In Italy the fame of Harlequin was at its zenith at the close of the seventeenth century.  In this country in 1687 a Harlequin (Penkethman) appeared in a farce called “The Emperor of the Moon” without a mask.  Colley Cibber says of this performance “That when he (Penkethman) first played Harlequin in ‘The Emperor of the Moon’ several gentlemen (who inadvertently judged by the rules of nature) fancied that a great deal of the drollery, and spirit of his grimace was lost by his wearing that useless, unmeaning mask, therefore insisted that the next time of his acting that part he should play without it.  Their desire was accordingly complied with, but alas! in vain—­Penkethman was no more Harlequin.  His humour was quite disconcerted.”

In “The Tempest,” Shakespeare introduces a Masque, and also in his “Midsummer Nights’ Dream,” the play of “Pyramus and Thisbe,” performed by the Clowns, is in burlesque of the Masque plays.

In both these two plays of the bard’s, and in connection with the Masque plays, we see, from the stage directions in them, how Pantomime formed part of their effective representation.

In out heroding-herod in the way of splendour, showy dresses and expensive machinery, the Masque soon fell into decay; and, as Ben Jonson states, “The glory of all these solemnities had perished like a blaze, and gone out in the beholder’s eyes; so short-lived are the bodies of all things in comparison with their souls.”

CHAPTER XI.

Italian Pantomime—­Riccoboni—­Broom’s “Antipodes”—­Gherardi—­Extemporal Comedies—­Salvator Rosa—­Impromptu Acting.

Pantomime in Italy had two distinct features, one a species of buffoonery, termed Lazzi, and the other Extemporal or Improvised Comedies.

“Lazzi,” mentions Riccoboni, in his “Histoire du Theatre Italien,” is a term corrupted from the old Tuscan Lacci, which signifies a knot, or something that connects. (Both the Lazzi and the Extemporal Comedies were all derived from the one original source, that of the Satirical drama of the Greeks, and perpetuated in the Fabulae Atellanae or Laudi Osci of Italy.)

Riccoboni continues:  “These pleasantries, called Lazzi, are certain actions by which the performer breaks into the scene, to paint to the eye his emotions of panic or jocularity; but as such gestures are foreign to the business going on, the nicety of the art consists in not interrupting the scene, and connecting the Lazzi with it; thus to tie the whole together.”

Lazzi is what we might term “bye play,” which, by gesture and action, could not detract, but rather added to the effectiveness of the scene in progress.

In Broom’s “Antipodes,” which was performed at the Salisbury Court Theatre, London, in 1638, a by-play, as he calls it, is represented in this comedy—­“A word (explains Malone) for the application of which we are indebted to this writer, there being no other term in our language that I know of, which so properly expresses that species of Interlude which we find in our poet’s ‘Hamlet,’ and other pieces.”