The Pantomime donkey is at least, we are told, 200 years old.  In “Arlequin Mercure Galant,” produced in Paris in 1682, by the Italian Comedians, Harlequin made his entrance on a moke’s back—­and the merriment afterwards being greatly enhanced when Master “Neddy,” with Pan seated on its back, suddenly came in two, to the consternation of the beholders.  To the Italian Pantomime Comedians we owe many of our stage devices and tricks.  The statue scene in “Frivolity,” played by the Messrs. Leopolds, was introduced by the Italians in “Arlequin Lingere du Palais,” when this piece was performed at Paris in 1682.  Again, the device of cutting a hole in a portrait for an eaves-dropper’s head to be inserted, was used in “Columbine Avocat” as far back as 1685.

In “Arlequin Lingere du Palais,” played at the Hotel de Bourgogne in October, 1682, there was represented two stalls—­an underclothier’s and a confectioner’s.  Harlequin dressed half like a man and half like a woman, with a mask on each side of his face to match presides in this dual capacity at both stalls.  Pasquariel, who comes to buy, is utterly bewildered, and is made the target of both jests and missiles of monsieur of the confectioners, and mademoiselle of the adjoining stall.  Possibly the shop scenes in our English Harlequinades may have originated from this.  A similar idea to the above was given in O’Keefe’s Pantomime of “Harlequin Teague; or the Giants’ Causeway,” performed at the Haymarket in 1782.  Charles Bannister appeared in this Pantomime and sang a duet as a giant with two heads, one side representing a gentleman of quality, and the other a hunting squire.  Mrs. German Reed, about 1855, appeared representing two old women, between whom an imaginary conversation was held, Mrs. Reed turning first one side of her face to the audience, and then the other.  Fred Maccabe, in his “Essence of Faust,” had also a similar allusion, and by many “transformation dancers” was it used.  The antiquity of many other devices could be noted, but I must desist, yet I cannot help remarking that even here we have more exemplifications of history repeating itself.

Scenical representations and mechanical devices in Italy had long been made a fine art, and an English traveller and critic observes that our painting compared to theirs is only daubing.  I find among their decorations statues of marble, alabaster, palaces, colonnades, galleries, and sketches of architecture; pieces of perspective that deceive the judgment as well as the eye; prospects of a prodigious extent in spaces not thirty feet deep.  As for their machines I can’t think it in the power of human wit to carry their inventions further.  In 1697, I saw at Venice an elephant discovered on the stage, when, in an instant, an army was seen in its place; the soldiers, having by the disposition of their shields, given so true a representation of it as if it had been a real elephant.