, and it is a genuine and continuing argument rather than a manufactured one.
The defence offered is that Punch is a figure of misrule in a very old tradition — an anarchic principle who defies authority, morality and death itself, and whom nobody is invited to admire. The comparison usually reached for is Tom and Jerry or the Roadrunner, where the violence is stylised beyond any connection with reality.
In practice most modern Professors have adapted. The domestic violence is toned down or dropped, Judy gives as good as she gets, and the emphasis has shifted to the crocodile, the sausages and the audience shouting warnings. The purists object; the shows continue.
Where to see one
Traditional seaside resorts — Weymouth, Llandudno, Swanage, Broadstairs — and at village fêtes, agricultural shows and heritage events across the country through the summer. There are perhaps a few dozen full-time Professors working in Britain, and the number is slowly falling.