A History of Pantomime

by R. J. Broadbent

Mr. Isaac Disraeli, in his work, "Curiosities of Literature," edited by the late Earl of Beaconsfield, thus distinguishes between the Mimi and the Pantomimi of the Ancients. The Mimi were an impudent race of buffoons who excelled in mimicry, and like our domestic fools, were admitted into convivial parties to entertain the guests. Their powers enabled them to perform a more extraordinary office; for they appear to have been introduced into funerals to mimic the person, and even the language of the deceased. Suetonius describes an archimimus accompanying the funeral of Vespasian. This archimimus performed his part admirably, not only representing the person, but imitating, according to custom, ut est mos, the manners and language of the living Emperor. He contrived a happy stroke at the prevailing foible of Vespasian, when he enquired the cost of all this funeral pomp—"Ten million of sesterces!" On this he observed that if they would give him but a hundred thousand they might throw his body into the Tiber.

The Pantomimi were quite of a different class. They were tragic actors, and usually mute; they combined the arts of gesture, music, and dances of the most impressive character. Their silent language has often drawn tears by the pathetic emotions they excited; "Their very nod speaks, their hands talk, and their fingers have a voice," says one of their admirers.

These Pantomimists seem to have been held in great honour. The tragic and the comic masks were among the ornaments of the sepulchral monuments of an Archmime and a Pantomimi. Montfaucon conjectures that they formed a select fraternity.

The parti-coloured hero (Harlequin), with every part of his dress, has been drawn out of the greatest wardrobe of antiquity; he was a Roman Mime. Harlequin is described with his shaven head (rasis capitibus); his sooty face (fuligine faciem abducti); his flat unshod feet, (planipedes), and his patched coat of many colours, (Mimi centunculo). Even Pulcinello, whom we familiarly call "Punch," may receive, like other personages of no great importance, all his dignity from antiquity; one of his Roman ancestors having appeared to an antiquary's visionary eye in a bronze statue; more than one erudite dissertation authenticates the family likeness; the nose long, prominent and hooked; the staring goggle eyes; the hump at his back, and at his breast; in a word, all the character which so strongly marks the Punch race, as distinctly as whole dynasties have been featured by the Austrian lip and the Bourbon nose.

The genealogy of the whole family is confirmed by the general term which includes them all: in English, Zany; in Italian, Zanni; in the Latin, Sannio; and a passage in "Cicero De Oratore," paints Harlequin and his brother gesticulators after the life; the perpetual trembling motion of their limbs, their ludicrous and flexible gestures, and all the mimicry of their faces: "Quid enim potest tam ridiculum quam Sannio esse? Qui ore vultu, imitandis motibus, voce, denique corpore ridetur ipso." Lib II., Sect. 51. ("For what has more of the ludicrous than Sannio? Who, with his mouth, his face, imitating every motion with his voice, and, indeed, with all his body, provokes laughter.")

The Latin Sannio was changed by the Italians into (as Ainsworth explains) Zanni, as, in words like Smyrna and Sambuco, they change the s into z, which gives Zmyrna and Zambuco, and hence we derive our word Zany. The word is, however, originally obtained from the Greek Sannos (observes Quadrio), from whence the Latins derived their Sannio.

From the size of the ancient theatres it was not possible to notice the visage of the actors, and this was one, but not the only reason, why masks were adopted. The Ancients did not like a character to be attempted, to which a proper appropriation was not annexed, and these masks were so contrived, that the profile on one side exhibited chagrin, and on the other serenity, or whatever other passion was most required. The actor thus, according to the part he was playing, presented the side of the mask best suited to the passage which he was reciting. The large mouths of these masks were presumed to have contained some bronze instrument suited to assist the voice, upon the principle of the speaking trumpet; for the mask was wider, and the recitation in tragedy much louder than in comedy, so that the voice might be heard all over the theatre. The masks of the dancers were of regular features.

By some it has been contended that these masks covered both the head and the shoulders under the supposed idea that when the head was thus enlarged it would throw the whole body into symmetry when raised upon stilts. It has, also, been argued that the masks for some of the characters were made of gold-beaters skin, or some transparent substance just covering the face so that the facial muscles could be seen through it, and the eyes, mouth, and ears being left uncovered. These masks, however, delineated very carefully the features of the character that were to be represented. Something not unlike the huge Pantomime masks of a hideous and frightful shape that we sometimes see in our present day Pantomimes must have appeared, especially those that covered the head and shoulders of the Mimis in the days of the Romans. Those that were just of the size of the face in all probability were fantastic and picturesque; and the third and remaining species of mask made of a transparent substance could hardly have been very effective.

Mr. Wright tells us, in his book on the Chester Mystery plays (which work I shall again refer to later on), that masks were used in the Mystery series of plays acted in England during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

Julius Pollux is still more ample in his account of theatrical masks used in Tragedy, Satyr, and Comedy. Niobe weeping, Medea furious, Ajax astonished, and Hercules enraged. In Comedy, the slave, the parasite, the clown, the captain, the old woman, the harlot, the austere old man, the debauched young man, the prodigal, the prudent young woman, the matron, and the father of a family, were all constantly characterised by particular masks.