Transcription
AMPHITHEATRICAL INTELLIGENCE.
A new pantomime was performed, for the first time, at Astley’s Theatre last night. It is called Harlequin, Emperor of the Moon. The house was very early crowded, by a most brilliant appearance of the greatest beauties of fashion and distinction, who expressed their pleasure and satisfaction at the new representation, by their most unbounded applause. Indeed, the pantomime deserves every approbation it received, or can possibly receive. The machinery is invented and arranged with the greatest simplicity as well as excellence. The transitions of the scenes and the escapes of Harlequin, are replete with safe, variety, and pantomimical consistency and propriety. But our correspondent will defer all further criticism, until he has given a short account of its plot. Harlequin is first in prison, which afterwards changes to a rocky desert, where he is pursued by the preying beasts and other savage inhabitants. A magician releases him, and gives him power to awe these ferocious animals, that he may pursue unmolested his motley avocations. He then seeks a wife, by getting into a trunk, which a porter, innocently, carries to Pantaloon’s house. After changing part of the furniture, he causes Colombine, Pantaloon’s daughter, to be conducted in a sedan chair to a tea garden. Being pursued there, he changes his trees into two giants. They guard the door from Pantaloon’s entrance. Pantaloon and the Clown than endeavoring to scale the back part of the garden wall, by standing on two stools, they are immediately thrown down upon each other, by the turning of the stools on which they stand. The garden then changes to a water mill, when a miller appears, who sings a song, which was received with great approbation. Pantaloon and the Clown arriving, just as Harlequin and Colombine are got on the other side of the stream, they endeavor to pass over the bridge. But the bridge breaking, they fall both into the water, and are from thence attached to the mill, which turns them round several times. The mill then changes to a menagerie of wild beasts and birds, which are described with great taste, fancy, and propriety. The Clown and Pantaloon entering here are very roughly bandied, our correspondent cannot say as customary—but rather ____ed or pawed by the savage possessors. Finding their clothes torn, they repair to a taylor’s [sic]. But a quarrel happens, when Harlequin appears, changes the shopboard into horses, where the taylors [sic] are seen seated, and giving battle to Pantaloon and the Clown, who being driven off, the stage returns again with the basting champions of a cookshop. However the taylors may be good baiters themselves, they so much prove inferior in this art to their female antagonists, that they are obliged to quit the field, strewed with the wrecks of their broken and bloody weapons. Harlequin and Colombine then retreats in a post chaife. The Clown seizes, and mounts an ass to pursue them; but he is soon dismounted, by the ass proving too mulish to be an ass to an ass. The post chaife is changed to a draw-bridge, which opposes Pantaloon and Clown going any further. Harlequin next appears, observing the speaking figure, when being surprised by his pursuers, he changes it into a transparency of the moon. The brilliancy, novelty, and perspective of this scene, produces an effect that is truly delightful. The inhabitants of the moon choose Harlequin and Colombine their Emperor and Empress, when Pantaloon arrives, and gives his consent to their marriage, when the piece concludes with a dance and chorus.
