As Pantomime writers in the early days there were Thomas Dibdin, son of Charles Dibdin, the writer of nautical ballads, Pocock and Sheridan.  Dibdin was one of the best of Pantomime librettists, and from the years 1771 to 1841 his prolific pen, as a writer of Pantomimes, was never idle, as from it came some thirty-three Pantomimes, and all successes.  Amongst other literary luminaries, in after years, as writers of Pantomime Extravaganzas, there were J.R.  Planche, E.L.  Blanchard, W. Brough, Mark Lemon, H.J.  Byron, Wilton Jones, and John Francis McArdle.

History always repeats itself we know, and poor Pantomime books were not unknown as far back as half a century ago, as the subjoined parody on the “Burial of Sir John Moore,” by the late Albert Smith plainly shows:—­

    Not a laugh was heard, not a topical joke,
      As its corse to oblivion we hurried;
    Not a paper a word in its favour spoke
      On the Pantomime going to be buried.

    We buried it after the Boxing Night,
      The folks from the galleries turning;
    For ’twas plain it would scarcely pay for the light
      Of the star in the last act burning.

    No useless play-bill put forth a puff,
      How splendid the public had found it,
    But it lay like a piece that had been called “stuff,”
      With a very wet blanket around it.

After this digression for one brief moment more, let us take a passing glance at some of the Pantomime subjects which our progenitors delighted in.  They had not the continual ringing of the changes on half-a-dozen Pantomime subjects, as we have at present, but revelled in such attractions as “Harlequin Don Quixote,” “The Triumph of Mirth, or Harlequin’s Wedding,” “The Enchanted Wood or Harlequin’s Vagaries,” “Hurly Burly, or the Fairy of the Wells,” “Blue Beard, Black Beard, and Grey Beard,” and many others.  However, to return.

Of the Pantomime subjects, whose origin we are going to enquire into, let us first commence with “Aladdin.”

According to the many versions of this popular story in Europe and Asia, it would seem that its origin originally was of Buddhist extraction.  In our common English version of “Aladdin,” in “The Arabian Nights,” which was taken from Galland’s French version, it is doubtless an Eastern picture.  It does not occur, however, in any known Arabian text (says Mr. Clouston, in “Popular Tales,” and to whose work I am indebted for much of the information for this chapter) of “The Thousand and One Nights” (Elf Laila wa Laila), although the chief incidents are found in many Asiatic fictions, and it had become orally current in Greece and Italy before it was published by Galland.  A popular Italian version, which presents a close analogy to the familiar story of “Aladdin” (properly “Ala-u-d-Din,” signifying “Exaltation of the Faith”) is given by Miss M.H.  Busk, in her “Folklore of Rome,” under the title of “How Cajusse was married.”