Harlequinade - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Harlequinade is a comic theatrical genre, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...

as "that part of a pantomime

Pantomime

Pantomime — not to be confused with a mime artist, a theatrical performer of mime—is a musical-comedy theatrical production traditionally found in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, India, Ireland, Gibraltar and Malta, and is mostly performed during the...

in which the harlequin and clown play the principal parts". It developed in England between the 17th and mid-19th centuries. It was originally a slapstick

Slapstick

Slapstick is a type of comedy involving exaggerated violence and activities which may exceed the boundaries of common sense.- Origins :The phrase comes from the batacchio or bataccio — called the 'slap stick' in English — a club-like object composed of two wooden slats used in Commedia dell'arte...

adaptation of the Commedia dell'arte

Commedia dell'arte

Commedia dell'arte is a form of theatre characterized by masked "types" which began in Italy in the 16th century, and was responsible for the advent of the actress and improvised performances based on sketches or scenarios. The closest translation of the name is "comedy of craft"; it is shortened...

, which originated in Italy and reached its apogee there in the 16th and 17th centuries. The story of the Harlequinade revolves around a comic incident in the lives of its five main characters: Harlequin, who loves Columbine, her greedy father Pantaloon, who tries to separate the lovers in league with the mischievous Clown, and the servant, Pierrot, often involving a chase scene with a policeman.

Originally a mime

Mime

The word mime is used to refer to a mime artist who uses a theatrical medium or performance art involving the acting out of a story through body motions without use of speech.Mime may also refer to:* Mime, an alternative word for lip sync...

(silent) act with music and stylised dance, the harlequinade later employed some dialogue, but it remained primarily a visual spectacle. Early in its development, it achieved great popularity as the comic closing part of a longer evening of entertainment, following a more serious presentation with operatic and balletic elements. In the 18th and 19th centuries, it was presented with increasingly elaborate stage effects as the closing part of pantomimes. A fairy initiated a "transformation scene" that transformed the pantomime characters and scenes into the harlequinade. It lost popularity towards the end of the 19th century and disappeared altogether in the middle of the 20th century, although pantomimes continue to be presented without the harlequinade.

History

During the 16th century, Commedia dell'arte

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

Theatre Royal, Drury Lane

The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is a West End theatre in Covent Garden, in the City of Westminster, a borough of London. The building faces Catherine Street and backs onto Drury Lane. The building standing today is the most recent in a line of four theatres at the same location dating back to 1663,...

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

John Rich (producer)

John Rich was an important director and theatre manager in 18th century London. He opened the New Theatre at Lincoln's Inn Fields and then the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden and began putting on ever more lavish productions...

presented and performed as Harlequin in similar productions. The theatre historian David Mayer explains the use of the "bat" or slapstick

Slapstick

and the "transformation scene":

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

Pantomime

into Harlequin, Columbine and their fellows.

In the early 19th century, the popular comic performer Joseph Grimaldi

Joseph Grimaldi

Joseph Grimaldi , was an English actor and comedian who is perhaps best known for his invention of the modern day whiteface clown. He chiefly appeared at Drury Lane in pantomime where his greatest success was appearing in Harlequin and Mother Goose; or the Golden Egg and followed with a successful...

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.""Theatre Royal, Haymarket", The Times, 3 Feb 1862, p. 8 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

Music hall

Music Hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment which was popular between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to:# A particular form of variety entertainment involving a mixture of popular song, comedy and speciality acts...

, comic opera

Comic opera

Comic opera denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria...

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.

Characters

Harlequin

Harlequin or Arlecchino in Italian, Arlequin in French, and Arlequín in Spanish is the most popularly known of the zanni or comic servant characters from the Italian Commedia dell'arte and its descendant, the Harlequinade.-Origins:...

is the comedian and romantic male lead. He is a servant and the love interest of Columbine. His everlasting high spirits and cleverness work to save him from several difficult situations into which his amoral behaviour leads during the course of the harlequinade. In some versions of the original Commedia dell'arte, Harlequin is able to perform magic feats. He never holds a grudge or seeks revenge.

John Rich

John Rich (producer)

brought the British pantomime and harlequinade to great popularity in the early 18th century and became the most famous early Harlequin in England. He developed the character of Harlequin into a mischievous magician. He used his magic batte or "slapstick" to transform the scene from the pantomime into the harlequinade and to magically change the settings to various locations during the chase scene.

A century later, Fred Payne and Harry Payne, known as the Payne Brothers

Payne Brothers

Harry Payne and Frederick Payne were members of a popular Victorian dynasty of British pantomime entertainers. They were billed as The Payne Brothers....

, were the most famous Harlequin and Clown, respectively, of their day.

Columbine

Columbina

Columbine is a fictional character in the Commedia dell'Arte. She is Harlequin's mistress, a comic servant playing the tricky slave type, and wife of Pierrot...

is a lovely woman, who has caught the eye of Harlequin. In the original Commedia dell'arte she was variously portrayed as a Pantaloon's daughter or servant. In the English harlequinade she is always Pantaloon's daughter or ward. Her role usually centres on her romantic interest in Harlequin, and her costume often includes the cap and apron of a serving girl, though (unlike the other players) not a mask.

Clown

Originally a foil for Harlequin's slyness and adroit nature, Clown was a buffoon or fool who resembles less a jester than a comical idiot. However, in the Victorian harlequinade, Clown became more important, embodying its anarchic fun. The great clown Joseph Grimaldi

Joseph Grimaldi

was responsible for building the character up from the country bumpkin fool of the Commedia dell'arte into the central figure of the harlequinade. He developed jokes, catch-phrases and songs that were used by subsequent Clowns for decades after his retirement in 1828, and Clowns were generically called "Joey" for four generations after him.

Clown became central to the transformation scene, crying "Here we are again!" and so opening the harlequinade. He then became the villain of the piece, playing elaborate, cartoonish practical jokes on policemen, soldiers, tradesmen and passers-by, tripping people with butter slides and crushing babies, with the assistance of his elderly accomplice, Pantaloon. The American George Fox

George L. Fox (clown)

George L. Fox was America’s first great white faced clown to follow in the footsteps of Britain’s Joseph Grimaldi.-Early Years:...

, popularly known as G. L. Fox, became interested in pantomime and made Clown a popular character in the Humpty Dumpty

Humpty Dumpty

Humpty Dumpty is a character in an English language nursery rhyme, probably originally a riddle and one of the best known in the English-speaking world. He is typically portrayed as an egg and has appeared or been referred to in a large number of works of literature and popular culture...

story, which he toured throughout the North America through the middle 19th century.

Pantaloon

Originally, Pantaloon (or Pantalone

Pantalone

Pantalone, or Pantalone del bisognosi, Italian for 'Pantalone of the needy', is one of the most important principal characters found in commedia del arte...

) was a devious, greedy merchant of Venice – a typical character of the Commedia dell'arte. He is taken in readily by the various tricks and schemes of Harlequin. Pantaloon's costume usually includes red tight-fitting vest and breeches, slippers, a skullcap, an over-sized hooked nose, and a grubby grey goatee. Pantaloon was familiar enough to London audiences for Shakespeare to refer to him at the turn of the 17th century as the exemplar of an elderly man, "the lean and slippered Pantaloon".

In the English harlequinade Pantaloon emerged as the greedy, elderly father of Columbine who tries to keep the lovers separated and assists Clown in his tricks.

Pierrot

Pierrot is a stock character of pantomime and Commedia dell'Arte whose origins are in the late 17th-century Italian troupe of players performing in Paris and known as the Comédie-Italienne; the name is a hypocorism of Pierre , via the suffix -ot. His character in postmodern popular culture—in...

, or ‘Pedroline’ was a comic servant character, often Pantaloon's servant. His face was whitened with flour. During the 17th century, the character was increasingly portrayed as stupid and awkward, a country bumpkin with oversized clothes. During the 19th century, the Pierrot character became less comic, and more sentimental and romantic. Also in the 19th century, Pierrot troupes arose, with all the performers in whiteface and baggy white costumes.

Harlequinade costume

The costumes consisted of the following:

Originally, a black mask, which allowed the actor to lift it and reveal himself sometimes. Other times it is lowered to keep the actor from the audience's view. It has tiny eyeholes and quizzically arched eyebrows. Later, some characters wore whiteface, and the British pantomime characters originally wore masks that they then removed for the transformation to the harlequinade.
Traditional diamond chequered trousers (usually alternating blue, green, and red diamonds)
Peasant's shirt
Batte, or slapstick (carried by Harlequin)

Adaptations

Although the original Commedia dell'arte characters inspired many stage works, novels and short stories, there are few works that draw on the characters of the English genre. They include Harlequin and the Fairy's Dilemma (1904), by W. S. Gilbert

W. S. Gilbert

Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S...

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.