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The Touchstone (1779) and the Return of the “Speaking Pantomime”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 July 2009
Extract
In his study of early nineteenth-century English pantomime, David Mayer III describes Harlequin Mother Goose—the 1806 Covent Garden production which first revealed the range of Joseph Grimaldi's comic genius—as “the end of nearly one hundred and forty years of fitful pantomime evolution.” For the next thirty years, the period dominated by Grimaldi, pantomime was at its peak: its structure and various production practices were stabilized; its potential for comedy and satire were realized more fully than ever before. Even the question of its use of dialogue was finally resolved: although, as Mayer says, “little in it was unexplainable by action,” early nineteenth-century pantomime was “rarely, if ever, silent in the way that we have come to think of pantomime today.”
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References
1 Harlequin in His Element: The English Pantomime, 1806–1836 (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), pp. 2–9, 21; quotations pp. 3, 21Google Scholar.
2 Ibid., p. 3.
3 Weaver described “SCENICAL Dancing,” which told “whole Stories by Action,” as a “faint Imitation of the Roman Pantomimes”(An Essay Towards an History of Dancing [London, 1712], p. 168)Google Scholar. He was the first to use the word “pantomime” for the kind of production under discussion, calling his 1717 The Loves of Venus and Mars “a New Dramatic Entertainment of Dancing after the Manner of the Antient Pantomimes” (Mayer, p. 4; London Stage, listing for 2 March 1717).
4 Davies, Thomas, Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick, Esq. (London, 1780), I, 91–92Google Scholar.
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6 Some suggest that The Touchstone might have been the first pantomime, after Rich's convention of silence was established, to use dialogue (see, for example, Dibdin, E. R., A Charles Dibdin Bibliography [Liverpool, 1937], p. 39Google Scholar; Fiske, Roger, English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century [London, 1973], p. 424)Google Scholar. But Garrick's Harlequin's Invasion predated it by twenty years (Stein, Elizabeth P., David Garrick, Dramatist [New York, 1938], p. 111Google Scholar; Stone, George Winchester Jr., and Kahrl, George M., David Garrick: A Critical Biography [Carbondale, Ill., 1979], p. 221)Google Scholar.
7 Dates of performances, casting, and statistics in this article are based on The London Stage, Part 4 and Part 5.
8 Dibdin, Charles, The Professional Life of Mr. Dibdin, Written by Himself (London, 1803), II, 26–27Google Scholar.
9 [Dibdin, Charles], The Songs, Chorusses, &c. in The Touchstone, or, Harlequin Traveller, 5th ed. (London, 1779)Google Scholar.
10 Dibdin, , Life, II, 28–29Google Scholar. Dibdin says that Garrick attended several rehearsals of The Touchstone and that the last time he was on a stage was at a dress rehearsal a night or two before it opened (p. 32).
11 Larpent MS. 464, Huntington Library. The MS indicates the start of the second part but not of the third; that the third part began with the tavern scene is suggested by the organization of the review in the London Chronicle (5–7 January 1779). In regard to structure, The Touchstone was unusual in that it presented only the harlequinade. The form developed by Rich—a relatively serious (mythological or legendary) plot in conjunction with a harlequinade—remained basic until the late 19th century (Mayer, pp. 4–5).
12 Quotations from the Larpent MS.
13 Public Advertiser, 2 and 4 January 1779; Rosenfeld, Sybil and Croft-Murray, Edward, “Checklist of Scene Painters Working in Great Britain and Ireland in the 18th Century,” Theatre Notebook, XIX (No. 1), 15–17Google Scholar; (No. 2), 62–63; (No. 4), 142–143.
14 Quotations from the Larpent MS.
15 Public Advertiser, 4 January 1779.
16 Fiske, p. 424; [Dibdin], The Songs, Chorusses, &c., p. 1.
17 Information on Brown and Farrell from Fiske, pp. 622–623, 628.
18 This reviewer says that some “Ombres Chinoises” had been cut (having received “tokens of the dissatisfaction of the audience” during earlier performances), but there is no mention of these in the Larpent MS.
19 The Bystander or Universal Weekly Expositor, reprint (London, 1790), p. 271Google Scholar. This periodical was published by Dibdin between 15 August 1789 and 6 February 1790 to promote himself and his work.
20 48 (January 1779). What the writer calls “Tartarus” was the “Gloomy Cavern.”
21 This review was reprinted in the Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure, LXIV (January 1779)Google Scholar.
22 An attempt was made to revive The Touchstone at Covent Garden in 1789 –1790. It was extensively revised, since much of the original humor was topical and had lost its point after 10 years. The new version was at first forbidden by the Lord Chamberlain, perhaps because of some obviously liberal sentiments (Larpent MS. 851 includes 2 MSS: one, “Songs Dialogues & Choruses in the revived pantomime of Touchstone,” is labeled “Forbidden”; the other, “New Airs Songs & Choruses &c in the revived Pantomime of Harlequin Touchstone,” was the one apparently done). When it finally opened, reviews were unfavorable; the Town and Country Magazine, XXI (December 1789)Google Scholar, for example, found it “unsupportedly tiresome.” Dibdin, writing in the Bystander, commented that the revisions, on which he had not worked, had made it “contemptible” (p. 271). He might have been right: it was performed only twice and then abandoned; no attempt was made to revive it again in the 18th century.
23 Dibdin, , Life, II 26Google Scholar.
24 Dibdin, , Life, II, 45–46Google Scholar, 52; Fiske, pp. 437, 440, 469.
25 The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, ed. Howe, P. P. (London, 1930–1934), XVIII, 323Google Scholar.