BUT why prate of benefit or pleasure to past or present audiences of the marionette when the best reason for the pupazzi, the true reason I do believe, for their continuance and longevity is the fun of puppet-playing? I confess it: nay, I proclaim it the foundation for my deep affection. And who shall find a firmer basis for any love than this,—interest, amusement, stimulation? Reverence or even understanding are far less vital, less compelling motives. Of course this applies to puppets. Everything applicable to humanity fits the burattini, for we are all so much the dancing dolls of destiny, satiric or serious, crude or precious puppets, all of us. One should truly have a fellow feeling for Punch and Judy.
As to the fun, however, of making puppets and of tinkering with the mechanical contrivances, the total absorption with such problems and the elation in overcoming absurd but seemingly insurmountable technical difficulties; the delight in carving and cutting, in designing costumes and then in sewing, glueing, painting, patching them into proper semblance of the original design: the art required properly to conceive a setting for dolls, the ingenuity exerted to decorate the stage, the delicious Lilliputian proportions of things, the charming effects contrived out of almost anything or nothing at all; and, in manipulating, the thrill of acquiring after long effort a full control of the doll at the end of the wires, of telegraphing one’s emotions down into the responsive little body; and the whimsical delight in writing for puppets (one dare be so impudent, being so impersonal and unpretentious!)—who shall say that such an aggregate of wholesome, creative enjoyment to an entire group of childlike grown-up folk is not sufficient vindication for Polichinelle and his kind? With so much bubbling enthusiasm behind the scenes, how can a proper audience be altogether bored? If they are bored it is a sure sign they are no proper audience!