I've done a new translation of Dmitry Grigorovich's classic reportage on street entertainment in the 1840s, The Petersburg Organ-Grinders, and am now annotating the Pulcinella show at the end. The usual interpretation of Petrushka ("enigmatic and mythical personage, does not save Puchinella from the fatal denouement with his misplaced intervention, and merely excites bewilderment in the spectators") by the Slavists is that this is an appearance by an ur-Russian joker which doesn't chime with their theory and is best brushed over; by the Europeanists, that this is some localised commedia dell'arte Pierrot/Pedrolino/Pierolino, and God knows how he got there.

I wondered instead, & after reading Johannes Rabe's Kasper Putschenelle, whether this isn't St-Peter-at-the-Pearly-Gates shtick from puppetised southern German Passion repertoire (I reckon the Russian "Puchinella" was localised by an Upper German speaker).

So, does anyone know anything about the pre-C20th (European) history of these gags?