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.

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.