Pantomime

“ Something like that sense of suspense seems to hang over the silent actors in pantomime, giving them a nervous exaltation, which has its subtle, immediate effect upon us, in tragic and comic situation. The silence becomes an atmosphere, and with a very curious power of giving distinction to form and motion. I do not see why people should ever break silence on the stage except to speak poetry. Here, in pantomime, you have a gracious, expressive silence, beauty of gesture, a perfectly discreet appeal to the emotions, a transposition of the world into an elegant accepted convention. ”

“ It is easy to laugh at all that ensued when first the mummers and the stainers of canvas strayed into Mayfair. Yet shall I laugh? For me the most romantic moment of a pantomime is always when the winged and wired fairies begin to fade away, and, as they fade, clown and pantaloon tumble on joppling and grimacing, seen very faintly in that indecisive twilight. ”

“ A week with the Duke of Burlington at Marringworth; a fortnight with the Fitz-pompeys at Malthorpe; a month with the Graftons at Cleve; and so on: he shuddered at the very idea. Who can see a pantomime more than once? Who could survive a pantomime the twentieth time? All the shifting scenes, and flitting splendour; all the motley crowds of sparkling characters; all the quick changes, and full variety, are, once, enchantment. But when the splendour is discovered to be monotony; the change, order, and the caprice a system; when the characters play ever the same part, and the variety never varies ”

“ SIGNOR NICOLINI.
I said to Patti after the pantomime, “You do not seem to believe that change of occupation is the best possible rest. You appear to me to work as hard at rehearsing and acting in your little theatre as if you were ‘on tour.’”
“Not quite. Besides, it isn’t work, it is play,” replied the miraculous little woman. “I love the theatre. And, then, there is always something to learn about acting. I find these pantomime performances very useful as well as very pleasant.” ”

“ Whoever knows the history of the theater is aware of the tremendous rôle which the pantomime has played in the development of mankind. From the old half-religious pantomimic and suggestive dances out of which the beginnings of the real drama grew to the fully religious pantomimes of medieval ages and, further on, to many silent mimic elements in modern performances, we find a continuity of conventions which make the pantomime almost the real background of all dramatic development. ”

“ From the Illustrated London News, December, 1848.
[185] CHAPTER XV
PANTOMIME IN THE PAST AND PRESENT
Some people still living (but they must be very aged people by now) may be able to remember the pantomime which was one of the great features of the Christmas holidays in early nineteenth century England, and may be looked upon as the legitimate successor of the ancient “masque.” The word pantomime comes from two Greek words meaning “all mimicry.” It is a play in which the actors say never a word but perform their parts in dumb show, that is, by signs and gestures. ”

“ The modern pantomime, as the word is still used, more especially in connexion with the English stage, signifies a dramatic entertainment in which the action is carried on with the help of spectacle, music and dancing, and in which the performance of that action or of its adjuncts is conducted by certain conventional characters, originally derived from Italian “masked comedy,” itself an adaptation of the fabulae Atellanae of ancient Italy. Were it not for this addition, it would be difficult to define modern pantomime so as to distinguish it from the masque ”

“ Other entertainments of eye or ear are but manifestations of a single art: 'tis flute or lyre or song; 'tis moving tragedy or laughable comedy. The pantomime is all-embracing in the variety of his equipment: flute and pipe, beating foot and clashing cymbal, melodious recitative, choral harmony. Other arts call out only one half of a man's powers—the bodily or the mental: the pantomime combines the two. His performance is as much an intellectual as a physical exercise: there is meaning in his movements; every gesture has its significance ”

“ Perhaps because the pantomime contains only the essential element of the drama—action—it has always been a popular form of play; and it appears very early in the history of the theater. Indeed, it seems to be the sole type of play achievable by primitive man—if we may judge from observations made among savages who are still in the earlier periods of social development. Gesture precedes speech, and a pantomime was possible even before a vocabulary was developed. In the Aleutian Islands, for example, the pantomime is the only form of play known. ”

“ A pantomime is a very good thing in its way. But that is your illustration; I would rather say opera bouffe, which is probably the truest copy of Life—if we were limited to one kind. But we are not: I tell you, we must have all sorts. There is tragedy in Life, and comedy—that more especially; a little of the other goes a long way. ”

“ Such gesture as is sparingly used is strictly conventionalised, and the faces of the performers remain blankly expressionless. Nothing is allowed to detract from the stiff formality of their aspect. For all that, the pantomime is curiously expressive. In his uncouth way, prompted by impulses only dimly comprehended, the faun seeks to woo the nymphs. They are startled and flee, but return almost as soon as they are gone, only to dart off again in sudden alarm. Curiosity alternates with shyness and fear. ”

“ If any one should pretend that the pantomime art is superior to the actor’s power of representation in tragedy or comedy, or that such an entertainment of dumb show ought to exclude that of speaking characters ”

“ For of all our publick diversions, the stage, if purged from the obscenity of farce, and the low buffoonery of pantomime, is certainly capable of affording infinitely the most rational, and the most manly entertainment. ”

“ B——, however, as you know, is admirably ingenious in pantomime, so when we wish any thing I stand in the door, repeating by rote words I have just picked out of the dictionary, while he is stationed near talking with nose, eyes, hands, and feet, by way of explanation; as you remember, in the infancy of the drama among the Greeks, one performer stood out in the front of the stage repeating the words while the actors in the background gesticulated the play in pantomime. ”

“ A pantomime is to us, a mirror of life; nay, more, we maintain that it is so to audiences generally, although they are not aware of it, and that this very circumstance is the secret cause of their amusement and delight. ”

“ The modern pantomime, therefore, with its universal hash of fun and frolic, of fairies and fiends, deities and dragons, of ghosts, goblins, and giants, of burlesque and ballet, painting and punning, of music and mountebanking, responds most accurately to the classical etymon. ”

“ The inexperienced 381 dramatist should be constantly alert to see to what extent he can substitute it for dialogue.44
In all that has been said of pantomime, of course technical pantomime is not meant. The Commedia dell’ arte, pantomime artists like the Ravel Brothers or Mme. Pilar-Morin, have a code of gesture to symbolize fixed meanings. What is meant here is the natural human pantomime of people whose faces and bodies portray or betray their feelings. ”

“ It would seem to have been a revival of a production of David Garrick's. "It is called a speaking pantomime," writes Hazlitt; "we had rather it had said nothing. It is better to act folly than to talk it. The essence of pantomime is practical absurdity keeping the wits in constant chase, coming upon one by surprise, and starting off again before you can arrest the fleeting 'phantom:' the essence of this piece was prosing stupidity remaining like a mawkish picture on the stage, and overcoming your impatience by the force of ennui. ”

“ If this be so in real life, he said, it should be so on the stage, because nothing passes in the world which may not pass also in the theatre; and as pantomime, or expression of emotion, feeling, purpose, otherwise than by speech, has so much to do in life, the dramatist should make abundant use of pantomime in composing stage-plays. ”

“ It is easy to conceive what a wonderful interest the actor, painter, or sculptor must find in the study of the human body thus analysed from head to foot in its innumerable ways of expression. Hence, the eloquent secrets of pantomime, those imperceptible movements of great actors which produce such powerful impressions, are decomposed and subjected to laws whose evidence and simplicity are a twofold source of admiration. ”

“ But the mere interest springing from words cannot in the least explain that constantly shifting action of our involuntary attention during a theater performance. The movements of the actors are essential. The pantomime without words can take the place of the drama and still appeal to us with overwhelming power. The actor who comes to the foreground of the stage is at once in the foreground of our consciousness. He who lifts his arm while the others stand quiet has gained our attention. ”

“ The Princess’s Theatre ought to produce the best pantomime, for it is the theatre of all others which pays most attention to stage effect; and it would be strange, if, eclipsing all others in the illustration of the Shakespearean drama, it should be behindhand in the representation of its pantomime. It is no vulgar brilliance of scenery, no clap-trap effects of green, red, and gold without meaning, that Mr Charles Kean introduces to his audience. ”

“ MEN OF THE THEATRE
My association with the theatre began somewhat disastrously. It was my father’s kindly thought, while we were still children, to afford us an annual visit to the pantomime, a visit that was accomplished for our large family by means of two hired flies, which transported us from our house at Barnes to the chosen place of amusement.
But my particular enjoyment of this long-desired entertainment was mitigated by circumstances both moral and physical. ”

“ Men do not dance or sing through life; or an Opera or a ballet would ‘come home to the bosoms and businesses of men,’ in the same manner that a Tragedy or Comedy does. As it is, they do not piece on to our ordinary existence, nor go to enrich our habitual reflections. We wake from them as from a drunken dream, or a last night’s debauch; and think of them no more, till the actual impression is repeated.—On the other hand, pantomime action (as an exclusive and new species of the drama) is like tragedy obtruncated and thrown on the ground, gasping for utterance and struggling for breath. ”

“ The moving picture depends entirely upon pantomime for interpreting character and expressing emotion. The greatest of the movie actors are great pantomimists. When we study the movements and gestures and the facial expressions of such actors as 200Emil Jannings and Charlie Chaplin, we begin to understand what pantomime really is. ”

“ While you must have wordless pantomime at the basis of every play, it is those plays which exhibit in high degree the use of action in the form of dialogue that are the more comfortable reading; and, always postulating that a play is a play—not necessarily a playwright's play, the admiration of his brother craftsmen, but a thing practicable, actable and effective on the stage—the more physical action is subordinated to character, to the exploration of the springs of human motive, the better it is for reading purposes and the better for all purposes. ”

“ I shall never forget an experience of my own, when I took a good French friend to see David Warfield in "The Music Master"; this young chap could not understand more than a word here and there, but we were compelled to miss the last act because he cried so hard during the famous lost-daughter scene that he was ashamed to enter the theatre after the intermission.
Every great play is, in the last analysis, a pantomime. Words are unnecessary to tell a stage story that has its wellspring deep in the emotions of the human heart. Words can only embellish it. ”

“ Now, the convention underlying pantomime is that we are beholding a story carried on by a race of beings whose natural method of communicating information and ideas is gesture—just as the convention of opera is that we are beholding a story carried on by a race of beings whose natural method of communicating information and ideas is song. No such races of beings ever existed; but we must admit the existence of such races as a condition precedent to our enjoyment of pantomime and of opera. ”

“ But things like these in every clime
Attend a famous pantomime.
“Great credit has the manager
From all the people gained.”
“Why those poor girls appeared so gay!”
Quoth Mabel, greatly pained.
“Hush, hush, thou little lass o’ mine;
It is a famous pantomime!
“And folk have praised the good lessee,
Who’s furnished us the fun.”
“But what’s the meaning of it all?”
Quoth Mat, his tiny son.
Said dad, “You’ll know it all in time;
But ’tis a famous pantomime.”
Orchis. (F. B. Doveton.)
Second Prize Poem. ”

“ For the rest of the pantomime every word was followed with breathless interest. At any moment the hero might come out with another brilliant line--“Look, there’s a hippopotamus.” Even when it was proved, with the falling of the final curtain, that the author had never again risen to these heights, there was still one chance left. Perhaps if they clapped loudly enough, the elephant would hear, and would take a call like the others.
What sort of pantomime do children like? It is a strange thing that we never ask ourselves “What sort of plays--or books or pictures--do public-school men like?” ”