Harlequinade - History

History

During the 16th century, Commedia dell'arte spread from Italy throughout Europe, and by the 17th century adaptations of its characters were familiar in English plays. In English versions, harlequinades differed in two important respects from the Commedia original. First, instead of being a rogue, Harlequin became the central figure and romantic lead. Secondly, the characters did not speak; this was because of the large number of French performers who played in London, following the suppression of unlicensed theatres in Paris. Although this constraint was only temporary, English harlequinades remained primarily visual, though some dialogue was later admitted.

By the early years of the 18th century, "Italian night scenes" presented versions of Commedia traditions in familiar London settings. 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. The basic plot remained essentially the same for more than 150 years. In the first two decades of the century, two rival London theatres, Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre and the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane presented productions that began seriously with classical stories with elements of opera and ballet, and ended with a comic "night scene". In 1716 John Weaver, the dancing master at Drury Lane, presented "The Loves of Mars and Venus – a new Entertainment in Dancing after the manner of the Antient Pantomimes". At Lincoln's Inn, John Rich presented and performed as Harlequin in similar productions. The theatre historian David Mayer explains the use of the "bat" or slapstick and the "transformation scene":

Rich gave his Harlequin the power to create stage magic in league with offstage craftsmen who operated trick scenery. Armed with a magic sword or bat (actually a slapstick), Rich's Harlequin treated his weapon as a wand, striking the scenery to sustain the illusion of changing the setting from one locale to another. Objects, too, were transformed by Harlequin's magic bat.

For the rest of the century this pattern persisted in London theatres. When producers ran short of plots from Greek or Roman mythology they turned to British folk stories, popular literature, and, by the end of the century, nursery tales. But whatever the story shown in the first part of the entertainment, the harlequinade remained essentially the same. At the end of the first part, stage illusions were employed in a transformation scene turning the characters of the pantomime into Harlequin, Columbine and their fellows.

In the early 19th century, the popular comic performer Joseph Grimaldi turned the role of Clown from "a rustic booby into the star of metropolitan pantomime". The Clown now appeared in a range of roles, from the rival suitor to household cook or nurse. Grimaldi's popularity changed the balance of the evening's entertainment, with the first, relatively serious, section soon dwindling to what Mayer calls "little more than a pretext for determining the characters who were to be transformed into those of the harlequinade." In the 19th century, theatrical presentations typically ran for four hours or more, with the pantomime and harlequinade concluding the evening after a long drama. The pantomimes had double titles, describing the two unconnected stories such as "Little Miss Muffet and Little Boy Blue, or Harlequin and Old Daddy Long-Legs." In an elaborate scene, a Fairy Queen transformed the pantomime characters into the characters of the harlequinade, who then performed the harlequinade. Throughout the 19th century, as stage machinery and technology improved, the transformation of the set became more and more spectacular.

The harlequinade lost popularity by the 1880s, when music hall, comic opera and other comic entertainments dominated the British comedy stage. In pantomime, the love scenes between Harlequin and Columbine dwindled into brief displays of dancing and acrobatics, the fairy-tale opening was restored to its original pre-eminence, and by the end of the century the harlequinade had become merely a brief epilogue to the pantomime. It lingered on but finally disappeared completely in the middle of the 20th century.