And What, About The Violence (Or Abuse?)

Punch and Judy can be performed well or poorly. Comparatively (to say, becoming a magician) it is too easy for anyone to pick up, a set of puppets and booth and think; ‘I’ll shove them on my hands, hit each puppet with the stick, and provided I’ve got some sort of squeaky voice, that’ll do… Yippee I’m a Punch and Judy Man!’. NO… No… No…
The stick was and I suppose still is, the means to an end. The end being each comic character’s scene. The stick is not Mr. Punch’s natural medium. Oh No! Originally his part was one of telling jokes, undertaking japes, and performing prat-falls and making silly (rude noises). He could walk and he could talk but he couldn’t effectively wield a stick. The stick is an invention, if invention is the right word, of the puppeteer who first put a hand-puppet on his hand and wondered what he could do with it. Whether a stick of celery or liquorish first came to hand, has never been recorded but in the Bodium Library, Oxford, there are illustrations of the earliest hand puppet shows where the protagonists are fighting with sticks. As Billy Joel sings: We didn’t Start the Fire!
Punch asks one of his assailants: ‘Do you have a headache?’ ‘He’ responds: ‘No!’ So Mr. Punch hits on the head and ‘he’ then says ‘Yes’… it’s funny. The funny is accentuated by the use of the Slapstick (Q.v. My article, on The Slapstick) wood on wood and the slapstick in use today, is always played for laughs.
The term assailant is useful and historically interesting. The first recorded script, when analysed, clearly describes who first brings a stick to the party. In 99% of the cases, it isn’t Punch.
Poor puppetry is easily masked by the use of the stick and if you watch a show where the audience gasps after a puppet is hit, then frankly, walk away the puppeteer doesn’t know what he or she is doing.