A History of Pantomime

by R. J. Broadbent

The Lupercalian festivals were held on the 15th of the Kalends of March. The priests, Luperci, used to dance naked through the streets as part of the ceremonies attached to the festival.

Mention has been made by Dr. Clarke, in his "Travels," Vol. IV., that Harlequin is the god Mercury, with his short sword herpe, or his rod, the caduceus (which has been likened to the sceptre of Judah), to render himself invisible, and to transport himself from one end of the earth to the other, and that the covering on his head, the winged cap, was the petasus. Apropos of this, the following lines in the tenth Ode, of the first book of Horace, will probably occur to the reader:

"Mercury! Atlas' smooth-tongued boy, whose will
First trained to speed our wildest earliest race,
And gave their rough hewn forms with supple skill
The gymnast's grace.
"'Tis thine the unbodied spirits of the blessed,
To guide to bliss, and with thy golden rod To rule the shades; above, below, caressed
By every god."

Mercury, as we have seen, was among the Ancients, only another name for Noah. "Indeed," says Dr. Clarke, "some of the representations of Mercury upon ancient vases are actually taken from the scenic exhibitions of the Grecian theatre; and that these exhibitions were also the prototypes whereon D'Hancarville shows Mercury, Momus, and Psyche delineated as we see Harlequin, Columbine, and Clown on our stages. The old man (Pantaloon), is Charon (the ferryman of hell). The Clown is Momus, the buffoon of heaven, the god of raillery and wit, and whose large gaping mouth is in imitation of the ancient masks."

Amongst the Aryans, Medians, Egyptians, Chaldeans, Babylonians, and other nations (including our own, as did not Lilly predict the execution of Charles I., the plague, the great fire of London, and other events) was astrology practised. The Egyptians peopled the constellation of the Zodiac (the first open book for mankind to read), with Genii, and one of the twelve Zodiacal signs was Aries (the Ram). The ram is of the same species as the goat, and the god Pan was the Goat god, as we know. The astrologers, in their divinations and rulings of the planets placed the various parts of the body under a planetary influence. The head and face were assigned to the house of Aries, and therefore the face notably for the Pantomimic Art was placed by the ancient astrologers under the influence of this particular planet.

The heathen worship of Pan was not only known in Arcadia, but also throughout Greece, although it did not reach Athens until after Marathon.

Of Pan's death Plutarch tells the story that in the reign of Tiberius, one Thamus, a pilot, visiting the islands of Paxae, was told of this god's death. When he reached Palodes he told the news, whereupon loud and great lamentations were heard, as of Nature herself expressing her grief. The epoch of the story coincides with the enactment of that grim, and the world's greatest tragedy on the hill of Golgotha, and the end, and the beginning of a new world. Rabelais, Milton, Schiller, and also Mrs. Browning, have allusions to this story of Plutarch's.

The ambitious family of the Titans (the bones of the "giants on the earth" before the Deluge, gave rise to the stories of the Titans found in caves), and their scions and coadjutors Jupiter, Juno, Mars, Mercury, Apollo, Diana, Bacchus, Minerva, or Pallas, Ceres, Proserpine, Pluto, and Neptune furnish by far the greatest part of the Mythology of Greece. Tradition says that they left Phoenicia about the time of Moses to settle in Crete, and from thence they made their way into Greece, which was supposed at that time to be inhabited by a race of savages. The arts and inventions were communicated to the natives, and the blessings of civilization in process of time inspired the inhabitants with admiration. They, therefore, relinquished worshipping the luminary and heavenly bodies, and transferred their devotion to their benefactors. Then into existence sprang the most inconsistent and irreconcilable fictions. The deified mortals, with their foibles and frailities, were transmitted to posterity in the most glorious manner possible, and hence accordingly, in both the Odyssey and the Iliad of Homer, we have a strange and heterogeneous mixture of what is not only mighty in heroes, but also that which is equally mean.

In the Grecian Mythology the labours of Hercules, the expedition of Osiris, the wanderings and transformation of Io, the fable of the conflagration of Phaeton, the rage of Proserpine, the wanderings of Ceres, the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Orgia, or sacred rites of Bacchus, in fine, the ground work of Grecian Mythology is to be traced to the East, from where also all our nursery tales, and also our popular Pantomime subjects; (which is the subject of another chapter) perhaps, with the exception of our own "Robinson Crusoe," originated.

The nine Muses called Pierides in Grecian Mythology were the daughters of Jupiter and Mnemosyne (Memory), supposed to preside over the liberal Arts and the sciences. They were Calliope (Heroic Poetry), Clio Euterpe (Music), Erato (Love Poetry), Melpomene (Tragedy), Polyhymnia (Muse of Singing and Rhetoric), Terpsichore (Dancing), Thalia (Comedy), and Urania (Astronomy). Mount Parnassus, Mount Helicon, and the fountains of Castalia and Aganippe were the sacred places of the Muses.