3-074-872 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Everyone His Own Pantomime, 1883. 'Harlequin; Fairy Queen; The Fop or Masher; Columbine; Sprites; Tumblers; Beauty & The Beast, or Evil Queen; Our. Little. Fairies; Fairy Godmother; Clown; Pantaloon - drawn by George Cruikshank. The peculiar form of theatrical entertainment called pantomime...seems likely soon to become extinct...Our Artist has...[delineated] the figures of a few people...whose habits and gestures show a certain similarity to those of the familiar actors of pantomime and to the stock characters of the fairy extravaganza with which it has frequently been combined. "Sprites" and "Tumblers" we shall always have with us, so long as we have frolicsome children, especially boys under ten or twelve years of age. The little girls will be fairies till they go to school. Smart and nimble juvenility, in either sex, up to five-and-twenty, will contrast, as in Harlequin and Columbine the graceful dancer, with the halting feebleness of superannuated Pantaloon;...the energetic rudeness of the Clown is unconsciously displayed in the manners of a "pushing man." These types of demeanour are perennial, whatever names they bear; and so is that of the "fop" or "masher," haunting the entrance to the stalls, who looks particularly silly just now'. From "Illustrated London News", 1883.