young fellow, whom she preferred, the other
a wealthy fop, whose pretensions were, of course, favoured by the
father. There was also a body servant of some sort in the old man's
establishment. At the moment when the young lady was about to be
forcibly married to the fop she despised, or, on the point of eloping
with the youth of her choice, the good fairy made her appearance, and,
changing the refractory pair into Harlequin and Columbine, the old
curmudgeon into Pantaloon, and the body servant into Clown: the two
latter in company with the rejected "lover," as he was called, commenced
the pursuit of the happy pair, and the "comic business" consisted of a
dozen or more cleverly constructed scenes, in which all the tricks and
changes had a meaning, and were introduced as contrivances to favour the
escape of Harlequin and Columbine, when too closely followed by their
enemies. There was as regular a plot as might be found in a melodrama.
An interest in the chase which increased the admiration of the ingenuity
and the enjoyment of the fun of the tricks, by which the runaways
escaped capture, till the inevitable "dark scene" came, a cavern or a
forest, in which they were overtaken, seized, and the magic wand, which
had so uniformly aided them, snatched from the grasp of the despairing
Harlequin, and flourished in triumph by the Clown. Again at the critical
moment the protecting fairy appeared, and, exacting the consent of the
father to the marriage of the devoted couple, transported the whole
party to what was really a grand last scene, which everybody did wait
for. There was some congruity, some dramatic construction, in such
Pantomimes; and then the acting. For it was acting, and first-rate
acting.

To give the reader a further insight into the old form of Christmas
Pantomimes, I cull the following from "The Drama," a contemporary
magazine of the period (1822):--

In compliance with the long-established custom of gratifying the holiday
visitors of the theatres with Pantomimic representations at this season
of year, a new piece of that description was produced at this theatre
(Covent Garden) last night, December 26th, 1822, under the title of
"Harlequin and the Ogress; or the Sleeping Beauty of the Wood." The
introductory story is taken from the well-known tale of "The Sleeping
Beauty," in "Mother Bunch's Fairy Tales," which had before been
"melodramatised," but had not hitherto been taken for the groundwork of
a Harlequin