Dorisbe arrives in Rome with her servant Lucillo: she rejoices at the idea of meeting her future husband, Dottore Grisanto (Doctor Grisanto). Clorimeno, Grisanto’s servant, refuses to be enchained by love, but his master orders him to fall in love. Outside the Colosseum, Dorisbe meets Nisbe, sister of the Dottore; she guides her to her brother’s house. On her way to announce the arrival of Grisanto’s future wife, Nisbe meets Clorimeno and falls in love with him. As for Dorisbe, she despairs after meeting the Dottore: the man she must marry is old, hoary and stupid. In the grip of her sorrow, Dorisbe meets Clorimeno: they both fall in love at first sight, and the young woman asks her lover to spare her from this gruesome marriage. Grisanto learns about his future wife’s unhappiness and dismisses his students to go comfort her; the Latinist students begin to dance. Clorimeno tells his master Grisanto that he loves Dorisbe. Grisanto laughs until he understands that he is the unfortunate husband; he decides to take revenge. After turning the old Nisbe’s love down, Clorimeno meets Dorisbe on her balcony. But Grisanto asks the cowardly Lucillo to make the lover flee and then to take revenge for him, and he scolds his betrothed; she pretends to be madly in love with Grisanto. Unfortunately, Clorimeno relates the whole story to his master when he sees him: he will come back to his beloved before the sun rises. Grisanto hides to spy on the lovers: Dorisbe has seen him, and she makes an ostentatious declaration to Clorimeno, telling him that she is faithful to her husband. In the following scenes, Nisbe comforts herself with Lucillo, while Dorisbe tries to clear up the situation with her lover, who despaired at her last words. The old pedant and future husband practices curtsying, but he falls, and young dancers begin to dance instead. Grisanto offers Clorimeno to Nisbe, who agrees. Clorimeno, who tried to kill himself, falls into Dorisbe’s arms. The lovers reconcile and agree to meet at night; Grisanto overhears them and decides to spy on them. He orders Lucillo to kill any man or woman in his garden. At night, Nisbe is waiting for Clorimeno: Lucillo arrives instead, and he is about to kill her, following the orders he was given. Grisanto stops her just before he does, and he believes that when Clorimeno talked about his lover, he was in fact talking about his sister: he arranges for Nisbe and Clorimeno to marry. Overhearing them, Dorisbe expresses jealousy, which Grisanto interprets as worry over seeing him with another woman. When Clorimeno arrives in the garden, he understands that Dorisbe is his master’s future wife and apologises; Grisanto promises to forgive him, as well as to give him his properties and the woman of the house. When the young man enters the house, Nisbe welcomes him and tells Dorisbe that she will marry him. Clorimeno protests, which comforts Dorisbe and stops her jealous feelings. Grisanto learns the truth and tries to make Clorimeno flee. But Clorimeno answers that he only followed his master’s advice.

"On foot and by rod" puppet

Marionette with counterweight

Not specified

Acciaiuoli Filippo (aka Gran Burattinajo)

Italy

Rome

Printed

Jealousy

Confidence

Promise

Pedant

Forced marriage

Burlesque

Farcical

Lyrical

Chi è cagion del suo mal pianga sè stesso, title page

Italian

Fiancée

Pupil

Schoolteacher

Old woman

Sister

Page

Dancer

Love story

Love rivalry

Music

Interlude

Classroom scene

Monologue

Situation comedy

Character leaning against the window

Spying scene

Hidden character

Night scene

Comic Equivocation

Misunderstanding

Wedding

Final wedding

Chi è cagion del suo mal pianga sè stesso

Let him who causes his own suffering blame himself

Polichinelle and Pierrot rob a vegetable garden every night. The gardener sets up scarecrows. At first, the thieves tremble with fear and give up their loot before they discover the trickery. Then they put on the scarecrows' clothes to scare and hit the Gardener. The Gardener runs away, but he has recognised Pierrot and Polichinelle. He returns disguised as a ghost, but Pierrot and Polichinelle are not fooled and hit him again. When the Gardener wants to prevent Polichinelle from escaping, Polichinelle plants him in a pot with Pierrot's help. The wife frees her husband. They both fill a melon with powder and a wick. Pierrot and Polichinelle, mistaking the wick for a cigar, light it. The explosion sends Polichinelle and Pierrot flying out of the garden, but causes the house to collapse on the Gardener and his wife.

Glove-puppet

All audiences

France

Paris

Duranty Louis Émile Edmond

Garden

Theft

Vegetables

Scarecrow

Phantom

Fear

Hoax

Rake

Firecracker

Blast

Melon

Trap

French

Gardener

Polichinelle

Pierrot

Gardener (woman)

Disguise

Plot twist

Blow-with-a-stick

Pyrotechnics

Explosion

Collapse of the set

Le Revenant

The Ghost

Pierrot is harassing his rich neighbour Mrs Trifouillon to get her to marry him. He locks her out of her house, then hides in her wardrobe. He beats her, breaks her dishes, throws her furniture in the street and deprives her of food and rest to make her give in. They fight, then she goes out to find a gendarme. When the gendarme arrives, Pierrot mistakes him for Mrs Trifouillon and pretends to marry him. Then Pierrot beats the Gendarme and throws him out. He finds Mrs Trifouillon's piggy bank, but she manages to take it back. Under threat, she agrees to marry Pierrot, who beats her to the rhythm of a wedding song that she is forced to hum while dancing.

Manipulated object

Silver wedding

Harassment

Cipidity

Stock exchange

Blackmail

Violence

Threat

Battered woman

Comical

Constable

Song

Beating with a broom

Ambush

Off-stage voice

Lazzi

Stone throwing

Aside

Headbutt

Throwing objects

Liquid spray

Final song

Running gag

Chase

Le Mariage de raison

The Marriage of reason

The rich Niflanguille goes to buy a bag of coal. He comes across the hungry Pierrot, who asks for his help in vain. The coalman cheats Niflanguille out of the weight of the bag. Pierrot hides in the bag and beats up the coalman, Niflanguille and the servant. Back home, Niflanguille looks for a sword to pierce the recalcitrant bag, but Pierrot gets it out in time and forces the servant to take his place. While Niflanguille pierces the bag and his servant with it, Pierrot runs away with a bag of money. A Gendarme wants to hang Niflanguille for murder, Pierrot for theft and the coalman for swindling. Pierrot kills the Gendarme and puts him in the sack, which he throws away, while Niflanguille flees through the window. Pierrot kills the coalman to avoid sharing the money, then orders wine which he pays for by beating the innkeeper with a stick. The Commissaire arrives with Niflanguille; he hangs Pierrot, but confiscates the money to punish the bad rich man.

Charcoal

Hunger

Poverty

Swindling

Trade

Deception

Contempt

Punishment

Money

Bad rich

Didactic

Coal merchant

Domestic servant

Police Superintendant

Hanging scene

Le Sac de charbon

The Bag of Coal

Marianne – the wife of a poor lumberjack – sends her starving children Hansel and Grethel in the woods, so that they pick some berries. But the children are captured by the cannibalistic naturalist Fleischmann, at the same time as the travelling tailor Kasperl Larifari, who believes he will find bed and board at his house. They are locked inside chicken coops and fattened. Kasperl is enraged. To calm him down, Fleischmann allows him outside the cage to drink some wine with him. He intends on eating him right after. But they both get drunk, while the professor’s maid, Katharine, helps the children escape and reports the cannibal to the police. Kasperl takes advantage of the general confusion to escape too. The professor chases him and then gives up. He wants to find the children but falls asleep in the end, exhausted. Kasperl finds him and sews the two legs of his pants together. Eventually, the court bailiff arrives with the children’s father, Peter. When they find Fleischmann, he is unable to move, and Peter kills him with an axe. The children come out of hiding and, at the end of the play, Kasperl declares that wickedness has been punished, virtue rewarded and that they all need to go to an inn now.

String marionette

Young audiences

Pocci Franz von

Germany

Munich

Cannibalism

University

Natural sciences

Philosophy

Tale

Misery

Cage

Forest

Justice

Drunkard

Drunkenness

Cruelty

Perversity

Fantasy

Parodistic

Title page illustrated by the author in the original collection

German

Der Menschenfresser

Teacher

Kasperl

Night

Moon

Murder on stage

Animated natural element

Dialect as a social marker

Caricature

Confinement

Versified passages

Hansel und Grethel

Hansel and Gretel

Polichinelle has cloistered himself in a barrel to escape the world’s malice. Despite the pleas of Pierrot, Cassandre and a pork butcher, he is determined to stay cloistered (although he took the wine, the money and the ham they brought to try and lure him out). Everyone misses the old Polichinelle and his love for life, but Pierrot comes up with an idea. He makes sure that Polichinelle watches a puppet show in which a harmless Polichinelle has withdrawn from the world. The real Polichinelle is outraged – he knocks the booth over and drives the puppeteer out. Meanwhile, Pierrot takes the barrel away. Polichinelle sorely misses his barrel, which he claims was a trick to better swindle people. The policeman arrives to arrest Polichinelle, for “disturbance to civilisation”, but the latter escapes. Pierrot, who fled when he saw the policeman, comes back with his arms full of the wine, ham and money he found in the barrel.

Hypocrisy

Misanthropy

Cunning

Vanity

Wine

Depression

Withdrawal from the world

Frontispiece of Polichinelle withdrawn from the World.

Pork butcher

Cassandre

Cassandra

L’Acteur faisant le personnage de Polichinelle

Actor

Manipulator

L’Acteur faisant le personnage de Pierrot

Theatre within the theatre

Apparition of the puppeteer

Characterisation through onomatopoeia

Polichinelle retiré du monde

Polichinelle withdrawn from the world

In Jeu-Maloches, a village in the French department of Indre, flageolet player Arthur Graboyos became a waiter at the inn Hôtel du Veau Qui Désire Téter (Hotel of the Calf That Wants To Suckle) in order to grow closer to Dorothée – the daughter of the innkeeper Friturin. Arthur and Dorothée both want to marry each other, but Friturin refuses to let an artist marry his daughter. Arthur is expecting a donation from an uncle in America. Bidet – the postman – brings a letter of marriage proposal to Friturin. Bidet himself would also like to marry Dorothée; however, she rejects him. The shipowner Chandelle, who sent Friturin the letter to offer his nephew to Dorothée, arrives at the hotel with an enormous trunk filled with pepper. Friturin dismisses Arthur after they quarrel. The latter comes back disguised as a cook and hides in Chandelle’s trunk to abduct Dorothée during the night. But the trunk snaps shut on him with a padlock. Several misunderstandings and quarrels happen one after another – Dorothée believes that Chandelle is Arthur in disguise, Friturin mistakes Chandelle for Arthur and Chandelle does not understand that Arthur is his nephew because he assumed the name Graboyos for his career as a musician. Arthur comes out of the trunk and makes himself recognised. All the misunderstandings are clarified and Chandelle gifts Arthur forty thousand French francs so that he can marry Dorothée.

Maurice Sand (Maurice Sand)

Nohant

Rivalry in love

Love

Dowry

Father-daughter relationship

Musician

Maurice Sand, Le Flageolet (first page of the manuscript)

Le Danger des malles à cadenas

Innkeeper

Postman

Daughter

Popular speech

Letter

Disguised character (false identity)

Instrumental tune

Le Flageolet

The Flageolet

Polichinelle finds himself without any money, and his house has been burnt down by the Prussiens (Prussians). Pierrot’s situation is even worse: the Prussiens burnt down his mill and killed his wife and kids. Polichinelle wants to enroll in the army so as not to starve to death. The two friends go for drinks at Mère Bacanale’s cabaret. The Sergent (Sergeant) lets La Grenade (the Grenade) stand guard. A first Soldat prussien (Prussian Soldier) arrives, and La Grenade kills him with a bayonet. A second Soldat prussien wounds La Grenade before running away. The Cantinière (Dinner Lady) gives La Grenade something to drink, takes his rifle and stands guard in her stead. She kills the Soldat prussien that was coming back, and tells what just happened to the Sergent and Polichinelle. The Sergent tells her that she will be honoured, and he lets Polichinelle stand guard. Polichinelle fights the Prussiens and kills them all, including Bismarck and the king of Prussia, Guillaume Ier (William I). The Diable (Devil) takes the corpses away.