a"--"Dick
Whittington"--"The House that Jack Built"--"Jack
the Giant Killer"--"Jack and the Beanstalk"--"Red
Riding-Hood"--"The Sleeping Beauty in the
Wood"--Unlucky subjects--"Ali Baba and the Forty
Thieves"--"The Fair One with Golden Locks"--The
source of "Sindbad the Sailor" and "Robinson Crusoe"

CHAPTER XX.

Pantomime in America

CHAPTER XXI.

Pantomimes made more attractive--The Restrictive Policy
of the Patent Houses--"Mother Goose" and "George
Barnwell" at Covent Garden--Lively Audiences--"Jane
Shore"--"Harlequin Pat and Harlequin Bat"--"The
first speaking opening"--Extravagence in Extravaganzas--The
doom of the old form of Pantomime--Its
revival in a new form--A piece of pure Pantomime--Present
day Mimetic Art--"_L'Enfant Prodigue_"--A
retrospect--The old with the new, and conclusion

CHAPTER I.

Origin of Pantomime.

From the beginning of all time there has been implanted in the human
breast the Dramatic instinct full of life and of vigour, and finding
undoubtedly its outlet, in the early days of civilization, if not in the
Dramatic Art then in the poetry of motion with that necessary and always
essential concomitant of both--Pantomime. Indeed, of the Terpsichorean
Art, it has been truly observed "That deprived of the imitative
principle (_i.e._, Pantomime), the strength, the mute expression, it
becomes nothing but a series of cadenced steps, interesting merely as a
graceful exercise." Equally so in every way does it apply to the
Dramatic Art, which minus its acting, its gestures--in a word, its
Pantomime--we have nothing but, to quote Hamlet, "Words, words, words."

In observing "That all the world's a stage, and the men and women merely
players," Shakespeare doubtless included in the generic term "players,"
Pantomimists as well: Inasmuch as this, that when, and wherever a
character is portrayed, or represented, be it in real life or on the
stage--"Nature's looking-glass," and the world in miniature--the words
that the individual or the character speaks, are accompanied with
gesture and motion, or, in other words, Pantomime, when "The action is
suited to the word, the word to the action."

To trace the original origin of Pantomime, or Mimicry, we must go to
Nature herself where we can find this practised by her from the
beginning of all time as freely, and as fully, as ever it was, or ever
will be, upon the stages of our theatres. What better evidence, or
instances, of this can we