The history of the harlequinade, volume 1 (of 2) — Inside the Classic

From Icaria to the Trestles

Sand begins his history in ancient Greece, naming Susarion as the first to give “form and sequence” to buffooneries in Icaria around 800 B.C. He describes a primitive troupe: a shaven-headed slave, a rubicund drunkard, an obese glutton who “tumbles incessantly.” Thespis later assigns roles, dresses mimes grotesquely, and smears faces with dregs or soot. Sand notes that Æschylus added a second actor to the chorus, and that thereafter no comic or tragic performance was given without music. He also catalogues street performers—diviners, sorcerers, jugglers, rope dancers—who competed with the formal theatre. The Greek schœnobates and acrobates become the Latin funambuli. Sand’s account is dense with names and dates, but his focus remains on the physical, improvisational roots of comedy: the leap, the tumble, the painted face.

Columbine’s Sharp Tongue

Sand devotes a chapter to Columbine, and the excerpts include two extended scenes. In the first, Columbine, disguised as a male chevalier, courts her mistress Isabella with a mix of flirtation and impatience: “You have, perdition catch me, more health than I have need of.” When Isabella hesitates, Columbine threatens to leave service, complaining that her pupil makes “no progress” in the art of snaring a husband. Her advice is blunt: “Man is an animal that desires to be mastered.” In the second scene, Columbine appears as Isabella’s younger sister, fifteen years old and already eager to marry. Isabella scolds her for “silly notions of love,” but Columbine retorts, “I am not as much an urchin as I seem.” Sand uses these dialogues to show Columbine’s versatility—she is by turns servant, suitor, and sibling—and her command of comic repartee.

The Catalogue of Masks

The book’s table of contents lists seven characters, each with its own chapter: Harlequin, Polichinelle, the Captain, Columbine, Pierrot, Lelio, and Ruzzante. Sand does not treat them as isolated figures; the introduction makes clear that they share a common ancestry in Greek and Roman mime. The excerpts suggest that Sand’s method is comparative: he traces how a character type mutates across national traditions and centuries. For instance, the Captain—a braggart soldier—appears in Italian commedia and later in French farce. Sand also includes illustrations, listed facing each chapter, which presumably depict the characters in costume. The book is the first of two volumes, and the excerpts end before covering all masks. Readers should expect a work that is part theatrical history, part anthology, held together by Sand’s conviction that these stock figures embody enduring comic principles.

Sand’s History of the Harlequinade is best read as a reference work to be dipped into by character, rather than a continuous narrative. The play excerpts are the book’s strongest evidence; they show how the masks actually spoke and behaved on stage. Readers interested in a single figure—say, Pierrot or Polichinelle—can turn directly to that chapter without losing context. The volume’s 1915 publication date and its origin in French scholarship mean that some historical claims may reflect the assumptions of that era. Sand’s own voice is present but restrained; he lets the characters and their lines carry the argument.

There’s something tender in how Sand tracks Harlequin’s patchwork across centuries, each era stitching its own folly onto him. It reminds me of watercolours—how a wash settles, layer over layer, until the landscape holds a quiet history of its own. I found myself thinking of The development of British landscape painting in water-colours — Key Ideas to Explore, that same patient accrual of light and time, both masks and hillsides slowly becoming what we recognize.