Harlequinade

Harlequinade, important element in the development of the English pantomime. It resulted from the fusion of the dumbshow of the actors at the Paris fairgrounds with the convention that the trickster Harlequin could turn himself into someone else. When the ‘Italian Night Scenes’ in which he figured were brought to London by John Weaver [ John Wever] (1673–1760), this convention was not understood, and it was the unhappy lover, or later the hero of the fairy-tale opening, who turned into Harlequin and so gave his name to the entire performance. Once the change had been effected the rest of the evening was devoted to the various stratagems by which the young lovers Harlequin and Columbine managed to escape from the old man Pantaloon. Not until the early 19th century, when Grimaldi made the purely English character Clown into the chief personage of the Harlequinade, did Harlequin lose his premier position, and the love scenes between him and Columbine dwindled into short displays of dancing and acrobatics. As these in their turn began to pall, the fairy-tale opening increased in length, and the harlequinade dwindled into a short epilogue. For a time there was a pretence of changing the fairy-tale hero (the principal boy, played always by a woman) into Harlequin by means of traps, but at last this too was abandoned, and the harlequinade, placed after the Grande Finale of the pantomime, lost all meaning. It finally disappeared altogether during the Second World War.