The Italian tragedians were so sharp of wit,
    That in one hour’s meditation
    They would perform anything in action.

And Lorenzo rejoins:—­

    I have seen the like
    In Paris, among the French tragedians.

Of course much was bound to become stereotyped and fixed, but much was ever fluctuating and new.

When Biancolelli died on 2 August, 1688, of pneumonia, contracted through neglecting to change damp clothes, the loss to the Italian theatre seemed irreparable, but in the following year an equally celebrated Harlequin, finer and wittier if not more popular than he, appeared in the person of Evariste Gherardi.  Gherardi was a man of culture, and he collected and edited a number of scenes, written in French, which were on the boards intermingled and played with the Italian farces in order to raise the tone of, and give something more solid and durable to, these entertainments.  In 1695 three volumes of these scenes were published at Amsterdam, ‘chez Adrian Braakman,’ under the title Le Theatre Italien, ou le Recueil de toutes les Comedies et Scenes Francoises qui ont ete jouees sur le Theatre Italien par la Troupe des Comediens du Roy de l’Hotel de Bourgogne a Paris.

Arlequin Empereur dans la Lune_ had been published in its entirety eleven years previously (1684), but it was sufficiently popular for Gherardi to include various scenes therefrom in his collection.  Accordingly he commences his first volume by giving the ’Scene de la Fille de Chambre’, where Harlequin, disguised as a woman, pretends to be seeking a place as waiting-maid to the Doctor—­Emperor of the Moon, Act ii, v.  In the French, Pierrot, dressed as the Doctor’s wife, interviews the applicant.  Gherardi also gives a scene between Isabella (Elaria) and Colombine (Mopsophil); a scene where Harlequin arrives tricked out as an Apothecary to win Colombine (in Mrs. Behn it is Scaramouch who thus attempts to gain Mopsophil); and the final scene which differs considerably from the conclusion of the English farce.  In Vol.  II there are two further extracts ‘obmises dans le premier Tome’, a dialogue between the Doctor and Harlequin, ’recit que fait Arlequin au Docteur, du Voyage qu’il a fait dans le Monde de la Lune’, and a short passage between Harlequin and Colombine, both of which can be closely paralleled in the English version.  Mrs. Behn of course used the edition of 1684.  Her statement that she only took ’a very barren and thin hint of the Plot’ from the Italian, and again that ’all the Words are wholly new, without one from the Original’ must not be pressed too strictly, although she has undeniably infused a new life, new wit and humour into the alien scenes.

In Maurice Sand’s standard work on Italian comedy, Masques et Bouffons (Paris, 1860) there will be found copious citations from this pantomime, the popularity of which he attributes wholly to Gherardi.  It was Biancolelli, however, who first brought it into favour and in whose lifetime it was actually printed, a rare honour, although doubtless it was owing to the great Gherardi that it retained and renewed its success.  Gherardi died 31 August, 1700.