If misrule may be counted as one ancient yet veiled influence within pantomime, it is not alone. In his pamphlet on pantomime, the essayist Thomas de Quincey (1785 - 1859) characterises pantomime as 'the short for fun, whim, trick and atrocity - that is, clown atrocity or crimes that delight us.'

Of course, at its most benign, 'clown atrocity' may be construed in terms of custard pies and slapstick - but it is commonly held that all comedy is rooted in the suffering or misfortune of others, and a darker seam of misogyny and persecution can certainly be discerned within pantomime.

This is exemplified by the most popular pantomime of all, Cinderella. This relatively obscure nursery tale has grown to become the definitive pantomime - staged more often than any other 'traditional' pantomime. What can lie behind the astonishing popularity of this simple story? Is it the moral message of the saintly heroine's struggle against adversity and injustice - or is there a more deep-rooted appeal?

'Crimes that delight us' is a phrase which seems to sum up part of the attraction. Cinderella is a victim figure almost without comparison, and much of the action is taken up with her trials. In this respect there is remarkably little variation from version to version. Cinderella is always portrayed as a beautiful girl, degraded and ill-treated by a pair of cross-dressed viragos. This unsavoury duo keep their young slave in a state of unambiguous vulnerability - semi-naked in rags and barefoot. They subject her to a sustained regime of minor mental and physical cruelties - to which she appears to submit with a martyr's willing suffering. One does not have to examine this material too deeply to discern a marked psychosexual undercurrent, or to see how the salacious potential in this plot arouses and feeds a very British appetite.

Thus an obscure Mid-European folk tale has been transmuted (by way of C17th French Romancers) into a storyline a tabloid editor would die for. It plays to our voyeuristic fascination with the lurid and titillating - a near universal prurience which helps to sell ten million tabloid newspapers every day. All harmless enough of course, especially within the safe, familiar, boundaries of pantomime's make-believe world, and scarcely noteworthy within the scale of human cruelty. To properly appreciate our limitless capacity to take morbid delight in the suffering of others, consider the vast crowds drawn to public hangings right up until the last century.

The De Quincey essay is quoted in Peter Ackroyd's novel 'Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem' - an intriguing and chilling tale of murder set amongst the grim shadows surrounding the Victorian music hall and pantomime in London's East End. One of Ackroyd's characters, Elizabeth Cree, sums up nicely the predilections of the populace for precisely this sort of entertainment: 'John, sometimes I think you really know very little about the theatre. People love to see degradation upon the stage… Of course she [the heroine] can be saved in the last act - but not before she has suffered terribly.'

The story of Cinderella appears to follow this doctrine exactly, and to a greater or lesser extent, the same may be said of the role of Principal Girl in several other pantomimes - not least, The Sleeping Beauty, where the heroine's trials include being metaphorically put to death (albeit, in order to allow her eventual resurrection - another palpable throwback to the ritual drama of earlier ages).

Of course, in pantomime, the 'crimes which delight us' are not uniquely visited upon the Principal Girl - the Dame is often a victim of clown atrocity, as well as a perpetrator, as are the Brokers' Men (or clowns). But how much more satisfying, how much more thrilling for the audience, when the character destined for 'victim' status, is a beautiful young woman. In England, we still prefer our virgin sacrifices to look the part, and a damsel is of limited interest unless she is in distress.

What other influences and themes consistently underpin true pantomime? Certainly, the conflict between good and evil - unsurprising, given that the majority of 'traditional' pantomimes are based on a narrow body of fairy tales which tend to carry a clear moral message.

The nature of what now passes for evil in most pantomime bears some examination however. Inevitably perhaps, in a genre in which the entertainment is essentially lightweight, and has become tailored for a family audience, often including very young children, it seems that manifest wickedness has to be eschewed for fear of darkening the mood, or otherwise spoiling the fun. The consequence is that the agents of evil in pantomime have by custom come to be treated in a semi-comic or tongue-in-cheek manner, the villainy often played with a reassuring nod and a wink to the audience. The very phrase 'pantomime villain' has become a synonym for a certain unconvincing malevolence - blustering, exaggerated, and ineffectual. In other words, scarcely evil at all - but a mere strutting, puffing, comic semblance of villainy.

Yet in true fairy tales - the de facto source material for most pantomimes - the nature of evil is very clearly defined. Unleavened by redeeming touches of humour or high-camp, evil often appears genuinely terrifying. Unless the evil in pantomime is portrayed with such unswerving conviction, then shades of light and dark within the story merge into one blurred, monochrome world, where every part is played for laughs, and the victory of light over darkness becomes of little consequence or potency.

The last principal ingredient essential to true pantomime is Magic. The near ubiquity of some form of supernatural agency, is probably the most important factor in lifting pantomime from the more pedestrian realms of mere clowning or low comedy, to an entertainment with the power to enchant an audience. The magic usually takes the form of a power for good intent, most familiarly in the person of a Good Fairy or Fairy Godmother - an archetype almost unique to pantomime, and common to several of the traditional tales, including Cinderella, The Sleeping Beauty, and Babes in the Wood.

Sometimes however, (and perhaps most appealingly) the magical or supernatural influence can appear rather more ambiguous - the Slave of the Lamp in Aladdin is a good example. The capricious unpredictability of the all powerful Djinn adds a dimension of dramatic tension to the plot.

And sometimes of course, as in The Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and Beauty and The Beast, the magic lies in the hands of the agents of evil - although where this is the case, it is invariably counter-balanced by the presence of good magic. In any event, the use of magic or other supernatural intervention generally serves as a catalyst to propel the action forward in a dynamic movement, or even to achieve resolution, and for this reason if no other, may be justified as an essential component.

Misrule and atrocity then, together with the conflict between good and evil, and the presence of magic or other supernatural forces, provide the cornerstones upon which true pantomime may be constructed, and it is these platforms which are largely responsible for providing the genre with its seductive edge, curiously capable not just of entertaining, but enthralling young and old alike. Take away the ambiguity of these darker influences, and pantomime is rendered down to bland, saccharine, and innocuous children's entertainment. Stripped back to its most lightweight incarnation, of course pantomime may superficially remain 'fun', but the entertainment has been deprived of its power and meaning.

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On all the above grounds, Rumplestiltskin seems an aposite tale on which to model a true pantomime. A classic fairy story from the same deep well of Central European folklore which provided the original source material for most of the traditional pantomime stories, it is a truly frightening and disturbing evocation of evil, with strong supernatural overtones. The early tribulations of the young heroine evolve into an ordeal of unimaginable horror. Misrule is the glue which must bind the story up and offset the shadows of darkness.

And as testimony to the fact that fairy tales were not in the first instance intended for children, Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable records that Rumpelstiltskin is an anglicisation of the original German Rumpelstilzchen - literally: shrivelled foreskin.

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.