by F.W. Fairholt, F.S.A.
Originally published in St. James's Magazine (W. Kent) vol.3 #2 (Jan 1862).
A kindly sensible man on the shady side of forty will find himself well repaid, at this season of the year, by investing some of his spare cash in a box at a Theatre, where a good Pantomime forms the pièce de résistance of the evening's banquet. It will give him a re-juvenescence that nothing else can so effectually accomplish. He may look upon the joyous little faces before him until the hard lines, which business and care may have impressed on his own, fade before the pleasant reflection of his little friends' happiness, and the thoughts that will return of past days when he also believed in a Pantomime. If we do not go back to childhood in studying a child's thoughts, we shall find the world grow older and gloomier than even we do ourselves. There is a perpetual youth springing fresh about us, and it should be welcomed as we welcome the spring.
"Pantomimes are not what they used to be! they are all spectacle, and no fun!" says one who can "just remember Grimaldi, sir." And is it really so? and are we to pull long faces in memory of "fun, deceased?" Look at our children—the girls all charmed with the Fairies, the boys radiant with laughter at the Clown. This very performance, that seems to you, old friend, so flat and tedious, will some day be quoted by them as the very perfection of joviality; and they, in their turn, will "put down" young men yet unborn, when they praise some Grimaldi to come, by assuring them that they are quite wrong, and that this class of amusement "is nothing to what it was thirty years ago—in 1862, say."
It is impossible to overstate the reality with which an imaginative child invests the Stage. To such an one the Theatre is no mere erection of bricks and mortar, but a veritable palace of enchantment, that will give reality to all which has been hitherto imperfectly guessed at in a popular story-book. Here they are delightfully destined to become personally acquainted with Cinderella and Little Red-Riding-Hood. They may shrink in terror from Tom Thumb's Giants, or see in mystic light what I once heard a little boy call, "a real honest Ghost!" All is new, and all is true, to them. Happy time, that knows no criticism!
To be critical over-much, to put aside much that is good, because it might be better, is an unlucky tendency in the present day. We cannot always "take the good the (managerial) gods provide us," without repining—sometimes reasonably, often capriciously. New sensations cannot be excited every year; and human ideas are of slow growth. It has taken more than two thousand years to change the Cart of Thespis into the Royal Italian Opera. All the wonderful combination of dress and decoration that makes the Stage so true a mirror of life, past and present, has been very slowly perfected. Authors, artists, managers, have devoted life and money to the study. When we sit so complacently in front of the stage, how little do we think of the bodily and mental wear-and-tear of all concerned in catering for our amusement!
There is nothing produced on the stage that demands a larger variety of thought and exertion than that quaint dramatic invention—a Christmas Pantomime. It takes in all the appliances of the scenic art—demands the best labours of the machinest—taxes the ability of the costumier, and leaves no one unoccupied who can be pressed into its service. It has grown into all this importance with the growth of Stage appliances; and, now that grand "transformation scenes" are designed by men of fertile fancy, and carried out in lavish expenditure, there is nothing that theatrical art can show more gorgeous, and sometimes more tasteful, than may be witnessed in a Pantomime.
So, leaving the children to the due enjoyment of the eye, may we not a little disport the mind in thinking over the changes that have made this popular spectacle what it is, since the days when Manager Rich first taught the Town to delight their eyes with his grand shows, and his own agility as Harlequin? It would be easy to go much further than this; to speak of the pantomimists of the Roman era, who, we are told by the men of their own day, used to express anything, by action only, in the most perfect manner; but it will be enough for us to restrict ourselves to the early part of the last century, when the man arose who has been called "Inventor of the English Harlequinade."
John Rich had a happy faculty for the concoction of Stage effects. He was Manager of Covent Garden Theatre at a time when its patented rights gave peculiar position and privilege to the holder, and he lavished his cash and his fancy over the production of Pantomimes, for which he had a great natural genius. He played himself the part of Harlequin, under the assumed name of Lun, and such was the enormous popularity attending all his efforts, that the "regular drama" was deserted by a public anxious to witness them. He was so far infatuated with his tastes, that it is said, on one occasion, when his theatre was crowded to witness a Tragedy, he could not help muttering, as he peeped at the audience through the hole in the green curtain, "What! you are there, you fools, are you? Well; much good may it do you!" When at last he gave up all reliance on Tragedy or Comedy, the success of his Pantomimic exhibitions was so great as to enable his theatre to withstand the opposed attractions of the best actors that ever adorned the English Stage. Even Garrick himself was obliged to try at rivalry, and produce a "Raree-show" at his theatre, in a vain attempt to arrest the mob who flocked to that of his opponent. Rich died, at the mature age of sixty-nine, a wealthy man, and is buried in the churchyard of Hillingdon, Middlesex, beneath an imposing monument, fitted in its character to commemorate one who had wielded a Field Marshal's baton rather than the wooden sword of Harlequin.
Our great novelist, Henry Fielding, occasionally threw off dramatic trifles, some of them very clever satires on the public tastes of the day. One of these was named "Pasquin," and was produced at the "little theatre in the Haymarket," in 1736. It comprised, in its strange variety of design, the rehearsal of two plays, and in one of them—"a Tragedy, called the Life and Death of Common Sense"—he has brought in Harlequin as Ambassador to Queen Ignorance, who is armed to destroy the rival after whom the Tragedy is named. He thus opens his business:—
"To you, Great Queen of Ignorance, I come,
Embassador from the two theatres,
Who both congratulate you on your arrival;
And to convince you with what hearty meaning
They sue for your alliance, they have sent
Their choicest treasure here as hostages,
To be detain'd till you are well convinced
They're not less foes to Common Sense than you."
The kind of hostages sent may be readily imagined ; they consist of tumblers and dancers, performing dogs, and ‘a human creature that personates a dog so well that he might almost be taken for one."
Rich seems to have been annoyed by this attack of Fielding's. It was not his first. In "the Author's Farce," 1730, he introduces "Monsieur Pantomime" in inferno, with other false "tastes of the Town;" but in "Pasquin" he is more satirical, making an Author who is one of the characters exclaim:—
"After the audience have been tired with the dull works of Shakespeare, Jonson, Vanbrugh, and others, they are to be entertained with one of these Pantomimes, of which the master of the play-house, two or three painters and half a score dancing-masters, are the compilers. What these entertainments are, I need not inform you who have seen 'em; but I have often wondered how it was possible for any creature of human understanding, after having been diverted for three hours with the productions of a great genius, to sit for three more and see a set of people running about the stage after one another, without speaking one syllable, and playing several juggling tricks, which are done at Fawks's after a much better manner: and for this, Sir, the Town does not only pay additional prices, but loses several parts of their best authors, which are cut out to make room for the said farces."
Rich retaliated by bringing out a Satire, at his theatre, in reply—but it was not successful; and Fielding returned to the charge in a Burlesque on his "Fall of Phaeton," called "Tumble-down-Dick, or Phaeton in the Suds," which he dedicated to "Mr. John Lun, vulgarly called Esquire." In this he says:—
"It is to you, Sir, we owe (if not the invention, at least the bringing into a fashion) that sort of writing which you have been pleased to distinguish by the name of Entertainment. Your success herein—whether owing to your heels or head, I will not determine—sufficiently entitles you to all respect from the inferior dabblers in things of this sort."
A Harlequinade in dumb show is introduced in this Play; giving a very good notion of what they were at that time. Harlequin was then the most important character, and the whole action of the Play rested with him. He played the tricks, and made the confusion which is now made by the Clown. The engraving appended will exhibit his general appearance; it is copied from a print of the period. He has no mask; but an abundant moustache; a hat that would suit a quaker, a deep falling collar, and heavy buckled shoes. The lozenge-shaped patches of which his dress is composed originated in the real ones worn by the Italian Harlequin, who was a ragged rascal when first introduced to the Stage; but whose tatters have in process of time been converted into a conventional dress of costly material.
Rich's most successful coup de théâtre was the production of "Harlequin Jack Sheppard," in which the motley hero went through the principal exploits of the more celebrated Newgate hero. There is a curious caricature, attributed to Hogarth, published in 1725, exhibiting Rich holding up the puppet of Harlequin in chains, as shown in this Pantomime, and affectedly invoking the Muses over his performance with the exclamation, "Assist, ye sacred Nine!" On each side are the opposition Managers, with their inventions. Booth has Jack Hall the Chimney-sweep; Wilks the figure of Punch, which he gazes on delightedly as he exclaims, "Poor Rich! faith, I pity thee!"—so sure is he of the success that will attend his comic hero. Columbine was at this time entrusted to some foreign lady from the Italian Companies who then first attempted to gain a footing among us. Where nothing had to be said expressive, dancing did all. Our cut depicts a Columbine of that era—whose quaint costume seems identical with the Dresden-china Shepherdesses, or the fair denizens of a Versailles Arcadia; from one, or both sources, her tout ensemble might have been obtained.
Wilks's Punch, in his opposition Pantomime, proved a formidable rival to Rich's Harlequin. From his first introduction to England the public always looked on him with pleasure. As a puppet he was irresistible; but when he appeared alive on the stage, doing all kinds of queer feats, he was still more attractive. Fielding makes him sing his own claims to notice thus:—
"Whilst the Town's brim-full of Farces,
Flocking whilst we see her asses
Thick as grapes upon a bunch,
Critics, whilst you smile on madness,
And more stupid, solemn sadness,
Sure you will not frown on Punch."
Punch at this time was habited in a hat as broad-brimmed as that of Harlequin; and sometimes with a very high crown, The engraving exhibits his appearance when he delighted the town in the days of Queen Anne. Under the control of Powell, the famed puppet-showman, Punch achieved an equal triumph among the corps of wooden actors. Indeed, so successful was he, that the following letter of complaint from an individual injured thereby was printed in the "Spectator" of March, 1710:—
"I have been for twenty years under-sexton of the parish of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, and have not missed tolling in to prayers six times in all these years; which office I have performed to my great satisfaction until this fortnight last past, during which time I find my congregation take the warning of my bell, morning and evening, to go to a puppet-show set forth by one Powell under the Piazzas. By this means, I have not only lost my two best customers, whom I used to place for sixpence apiece over against Mrs. Rachel Eyebright, but Mrs. Rachel herself has gone thither also. There now appear among us none but a few ordinary people, who come to church only to say their prayers, so that I have no work worth speaking of but on Sundays. I have placed my son at the Piazzas to acquaint the ladies that the bell rings for church, and that it stands on the other side of the Garden; but they only laugh at the child!"
Powell, however, prided himself on the strict morality of his Stage, which might fairly be considered as the legitimate descendant of the old Mysteries; for his dramas were, like them, founded on Sacred story. Thus, "Noah's Flood," the "History of Susannah," and the "Judgment of Solomon," were stock pieces of his répertoire. But Punch was introduced in them all—he danced with his wife in Noah's Ark, entering it with the polite salutation, "Hazy weather, Master Noah!" His appearance before Solomon is thus alluded to by Swift:—
"Observe, the audience is in pain,
While Punch is hid behind the scene;
But when they hear his rusty voice,
With what impatience they rejoice!
And then they value not two straws
How Solomon decides the cause;
Which the true mother—which pretender."
Both Punch and Harlequin may be traced back to the older Vice who delighted the lovers of the drama before Shakespeare wrote. The battle between the Vice and Satan was a conflict that all delighted to view. Harlequin's wand certainly had its prototype in that borne by the Vice, as alluded to by the Clown in "Twelfth Night,"—
"Who with dagger of lath,
In his rage and his wrath,
Cries 'Ah, ah!' to the Devil."
Harlequin's wand is the flat flexible sword with which the Vice belaboured all opponents, to make the groundlings laugh, who always relished such antics. Harlequin and Punch were both great talkers on the old Stage—the former a blundering joker; the latter a satirical wit, who dared to make remarks on men, manners, and even Government, after the fashion of Pasquin. Punch still talks, but Harlequin has become a bespangled nonentity. Addison, in his "Travels in Italy" tells us that there, "Harlequin's part was made up of blunders and absurdities; he is to mistake one name for another, to forget his errands, to stumble over queens, and to run his head against every post that comes in his way." There was a famous Harlequin in the latter part of the reign of Louis X1V. named Dominique, who, being a man of wit, elevated the part from this grotesque, ignorant character, into a smart satirical one. He introduced, or rather invented, the character of Pierrot, who was supposed to be his blundering servant, and appears to be the origin of the English Clown, who now combines in himself both characters.
Ruzzante, an author and actor who flourished on the Italian stage about 1530, is the reputed inventor of Pantaloon. His name is said by some authors to be derived from the watch-word of the Venetians, "Pianta leone," and the character a burlesque on their pomposity. He was a grotesque old fellow. "The lean and slipper'd Pantaloon" is well characterized in Shakespeare's words; but in the succeeding century he was younger and more active. Witness the ‘copy here given of Riccoboni's figure. He is here most remarkable for a certain pompously grotesque manner; an inflated dignity and attempt at grace. His ample moustachios and pointed beard give him the aspect of a vieux militaire, and his manners seem those of Captain Bobadil. Now he is, with us, a mere senile recipient of the practical jokes, the kicks and thumps, of the Clown. As the genius of Rich made Harlequin great, so that of Grimaldi made the Clown even more famous. It is due to his strong sense of grotesque humour that the mere fool of the Pantomime became its only "telling" part. Grimaldi had the power of conceiving the most irresistibly comic stage-business. His invention never flagged, and year after year some new whim set the theatre in a roar. He would concoct all kinds of queer "tricks," and produce the oddest and most unlooked-for combinations from the various articles apparently brought by accident on the stage. Thus he would construct a tandem from a cradle elevated on wooden rollers, the foot-board being a dust-pan; the rail round the seat, gridirons; the lamps, paper-lanterns from an apple-stall. Sometimes he would metamorphose Pantaloon as completely as Harlequin changed the scenery. Here is a copy of a once popular print, representing him with the Nondescript in the Pantomime of the "Red Dwarf;" the creature being composed over the prostrate Pantaloon from a lion's skin, an ass's head, bear's paws, eagle's wings, and a fish's tail.
The addition of scenic effects and pleasing music to Grimaldi's fun, proved an irresistible attraction to pantomimic entertainments; and the extraordinary success which attended one of them, "Mother Goose,"—(concocted by T. Dibdin, and Farley, the actor)—has been recorded by Byron, in his "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," as well as the merits of Greenwood's scenery. It was played more than a hundred and fifty nights consecutively; brought more than twenty thousand pounds to the Treasury of Covent Garden Theatre; and was often reproduced as "a stock-piece," at all theatres, metropolitan and provincial, for a long series of years.
In this slight literary sketch it is not intended to do more than indicate a train of thought and inquiry that may result from reflecting on the past history of the Stage. There is a key to a nation's character in all its popular amusements; and surely the harmless folly of a Pantomime is more laudable than the cruelties of a bull-fight. If pantomimes have become less uproariously comical than they were in the days of Grimaldi, we must remember they are more refined in all their adjuncts. Scenery and decoration are sometimes lavished upon them in a manner that our forefathers would have scarcely conceived to be possible. There is a peculiar genius at work in this way also; and the inventions of Mr. William Beverley are such gorgeous realizations of fairy-land, that "children of a larger growth" are often as much astonished by their artistic beauty as the younger ones are mentally entranced, by this, their real, visit to fairy-land—for such is the theatre to them, and there they are, while gazing at his stage-glories.
Abler pens than that now employed have descanted on the thought and labour occupying so many minds and hands at this season of the year, in the production of these annual entertainments; and have taught us to think more seriously over the career of the "poor player," who works so hard day and night for our amusement. All the ease and smoothness of action that we witness, in the evening, is obtained by wearisome rehearsal in a dark, damp, foggy theatre, in the day. After that, tired Clowns may get a hurried dinner, and prepare to go through a heavy amount of hard labour till midnight, and then be up and at it, rehearsing again in the morning, till all works well. Who thinks that a Clown is ever dismal, or suffering from cold and illness? or that Pantaloon may in reality be an elderly man not properly able to be buffeted as he must be, but obliged to bear it for the support of a wife and family? Harlequin and Columbine, too, may have their troubles, and dance in gauze and spangles with a heavy heart. But we need take no gloomy view of the position of any one of the quaint group; only let us think kindly, if not gratefully, toward members of a most hard-working profession, and dismiss them as Don Quixote did the players he encountered on their road to a village where they were to act a solemn morality at the feast of Corpus Christi. Don Quixote, who in all his aberration of intellect and eccentricity of action always exhibited the kindly feeling and right-heartedness of a true gentleman, takes his leave of the strollers in the courteous words:—"Peace be with you, good people! Go, and act your play; and if there be any thing in which I may be of service to you, command me; for I will do it readily, and with a good-will, having been from my youth a great admirer of masques and theatrical representations."