The History of Pantomime

The christmas pantomime of today is a peculiarly British institution. Whilst not unknown in other areas of the World, it is only in those areas that once formed part of the British Empire that it is truly popular and has become a christmas tradition, and only in Britain itself does it dominate the christmas theatrical scene so completely. Pantomime established itself as a christmas tradition in the late part of the nineteenth century and acheived it's recognisably modern form shortly thereafter. Remarkably, in over one hundred years since then, little has changed.

Today, in Great Britain, whilst the major West End houses continue their normal fare over the christmas period, in the suburbs and provinces pantomime very much dominates the christmas scene. So much so that it would be possible to see a pantomime in almost every major provincial town or city over that period, when probably as many as two thirds of all provincial theatres turn themselves over to that type of production.

Compare that to the year 1900. Although only two of the centrally located theatres gave themselves up to pantomime (The Drury Lane and the Garrick), no less than thirty of the houses in the surrounding districts did so. The pantomime at The Garrick was 'Puss In Boots' whilst the Drury Lane offering was an enormously expesive version of 'Jack and the Beanstalk' with lavish scenery, gorgeous costumes, flying fairies and a fifty foot giant, seen prostrate, out of whose pocket spilled scores of children dressed as soldiers.

Outside of London, in the other great cities of Great Britain, no fewer than eighty-eight christmas pantomimes were being produced, the most popular subjects being 'Cinderella', 'Dick Whittington', 'Robinson Crusoe' and 'Babes in the Wood'. The popularity of pantomime in the provinces can be no better illustrated than by the extensive list of such productions that had been offered in Liverpool over the christmas period two years earlier. These were; two versions of 'Robinson Crusoe' (The Royal Court and The Rotunda); two of 'Little Red Riding Hood' (The Princes of Wales and Reynolds); and one each of 'The Yellow Dwarf' (The Shakespeare), 'Babes in the Wood' (The Star), 'Bluebeard' (The Lyric), and 'The House that Jack Built' (The New Empire). This latter appears to have been a particularly lavish production, boasting of two hundred and fifty performers including one hundred trained children.

History of Pantomime

Pantomime has changed greatly as it has developed over the years. The very term itself has several meanings. It's most distant origin is from the Greco-Roman pantomimus, in which it referred to a dramatic art form in which masked players would act out all the parts in a fable by gesture alone, often with a chorus narrating from the sidelines. The classical meaning of the term therefore is "to act without words, using gesture alone". In early English literature, however, the term had another meaning, that of "player of every part". By the beginning of the twentieth century it had taken on yet another meaning, "a farcical musical entertainment for children, usually based on nursery tales" - the element of dumb-show now having been lost completely.

Early English pantomime took its inspirations from a fusion of the Italian "Commedia dell’ Arte", a popular form of improvised visual comedy involving dance, acrobatics and buffoonery, and the French "Harlequinade", itself a stylised derivative of Commedia dell' Art based upon sketches and comic dances involving the character 'Harlequin' which were popular at Paris fairs. Both these forms reached England around the beginning of the eighteenth century through travelling performers and were quickly adopted by the populace. The earliest recorded pantomime performed by grotesque characters in England was at Drury Lane Theatre in 1702. It was composed by a Mr. Weaver, a dancing master, and called "The Tavern Bilkers."

By 1715, this new form had become firmly established (largely due to a Royal ban imposed at the time on spoken drama), and English performers began replace the foreign imports. The format usually consisted of a "forepiece" wherein the Harlequin figure introduced the story in verse and song, followed by the main piece enacting the story - supplemented by all kinds of specialty acts; jugglers, magicians, tight rope artists and animal figures.

The rivalry between the different London theatres in producing these kinds of entertainments was keen. The famous eighteenth-century theatrical manager, John Rich, adopted entertainments in the Italian style as the staple of his new theatre at Lincoln's Inn Fields (built 1714) in order to compete with the Drury Lane theatre (then under the management of Colley Cibber). Rich's pantomimes consisted of representations of fabulous stories with spectacular accompaniments of fine costumes, grand dances, and appropriate music. Interwoven between the acts would be a comic story consisting of the courtship of Harlequin (played by Rich himself) and his sweetheart Columbine.

Rich's productions became the rage of the capital so that public approval led to the format being lengthened until the style had to be altered to allow rest time for the dancers. In 1720 he produced a lavish and highly successful production at Lincolns Inn Fields entitled "Harlequin Executed," and its subtitle was "A New Italian Comic Scene Between a Scaramouche, a Harlequin, a Country Farmer, His Wife and Others" which set new standards for pantomime in England. Early in 1723, the managers of Drury Lane, responded with a pantomime by one Thurmond, a dancing-master, entitled "Harlequin Doctor Faustus" which was constructed on an even more elaborate scale than any of those previously given. Consequently, opinion is divided as to which of these two pieces represents the first English pantomime.

About the middle of the eighteenth century the character of pantomime underwent another significant transition, due to the influence of the famous clown, (Joseph) Grimaldi. He was the son of a ballet-master and a dancer, and as a youth played dwarves and old hags in various pantomimes. When he later took over the chief comic role of the clown 'Dubois', Grimaldi transformed that character from a bumbling country bumpkin to a colourful Pierrot, and introduced a style of humour which was more richly developed and leisurely than the flash-bang style of previous comics. Grimaldi was the most popular comic singer of his day, as well as an accomplished dancer, actoer, mimist and acrobat - particularly noted for his mock swordfights.

Through the mid-nineteenth century, the opening gradually elaborated in cast and scenery until it resembled the form of the popular burlesques of the time - an extravaganza with fabulous costumes and all sorts of wonderful stage effects. It was also around this time that actresses began to replace actors in the heroes role, establishing the pantomime tradition of the 'Principal Boy' (the first known example being that of one Eliza Povey playing the title role in Jack and the Beanstalk in 1819). The tradition of the comic older woman, the Dame, being played by a man is much older. When pantomime first arrived in England women were not admitted to the stage so that all female roles had to be played by men. When that situation changed, male actors simply clung on to that plum role.

Up until this time, pantomimes were not specifically a Christmas entertainment, nor were they aimed at children, and the shows generally covered themes of medieval romance and classic legends. Up until this time also, dialogue was generally only used in the forepiece, with the remainder of the performance being done in dumb-show.

Victorian pantomimes of the late nineteenth saw yet another change, as pantomimes entered the first stage of their transition into their recognisably modern form. First the burlesque element of the opening scene was softened and scaled down, often taking the form of a one-act comedy. This allowed emphasis to be returned to the main story which now commonly centered on a dramatized fairy tale and was not always done in dumb-show.

These changes directed the pantomimes towards a younger audience and led to a great increase in the number of children being brought to the various theatres, which in itself fuelled the next big change. With a forepiece, main show and afterpiece, the pantomimes were very long, too long for the attention span of the young spectators they were now being aimed at. Consequently, the after-piece was cut and certain elements of it were combined with the main show. Lastly, with children being a key component of the audience, pantomime became a holiday entertainment staged mainly at Christmas and Easter.

Edwardian Pantomime

By the beginning of the Edwardian era, a pantomime generally consisted of two parts. A fairy piece dramatising some well-known childrens fairy tale, and a Harlequinade. Traditionally, a pantomime would open on Boxing Day and, depending on it's success, run as long as early March or even April.

As the genre continued to move more towards being a childrens entertainment, the fairy story then began to usurp the Harlequinade as the main focus of the show. The success of J.M. Barrie's 'Peter Pan' had shown that a fairy story could be successful in it's own right, and consequently the Harlequinade lessened in importance with an inexorable shift in the pantomime format toward an extended and more detailed fairy story (absorbing some of its elements).

To win the hearts of a young audience there were always fairies, dwarves and animal characters (sometimes all three) for them to relate to. Whilst for the adults, there would be satirical references to topical issues and allusions to current events that meant that scripts could change at a moment's notice - thus making panto an ideal venue for the art of the 'Ad lib'.

Panto also became the last bastion of audience participation. In Elizabethan times it was not unusual for audiences to cheer the hero and boo and barrack the bad guy during the course of a performance. By Edwardian times, this had died out and audiences had become much more restrained, saving their emotions for the end. Only in panto was this behaviour not only accepted but institutionalised as part of the show.

Further Developments

The transition to a format which would be largely recogniseable to modern day audiences was completed in the years immediately following the end of the Great War. In the course of the journey, pantomime had largely divorced itself from its origins, indeed from the very meaning of the term, but in so doing had become a well-defined art forms with its own style and traditions. Stories had become largely allegorical, invariably with a main theme of good triumphing over evil. The hero and heroine always got married in the end and the baddies got their comeuppance, whilst the Dame spun a thread of hilarity throughout the piece.

Strangely, unlike most other forms of theatre popular in the Edwardian era (when the London and New York theatre scenes were largely interchangeable) pantomime never successfully made the transition to the other side of the Atlantic. True, some pantomimes were staged in the US with great success, sometimes with imported British companies, but it never captured the public imagination in quite the same way and tended to be looked upon as a quaintly British eccentricity. Only to former British colonies did it transfer with any real success. But although panto itself may be quaintly British, the stories on which it is based are frequently drawn from foreign sources. "Bluebeard," "Cinderella" and "Tom Thumb" come from France; "Puss In Boots" from Italy; "Jack the Giant Killer" hails from Norway; "Jack and the Beanstalk" from Germany; "Sindbad the Sailor" comes from the east whilst "The Babes In the Wood" and "Little Red Riding Hood" are among the few stories of British.

Reproduced below is an article from a contemporary US newspaper discussing the English panto scene.

The Newark Advocate (USA), 21st December, 1904.
CHRISTMAS PANTOMIMES

If there is anything that may be considered exclusive in old England, and particularly in London, is it the Christmas Pantomime. This special form of entertainment is not only produced annually in nearly all the theatres in the largest city in the world on Boxing night, next after Christmas, but in all the large cities of the "Tight Little Island," such as Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol, Hull, Leeds, etc.

A pantomime consists of two parts: a fairy extravaganza and the pantomime proper. The first part is a dramatization of some fairy tale, such as "Beauty and the Beast," "Sinbad the Sailor," etc. In fact, the "Arabian Nights" have furnished more material for this class of work than any other book in existence. The extravaganza ends with a grand transformation scene, and then the fun begins.

The lover has been turned into Harlequin and presented with a magic wand by the fairy queen. His lady love accompanies him in all his antics and frustrations of mischief as Columbine. The villain is made a trouble-making clown, and the girl's father is Pantaloon. Everything is in dumb show, unless the clown can sing a song, and then he does.

The scenery of the story proper is of the most gorgeous description, representing gold and silver palaces, crystal caves, magnificent flowers turning into living fairies, etc. The theatres try to outvie each other in this direction, and the Londoner will go round to each home of the drama and make comparisons. The first nighter selects Drury Lane Theatre, and the man who has been there never forgets it. The building is packed to its utmost capacity with human freight, like sardines in a box, and everyone is good-natured and determined on enjoying himself to the top of his bent.

Few ladies are present. Joe Grimaldi was the most famous clown that England ever produced, and it was his art, both as an actor and a singer, that made this class of entertainment popular. He was in his zenith about a hundred years ago and during the festive season performed in two theatres in one night — Drury Lane and Sadler's Wells — when he was little more than a boy.

Two of his most celebrated songs were "Hot Codlins" and "Tipitywichet" and they were popular until quite recently. The most renowned pantomime was "Harlequin Mother Goose." It was produced for several successive seasons, a success without precedent.

Grimaldi has had many successors but no equal. Among the most noted were Tom Matthews, Harry Boleno, and last, but not least, Tom Payne. He was a prime favorite with his children audiences up to the time of his death, which occurred only a few years ago.

Large sums of money were invested in the production of a single pantomime, ranging from thirty to fifty thousand dollars. Hence its success is of the utmost interest to the proprietor. If the public is satisfied, it will run right up to Easter, and occasionally for some time after. This is a matter of great importance when it is borne in mind that there are about thirty new pantomimes produced in London alone on the opening of the Christmas holidays.