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Having created a number of alternative pantomimes (employing the archetypes, idiom, and well-worn routines of traditional pantomime, but heavily laced with the satirical humour of our own times, and based on stories quite different from the usual fairytale source material), the writing of a true pantomime becomes an irresistible yet challenging prospect – particularly as the nature of ‘true pantomime’ effectively defies definition. Almost the only certain fact about pantomime, is that it is a concoction of polyglot ingredients, whose history has been one of continual evolution, addition and reinvention

The modern audience’s conception of ‘traditional’ pantomime is bounded by an extraordinarily limited set of around a dozen stories – the pre-eminent triumvirate of Aladdin, Cinderella and Jack and The Beanstalk, together with The Sleeping Beauty, Mother Goose, Puss in Boots, Snow White, Dick Whittington, and Babes in The Wood, plus the two Arabian Nights derived titles – Ali-Baba and the Forty Thieves, and Sinbad the Sailor. To this exclusive list may be added the arriviste title of Peter Pan. A handful of further nursery tales have served an apprenticeship beyond this charmed circle, but have never really become established to any great extent – Beauty and The Beast, Tom Thumb, Hansel and Gretel, and a few others.

So prescriptive has this list become, that in the common preface to French’s series of basic pantomimes (written between 1944 and 1950), the following stern injunctions against the least presumption to question the established order, are firmly set out:

‘Of all our national forms of entertainment, the Pantomime is perhaps the most traditional…’
‘The time honoured stories on which all our pantomimes are (and rightly) based…’
‘The scripts follow, in each case, the traditional stories very strictly. Any major departure would be resented by the youngest – and the oldest – members of the audience…’

But contrary to these ringing assertions of the inviolability of the ‘time-honoured stories’, until the latter part of the nineteenth century, pantomimes were actually based upon a wide variety of inventive and original themes – and not the narrow canon of fairy stories, so staunchly defended in the excerpts above. It was also during this late Victorian period that some of the most familiar facets of what we today recognise as ‘traditional’ pantomime were first introduced – and rapidly institutionalised within the genre.

In truth, the pantomimes of the 1940′s are extraordinarily symptomatic of their day – in tone, language and moral values. The austerity of the post-war years, and the associated ethic of social order – a society where everyone knows their place and behaves accordingly – is palpable across the chasm of more than half a century. The dialogue now seems as stilted, incongruous and jarring as the received pronunciation and mannered delivery of a Pathé newsreel or Listen with Mother. Unsurprisingly, the oddly lame vernacular and prudish conventions of that time, sit most uncomfortably with what has always been a freewheeling form of entertainment, essentially concerned with bawdy and misbehaviour.

Thus it was during this peculiarly strait-laced period that pantomime was ritually emasculated, and its natural riotous character diluted to a form of mild cheek. Gentrified and neutered, pantomime was reinvented as a rather respectable and institutionalised entertainment to please a highly institutionalised society, steeped in deference.

Unfortunately, to a great extent, the social mores of the 1940′s have continued to inform our view of what constitutes ‘traditional’ pantomime, right up to the present day. In other words, a largely polite, uncontroversial, and formulaic entertainment, primarily intended for children.

But this narrow, conservative interpretation of pantomime, ossified in an age when the sun had not quite set on the Empire, and institutions such as the Home Service, the WRVS, and the Boys Brigade typified the moral codas of the day, does little justice to the origin, depth, or true potential of the genre.

In short, the inference that pantomime is an obdurate and unalterable form, cast in stone by the prescription of some ancient and sacrosanct tradition – is both mendacious and incorrect. Pantomime is a far from ancient tradition, with no pedigree in British theatre until the middle of the eighteenth century. Early pantomime of this period would be quite unrecognisable from that of today. Furthermore, for much of its history, pantomime was not performed exclusively at Christmas, nor was it primarily thought of as a children’s entertainment – quite the reverse in fact.

So what do we know of actual origins, and how should this inform the creation of a pantomime true to the authentic roots of the genre?

The generally accepted view is that the rootstock of pantomime can be traced to the Commedia dell’Arte – a type of improvised comedy theatre popular in Italy during the 1600′s. The Commedia is also related to the Parisian Harlequinade – another highly formulaic type of entertainment – and distinctive elements of both Italian and French traditions featured prominently in the first pantomimes seen in England. Within a hundred years however, these continental components had all but disappeared, displaced by native influences from a myriad of more popular and accessible entertainment forms, including burlesque, melodrama, circus and music hall.

Some of the key ingredients of what we today recognise as traditional pantomime, in reality spring from far deeper roots than these. One clue lies in the very specific time of year with which pantomime has come to be associated. Most pantomimes, and particularly community based entertainments, are performed just before, or shortly after Christmas – most commonly during the first week of January, co-inciding with the old Twelve Days of Christmas.

This holiday has a venerable 2,000 year history of misrule – from the Roman Saturnalia, through the medieval Feast of Fools, down to the guisers and mummers of more recent centuries. The recurring central theme of the Twelve Days throughout this timespan, is role-reversal: a topsy-turvy world where for a few heady, drunken days each midwinter, men become women (and vice-versa), authority is publicly turned upon its head, and those usually subordinate are permitted to subvert and lampoon their betters.

The guiding spirit of true pantomime is this festive misrule precisely. Its paramount agent is the Dame – the man/woman who cares not one jot for those in authority, but delights in rebellious impertinence and boisterous rudery. Also of course, the pantomime horse, whose animal disguise is an incitement to bestial misbehaviour. The very anonymity of the performer beneath the skin – human, yet not human – lends a weird frission of unpredictability to the outwardly comic. With a skilful ‘horse’, this sinister/ludicrous ambivalence can be experienced as powerfully in pantomime, as in the various survivals of pagan hobby horse festivals littered around the British Isles. Such disguise is very ancient licence for – quite literally – horseplay.

In The Stations of the Sun, his seminal history of the British ritual year, Ronald Hutton suggests that ‘Two of the simplest ways of expressing festive licence and signalling the existence of legitimate misrule have always been for the sexes to cross-dress, or for people to put on animal skins or masks. Both indicate the suspension of the normal…’

He later observes that through pantomime ‘The ancient seasonal motifs of cross-dressing, absurd comedy, and animal disguise had been appropriated, professionalized, and placed at a much safer distance from the audience… In the same period, the older, amateur expressions of these motifs went into terminal decline.’

In other words, as the cities expanded exponentially to meet the demands of the industrial revolution, and as the countryside drained of rural labourers, the living tradition of ritualised folk plays celebrated in every agrarian community, was impossible to sustain in the face of this sudden and wholesale mobility of labour. But the time-honoured traditions of this homespun, rustic theatre, were easily subsumed into the still unformed and evolving genre of pantomime – to re-emerge as quintessential facets of that new tradition.

This genuinely ancient lineage may help to explain the enduring and widespread popularity of pantomime. It may be fanciful to suggest some form of collective memory at work, but some impulse certainly spurs thousands of communities, from the city suburbs, to rural villages the length and breadth of the country, to mount this absurd yet highly ritualised entertainment each and every Christmas.

It seems plausible to suggest that a custom which has become so completely ingrained in British seasonal culture, inside such a (relatively) short span of time, may well have absorbed and incorporated aspects of older, more primitive forms of seasonal folk entertainment.

If misrule may be counted as one ancient yet veiled influence within pantomime, it is not alone. In his pamphlet on pantomime, the essayist Thomas de Quincey (1785 – 1859) characterises pantomime as ‘the short for fun, whim, trick and atrocity – that is, clown atrocity or crimes that delight us.’

Of course, at its most benign, ‘clown atrocity’ may be construed in terms of custard pies and slapstick – but it is commonly held that all comedy is rooted in the suffering or misfortune of others, and a darker seam of misogyny and persecution can certainly be discerned within pantomime.

This is exemplified by the most popular pantomime of all, Cinderella. This relatively obscure nursery tale has grown to become the definitive pantomime – staged more often than any other ‘traditional’ pantomime. What can lie behind the astonishing popularity of this simple story? Is it the moral message of the saintly heroine’s struggle against adversity and injustice – or is there a more deep-rooted appeal?

‘Crimes that delight us’ is a phrase which seems to sum up part of the attraction. Cinderella is a victim figure almost without comparison, and much of the action is taken up with her trials. In this respect there is remarkably little variation from version to version. Cinderella is always portrayed as a beautiful girl, degraded and ill-treated by a pair of cross-dressed viragos. This unsavoury duo keep their young slave in a state of unambiguous vulnerability – semi-naked in rags and barefoot. They subject her to a sustained regime of minor mental and physical cruelties – to which she appears to submit with a martyr’s willing suffering. One does not have to examine this material too deeply to discern a marked psychosexual undercurrent, or to see how the salacious potential in this plot arouses and feeds a very British appetite.

Thus an obscure Mid-European folk tale has been transmuted (by way of C17th French Romancers) into a storyline a tabloid editor would die for. It plays to our voyeuristic fascination with the lurid and titillating – a near universal prurience which helps to sell ten million tabloid newspapers every day. All harmless enough of course, especially within the safe, familiar, boundaries of pantomime’s make-believe world, and scarcely noteworthy within the scale of human cruelty. To properly appreciate our limitless capacity to take morbid delight in the suffering of others, consider the vast crowds drawn to public hangings right up until the last century.

The De Quincey essay is quoted in Peter Ackroyd’s novel ‘Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem’ – an intriguing and chilling tale of murder set amongst the grim shadows surrounding the Victorian music hall and pantomime in London’s East End. One of Ackroyd’s characters, Elizabeth Cree, sums up nicely the predilections of the populace for precisely this sort of entertainment: ‘John, sometimes I think you really know very little about the theatre. People love to see degradation upon the stage… Of course she [the heroine] can be saved in the last act – but not before she has suffered terribly.’

The story of Cinderella appears to follow this doctrine exactly, and to a greater or lesser extent, the same may be said of the role of Principal Girl in several other pantomimes – not least, The Sleeping Beauty, where the heroine’s trials include being metaphorically put to death (albeit, in order to allow her eventual resurrection – another palpable throwback to the ritual drama of earlier ages).

Of course, in pantomime, the ‘crimes which delight us’ are not uniquely visited upon the Principal Girl – the Dame is often a victim of clown atrocity, as well as a perpetrator, as are the Brokers’ Men (or clowns). But how much more satisfying, how much more thrilling for the audience, when the character destined for ‘victim’ status, is a beautiful young woman. In England, we still prefer our virgin sacrifices to look the part, and a damsel is of limited interest unless she is in distress.

What other influences and themes consistently underpin true pantomime? Certainly, the conflict between good and evil – unsurprising, given that the majority of ‘traditional’ pantomimes are based on a narrow body of fairy tales which tend to carry a clear moral message.

The nature of what now passes for evil in most pantomime bears some examination however. Inevitably perhaps, in a genre in which the entertainment is essentially lightweight, and has become tailored for a family audience, often including very young children, it seems that manifest wickedness has to be eschewed for fear of darkening the mood, or otherwise spoiling the fun. The consequence is that the agents of evil in pantomime have by custom come to be treated in a semi-comic or tongue-in-cheek manner, the villainy often played with a reassuring nod and a wink to the audience. The very phrase ‘pantomime villain’ has become a synonym for a certain unconvincing malevolence – blustering, exaggerated, and ineffectual. In other words, scarcely evil at all – but a mere strutting, puffing, comic semblance of villainy.

Yet in true fairy tales – the de facto source material for most pantomimes – the nature of evil is very clearly defined. Unleavened by redeeming touches of humour or high-camp, evil often appears genuinely terrifying. Unless the evil in pantomime is portrayed with such unswerving conviction, then shades of light and dark within the story merge into one blurred, monochrome world, where every part is played for laughs, and the victory of light over darkness becomes of little consequence or potency.

The last principal ingredient essential to true pantomime is Magic. The near ubiquity of some form of supernatural agency, is probably the most important factor in lifting pantomime from the more pedestrian realms of mere clowning or low comedy, to an entertainment with the power to enchant an audience. The magic usually takes the form of a power for good intent, most familiarly in the person of a Good Fairy or Fairy Godmother – an archetype almost unique to pantomime, and common to several of the traditional tales, including Cinderella, The Sleeping Beauty, and Babes in the Wood.

Sometimes however, (and perhaps most appealingly) the magical or supernatural influence can appear rather more ambiguous – the Slave of the Lamp in Aladdin is a good example. The capricious unpredictability of the all powerful Djinn adds a dimension of dramatic tension to the plot.

And sometimes of course, as in The Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and Beauty and The Beast, the magic lies in the hands of the agents of evil – although where this is the case, it is invariably counter-balanced by the presence of good magic. In any event, the use of magic or other supernatural intervention generally serves as a catalyst to propel the action forward in a dynamic movement, or even to achieve resolution, and for this reason if no other, may be justified as an essential component.

Misrule and atrocity then, together with the conflict between good and evil, and the presence of magic or other supernatural forces, provide the cornerstones upon which true pantomime may be constructed, and it is these platforms which are largely responsible for providing the genre with its seductive edge, curiously capable not just of entertaining, but enthralling young and old alike. Take away the ambiguity of these darker influences, and pantomime is rendered down to bland, saccharine, and innocuous children’s entertainment. Stripped back to its most lightweight incarnation, of course pantomime may superficially remain ‘fun’, but the entertainment has been deprived of its power and meaning.

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On all the above grounds, Rumplestiltskin seems an aposite tale on which to model a true pantomime. A classic fairy story from the same deep well of Central European folklore which provided the original source material for most of the traditional pantomime stories, it is a truly frightening and disturbing evocation of evil, with strong supernatural overtones. The early tribulations of the young heroine evolve into an ordeal of unimaginable horror. Misrule is the glue which must bind the story up and offset the shadows of darkness.

And as testimony to the fact that fairy tales were not in the first instance intended for children, Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable records that Rumpelstiltskin is an anglicisation of the original German Rumpelstilzchen – literally: shrivelled foreskin.

Copyright. Richard Lloyd 2002. Please do not reproduce without the author’s permission.

Richard Lloyd’s pantomimes The Christmas Cavalier, Smut’s Saga or Santa and The Vikings, Treasure Island – The Panto, The Three Musketeers – Le Panteau, and The Arabian Knights, are published and licenced by Samuel French Ltd.

Richard’s pantomimes Cinderella Insterstellar, Panto Goes West, and The Fairy Godfather, together with comic adventure parody Raiders of The Lost Shark, and roistering adaptations of Tom Jones and The Canterbury Tales, are available for performance by arrangement with the author. Email for more details.