Marionettes Views
A marionette is a puppet controlled from above using wires or strings (wires being the standard now due to increased durability). A marionette's puppeteer is called a manipulator.[1] Marionettes are operated with the puppeteer hidden or revealed to an audience by using a vertical or horizontal control bar in different forms of theatres or entertainment venues. They have also been used in films and on television.
Though the Greeks left few physical examples of puppets, their literature suggests that puppetry was important. The oldest written record on puppetry can be found in the writings of Xenephon dating from around 422 BC. The Greek word usually translated as puppets is neurospasta, which means string-pulling , from nervus, meaning either sinew, tendon, muscle, string, or wire, and span, to pull. Aristotle compared pulling strings to control heads, hands and eyes, shoulders and legs[citation needed]. Archimedes is known to have worked with marionettes.[citation needed] Plato's work is full of references to puppeteering. The 'Iliad' and the 'Odyssey' were presented using puppetry.[specify] Herodotus wrote that during festivals to honour Osiris, female priests carried statues which had moving arms activated by strings.
Italy is considered by many to be the early home of the marionette thanks to the influence of Roman puppetry. Xenophon and Plutarch refer to them. The Christian church used marionettes to perform morality plays. It is believed that the term marionette' emerged around 1600. Comedy sneaked into the plays as time went by and ultimately led to an edict banning puppetry from the church. Puppeteers responded by setting up stages outside cathedrals and became ever more ribald and slapstick. Out of this grew the Italian comedy called commedia dell'arte. Puppets were used at times in this form of theatre. Sometimes Shakespeare's plays were performed using marionettes instead of actors.
The sides of donkey carts are decorated with intricate, painted scenes from the Frankish romantic poems, such as The Song of Roland; these same tales are enacted in traditional puppet theatres featuring hand-made marionettes of wood, this art is called Opira dî pupi (Opera of the puppets) in Sicilian. The opera of the puppets and the Sicilian tradition of cantastorî (sing stories) are rooted in the Provençal troubadour tradition in Sicily during the reign of Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor, in the first half of the 13th century. A great place to see this marionette art is the puppet theatres of Palermo, Sicily.
Marionettes Images
