“For several weeks past an entertainment at Robinson’s Hall, on Sixteenth street near Union Square, has been attracting crowds of children and not a few grown-up people. It is the Marionette performance, in which a number of little wooden puppets take the parts in burlesque and melodrama of real actors, the words being spoken by persons behind the scenes. Such a style of entertainment has for years been in vogue in Paris, Florence and Naples; and the present company of Marionettes profess to come from London.

 

They certainly showed their Anglican origin, for they perform a tedious travesty of the charming old story of ‘Little Red Ridinghood,’ in which the dreary wastes of unintelligible rhymed dialogue, spoken by almost inaudible voices, is full of English allusions. The singing in this burlesque is also about as poor as it can be. The whole affair is a foreign importation not yet adapted to American comprehension.

 

[Paragraph about the motion of the puppets.]

 

There is in this entertainment a minstrel show, where the doll minstrels stretch open their mouths, play bones, strike tambourines, and generally do all those ridiculous things which are the special province of this profession…” Continues about the motions of the puppets, but no further mention of music.