The Story of Pantomime

Pantomime as we know it today was beginning to take shape at the start of the Eighteenth Century although its origin goes back much further. The word itself originally referred not to the play, but the players who presented mime performances to the Roman audiences two thousand years ago. It can be said to have grown up during the reign of Queen Victoria.

It was not until the 1870’s that pantomime began to assume its present day form. Music Hall artistes began to play leading parts bringing with them their own style of songs and humour and managements began to confine their subjects to a handful of well known fairy or traditional stories. For a long time previously there had been entertainments called harlequinades, dance dramas that mixed romance and comedy. The central character was Harlequin who is often pictured in Christmas decorations with his suit of bright coloured diamonds topped off with a mask and a cap. His heroine was Columbine, often depicted in the dress of a ballerina, and other characters included her father called Pantaloon and his blundering servant at first named Pierrot and then Clown.

The Harlequinade had an opening scene in which the hero was given a magic wand or slap-stick. This not only gave its name to a style of pantomime comedy, but also served, when slapped on the floor, as a cue for stage managers to set in motion the elaborate transformation scenes, one of the most characteristic parts of the pantomime tradition. The opening gradually increased in length and became more of a comedy than a romance, with the love scenes becoming an occasional ballet sequence between bouts of slap-stick comedy. When fairy tales were regularly dramatised for this purpose, the older format took second place as an epilogue known as the harlequinade whilst the first part was called the pantomime. Today the harlequinade has practically disappeared although the corps de ballet still plays an important part in modern pantomime. The figure of the clown also remains as Idle Jack in Dick Whittington, Buttons in Cinderella and Widow Twankey in Aladdin.

It was at Drury Lane Theatre that variety artistes first appeared in their Christmas shows and this tended to put emphasis on comedy. The grandeur was retained by the use of colourful tales based on nursery rhymes and included such shows as Mother Goose, Bluebeard and Goody Two Shoes, tales which have been told for over a hundred years. Many of the plots have changed considerably from the original and more often than not, the pantomime version has become the most popularly accepted.

Perhaps the most famous pantomime performer was Joseph Grimaldi, traditionally the funniest of clowns. He made his first impact in comedy at Covent Garden in 1806 when he played Clown in Harlequin and Mother Goose. Grimaldi was the most popular comic singer of his day, a skilled dancer, an acrobat of amazing agility, a polished actor and a superb pantomimist.

It was not long after this that pantomime, by now a traditional entertainment, became a subject for  the noted dramatists of the day. Although many original stories had been created, they now began to write pantomimes based upon favourite characters which we recognise today - Aladdin, Dick Whittington, Cinderella, Babes in the Wood and others. It was the great Dan Leno who bridged the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries as he appeared in Drury Lane pantomimes from 1889 (The Babes in the Wood) until 1903 (Humpty Dumpty).

Today, pantomime has of course “changed” - each succeeding generation recalls “the old days” which in retrospect, often seemed better than the present. Perhaps “we were not amused” when Harlequin as a character was supersede by Clown and resented it when Clown disappeared and music hall artistes took his place. Each new development however, more than compensates for the loss of those familiar characteristics which need the fresh air of change in which to flourish.

Over the years, many of the tales have changed in the telling and particularly when transferred to the stage some of the original episodes have been left out and new ones added. Thanks to the theatre, we can enjoy the experience of watching and listening to the pages of the old story books as they come to life. The Wonderland of the fairy tale becomes twice as wonderful and at the same time twice as real. The dazzling costumes, breathtaking scenes, gay songs and lively dances all combine with the romance and comedy to give the illusion that a fairy-Godmother has indeed waved her magic wand. On with the show