a speaking pantomime,” writes Hazlitt; “we had rather it had said nothing.  It is better to act folly than to talk it.  The essence of pantomime is practical absurdity keeping the wits in constant chase, coming upon one by surprise, and starting off again before you can arrest the fleeting ‘phantom:’  the essence of this piece was prosing stupidity remaining like a mawkish picture on the stage, and overcoming your impatience by the force of ennui.  A speaking pantomime such as this one is not unlike a flying waggon,” &c. &c.

“Harlequin versus Shakespeare” was generally voted dreary and a failure.  Of another “speaking pantomime,” called “Harlequin Pat and Harlequin Bat; or, The Giant’s Causeway,” produced at Covent Garden in 1830, Leigh Hunt writes:  “A speaking pantomime is a contradiction in terms.  It is a little too Irish.  It is as much as to say:  ’Here you have all dumb-show talking.’  This, to be sure, is what made Grimaldi’s talking so good.  It was so rare and seasonable that it only proved the rule by the exception.  The clowns of late speak too much.  To keep on saying at every turn, ‘Hallo!’ or ‘Don’t!’ or ‘What do you mean?’ only makes one think that the piece is partly written and not written well.”  We may note that Mr. Tyrone Power, the famous Irish comedian, appeared as harlequin in this pantomime, assisted by a skilled “double” to accomplish the indispensable attitudinising, dancing, and jumping through holes in the wall.  Power abandoned his share in the performance after a few nights, however, and the part was then undertaken by Mr. Keeley, and subsequently by Mr. F. Matthews.

Gradually, speaking was to be heard more and more in pantomimes; and some forty years ago an attempt was made to invest this form of theatrical entertainment with peculiar literary distinction.  In 1842 the staff of Punch, at that time very strong in talent, provided Covent Garden with a pantomime upon the subject of King John and Magna Charta.  The result, however, disappointed public expectation. Punch was not seen to advantage in his endeavour to assume the guise of harlequin.  At a later date, Mr. Keeley, at the Lyceum, produced a fairy extravaganza of the Planche pattern, called “The Butterfly’s Ball,” and tacked on to it several “comic scenes” for clown and pantaloon.  The experiment was not wholly successful in the first instance; but by degrees the burlesque leaven affected the pantomimic constitution, and pantomimes came to be what we find them at present.  The custom of interrupting the harlequinade by the exhibition of dioramic views, at one time contrived annually by Clarkson Stanfield, expired about thirty years ago; as a substitute for these came the gorgeous transformation scenes, traceable to the grand displays which were wont to conclude Mr. Planche’s extravaganzas at the Lyceum Theatre, when under the management of Madame Vestris.  Mr. Planche has himself described how the scene-painter