ABSTRACT
Late eighteenth century Regency pantomime opened with a few scenes from legend or story, when the characters wore large head masks, known as ‘big heads’, and baggy costumes. Pantomime introduced ‘transparencies’, back-lit paintings on gauze, and in 1811 at Covent Garden in Harlequin and Padmanaba, or The Golden Fish presented a real elephant. Grimaldi had brought pantomime to an extraordinary popularity which lasted beyond his retirement. Grimaldi Senior was best known as a Pantaloon, though he played other parts, including Clown later in life, and both he and Grimaldi’s mother, Rebecca Brooker, were theatre and pantomime performers, Rebecca in the chorus at Drury Lane for several years. In the fifteen scenes of the Harlequinade, Grimaldi’s anarchic Clown ran amok through Georgian England. Grimaldi’s acting was very often broad and comic: he rolled his eyes, blew out his breath through trumpet lips, looked down at his feet or up at the sky as well as any clown.
