John Ketch. Talk of modern dramas,
indeed!--show me any of your Dimonds, Reynolds, Dibdins, or Crolys that
can compare with Punchiana, in the unities of time, place, costume, and
action, intricate and interesting plot, situations provokingly comical
and effective, and a catastrophe the most appallingly surprising and
agreeable. Then his combats aux batons are superior even to Bradley and
Blanchard; but the ne plus ultra of his exploits, the cream of all
his comicalities, the grand event, is the ingenious trick by which
Mr. Punch, when about to suffer on the scaffold, disposes of the
executioner, and frees himself from purgatory, by persuading the
unsuspecting hangman, merely for the sake of instruction to an
uninitiated culprit, to try his own head in the noose: Punch, of
course, seizes the perilous moment--runs him up to the top of the fatal
beam--Mr. John Ketch hangs suspended in the air--Punch shouts a glorious
triumph--all the world backs him in his conquest--the old cracked
trumpet sounds to victory--the showman's hat has made the transit of the
circle, and returns half-filled with the voluntary copper contributions
of the happy audience. The alderman drops his tributary shilling, while
his fat sides shake with laughter; even Mrs. Marigold and the amiable
Miss Biddy have become victims to the vulgar inspiration, and are
laughing as heartily as if they were enjoying the grimaces of the first
of buffos, Signor Ambrogetti.
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