Tag Archives: Pantomime

Harlequin, Scaramouch and The Emperor of the Moon

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Another play with dancing that held the London stage for several decades was Aphra Behn’s The Emperor of the Moon. It was probably first performed in March 1687 at the Dorset Garden Theatre and was published the same year. Behn’s principal source was Fatouville’s Arlequin empereur dans la lune, itself first performed by the Italian comedians in Paris on 5 March 1684. I am not going to attempt an analysis of the relationship between the two plays. My interest, as ever, is dancing and – in this case – the roles of Harlequin and Scaramouch, as performed on the London stage.

According to the printed play, Harlequin was first performed by ‘Mr Jevon’ and Scaramouch by ‘Mr Leigh’. Thomas Jevon and Anthony Leigh were both comedians with the company. Jevon had begun as a dancing master and regularly added dancing to his stage performances, while Leigh was known for ad-libbing and his wide variety of roles. Both must have been able to give a good account of commedia dell’arte-style action, for Behn’s play includes several lazzi for the two, including a fight which ends in a dance in act 1 scene 3.

‘They go to fight ridiculously, and ever as Scaramouch passes, Harlequin leaps aside, and skips so nimbly about, he cannot touch him for his life; which after a while endeavouring in vain, [Scaramouch] lays down his sword’.

Admitting defeat as a swordsman, ‘Scaramouch pulls out a flute doux, and falls to playing. Harlequin throws down his [sword], and falls a-dancing. After the dance, they shake hands’. Both are, of course, speaking (as well as miming) characters.

Scaramouch is described in the stage directions as ‘dressed in black, with a short black cloak, a ruff, and a little hat’, his customary costume, suggesting that Harlequin also wore his traditional parti-coloured suit with a mask. Aphra Behn is thought to have seen Fatouville’s piece in Paris in 1684, but it is not clear where Jevon and Leigh learnt their action since there had been no Italian comedians in London since the late 1670s.

The Emperor of the Moon revolves around the usual pairs of young lovers, who employ Harlequin and Scaramouch to trick Doctor Baliardo into allowing them to wed. The Doctor is obsessed with the world in the Moon and the final scene of the play has an elaborate masque in which the two young men descend to earth as the ‘Emperor of the Moon’ and the ‘Prince of Thunderland’ and marry their sweethearts. The action of the play includes three ‘antic’ dances, the last of which comes in this finale and is probably performed by the attendants of the ‘Emperor’ and ‘Prince’. According to the cast list they are ‘persons that represent the court cards’.

Revivals of The Emperor of the Moon up to 1700 are difficult to chart. The play was given in 1687-1688 and 1691-1692 and perhaps also in 1699-1700, although its later popularity suggests that it was performed far more often. The first known performance after 1700 was on 18 September 1702 at Drury Lane, with another famous comedian, William Pinkethman, as Harlequin. He experimented by trying to play the role without a mask, but – as Colley Cibber recorded in his Apology of 1740, ‘Penkethman could not take to himself the Shame of the Character without being concealed – he was no more Harlequin – his Humour was quite disconcerted!’. The Drury Lane performance on 20 December 1704 advertised ‘All the original Dances which were perform’d, particularly the Card Dance’. In 1709-1710, a Night Scene with commedia dell’arte characters was advertised alongside The Emperor of the Moon but may perhaps have been performed within the play.

When the Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre was allowed to open in 1714, it gave The Emperor of the Moon in competition with Drury Lane, finally taking over the play altogether from 1717-1718. Behn’s play was given at Lincoln’s Inn Fields nearly every season until 1731-1732, usually with William Bullock Sr as Scaramouch and James Spiller as Harlequin. Both were established comedians and Spiller also occasionally danced in the entr’actes. When the company moved to its new Covent Garden Theatre, The Emperor of the Moon went too.

The Emperor of the Moon was given a well-advertised revival at the Goodman’s Fields Theatre on 15 October 1735, with William Pinkethman Junior as Harlequin and James Rosco as Scaramouch. Pinkethman was following in his father’s footsteps, while Rosco was a leading actor in the company with a very varied repertoire. The bills announced that the play would be given with ‘the original Songs’ and ‘New Dances, adapted to the opera, particularly A Dance of Court Cards’. According to the advertised cast list, actors and not dancers performed this dance, while the company’s dancers gave ‘other dances’. The Emperor of the Moon was performed more than a dozen times at Goodman’s Fields in 1735-1736, but was not subsequently revived there.

The last revival of Behn’s play was during the 1748-1749 season, when David Garrick at Drury Lane vied for audiences with John Rich at Covent Garden. Both theatres advertised it as ‘forthcoming’ a few days before Christmas and both performed The Emperor of the Moon on 26 December 1748. At Drury Lane it was given as an afterpiece, with Henry Woodward as Harlequin and Richard Yates as Scaramouch. Both were comic actors and Woodward (trained by John Rich) would become London’s leading Harlequin. Garrick’s production included dancers, but did Rich’s? At Covent Garden, The Emperor of the Moon was the mainpiece, with a pantomime The Royal Chace (which did have dancing) as an afterpiece. There was no mention of dancing in the play, but the entr’acte dances included a solo Scaramouch and a Grand Masquerade Dance – or were they both given in The Emperor of the Moon?

Aphra Behn used commedia dell’arte at a period when it was still quite new to English actors and The Emperor of the Moon established a place in the repertoire some years before Joseph Sorin and other French forains came to perform in London. The tradition begun by Thomas Jevon may well have influenced some of London’s dancing Harlequins, while Pinkethman’s and Spiller’s performances may have contributed to the rise of ‘Lun’ (John Rich’s ‘Harlequin’ identity). The dances in The Emperor of the Moon didn’t make their way into the entr’actes, but the antics of Harlequin and Scaramouch must surely have played a part in the development of the English pantomime.

Claude Gillot’s various depictions of scenes from the Italian comedies given in Paris provide a flavour of performances there – here are Arlequin and Scaramouch fighting in Arlequin empereur dans la lune. What were the English like?

Gillot Arlequin Scaramouch combat

THE LOVES OF MARS AND VENUS IN CONTEXT

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The theatre world of 18th-century London was very different from ours today. There were only two theatres allowed by law to perform plays, an arrangement that went back to the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. By 1717, one of these playhouses was Drury Lane (on the same site as the present theatre, but much smaller) while the other was Lincoln’s Inn Fields (demolished in 1848, but on a site now occupied by the Royal College of Surgeons of England). There was also the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket (on the site now occupied by Her Majesty’s Theatre) which presented only Italian opera. The most capacious of the three (at least when it was full to bursting) was Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which could hold some 1400 people. Drury Lane and the King’s Theatre could seat around 800 – 1000 patrons.

Drury Lane and Lincoln’s Inn Fields were both wholly commercial ventures and thus dependant on paying audiences for their survival. They were, of necessity, rivals. Dancing was a key element in their struggle to fill their auditoriums each night. Most dancing, at both houses, took place in the entr’actes, i.e. between the acts of the plays which were the main part of the bills. John Rich, manager of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, was well aware of the popularity of dancing and made it an important feature as soon as he took over the theatre in 1714.

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John Wykeham Archer, Building formerly Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre, 1847. © British Museum

At Drury Lane, the actor-managers Colley Cibber, Robert Wilks and Barton Booth, together with their fellow manager Sir Richard Steele, favoured drama – not least because they had the best actors in London. Despite their serious intent, they were forced to try and emulate Rich as his success drew away their audiences.

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View of the Drury Lane Theatre (Bridges Street front by Robert Adam), c1794? © British Museum

This was the world within which John Weaver’s The Loves of Mars and Venus was first produced.

Theatre seasons ran from September or October to June or July the following year. So, The Loves of Mars and Venus received its first performance some way through Drury Lane’s 1716-1717 season. During that season, the playhouse offered some nine afterpieces (short farces or other entertainments performed after the main comedy or tragedy), but only The Loves of Mars and Venus and The Shipwreck; or, Perseus and Andromeda, a ‘New Dramatick Entertainment of Dancing in Grotesque Characters’ also by Weaver, were danced. In their first season the former received seven performances before the end of March 1717, while the latter had three in April.

More than twenty years later, in his Apology, Colley Cibber explained how and why Weaver’s experimental ballet was allowed to go ahead. He began with the disparity between the two companies, and Lincoln’s Inn Fields’s need ‘to exhibit some new-fangled Foppery’ if it was to compete with Drury Lane’s higher reputation.

‘Dancing therefore was, now, the only Weight in the opposite Scale, and as the New Theatre [Lincoln’s Inn Fields] sometimes found their Account in it, it could not be safe for us, wholly to neglect it. To give even Dancing therefore some Improvement, and to make it something more than Motion without Meaning, the Fable of Mars and Venus, was form’d into a connected Presentation of Dances in Character, wherein the Passions were so happily express’d, and the whole Story so intelligibly told, by a mute Narration of Gesture only, that even thinking Spectators allow’d it both a pleasing, and a rational Entertainment; tho’, at the same time, from our Distrust of its Reception, we durst not venture to decorate it, with any extraordinary Expence of Scenes, or Habits; but upon the Success of this Attempt, it was rightly concluded, that if a visible Expence in both, were added to something of the same Nature, it could not fail of drawing the Town proportionably after it.’

Colley Cibber obviously had no great respect for dancing, but he had to admit that Weaver’s The Loves of Mars and Venus was not only completely new, it was also a proper drama and a success.

The Loves of Mars and Venus was given another sixteen performances in 1717-1718, seven performances in 1718-1719 and eight more in 1719-1720. It then disappeared from the repertoire until 1723-1724, when it was performed five times before it was dropped completely. Its success in all the seasons when it was performed suggests that there may have been other reasons why it did not survive beyond the mid-1720s.

However, there were later dance pieces titled Mars and Venus and at least one of these may have been a revival of Weaver’s ballet. This was given at Drury Lane on 2 May 1739 at a benefit for the dancer Essex. He was, very probably, William Essex the son of John Essex who translated Rameau’s Le Maître a danser for publication in London in 1728. William Essex danced Vulcan, with Desnoyer as Mars and Mrs Walter as Venus. All three had worked with John Weaver. Essex had danced in Drury Lane’s 1728 pantomime Perseus and Andromeda. With the Rape of Colombine: or, The Flying Lovers, for which Roger had created the serious scenes while Weaver had undertaken the comic action. Even though Essex had danced in Roger’s scenes, he must have worked alongside Weaver. Desnoyer had created the role of Paris in Weaver’s last dance drama The Judgment of Paris, given at Drury Lane in 1733. Mrs Walter had also danced in The Judgment of Paris, as the goddess Juno.

There were, therefore, many opportunities for Weaver’s The Loves of Mars and Venus to influence other, later dance works even beyond its last certain performances in the 1723-1724 season.

A Year of Dance: 1717

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1717 was a busy year on the London stage, at least so far as dancing was concerned. With hindsight, the most significant event was the performance at the Drury Lane Theatre on 2 March 1717 of John Weaver’s ‘New Dramatick Entertainment of Dancing after the Manner of the Antient Pantomimes’ The Loves of Mars and Venus – now widely recognised as the first modern ballet. Weaver followed it up on 2 April with a ‘New Dramatick Entertainment of Dancing in Grotesque Characters’, The Shipwreck; or, Perseus and Andromeda. Together, the two afterpieces were surely intended to show the full range of the expressive dancing that Weaver was eager to promote. On 5 December 1717, Weaver’s Harlequin Turn’d Judge was given at Drury Lane. It was later advertised as an ‘Entertainment of Dancing in Grotesque Characters’ but was, to all intents and purposes, a pantomime (a genre new to London’s theatres). Both The Loves of Mars and Venus and Harlequin Turn’d Judge were successful enough to survive into the 1720s.

The popularity of Weaver’s danced afterpieces attracted several responses from John Rich at Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Rich began with The Cheats; or, The Tavern Bilkers on 22 April 1717. The alternative title apparently refers to a much earlier piece by Weaver, which the dancing master claimed was performed at Drury Lane in 1702. Although, as Weaver’s The Tavern Bilkers was never revived, how did Rich know about it? A few months later, Rich turned his attention to Weaver’s new ballet with Mars and Venus; or, The Mouse Trap, given at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 22 November 1717. He then produced Colombine; or, Harlequin Turn’d Judge on 11 December. Neither of Rich’s ripostes were anything like as successful as the originals. However, The Jealous Doctor; or, The Intriguing Dame, a pantomime given at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 29 April 1717 continued to be popular until the mid-1720s.

All these afterpieces had casts of dancers, and Rich did not neglect entr’acte dancing. His star dancers in 1717 were the ‘two Children, Scholars of M Ballon, lately arriv’d from the Opera at Paris’. Francis and Marie Sallé had made their London debut at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 18 October 1716. Rich billed them frequently, in a varied repertoire of serious and comic dances, between then and their last performance on 20 June 1717. Was their ‘New Comic Scene’ entitled The Loves of Harlequin and Colombine, given on 23 April 1717, intended as another hit at The Loves of Mars and Venus? They also performed ‘The Submission, a new Dance, compos’d by Kellom’ on 21 February 1717 demonstrating their versatility.

Kellom Tomlinson’s The Submission was one of the only two notated dances to be published in London this year. The other was L’Abbé’s The Royal George, according to newspaper advertisements published ‘for the Princess’s Birth Day’ in March 1717 although the title page says only a ‘A New Dance … for the Year 1717’. The title must thus honour the Prince of Wales her husband. Fortunately, the dance appeared several months before the serious quarrel between the King and his son the following November, which would divide the royal family for the next few years. The other noteworthy cultural event of 1717 was the first performance on 17 July of Handel’s Water Music for George I as he travelled by barge along the River Thames.

In Paris, the annual dance publication was the XV Recüeil de danses pour l’année 1717 published by Dezais. It contained three short ballroom duets, La Clermont and La de Bergue by Claude Ballon and La Ribeyra by Dezais himself. The last of them was dedicated ‘A Madame l’Ambassatrice de Portugal’, providing an insight into the naming of such choreographies. At the Paris Opéra, besides the usual revivals of works by Lully, André Campra was represented not only by revivals of his Fragments de M. Lully and Tancrède but also by a new opera Camille, Reine des Volsques given on 9 November 1717 (N.S.).

The most important dance publication of the year, at least for many 21st-century dance historians, was Gottfried Taubert’s monumental treatise Rechtschaffener Tantzmeister which appeared in Leipzig and provided a German view of French dancing. It shows not only how influential la belle danse was around Europe but also how this French style and technique could be moulded to suit other national tastes and ideas.