_Sigismundo, tyrannical prince of Poland_, _the Court of Sicily_, _Titus Andronicus_, _Tarquino_, _Edward of England_ and, of course, _Doctor Johanni Fausto, Teutsche Comedi_ (to distinguish it from Marlowe’s tragedy). When one considers that these plays with all the necessary business were long and complicated, one may imagine the difficulty of the art of puppet showmen. Everything connected with the presentation, the settings, directions and the plays themselves had to be learned by heart. Young boys generally attached themselves to showmen as apprentices and observed and studied for years before they were even allowed to speak parts. These had to be acquired by listening, for although the owner of the puppets generally had a copy of the play it was so precious a possession that he guarded it most carefully. The amazing repertory of the Puppenspiel during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ranged from myth and history to any event of the day of intrinsic interest. In 1688 we find the marionette manager, Weltheim, giving translations of Molière, also the old _Adam and Eve_ followed by a buffoonery called _Jack Pudding in Punch’s Shop_ and the strange assortment of _Asphalides, King of Arabia_, _The Lapidation of Naboth_, _The Death of Wallenstein_. Weltheim used students of Jena and Leipsig to read for his puppets. When in 1780 Charles XII of Sweden fell dead in the trenches of Friedrichschall, slain (so popular tradition averred) by an enchanted bullet, his death was immediately dramatized and produced on the puppet stage. In 1731 the disgrace of Menschikoff was made into a drama performed in German by the English puppets of Titus Maas, privileged comedian of the court of Baden Durlach,--“With permission, etc., etc., there will be performed on an entirely new theatre and with good instrumental music, a Hauptundstaatsaction recently composed and worthy to be seen, which has for title--The Extraordinary vicissitudes of good and bad fortune of Alexis Danielowitz, Prince Menzikoff, great favorite of the Czar of Moscow, Peter I of glorious memory, to-day a real Belisarius, precipitated from the height of his greatness into the most profound abyss of misfortune; the whole with Jackpudding, a pieman, a pastry-cook’s boy and amusing Siberian poachers.” Although Titus Maas had permission to perform in Berlin his show was quickly stopped for political reasons.