Real life events that fit the characters in Punch & Judy
Armed with my characters and my theme, I now have to fill in the missing pieces. I need to find a way to bring each of her puppets to life, to establish who they were and their relationship to Joan. How do they fit into her story? But more importantly, how do I keep the whole story fitting the theme of Joan’s puppet show, the one we now know as Punch and Judy?
It's been quite a challenge to cover 450 years of history in this timeline, especially since Joan is still alive today. We've tried to be as historically accurate as possible, since this is her 'biography' and she lived through all of these events. Hopefully we've done her justice! When I think of Joan, I can't help but imagine her living in the Lake District with all her family around her!
I had to find a suitable date of birth for her based on her experience of Commedia dell arte. It's clear that she was very familiar with the art form, so she must have seen it performed live, maybe even in her home town of Rome. I consulted a few sources and found that the first recorded mention of Commedia dell arte was in 1545. From there, I was able to track back and determine that she would have been around 20 years old when she first saw it performed. This means that she would have been married young by Italian standards.
In medieval Europe, the average age for marriage was around 21 for men and 18 for women. However, it was not unusual for men to marry earlier or later than this, depending on their social class and circumstances. For example, nobles and other high-ranking men often married younger women in order to produce heirs as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, commoners and other lower-ranking men often had to wait longer to marry because they needed to save up enough money to support a family. The acceptable age difference between a medieval man and his wife varied depending on the man's social class. For example, nobles were expected to marry women from other noble families, who were usually around the same age. However, commoners had more freedom in choosing a wife, and it was not unusual for a commoner to marry a woman who was a few years older or younger than him.
As it turned out for me, this story almost wrote itself. All the characters I needed to develop and the situations I needed for Joan to experience seemed to fall into place. The research I did for this story could fill an entire book, but I only want to share a taste of it in the hope that you will enjoy the story as much as I enjoyed researching it!
A medieval wedding: It was delightful to research medieval weddings, which uncovered some interesting aspects beyond finding wonderful designs for the bride's wedding dress and groom's outfit. For example, the couple were officially married outside the doors of the chapel before being allowed inside for the nuptial mass. This is contrast to a Protestant mass, where everyone in the congregation is given the body and blood of Christ for communion, whereas Catholics are only given the body of Christ, except in the case of a nuptial mass.
Another fact that I discovered is that on the wedding night, a medieval wife would not wear a nightgown but present herself naked before her husband. I ignored this fact for the sake of my story and called it authors prerogative.
A wife’s place in society through the ages: Wives were considered no better than chattel, in fact for a long time, they were had less value than chattel! How women have been perceived in society has been quite disturbing over the centuries anything from being beaten once a week to keep her in place to taking all her worldly goods as her husbands, with no rights over land, money or even her own children until the nineteenth / twentieth century.
Child birth:
Medieval Mothers were not meant to be seen in their final days / weeks before baby is born. They had to 'prepare' for the birth with religious amulets, tokens, prayers, asking for forgiveness for their sins all in order to have a safe delivery [confessing sins to a priest also prepared them to be free from sin should they die in childbirth too! All very sinister when you think of it] This horrific looking cutter was used to cut through pelvic bone if the baby was stuck in childbirth, saving the child was more important than saving the mother for a long time even up until the twentieth century in some cultures.
When it came to finding how to fit the crocodile into the story... well... that was an interesting one for I discovered the reason Mr Punch traditionally calls the crocodile a 'kitty, kitty'. Crocodiles or cocodrillo's, make a purring sound when warning people off. To someone who had never seen a crocodile before, hearing the purring sound would be like hearing the purr of a cat, and Pulcinella or Mr Punch would have been no different!
For even further research, I wondered how Joan and her family would feel when they found out they were immortal... I decided to ask the public. Using social media this time, I asked the questions:
Would you choose to be immortal if offered a potion for life eternal?
-Only one third of people said they would, which surprised me. I'd thought that if someone discovered an elixir for immortality that everyone would want it!
Then when told that the potion could be taken by their whole family
-a further fifty percent said they would consider it, not definitely, but they'd consider it.
So immortality wasn't as popular as you'd think!
That brought me to wondering how Joan, Pulcinella and their baby would handle finding out they would never die, they would never meet their maker, they would never find peace? You'll have to read the story for what happened I'm afraid though, haha!
Joan and her family became immortal after taking a potion intended only to heal, from their family friend John Dee; but there's more than friendship binding John to her family, a secret she has yet to uncover.
JOAN - Put on a Happy Face is the first of a trilogy meant to whet your appetite for what is to come...
