ABSTRACT
First published in The Examiner, X, 5 January 1817, p. 7. Reprinted in Hunt, Dramatic, pp. 140–3. The rest of the Theatrical Examiner (pp. 7–8) is devoted to Drury Lane and particularly the work of Miss Somerville. This piece was concluded on 26 January 1817, p. 57; see below, pp. 94–5. There is an interesting later comment on the pantomime in The Tatler, 18 December 1831, p. 613. Hunt’s defence of the most popular and ‘irregular’ of the period’s dramatic forms is striking, given the fact that he often seems to defend the traditional drama. With its roots in commedia dell’arte and a particularly English tradition running back to the early part of the eighteenth century, the Christmas pantomime was an almost ritualised form, in which an opening section, often based in fairy tale or myth, creates a problem for two lovers. The problem is then resolved in the harlequinade proper, where the central figures from the opening section lose their papier-mâché ‘big heads’ which designated their characters and are revealed as various archetypal figures: Columbine and her lover Harlequin with his magic sword or bat, the rival or ‘Dandy’ lover, Pantaloon, and the ever hungry Clown, who in the hands of the great Grimaldi often became the central figure in these plays. The transformations are performed by good and evil magical figures, and in the pantomime’s penultimate scene the evil power seems about to win when Harlequin and the force of good that supports him suddenly prove victorious. These plays, which made enough money in the period following Christmas (they usually opened on Boxing Day) to support the major theatres during the rest of the year, were filled with contemporary allusions, as well as with the antics of clown, the dancing of Columbine, and the trick work of Harlequin, who transforms carriages into balloons, animates mechanical figures and unleashes his magic on Clown, Pantaloon and the Lover. On the pantomime, see David Mayer, Harlequin in His Element; The English Pantomime, 1806-1836 (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1969) and Jane Moody, Illegitimate Theatre in London, 1779–1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000).
