Rose-Marie Walton

Professor Preiss
ENGL 6620
29 May 2015
Staging the Puppet Show in Bartholomew Fair
Much has been written about the significance of the puppet show in Ben Jonsons
Bartholomew Fair, The ancient modern history of Hero and Leander, otherwise called The
Touchstone of True Love. Hero and Leander recapitulates much of the play that has gone
before. The people of the fair (hustlers and thieves) and the visitors to the fair sit down together
to enjoy the puppet show. Hero and Leander provides a context for the denouement of the play
that largely takes place in the booth where the people gather to watch to show. This paper will
focus on how the choice to perform this play within a play with puppets and specifically how it
might have been performed, influences the way that we interpret it.
If acting is nothing but being a vehicle for the script, than a puppet would be the perfect
actor if the author was the puppeteer. He could then control their every movement and make
them perfect in their lines. In the Induction, the Stage-keeper suggests the poet (Jonson), or
one of his spies, may be hiding behind an arras listening. The description of the puppets as actors
likewise imagines the poet as the puppeteer in the booth, unseen, but in complete control.
Throughout Bartholomew Fair Bartholomew Cokes remains childish in his insistence on
viewing the puppets as anything but puppets. He repeatedly refers to them as actors. He asks
which of them is the best actor and wants to know are they never flustered in performance
(5.3.71, 82). When Lantern Leatherhead notices Cokes handling the puppets Cokes tells
Lantern not to be jealous of Puppet Hero because he wont hurt her, offering as proof of his pure
intentions that he is already engaged to be married (5.4.5-6). Cokes tells Lantern they are better
than human actors because, they offer not to fleer, nor jeer, nor break jests, as the great players

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do and Lantern agrees that the puppet actors are at least as good, telling him they are / as well
governed a company, though I say it And here is young Leander is as / proper an actor of his
inches, and shakes his head like an hostler (5.3.79-80, 84-7).
Cokes additionally views the puppets as products that can be bought and sold. He
nicknames the puppet various toys he could buy at the fair, consoling himself with the idea that
they will replace all of the other things he would like to buy at the fair. The implication seems to
be that actors and objects are synonymous. Puppets are in some ways the epitome of objects,
simple materials with no real soul and products, bought and sold. Yet they are also sometimes
imagines as transcendent of the corporeal, by being only a symbol without any flesh (mortality,
desire, and sin) inherent to them. Puppets are the perfect actors in part because they can be
absolutely anything. There is no original physicality or identity to overcome. The hand that
animates the puppet may well be more like the humors (which are reduced to vapours in
Bartholomew Fair). The puppet and human characters are driven by carnal desires.
Even still, when we read Hero and Leander, it is easy to get drawn into the narrative and
forget that all the backchat and brawling that imitates impromptu puppet show mayhem so well,
is completely scripted. Jonson seems to argue puppetry, which likely did not utilize scripts at all,
and certainly did not publish them, because they were ephemera, and all about the performance
and the things that supposedly could not be written down, not only could be scripted could be
scripted because it was entirely formulaic and therefore predictable. This is epitomized by the
moment at which Lantern tells the puppets/puppeteers Hold, hold your hands when we can
easily imagine that when puppets Damon and Pythias stop attacking Lantern, the audience on
stage stops clapping, as does the audience of the Hope Theatre (5.4.216). In this way Jonson
shows how he is able to make the actors and audience members his puppets. The puppet show

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was going through the same transition that theatre had been not so very long ago: it had been
kicked out of the churches, and was now itinerant, low culture for the masses. The human stage
and puppet theatre both depended upon audience reaction and interaction with the show.
To the extent that Jonsons fantasy of being puppet master can be fulfilled, this is
accomplished more successfully on the page than on the stage. Indeed, in print, Jonson is both
puppeteer and interpreter by providing marginal notes summarizing and explaining the action.
Nevertheless, even in print, where Jonson is given much more control of his work, Hero and
Leander provides a prime example of mediation between the reader and Jonsons words. Jonson
likely wrote dialogue in which Lantern Leatherhead asks to be addressed as Lantern rather than
Leatherhead at least in part so that the speech tags between him and Puppet Leander would not
be identical. The printer used Pup. L. rather than Lea., for Leanders speech tags, but he also
momentarily switched back to Lea. for Lantern Leatherheads speech tag (234). This seems to
be nothing more than an error on the printers part. The printers abbreviations of the puppets
names for their speech tags and their rapid fire dialog is confusing enough without such
mistakes. The pre-fix Pup. is useful to distinguish Lantern and Cokes from the puppets at first,
but it quickly disappears for the reader and every I and O that begins a speech is confused
with the tag. In fact, the collection that included this play when it was first printed was halted by
Jonson because he was so unhappy with the product.
Jonsons text imagines complete control. The live show, on the other hand, works in
almost the exact opposite way. This is the only example of a written puppet play script from this
era in England and Jonson does an admirable job of writing in every insult and much of the
action. Nevertheless, even if the puppeteer intended to stick to Jonsons script word for word
(which is very hard to imagine as puppeteers were likely used to not have a script at all), he

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would have to essentially re-write the script, at least in his head, to determine how Jonsons
vision would actually be performed. It is possible of course, because Jonson seems to know
something of puppets and wanted to be in total control of his plays, that the script he sold to the
Lady Elizabeths Servants had extensive notes for how to perform Hero and Leander. Puppet
show scripts are meant for reference, not as detailed instructions, even today, however, and the
puppeteer would decide how he felt most comfortable performing the show. This may very well
have involved large changes to Jonsons script for practicalitys sake, but for the purposes of this
paper, we will assume that Hero and Leander, as printed by John Beale in 16311, could be
performed on the Renaissance stage. Many historians of puppet theatre reference Hero and
Leander because puppet shows were not printed at the time and although we do not have the
script, what we do have shows that it was clearly closely modeled on the contemporary puppet
dramas, and it certainly is a genuine play for puppets, with its knock-about funny business, its
vulgarity, and its repartee between the showman, the public, and the puppets (33). By this point
in Jonsons career, he knew very well that there would be several layers of mediation between
the text he wrote and what the audiences saw performed. The presence of the Scrivener, who
would have written out each players part, and the contract presented to the audience in the
Induction both recognize how much he depends upon others for the plays success. The supposed
author of Hero and Leander, Littlewit, is absent during the performance. It may seem that
Lantern takes control of the play in the authors necessary absence, but much depends upon the
puppeteer. What is of particular interest to this paper is the production of puppet show, the live
performance in the Hope Theatre. By doing so we may open new possibilities of interpretation,
or at least add layers of meaning onto a literary reading of the Hero and Leander.

This text is my primary source for the play, however there are no line numbers in this edition. Therefore all line
numbers refer to the Longman annotated edition for convenience.

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The fact that Lantern Leatherhead takes credit for the show, calling the puppets his
company, and telling Cokes Im the mouth of em all leads some critics to conclude that
Lantern at least voices all of the puppets and likely is the puppeteer (5.3.65). Lantern
Leatherhead is described repeatedly as the interpreter of Hero and Leander. As far as we can tell
from the very limited records of early modern English puppet shows, the interpreter would stand
outside the booth to talk to the audience and the puppets. This person was the showman,
collecting money from the crowd and engaging in backchat as well as the primary duty of
narrating the story and repeating dialogue. The puppeteer in the booth would likely be difficult to
hear. Puppet voices were also traditionally high and nasal, even when a swazzle was not used, as
in the Italian shows, making them difficult to understand. The puppet booths were usually
designed for a puppeteer to stand up with his hands over his head, so that the audience could see
the puppets over the crowd. The booth was designed to do very little besides hide the puppeteer
and his props because the puppeteer was meant to be invisible. Of course, the booth could be
designed differently to make both the puppeteers head and the puppets visible. However, it is
logical to have two people perform these very different roles. George Speaight, a commonly
cited source on early English puppetry, assumes Lantern would perform his role as interpreter
outside the booth (33). As interpreter, he acts as a mediator between the puppets and the
audience.
Bartholomew Cokes tells Wasp just before the show begins Ile interpret to thee and
indeed he does act as a second interpreter, telling both Wasp and by extension the audience of
the Hope Theatre what is said and done throughout the show (5.4.93-4). This is a clever piece of
comic business because Cokes enthusiasm for the show is contagious and he helps Lantern tell
the audience what is going on in case they cannot see or hear the puppets well enough. The

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standing puppet booth was likely used in Bartholomew Fair because it would be quick and easy
to set up on stage and would allow greater visibility for the audience of the Hope, by raising the
puppets up above the seated audience members on stage. Cokes wants to go into the tiringhouse (the back stage area) to drink with the young company, but Lantern tells him You
cannot go upright int (5.3.48-9, 51). This likely refers not to the area that the puppeteer would
stand in to perform, but a very small compartment attached to it for props, scenery and the
baskets of puppets, the puppet theatres equivalent of the tiring house.
The puppet of choice in Renaissance England were glove puppets (the British term for
hand puppets). Glove puppets are also particularly suited to this comic, knock-about show.
Because they are based upon the human hand, they can grab objects and move very quickly.
Lantern brings out the puppets in baskets so Cokes can meet them. Marionettes were the other
well-known puppets in England in the early 17th century, but they would not likely be kept in

Fig. 1 The traditional hand position for glove puppets in England, allowing for the greatest
arm action from the puppet, but also creating a bulge from the unused fingers.
Helen Binyon. Puppetry Today. (New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1967) 39. Print.

baskets because their strings would easily tangle. All of this leads most scholars to believe that
the puppets in this show were glove puppets.
Speaight gives a quick overview of how the English clown wound up on the puppet stage,
explaining the hunchbacked Punch as a historical remnant of mocking people who were
physically different in size, shape, or ability. In addition, glove puppets are naturally lopsided to
some extent because a hand is not symmetrical. Rather than trying to hide this, comic puppets
such as Punch, exaggerated it into the already iconic clown figure.

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It would be difficult for one puppeteer to perform all of the puppets in this show, but it
could be done. The benefit would be a partial fulfillment of Jonson as one-man puppet master,
controlling all that is said and done on the puppet stage, while still admitting the mediation of the
showman and the audience. According to Rod Burnett, who has been performing Punch and Judy
style puppet shows since the late 1970s, one way to allow a single puppeteer to quickly change

puppets is to hang the puppets upside-down inside the booth for easy access. A small metal ring
on the bottom to allows the puppeteer to hang them on hooks inside the booth. This would allow
the puppeteer to take puppets off and put them on again (figure 2). Puppets for the left hand are
hung on the left side and puppets for the right hand are hung on the left. To keep the bottom of
the puppets open, Burnett hems a piece of piece of wire along the bottom of the puppet. The
most challenging scene to perform with one puppeteer would be the fight scene that involves
puppets Damon, Pythias, Hero, Leander, and Jonas. One solution would be a rack to hold the
puppets (figure 3). Even before this battle, Hero, Damon, and Pythias get into a mostly verbal
altercation that could utilize the rack. Leander says nothing during the initial confrontation of
Damon and Pythias and Hero. In fact both Lantern and Puppet Jonas (Cupid) have to convince

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Leander to join in the fight. Leander could either be off stage when he neither says nor does
anything or he could be on this rack.
It would be much easier, of course, to build the booth to accommodate a second
puppeteer. Two man puppet shows were not unheard of. The audience would not necessarily be
able to tell if there were one or two puppeteers, but it would influence the performance. The
puppeteers would not be identical. The voices might have been distinguishable. Just as human
actors sometime upstage each other, puppeteers sometimes have trouble sharing the stage. The
selection of the puppet Dionysius by Lantern to debate Zeal-of-the-Land Busy would also be a
selection of a particular puppeteer, not only a puppet.
Much of the work of Hero and Leander would have happened before the performance.
Not only would the puppeteer have needed to decide how to stage the show, as previously
mentioned, but the puppets would need to be created or altered in order to fulfill their parts. A
quick overview of the puppets may be useful. Lantern tells Cokes that Leander is a favorite of
the ladies because of his shapely leg. There is a reference to Hero gawking at his naked leg in
Hero and Leander as well. It is entirely possible that Puppet Leander had legs, but given that he
has no real use for them and there are so many puppets to fit on stage at once, it is just as likely
that he and the other puppets only exist from the waist up. If this is the case, the references to his
legs are jokes based upon the audiences willing belief that the puppet has legs that we just dont
see hiding behind the puppet stage. There are several other references in Hero and Leander to
what is hidden and what is imagined to be hidden, but only exists in the mind. Puppet Leander
tells Lantern to kiss my hole here and smell for instance (5.4.115). The only hole in the puppet
would likely be the hole for the puppeteers hand, which could not be easily proffered, without
taking it off. Instead, Leander is likely referring to his imaginary anus. Likewise, Hero tells

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Damon and Pythias to kiss the whore o the arse (270). Puppet Jonas has some kind of love
potion, possibly signified by a bottle, hidden under his apron where his lechery lurks (238).
Damon and Pythias each have a ham hidden under their cloaks. Pulling these props out from the
puppets garments could be done a number of ways. In order to have these mini revelations
mimic the final unveiling of Puppet Dionysius as a sexless puppet, one hand of each puppet
could be attached to the prop and concealed under the puppets garments. This would not be
difficult in the case of Jonas apron, which would naturally be open at the sides. The cloaks
could also have a slit along one side to allow the puppets hands and props to hide behind the
cloth. This method has the drawbacks of requiring more than one puppet for Damon and Pythias
and limits the size of the props. If the props are attached to one of the puppets hands, the
puppeteer would not have to worry about dropping it and could therefore easily use it as a
weapon throughout the scene. However, the larger the prop is, the greater the reach of the puppet
to bash one another. Perhaps the best solution would be a compromise in which the puppet
appears to pull the prop out from under his garments, but it really comes from just below the
sight of the stage. The props could then be comically large, easier to see, and extend the puppets
reach most effectively. Glove puppets are specially designed for grabbing props and the
puppeteer would likely have lots of practice wielding them.
These puppets are marked as male or female, the marking is simply an empty symbol
with no true referent. Puppets not only have no real gender; they have no identity; they are
whatever they need to be. When the puppet Dionysius lifts up his garment he is essentially
revealing what everyone already knows, that he is a puppet. Cokes is not the only one who has
treated the puppets as if they are something other than puppets, however. The entire debate
between Dionysius and Busy assumes that the puppet is somehow able to answer for himself.

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The audience on stage and in the Hope Theatre believe in the magic of puppetry at least enough
to enjoy the show. The puppets have been so closely related to actors throughout the scene and
more specifically in the argument with Busy implies that actors too have no real identity. Earlier
Edgworth mocks the idea that Cokes has a soul, Heart, if he have any more than a thing given/
him instead of salt, only to keep him from stinking, Ill be hanged afore / my time presently
(4.2.46-8). He goes on to ask, if he has a soul, where it would be (48). Not only actors or even
characters in the show are susceptible to this charge. Jonson argued as much in Discoveries
Made Upon Men and Matter, I have considered, our whole life is like a Play: wee so insist in
imitating outhers, as wee cannot (when it is necessary) returne to our selves (105).
The puppets in this show, like the actors Bartholomew Fair, also have costumes on top of
costumes. Leander is first seen with cloth lapped about him like a scarf, before he changes into
his best clothes to meet Hero. This would likely mean that he simply takes off his scarf to reveal
the clothes he already has on underneath. We are told that Cupid is disguised as Jonas the
drawer, but as we never see Jonas take off his supposed disguise, we can only imagine that the
puppet is simply a drawer that we are told to imagine is actually Cupid. The most complicated
layering of identities and costumes is the Ghost of King Dionysius, who is dressed as a
Scrivener. How much of this layered identity is actually visible in the puppet is debatable, but it
is difficult to imagine that all of this would be evident to the audience from the design of the
puppet without Lanterns description. Although puppetry is essentially a visual art, Jonson seems
to be playing with the verbal control of the interpreter to tell the audience how to interpret what
they see. King Dionysius is associated with the Damon and Pythias because of a legend which
employed all three iconic characters. This story would likely be familiar to the audience as it had
been made into a play by Richard Edwards. By having the tyrant dressed as a scrivener Jonson

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may well have been following referring to Nashes Lenten Stuff which includes the following
description: Now, King Dionysius being a good wise fellow, for he was afterwards a
schoolmaster, and had plaid the coachman to Plato, and spit in Aristippus the philosophers face,
many a time and oft (315). That the name Dionysius is shared among many historical characters
(not to mention the Greek god) makes the conflation between a philosopher and tyrant as easy
explanation in both cases. The reason for making Dionysius a ghost as well is less clear. It does
allow the character to appear in the midst of the action. The ghost would likely have appeared
from below and risen up, imitating the ghosts on the Elizabethan stage who appeared from trap
doors under the set. Of course, all of the puppets could easily enter and exit this way, but a ghost
puppet could easily parody the conventions of the stage ghost.
The concept of a ghost puppet is interesting, however. The analogy between the puppet
and the actor or the puppet and the man more generally seems to be that the body is the puppet
and the hand is the spirit that creates the motion. This is already an odd dynamic, making a spirit
out of flesh, but in the case of a ghost puppet, if that which is meant to represent the spirit is on
the outside and the hand is the motion of the spirit, it is almost turned inside-out. Like the ghost
of Dionysius who angrily insists that the puppets stop fighting, Busy appears seemingly from
nowhere, interrupting the show. Before the argument with the puppet Dionysius, Busy calls on
an outside power to assist him in the dispute: Assist me, zeal, / fill me, fill me; that is, make me
full (35-6). At the end of the argument Puppet Dionysius tells the audience, I speak by
inspiration as well as/ he and indeed they both have the same supposed source of inspiration:
Jonsons text. During performance, however, the text is not the hand in the puppet or the voice of
the puppeteer any more than it is the voice that emanates from Busy. There is the further
mediation of the puppeteer and the actor. Indeed, Jonsons text only tells us at this crucial

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moment, The puppet takes up his garment, but it is up to the puppeteer to decide what exactly
is revealed underneath: the sexless body of a puppet, or the hand of the puppeteer.
Of course each option reveals the obvious fact that Puppet Dionysius is a puppet, but they
are nonetheless different. Hero and Leander (as mentioned earlier) is full of revelations as is
the larger play, but this particular reveal is linked most obviously with the discovery of Justice
Overdo because both are marked in the margin of the same page. Justice Overdo has been in
disguise from the beginning of the play, so when he takes off his second disguise the audience is
seeing him as Justice Overdo for the first time. This too is a costume, of course, and rather than
revealing himself to be a wise magistrate who has discovered all the hidden crimes of the fair,
he, who seems to have been well-respected by the other characters up to this point,
unintentionally shows himself to be very injudicious in his analysis. Indeed, Quarlous sees fit to
strip him down even further: remember you are but Adam, flesh and blood! / You have your
frailty; forget your other name of Overdo (5.6.85-6). If the puppet reveals a smooth, sexless
body, then it, like Justice Overdo, promises to reveal more than it really does, peeling back only
the upper most surface.
If, however, the puppet reveals the puppeteer under his gown, he has revealed more than
promised. The puppets may not have female or male among them, but the puppets are the
disguise, the costumes that allow the puppeteer to play any role he chooses. What is the
difference between a male actor putting on the costume of a female character and a male
puppeteer playing all the male and female roles with puppets on his hands? If the puppet reveals
a sexless cloth body, the focus is on the puppet as empty signifier, ignoring the puppeteer
completely. That a man may operate male and female puppets is not the issue. Instead, it is an
emphatic statement that nothing is hiding underneath. The question posed by Busy relates to

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actors specifically and Puppet Dionysius argues that the same does not apply to puppets. Because
puppets have been confused with actors so many times up to this point, however, it seems logical
to ask whether or not actors are also sexless, merely costumes with no identity underneath.
Indeed the ability of actors to disguise themselves as different genders and classes seemed to be
an easy target for Renaissance conservatives who were anxious about anyone being able to seem
on thing but be another. It could be that Puppet Dionysiuss gesture implies that we are all
puppets, making gender and class mere costumes we with no real meaning. Indeed, the
altercation is designed in part to compare Busy to a puppet. Dionysius calls Busy Dagonet in
response to Busys referring to him as Dagon (5.5.81). Much of the puppets argument rests on
Busy being a hypocrite, but by calling him the same name in diminutive form, he is also
implying that Busy is no bigger than himself. Therefore Busy is a puppet in that he is a miniature
man. Dionysius ends the confrontation with the claim, my standing is as lawful as his, that I
speak by inspirations as well as / he, that I have as little to do with learning as he, and so scorn
her / helps as much as he (94-6). His argument is essentially that a Puritan is nothing more than
a puppet, mocking the concept of being an empty vessel waiting to be filled by inspiration.
Earlier in Hero and Leander Lantern tells Cokes to hush because the puppets will be
angry if they realize he is eavesdropping on their plans (5.4.249-50). This points out what may
not otherwise be noticeable. In this play the puppets only see and hear Lantern. There is no
interaction between the puppets and the audience. When Puppet Dionysius takes up the argument
with Busy, this convention (at least of this show) is broken. If the puppet reveals the puppeteers
wrist, the breaking down of the shows conventions are taken further. By revealing the
puppeteers wrist, the suspension of disbelief is undone. Busy is not arguing with Puppet
Dionysius, but with an unseen puppeteer performing the puppet. We may not be as credulous as

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Cokes or Busy, but all of the audience must believe in the illusion of the puppet having its own
life to enjoy the show. The difference would be analogous to the discovery that a magician up on
the stage is actually only performing tricks versus the having one of his tricks explained to the
audience. Furthermore, by bringing the puppeteer into the argument through the revelation of his
wrist, it is more strongly implied that puppeteers and actors, for that matter, are just as sexless as
puppets. Theatre is all show with no reality behind it at all, all symbolism with no underlying
referents. Indeed, it may well be that identity in or out of the theatre is a myth.
Jonsons puppet parody of the classical Hero and Leander belongs in the company of
other contemporary parodies of the story. Similarly, Jonson was not alone in his irreverent
treatment of male friendship epitomized by Damon and Pythias. Such idealized friendship is
often described in terms of duplication and interchangeability (Stretter 348). Damon and Pythias
are interchangeable in Hero and Leander, the only difference seems to be that Damon wears a
beard. Ideally, the voices and costumes of these puppets would be identical so that Damons
beard is the only distinguishing characteristic between the two. They are always on stage
together, they have identical personalities, and generally act as one. Of course by having these
iconic friends full of quarrelsome vapors as Knockem would say, is an obviously comic reversal.
The decision to go to Hero together also ridicules the way that several plays of the time
problematized the ideal of male friendship by putting it in conflict with romantic love. This
conflict is quickly put aside after their own argument is channeled into violence again Lantern.
Lantern Leatherhead is compared to a historical jester by Joan Trash and she tells
Bartholomew Cokes that his proper place is on the table rather than at it, where hell do you
forty fine things (3.4.105). Joan also implies that Lantern will change his outfit for the puppet
performance: Nay, sir, you shall see him in his velvet jerkin and a scarf too, at / night, when you

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hear him interpret Master Littlewits motion (118-119). This costume change makes sense as
well because he seems to be unrecognized by Bartholomew Cokes who has paid for all of
Lanterns wares and for a special wedding performance. What would be particularly useful
would be for Lantern to also don a jesters cap for the performance. This would make it much
easier for the puppets in the booth to reach out and strike him, by increasing the size of the
target. For example, Puppet Cole is supposed to hit Lantern over the head early in the play. If he
needed to jump out of the boat to do this, it may very well have involved the creation of a
separate Cole puppet. If Lantern is wearing a large hat that could hang partially into the reach of
the puppet stage at the key moment, Cole could theoretically swing his oar into the hat without
leaving his boat. This would allow the Cole puppet to mimic the actual rowing motion of an oar
by using an oar attached to the boat with a specialized crank to make the oar move without the
creation of two puppets. Of course, it is not at all necessary for the movement of the puppets to
be believable, but we find records of Renaissance audiences admiring puppet shows specifically
because of the surprising realism they found in the motions. The jesters cap would also provide
a useful visual cue to the audience that misrule will continue to be the master of the fair, despite
Justice Overdos attempt to cast out the enormities.
Travelling puppet shows often borrowed characters and plots from the human stage and
Renaissance theatre is riddled with references to puppets. Hero and Leander dramatizes this
relationship. The puppet show recapitulates much of the themes and actions of the play, the
mindless bickering, the disguises, fighting over women, etc. That Justice Overdo chooses to
discover himself so soon after Puppet Dionysius takes up his garment, makes his revelation,
which the audience has been waiting for since the beginning of the play, seem like an imitation
of puppets. The Induction is designed in part to prompt the question of when the play begins

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(with the script, the stage, the actors, etc.) By inserting Hero and Leander into the end of the
play, Jonson pre-empts the transformation of his play into a puppet show by doing it himself.
The puppet of the ghost of Dionysius may well have parodied stage ghosts. Likewise, Cokes may
have imitated a puppet in his participation in the show. The glove puppets of the time usually had
cloth bodies and wooden heads, without moving mouths. Raising a puppet up or moving it up
and down would indicate which puppet was speaking. The stage audience of Hero and Leander
would have their backs to the real audience, even if they were turned on an angle to provide
better visibility. Actors would normally step up to the front of the stage to say their lines in order
to make them easier to hear and see. For Cokes interruptions, it would make sense for him to
jump up excitedly, at least the first time, to cue the audience into who was speaking. He already
has become part of the show because he shares so much dialog with Lantern, but by doing this,
he appears to be one of the puppets, rather than an audience member.
Simply by making the character Hero into a puppet, she becomes a joke. Shershow
concisely describes how puppets are imagined to be feminine in the English Renaissance. They
are receptacles. They are associated with hollow pretence and the fear that makeup, wigs, and
clothes could make anyone (even a boy!) appear to be a fine lady appears to have been rampant
at the time. Women were often called terms for puppets, often with the implication, if not the
explicit meaning of a whore. Indeed, Hero is accused of being a whore, not just by Damon and
Pythias, but Lantern who tells them when they are fighting over Hero that between you, you
have both but one drab (5.4.201). Lantern tells us that Damon goes to visit Hero for some
kindness done him the last week and before Pythias even accuses Damon of coming to sleep
with Hero, Damon tells him, Thou has lain with her thyself (196). Lantern also implies that
Cole is angry that Leander wants to cross the river to see Hero because Cole has not yet taken

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payment for Heros crossing, making him jealous to see another man enjoy her before he has the
chance. By making Hero a wench o the bankside rather than a priestess in a temple, not only
does she become common (like everything else in the story), but by being common, she is also
imagined to be licentious.
Lantern also tells us that even after Hero becomes very drunk, not three pints of sherry
could flaw her and even after Cupid put love in her sack she and Leander only kiss and plan
to meet later (5.4.236, 238). Of course, the puppeteer may very well do more than Jonsons text
suggests in this scene. Likewise the action on stage is largely left up to the readers imagination
during Heros fight with Damon and Pythias. Jonsons stage directions are simply that they all
quarrel and fall about the ears during the knave out of door whore out of door repartee. After
Hero tells them kiss the whore o the arse the both reply So we will, so we will (5.4.270,
272). They accost her in some way which causes Hero to cry Oh my haunches, O my haunches,
hold, hold. It is possible that Pythias and Damon are attempting to rape Hero and therefore
enacting the funny business of raping a punk upside-down suggested by the Stage-keeper in
the induction. This would be another case of something that the Stage-keeper tells the audience
Jonson refused to put in the play to make it more popular actually ends up being in the play. It is
also possible that the puppets both grab Hero and try to kiss her haunches. Another option
would be for the puppets to try to pull up and get underneath Heros dress. If this were the case,
it would mimic the lechery and ham under the puppets clothes prior to this as well as
foreshadow the taking up of Puppet Dionysius garment. The puppeteer and not Hero may
actually be who is in danger of being revealed. It would also involve Damon and Pythias trying
to get underneath Hero. The joke, of course, is that when Hero tells them to kiss her arse, she
does not mean it literally. The idea behind it is essentially that the other person would not want

Walton 18

to do that because it would be putting them in a humiliating, inferior, subordinate position. If the
puppets try to get underneath Hero they are literalizing her suggestion completely. The puppets
are generally understood to be a low form of entertainment and Hero and Leander is a coarse
parody of Greek mythology. They are literally higher than everyone and everything else on
stage, however.
The Dramatis Personae for Bartholomew Fair is interesting because of what characters
are included and which are excluded. It is not surprising that there is not mention of a puppeteer
as there is no textual reference to anyone other than Lantern Leatherhead associated with the
performance of Hero and Leander in Bartholomew Fair. The Book-holder, Stage-keeper, and
Scrivener from the Induction are also missing from the list. Puppets is the very last listing on
the page. It is tempting to read this last entry as a description of the rest; that all the
aforementioned characters are mere puppets. The inclusion of puppets in this list seems
ridiculous if we imagine them to be nothing more than props. Helen Ostovich points out that
Bartholomew Fair has the largest cast of characters of any Jonsonian play, perhaps explaining
why Jonson felt there was not room to list all of the puppets. It is also possible that even while
the puppets are elevated to the level of the human characters, they are also intentionally marked
as essentially identical to one another and even to the puppeteer. Hand puppets provides a useful
tool for Jonson to investigate issues of theatricality, authorship, and identity in a very physical
and entertaining way.

Walton 19

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Hull, Elizabeth M. "Hero and Leander." The Classical Tradition. Eds. Anthony Grafton et al.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010. Credo Reference. Web. 3 May 2015
Jonson, Ben. Bartholmew fayre : a comedie, acted in the yeare, 1614 by the Lady Elizabeths
seruants, and then dedicated to King Iames, of most blessed memorie. London : Printed
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__________. Bartholomew Fair. Ben Jonson: Four Comedies. Ed. Helen Ostovich. New York:
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__________. Discoveries made upon men and matter. The Works of Ben Jonson. Ed. Peter
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and tracts ... in the late earl of Oxford's library. Oxford: Oxford University, 1809. 288333. Google Books. Web. 28 May 2015.
Shershow, Scott Cutler. Puppets and Popular Culture. Cornell University Press: Ithaca 1995.
Speaight, George. Punch and Judy: a History. Plays Inc.: London 1970. Print.
Stretter, Robert. Cicero on Stage: Damon and Pythias and the Fate of Classical Friendship in
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Syme, Holger Schott. Unediting the Margin: Jonson, Marston, and the Theatrical Page.

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