Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/233

P A N P A N 215 fixed in a plane, and if P be made to describe any given figure, the point P will describe another figure which is similar and similarly situated to the given one with S as centre of similitude, the ratio of similitude being PS : SP . Thus if the point S be fixed at S fig. 2, and if P be made to describe the figure ABCD, then P will describe the similar figure A B C D . For the geometry of figures which are similar and similarly situated, compare " Similar Figures " under PROJECTION. For practical working there is at P a steel tracer having a fine but not sharp point, and at P a tracing pencil for drawing the copy, or sometimes a sharp steel point for at once engraving the copy on a plate of metal. To obtain the smooth and steady motion of the instrument required for delicate work, a variety of different constructions are in use under various names, but all rest on the above principle that three points are kept in a line with their distances in a constant ratio. It will be noticed if any three points T, Q, Q in a line be taken, as in fig. 1, these fulfil the con ditions required, so that, for instance, T might be taken as the fixed point, and Q, Q as the tracer and pencil. PANTOMIME is a term which has been employed in different senses at different times in the history of the drama. Of the Roman pantomimus, a spectacular kind of play in which the functions of the actor were confined to gesticulation and dancing, while occasional music was sung by a chorus or behind the scenes, some account has been given elsewhere (vol. vii. p. 412). To speak of the Western drama only,there is no intrinsic difference between the Roman pantomimus and the modern "ballet of action," except that the latter is accompanied by instrumental music only, and that the personages appearing in it are not usually masked. The English "dumb-show," though fulfilling a special purpose of its own, was likewise in the true sense of the word pantomimic. On the other hand, the modern pantomime, as the word is still used, more especially in connexion with the English stage, signifies a dramatic entertainment in which the action is carried on with the help of spectacle, music, and dancing, and in which the performance is partly carried on by certain conventional characters, originally derived from Italian " masked . comedy, " itself an adaptation of the fabulx Atellanx of ancient Italy. Were it not for this addition, it would be difficult to define modern pantomime so as to distinguish it from the mask, and the least rational of English dramatic species would have to be regarded as essentially identical with another to which in its later development our dramatic literature owes some of its choicest fruit (see DRAMA, vol. vii.). As a matter of course, no fixed date can be assigned to the birth of modern pantomime. The contributory elements which it contains had very soon in varying proportions and manifold combinations introduced themselves into the modern drama as it had been called into life by the Renaissance. In Italy the transition was almost imper ceptible from the pastoral drama to the opera ; on the Spanish stage ballets with allegorical figures and military spectacles were known already towards the close of the IGth century; in France ballets were introduced in the days of Mary de Medici, and the popularity of the opera was fully established in the earlier part of the reign of Louis XIV. Meanwhile, in the previous century the improvised Italian comedy (commedia dell arte) had crossed the Alps with its merry company of characters, partly borrowed from masked comedy, though also largely corresponding to the favourite types of regular comedy both ancient and modern, and including Pantalone, with Arlecchino, among other varieties of zanni. 1 Readers of Moliere are aware of the influence of the Italian 1 Whether the traditional costume of the ancient Roman mimi the centunculus or variegated harlequin s jacket, the shaven head, the sooty face, and the unshod feet had before this been known among the provincials, may be left undecided. players upon the progress of French comedy, and upon the works of its incomparable master. In other coun tries, where the favourite types of Italian popular comedy had been less generally seen or were unknown, popular comic figures such as the English fools and clowns, the German Hansivurst, or the Dutch Pickelheriny, were ready to renew themselves in any and every fashion which preserved to them the gross salt favoured by their patrons. Indeed in Germany, where the term pantomime was not used, a rude form of dramatic buffoonery, corresponding to the coarser sides of the modern English species so-called, long flourished, and threw back for centuries the progress of the regular drama. After being at last suppressed, it found a commendable substitute in the modern Zaulerposse, the more genial Vienna counterpart of the Paris f eerie. In England, where the mask was only quite exceptionally revived after the Restoration, the love of spectacle and other frivolous allurements was at first mainly met by the various forms of dramatic entertainment which went by the name of " opera." In the preface to Albion and Albanius (1685), Dryden gives a definition of opera which would fairly apply to modern extravaganza, or to modern panto mime with the harlequinade left out. Character-dancing was, however, at the same time largely introduced into regular comedy ; and, as the theatres vied with one another in seeking quocunque modo to gain the favour of the public, the English stage was fully prepared for the innovation which awaited it. Curiously enough, the long-lived but cumbrous growth called pantomime in England owes its immediate origin to the beginnings of a dramatic species which has artistically furnished congenial delight to nearly two centuries of Frenchmen. Of the early history of vaudeville it must here suffice to say that the unprivileged actors at the fairs, who had borrowed some of the favourite character-types of Italian popular comedy, after eluding prohibitions against the use by them of dialogue and song, were at last allowed to set up a comic opera of their own. About the second quarter of the 18th century, before these performers were incorporated with the Italians, the light kind of dramatic entertainment combining pantomime proper with dialogue and song enjoyed high favour with the French and their visitors during this period of peace. The vaudeville was cultivated by Le Sage and other writers of mark, though it did not conquer an enduring place in dramatic literature till rather later, when it had, moreover, been completely nationalized by the extension of the Italian types. It was this popular species of entertainment which, under the name of pantomime, was transplanted to England before in France it had attained to any fixed form, or could claim for its productions any place in dramatic literature. Colley Gibber mentions as the first example, followed by " that Succession of monstrous Medlies," a piece on the story of Mars and Venus, which was still in dumb-show ; for he describes it as "form d into a connected Presentation of Dances in Character, wherein the Passions were so happily expressed, and the whole Story so intelligibly told, by a mute Narration of Gesture only, that even thinking Spec tators allow d it both a pleasing and a rational Entertain ment." There is nothing to show that Harlequin and his companions figured in this piece. Geneste, who has no record of it, dates the period when such entertainments first came into vogue in England about 1723. In that year the pantomime of Harlequin Dr Faustus had been produced at Drury Lane, its author being John Thurmond, a dancing master, who afterwards (in 1727) published a grotesque entertainment called The Miser, or Wagner and Abericock (a copy of this is in the Dyce Library). Hereupon, in December 1723, John Rich (1681-1781), then lessee of the theatre in Lincoln s Inn