ABSTRACT
Formerly, a rustic ballet-kind of opening to the pantomimes, with certain mechanical changes when the harlequinade commenced, was thought sufficient; but now the opening is in itself an elaborate story—the drollest whimsicalities are therein introduced, and it forms perhaps the most important part of the production: whilst in the pantomime, properly so called, all sorts of sly shafts are aimed at passing or past follies and events. The arrangements for the promenade concerts, and the decorations of the Bal Masque having been cleared away by a transformation as wonderful as any in the Christmas piece, after the time-honoured “boxing-night” tragedy of “George Barnwell,” a new comic pantomime by Mr. Nelson Lee was produced, called “Harlequin Crotchet and Quaver, or Music for the Million.” The characters and plot are to the fullest extent musical.
