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transcription of the Punch and Judy puppet show performed in England by Giovanni Piccini in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Collier (1789-188 3) was a British journalist, critic, editor, and literary scholar; his works include such studies as A Bibliographical and Critical Account of the Rarest Books in the English Language (1865 ), but he is perhaps best known for having forged numerous emendations and notations in a copy of the Second Folio of Shakespeare's plays. From the discovery of those forgeries his reputation never recovered. As for Punch: familiar to British audiences throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth this figure evolved from the Pulcinella of the Italian commedia delVarte tradition dating back to the seventeenth century. In puppet form, this brutal, humpbacked, hooknosed character appears to reflect a merging of the mischievous Pulcinella figure (from which the Petrouchka figure in Russia also derives) with the figure of the humpbacked fool in the French and English traditions. Whatever the exact reliability of the record made by Collier in 1827, it is clear that by that time the exploits of the coarse, violent, and deceitful Mr. Punch had become an established source of wonder and amusement for audiences of all ages.
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