Pantomime (; informally panto)Lawner, p. 16. is a type of musical comedy stage production designed for family entertainment, generally combining broad and topical humour and cross-dressing actors with a story based on a well-known fairy tale, fable or folk tale.Reid-Walsh, Jacqueline. "Pantomime", The Oxford Encyclopedia of Children's Literature, Jack Zipes (ed.), Oxford University Press (2006), Mayer (1969), p. 6. Pantomime is a participatory form of theatre developed in England in the 18th century in which the audience is encouraged and expected to sing along with certain parts of the music and to shout out phrases to the performers.
The origins of pantomime reach back to ancient Greek classical theatre. It developed partly from the 16th century commedia dell'arte tradition of Italy and partly from other European and British stage traditions, such as 17th-century masques and music hall. An important part of the pantomime, until the late 19th century, was the harlequinade. Modern pantomime is performed throughout the United Kingdom, Ireland and (to a lesser extent) in other English-speaking countries, especially during the Christmas and New Year season, and includes songs, gags, slapstick comedy and dancing.
Outside the British Isles, the word "pantomime" is often understood to mean miming, rather than the theatrical form described here.
History
Ancient Rome
The word pantomime was adopted from the Latin word pantomimus,Oxford English Dictionary s.v. pantomime which in turn derives from the Greek word παντόμιμος (pantomimos), consisting of παντο- (panto-) meaning "all", and μῖμος (mimos), meaning a dancer who acted all the roles or all the story.Hall, p. 3. Pantomimus, Encyclopædia BritannicaLiddell, Henry George and Robert Scott. παντόμιμος, A Greek–English Lexicon, Perseus Digital Library, accessed 16 November 2013 The Roman pantomime drew upon the Greek tragedy and other Greek genres from its inception, although the art was instituted in Ancient Rome and little is known of it in pre-Roman Greece.Lincoln Kirstein, Dance, Dance Horizons Incorporated, New York, 1969, pp. 40–42, 48Broadbent, pp. 21–34. The English word came to be applied to the performance itself. According to a lost oration by Aelius Aristides, the pantomime was known for its erotic content and the effeminacy of its dancing;Mesk, J., Des Aelius Aristides Rede gegen die Tänzer, WS 30 (1908) Aristides's work was responded to by Libanius, in his oration "On Behalf of the Dancers", written probably around 361 AD.
Roman pantomime was a production, usually based upon myth or legend, for a solo male dancer—clad in a long silk tunic and a short mantle (pallium) that was often used as a "prop"—accompanied by a sung libretto (called the fabula saltica or "dance-story") rendered by a singer or chorus (though Lucian states that originally the pantomime himself was the singer).Quoted in Lincoln Kirstein, Dance, Dance Horizons Incorporated, New York, 1969, p. 50. Music was supplied by flute and the pulse of an iron-shod shoe called a scabellum. Performances might be in a private household, with minimal personnel, or else lavish theatrical productions involving a large orchestra and chorus and sometimes an ancillary actor. The dancer danced all the roles, relying on masks, stock poses and gestures and a hand-language (cheironomy) so complex and expressive that the pantomime's hands were commonly compared to an eloquent mouth.Alessandra Zanobi. Ancient Pantomime and its Reception, Oxford University Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama
Roman pantomime was immensely popular from the end of the first century BC until the end of the sixth century AD, a form of entertainment that spread throughout the empire where, because of its wordless nature, it did more than any other art to foster knowledge of the myths and Roman legends that formed its subject-matter – tales such as those of the love of Venus and Mars and of Dido and Aeneas – while in Italy its chief exponents were celebrities, often the protegés of influential citizens, whose followers wore badges proclaiming their allegiance and engaged in street-fights with rival groups, while its accompanying songs became widely known. Yet, because of the limits imposed upon Roman citizens' dance, the populism of its song-texts and other factors, the art was as much despised as adored, and its practitioners were usually slaves or freedmen.
Because of the low status and the disappearance of its libretti, the Roman pantomime received little modern scholarly attention until the late 20th century, despite its great influence upon Roman culture as perceived in Roman art, in statues of famous dancers, graffiti, objects and literature. After the renaissance of classical culture, Roman pantomime was a decisive influence upon modern European concert dance, helping to transform ballet from a mere entertainment, a display of technical virtuosity, into the dramatic ballet d'action. It became an antecedent which, through writers and ballet-masters of the 17th and 18th centuries such as Claude-François Ménestrier (1631–1705), John Weaver (1673–1760), Jean-Georges Noverre (1727–1810) and Gasparo Angiolini (1731–1803), earned it respectability and attested to the capability of dance to render complex stories and express human emotion.
Development in Britain In the Middle Ages, mummers' plays were a traditional English folk play, based loosely on the Saint George and the Dragon legend, usually performed during Christmas gatherings, which contained the origin of many of the archetypal elements of the pantomime, such as stage fights, coarse humour, fantastic creatures,Barrow, Mandy. "Mummers' Plays", Project Britain, 2013, accessed 21 April 2016. gender role reversal, and good defeating evil.Barrow, Mandy. "Christmas Pantomimes", Project Britain, 2013, accessed 21 April 2016 Precursors of pantomime also included the masque, which grew in pomp and spectacle from the 15th to the 17th centuries.Burden, Michael. "The English Pantomime Masque" , Abstract of symposium paper for French and English Pantomime (2007), University of Oxford, accessed 21 April 2016.
Commedia dell'arte and early English adaptation
The development of English pantomime was also strongly influenced by the continental commedia dell'arte, a form of popular theatre that arose in Italy in the Early Modern Period. This was a "comedy of professional artists" travelling from province to province in Italy and then France, who improvised and told comic stories that held lessons for the crowd, changing the main character depending on where they were performing. Each "scenario" used some of the same stock characters. These included the (young lovers); the vecchi (old men) such as Pantalone; and (servants) such as Arlecchino, Colombina, Scaramouche and Pierrot.Mayer, David. "Pantomime, British", Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance, Oxford University Press, 2003, accessed 21 October 2011 Broadbent, chapter 12. Italian masque performances in the 17th century sometimes included the Harlequin character.Broadbent, chapter 10.
In the 17th century, adaptations of the commedia characters became familiar in English entertainments."Early pantomime", Victoria and Albert Museum, accessed 21 October 2011 From these, the standard English harlequinade developed, depicting the eloping lovers Harlequin and Columbine, pursued by the girl's father Pantaloon and his comic servants Clown and Pierrot.Smith, p. 228 In English versions, by the 18th century, Harlequin became the central figure and romantic lead.Hartnoll, Phyllis and Peter Found (eds). "Harlequinade", The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre, Oxford Reference Online, Oxford University Press, 1996, accessed 21 October 2011. The basic plot of the harlequinade remained essentially the same for more than 150 years, except that a bumbling policeman was added to the chase.
In the first two decades of the 18th century, two rival London theatres, Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre and the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane (the patent theatres) presented productions that began seriously with classical stories that contained elements of opera and ballet and ended with a comic "night scene". Tavern Bilkers, by John Weaver, the dancing master at Drury Lane, is cited as the first pantomime produced on the English stage.Broadbent, chapter 14. Broadbent spends the first half of his book tracing the ancient and European origins of pantomime. This production was not a success, and Weaver waited until 1716 to produce his next pantomimes, including The Loves of Mars and Venus – a new Entertainment in Dancing after the manner of the Antient Pantomimes. The same year he produced a pantomime on the subject of Perseus and Andromeda. After this, pantomime was regular feature at Drury Lane.Broadbent, chapter 14. In 1717 at Lincoln's Inn, actor and manager John Rich introduced Harlequin into the theatres' pantomimes under the name of "Lun" (for "lunatic").Dircks, Phyllis T. "Rich, John (1692–1761)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, May 2011, accessed 21 October 2011Chaffee and Crick, p. 278 He gained great popularity for his pantomimes, especially beginning with his 1724 production of The Necromancer; or, History of Dr. Faustus.Broadbent, chapter 15.
These early pantomimes were silent, or "dumb show", performances consisting of only dancing and gestures. Spoken drama was allowed in London only in the two (later three) patent theatres until Parliament changed this restriction in 1843.Haill, Catherine. Pantomime , University of East London, accessed 17 January 2012 A large number of French performers played in London following the suppression of unlicensed theatres in Paris. Although this constraint was only temporary, English pantomimes remained primarily visual for some decades before dialogue was introduced. An 18th-century author wrote of David Garrick: "He formed a kind of harlequinade, very different from that which is seen at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, where harlequin and all the characters speak."Davies, Thomas. Memoirs of the life of David Garrick, New edition, 1780, I. x. 129, quoted in the Oxford English Dictionary. The majority of these early pantomimes were re-tellings of a story from ancient Greek or Roman literature, with a break between the two acts during which the harlequinade's zany comic business was performed. The theatre historian David Mayer explains the use of the "batte" or slapstick and the transformation scene that led to the harlequinade:
Pantomime gradually became more topical and comic, often involving spectacular and elaborate theatrical effects as far as possible. Colley Cibber, David Garrick and others competed with Rich and produced their own pantomimes, and pantomime continued to grow in popularity.Broadbent, chapters 14 and 15.
1806–1836