The VV really loves this engraving. It reminds her of the time when she wrote The Somnambulist, her first Victorian novel which opened up with a theatre scene from a Christmas show at Wilton's Hall. But then a trip to a pantomime was such a traditional thing to do in the Victorian era: a mixture of story and music, with rhyming couplets, double entendres, and lashings of topical wit.
From the V&A Archives
However, the name 'pantomime' derives from Ancient Greece, when an actor or 'pantomimus' told stories by means of mime or dance, and that act was often accompanied by music and a chorus line.
In the middle ages, the Italian Commedia dell’Arte (from whom we also owe thanks for the creation of Punchinello or Mr Punch) was a type of entertainment where travelling troupes performed dramatisations in marketplaces or fairgrounds. They improvised their story lines around the character Harlequin, who wore a diamond-patterned costume and carried a magic wand. Later, this part was famously played by Grimaldi the clown who died in 1837, the year Queen Victoria came to the throne.
Joseph Grimaldi as Harlequin
As Victoria’s reign progressed the stories told by Harlequin became entwined with the antics of rural English Mummers. Eventually those events evolving into very much grander productions – although many pantomimes back then were still then based around Harlequin's character.
From the V&A Archives
The proof of this is illustrated in elaborate titles for the shows, such as Harlequin and the Forty Thieves, or Jack and the Beanstalk; or, Harlequin Leap-Year, and the Merry Pranks of the Good LittlePeople (surely some dwarves had been employed). In 1863 W S Gilbert wrote Harlequin Cock Robin and Jenny Wren; or, Fortunatus and the Waters of Life, the Three Bears, the Three Gifts, the Three Wishes, and the Little Man who Wooed a Little Maid - though that particular production may have been somewhat ambitious in its scope and its complexity. Years later Gilbert was heard to confess that perhaps it was not the best title to use.
Augustus Harris
For whatever the reason, as years went by the Harlequin character was used much less. Productions such as those put on by the manager Augustus Harris at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane were based on traditional fairy tales such as Jack and the Beanstalk or Cinderella. These were extravagant stagings featuring ballets, acrobatics and grand processions of specially recruited children. There were magicians and slapstick, cross dressing and innuendo. There was audience participation in the vein of the still familiar refrains of 'Oh no, he isn’t…Oh yes, he is'.
From the V&A Archives
There were also the popular ‘skins’, when actors would dress in animal garb - quite scarily as insects in the version of Cinderella (above), or more often, and more comically, to play the back or the front end of a pantomime horse or cow – a role once undertaken at the Stockport Hippodrome by an aspiring young actor by the name of Charlie Chaplin.
Back in 1881 Augustus' Harris’ production of The Forty Thieves began at 7.30pm and ended at 1am the next morning. One scene lasted for forty minutes while the thieves (each of whom had his own band of followers) processed across the stage. The pantomime cost £65,000 – the equivalent of several millions today. But then, with popular music hall acts such as Marie Lloyd and Dan Leno employed to take the starring roles, Harris’ shows were always a success – artistically and financially.
How the VV wishes that she could have been around to see one!
