The Bastards' Paradise by Kathe Koja

Author:Kathe Koja [Koja, Kathe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Novel, Horror, Fantasy, Fiction
ISBN: 9781938263231
Publisher: Roadswell Editions
Published: 2015-11-11T23:00:00+00:00

From the introduction to The Strings of Memory

Upon the road, the turning road, the happy road they go

They walk the wide world up and down, they play a show of great renown!

One wears a hat, one wears a crown

As on the road they go.

from “Ruprecht & Steven,” anonymous, 1904

Reginald Greene’s well-respected volume The Strings of History means to be a full history of puppet theatre, from its ancient beginnings in India to its great popularity in the Victorian age. He knows a great deal, even including fine overlooked plays like Tomas Grieg’s “Ist Es Wahr?”, Alban Cockrill’s “Poor Willy & Missus Willing,” and Arthur Kummerman’s “Showman of the Strand.”

But Mr. Greene views this world only from the audience. He treats rumor as fact, and fact as rumor, and sees less than half of any show that is played. He even begins his book by imagining the Garden of Eden as a theatre for Adam, Eve, and a crafty character who uses a snake to speak his lines—a very harsh and unfair commentary on the way puppeteers are perceived!

Having watched first-hand the day-to-day workings of several such theatres, and their supremely skilled performers both onstage and off, I believe that I may speak with more knowledge than Mr. Greene has, learned though he is. And since these particular puppeteers bear the burden of so many stories, under so many names—and so many of them as false as Mr. Greene’s in the Garden!—how they lived, and died, and where and how they played, all of this I mean to address, and thus finally set the record to rights.

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