"Farewell! That you and yours may ever enjoy that greatest earthly good—health, is the sincere wish of your faithful and obliged servant. God bless you all!"
Poor Joe was buried in the burying-ground of St. James' Chapel, on Pentonville Hill, and in a grave next to his friend, Charles Dibdin. May the earth lie lightly over him!
CHAPTER XVII.
Plots of the old form of Pantomimes—A description of "Harlequin and the Ogress; or the Sleeping Beauty of the Wood," produced at Covent Garden—Grimaldi, Père et Fils—Tom Ellar, the Harlequin, and Barnes, the Pantaloon—An account of the first production of the "House that Jack built," at Covent Garden—Spectacular display—Antiquity and Origin of some Pantomimic devices—Devoto, Angelo, and French, the Scenic Artists—Transparencies—Beverley—Transformation Scenes.
Of the plots of the old form of Pantomime and what these entertainments were generally like, graphically, does Planché describe them.
How different (he says) were the Christmas Pantomimes of my younger days. A pretty story—a nursery tale—dramatically told, in which "the course of true love never did run smooth," formed the opening; the characters being a cross-grained old father, with a pretty daughter, who had two suitors—one a poor young fellow, whom she preferred, the other a wealthy fop, whose pretensions were, of course, favoured by the father. There was also a body servant of some sort in the old man's establishment. At the moment when the young lady was about to be forcibly married to the fop she despised, or, on the point of eloping with the youth of her choice, the good fairy made her appearance, and, changing the refractory pair into Harlequin and Columbine, the old curmudgeon into Pantaloon, and the body servant into Clown: the two latter in company with the rejected "lover," as he was called, commenced the pursuit of the happy pair, and the "comic business" consisted of a dozen or more cleverly constructed scenes, in which all the tricks and changes had a meaning, and were introduced as contrivances to favour the escape of Harlequin and Columbine, when too closely followed by their enemies. There was as regular a plot as might be found in a melodrama. An interest in the chase which increased the admiration of the ingenuity and the enjoyment of the fun of the tricks, by which the runaways escaped capture, till the inevitable "dark scene" came, a cavern or a forest, in which they were overtaken, seized, and the magic wand, which had so uniformly aided them, snatched from the grasp of the despairing Harlequin, and flourished in triumph by the Clown. Again at the critical moment the protecting fairy appeared, and, exacting the consent of the father to the marriage of the devoted couple, transported the whole party to what was really a grand last scene, which everybody did wait for. There was some congruity, some dramatic construction, in such Pantomimes; and then the acting. For it was acting, and first-rate acting.
To give the reader a further insight into the old form of Christmas Pantomimes, I cull the following from "The Drama," a contemporary magazine of the period (1822):—
In compliance with the long-established custom of gratifying the holiday visitors of the theatres with Pantomimic representations at this season of year, a new piece of that description was produced at this theatre (Covent Garden) last night, December 26th, 1822, under the title of "Harlequin and the Ogress; or the Sleeping Beauty of the Wood." The introductory story is taken from the well-known tale of "The Sleeping Beauty," in "Mother Bunch's Fairy Tales," which had before been "melodramatised," but had not hitherto been taken for the groundwork of a Harlequinade.
The piece opens in one of the fabled grand caverns under the Pyramids of Egypt, in which the three fatal sisters of Mother Bunch's Mythology are seen spinning and winding a ball of golden thread, the fastening of which to the wrist of the Sleeping Beauty is intended to add another century to the duration of her life, and of the power which the Ogress, or Fairy, has exercised over her, and her possessions, for the preceding hundred years. The ball having been completed, with the due quantum of magic incantation in such cases prescribed, is consigned to the care of Grim Gribber, the porter of the castle, with directions to attach it to the wrist of the lady in the chamber of sleep, whither he accordingly proceeds for that purpose; but overcome by the soporific influences of the atmosphere of that enchanted place, he falls into a deep sleep ere his task is accomplished. The Prince Azoff, with his Squire Abnab, straying from a hunting party into the enchanted cedar grove, encounters the Fairy Blue-bell, protector of the Sleeping Beauty, who imparts to the Prince the story of her enchantment, furnishes him with a magic flower to protect him from the influence of the Ogress, and instructs him in the means of releasing the Beauty at the expiration of the term of her first enchanted sleep, which is then drawing to a close. In the amazement which seizes the Prince on finding himself in the chamber of sleep, at the splendour of everything around him, and the sight of the Sleeping Beauty with her surrounding train of attendants, whose faculties are all enchained in the same preternatural slumber, he lets fall the magic flower, and becomes thereby subject to the power of the Ogress, from which he is, however, rescued on the instant by the protecting interference of the Fairy Blue-bell. But in punishment of his neglect, he is condemned to wander for a time in search of happiness with the now-awakened Beauty, pursued by the relentless Ogress and her servant, Grim Gribber. The whole of the persons engaged in the scene now undergo the prescriptive Pantomimic changes, and the ordinary succession of Harlequinade adventures, tricks, and transformations ensue.