Chapter 5

5 — Knockabouts & Cascadeurs

Buster Keaton’s deadpan expression is more familiar to us than any clown face, the MarxBrothers are still popular long after the HanIon-Lees have been forgotten, and Charlie Chaplinis better known than Joseph Grimaldi. The miracle of motion pictures makes this possible, if notinevitable. But Chaplin, Keaton, and the Marx Brothers, all great clowns, drew freely upon a richand fascinating heritage of knockabout comedy that had been developed by the clown over the

centuries and rened in the circuses and pantomime theatres of the 1800s.



THE HARLEQUINADE

It was in the harlequinade, the long chase scene that concluded most nineteenth-century Englishpantomimes

(1)

, that this kind of rough-and tumble comedy became an obsession and an art form. Inthose days, pantomimes were divided into two parts, the opening — a fairy tale in dance, dialogue,and song — and the madcap harlequinade. The two halves were linked by a transformation scenein which a benevolent agent such as Mother Goose or a Fairy Queen miraculously changed thecharacters of the opening into such stock types as Harlequin, Columbine, Pantaloon, and Clown.The plot shared by both parts usually centered around the romance between two young lovers (later

Harlequin and Columbine) who were determined to be united, the opposition of the girl’s father(later Pantaloon) notwithstanding. The inevitable result was a long chase scene with Pantaloon

and his not-so-loyal servant, Clown, in hot pursuit of Harlequin and Columbine. It was as if aperformance of Cinderella suddenly turned into a Keystone Cops comedy.

The harlequinade began with the Clown’s traditional boisterous greeting, “Hello, here we areagain” — a sure signal of the delights to come. The chase scene that followed was merely anexcuse for a long succession of practical jokes and for dizzying displays of acrobatic agility.The actors danced on stilts, walked on barrels, suffered jarring pratfalls, and performed tricks of

contortion (often disguised as animals), feats of strength, and daring leaps.

Because they were performed on stage rather than in a circus ring, these pantomimes took fulladvantage of a wide assortment of trapdoors and elaborate trickwork. Nothing was ever whatit seemed to be: illusions from stage magic became valuable comic tools; scenery could betransformed instantaneously into something quite different; objects literally took on a life of theirown; and Clowns and Harlequins miraculously appeared and disappeared through undetectable

gaps in the oor and walls. There was even a standard joke that some performers never met, for

while one was going up to the stage, the other was coming down.

French poet Theodore de Banville wrote in 1880 that...

“...between the adjective “possible” and the adjective “impossible” the English pantomimist has made his choice: he has chosen the adjective “impossible.” He lives in the impossible; if it is impossible, he does it. He hides where it is impossible to hide, he passes through openings that are smaller than his body, he stands on supports that are too weak to support his weight; whilebeing closely observed, he executes movements that areabsolutely undetectable, he balances on an umbrella, hecurls up inside a guitar case without it bothering him in

the least, and throughout, he ees, he escapes, he leaps,he ies through the air. And what drives him on? The

remembrance of having been a bird, the regret of nolonger being one, the will to again become one.”

(2)

The stage in most pantomime theaters included atrapdoor known as the “star trap” or, internationally, asthe “English trap.” This trap was usually circular in shapeand consisted of sixteen triangle-like sections of oneand-one-half-inch planking that were so lightly secured

to the surrounding oor that the least bit of pressure

from below forced them open. Underneath it (in the area

below the stage) was a platform on pulleys, designed

rather like an elevator, that could catapult a performer

through the stage oor faster than the eye could see.

When the counterweights attached to the platform werereleased, the performer — sometimes Clown, but moreoften a supernatural sprite — was shot through the trapto appear suddenly as if out of nowhere. The performerhad to remain poised, for any sudden movement couldresult in a grave accident.

The star trap in action. Drawing from GeorgesMoynet,

Trucs et Decors.

Similar to this was the “vampire trap,” said to have rst been seen in 1820 in James Planché’s

melodrama,

The Vampyre; or, the Bride of the Isles.

It was a segmented trapdoor on spring

hinges, usually consisting of two spring leaves, which assumed its original conguration after the

performer had passed through it, thus enabling him to enter or exit through what seemed to be

a solid surface. These vampire traps were frequently placed in ats and drops so that Harlequin

could escape his would-be captors by leaping through a “solid” clock or mirror. In John Fairburn’sdescription of Harlequin and Mother Goose, for example:

A bustle ensues, they [Clown and Pantaloon] endeavor to secure Harlequin, who eludes their

grasp, and leaps through the face of the clock, which immediately represents a sportsman with his

gun cock’d, the Clown opens the clock door, and a Harlequin appears as a pendulum, the Clownsaying shoot, present, re, the sportsman lets off his piece, and the Clown falls down, duringwhich period Columbine and Harlequin escape, (who had previously entered through the panel).Pantaloon and the Clown run off in pursuit.

As another pantomime succinctly put it, “Aristotle in book concerning entertainments has laid itdown as a principal rule that Harlequin is always to escape.”These leaps and falls were not without their dangers. An acrobatic Clown by the name of Bradbury,

whose fearless jumps included one from the ies down to the stage, wore protective pads on

his head, shoulders, elbows, hips, knees, and heels. Leaping through trapdoors was especially

Tom Ellar in the role of Harlequin leaps through a mirror. Courtesy of the Milner Library, Illinois State University.