ABSTRACT
To say, as William Archer did, that the poetic drama of the 1880s had taken over the techniques of spectacle from melodrama and pantomime was not only to acknowledge, somewhat after the event, the indisputable connection between Shakespeare on the one hand and these ‘illegitimate’ forms on the other, but also to recognise what had been obvious to any interested theatrical observer for generations. Melodrama and pantomime embodied spectacle as an essential aspect of their appeal and an integral part of their dramatic structure. Melodrama used spectacle for two main reasons: to imitate social and urban life on a size and scale appropriate to the magnitude of human emotion and the conflict between good and evil at the heart of its being, and to express in striking visual terms the sensationalism inherent in its nature. Pantomime did not pretend to the social verisimilitude of melodrama, although in the Regency harlequinade there was a great deal of social satire. Spectacle in pantomime was directed to the end of fantasy, a fantasy often excessively pretty and ideally beautiful, sometimes darkly grotesque, but employing mass, colour, and light for non-realistic purposes, as opposed to melodrama. As the poetic beauty and archaeological pictorialism and the realistic effects of melodrama followed the path of increasing elaboration, so too did the realisation of the fantasy world of pantomime.
