Stranica 14 [14]
OCR
4. INTRODUCTION Faust really owes its existence to the marionette-play by the same name which for many generations delighted the German people and gave Goethe the idea for his opera. And who can doubt but that the wonderful mechanical doli Ophelia in Offenbach’s operatic masterpiece, The Tales of Hoffman, is a direct descendant of those primitive puppets? In Italy puppet-plays have survived up to the present, having reached a quite high degree of artistic perfection. In our own country the most familiar street puppet-show is Punch and Judy—not forgetting their delectable baby— and wherever this appears it never fails to draw shrieks of laughter from the audience. Pinocchio is by all odds the best puppetstory to be found anywhere, and we sigh in sympathy with the funny little chap’s scrapes and punishments, or chuckle at his pranks, while we feel like exclaiming, “ Why, how much Pinocchio must have been like me!” The author of this captivating tale, Signor Lorenzini, or “ Collodi’’—as he liked to call himself after his native town in Italy—lived during the Nineteenth Century (1826-90) and devoted himself to writing and education, believing that one pleasing way to teach was through the puppet-plays. LovuisE R. BULL
