PANTOMIME 



PAPAVERACE.E 



737 



Pantomime, among the ancient Romans, 

 denoted not a spectacle but a person. The panto- 

 mimes were a class of actors who acted wholly by 

 mimicry in gesture, movements, and posturings, 

 corresponding therefore pretty closely to the 

 modern ballet-dancers. When they first made 

 their appearance in Rome cannot be ascertained ; 

 probably the histriones ( Etrusc. hister, ' a dancer ' ) 

 brought from Etruria to Rome 364 B.C. were panto- 

 mimes ; but the name does not once occur during 

 the republic, though it is common enough from the 

 very dawn of the empire. Augustus showed great 

 favour to this class of performers, and is conse- 

 quently supposed by some writers to have been 

 himself the inventor of the art of dumb acting. 

 The most celebrated pantomimes of the Augustan 

 age were Bathyllns (a freed man of Maecenas), 

 Pylades, and Hylas. The class soon spread over 

 all Italy and the provinces, and became so popular 

 with the Roman nobles and knights that Tiberius 

 reckoned it necessary to administer a check to 

 their vanity, by issuing a decree forbidding the 

 aristocracy to frequent their houses, or to be seen 

 walking with them in the streets. Under Caligula 

 they were again received into the imperial favour ; 

 and Nero, who carried every unworthy weakness 

 and vice to the extremity of caricature, himself 

 acted as a pantomime. From this period they 

 enjoyed uninterrupted popularity as long as 

 paganism held sway in the empire. 



As the pantomimes wore masks, no facial mimi- 

 cry was possible ; everything depended on the 

 movements of the l>ody. It was the hands and 

 fingers chiefly that spoke ; hence the expressions, 

 mnnits loquacissimte, digiti clamosi, &e. To such 

 perfection was this art carried that it is said the 

 pantomimes could give a finer and more precise 

 expression to passion and action than the poets 

 themselves. The subjects thus represented in 

 dumb show were always mythological, and con- 

 sequently pretty well known to the spectators. 

 The dress of the actors was made to reveal, and 

 not to conceal, the beauties of their person ; and 

 as, after the 2d century, women began to appear 

 in public as pantomimes, the effect, as may easily 

 be supposed, of their costume, or lack of costume, 

 was prejudicial to morality. Hence pantomimic 

 exhibitions were denounced by the early Christian 

 writers, as they w.ere even by pagan moralists like 

 Juvenal. 



The pastoral drama in medueval Italy gave birth 

 to the opera, and already in the 16th century we 

 find on the Spanish stage ballets with allegorical 

 fimires. Into France also about the same time the 

 ballet was introduced. But the improvised Italian 

 comedy was already familiarly known far beyond 

 Italy, with its conventional comic figures, Panta- 

 lone and Arlecchino. In England the mask and 

 so-called opera of the 17th century supplied the 

 place of the modern pantomime, which grew out of 

 an attempt to reproduce a popular light dramatic 

 entertainment, varied with song and dance, itself 

 the parent of the modern French vaudeville. Colley 

 Cibber mentions as the first example a piece on 

 the Loves of Mars and Venus. Geneste gives the 

 year 1723 as the commencement of pantomime in 

 England, with Harlequin Dr Faitstus by John 

 Thurmond, presented at Drury Lane. John Rich 

 (1681-1781) produced splendid pantomimes at 

 Lincoln's Inn Fields and Covent Garden, and from 

 that time this form of entertainment became a 

 traditional institution. 



In the older English pantomimes the harlequin 

 played a serious as well as merely comic part; 

 columbine (originally his (laughter) was a village 

 maiden whose lover was pursued by the constables 

 the prototypes of the modern policemen. The 

 predominance of the clown seems to be a modern 

 359 



development, mainly due to the exceptional ability 

 of Joseph Grimaldi. Now the chief reliance of the 

 manager is on scenic and spectacular effects, large 

 sums of money being lavished on the mise en scene. 

 Pa'oli, PASQUALE DE, a famous Corsican patriot, 

 was born in 1726 at Morosaglia in Corsica, son of 

 that Giacinto Paoli who fought bravely, but with- 

 out success, for independence against the Genoese 

 and their French allies, and died at Naples in 1756. 

 Thither he was carried in 1739 by his father, but 

 returned to take part in the heroic struggle of his 

 country, and in July 1755 was appointed to the 

 chief command in a full assembly of the people. 

 He struggled bravely against disaffection within 

 and a powerful enemy without, governed the 

 island with rare wisdom and moderation, and 

 would have achieved the independence of Corsica 

 had not the Genoese sold it in 1768 to France. 

 For a year he held out against a French army, 

 under the Comte de Vaux, of 22,000 men, but was 

 at length overpowered and forced to make his 

 escape to England, where he was warmly received 

 and granted a pension by the crown. Boswell, 

 who had visited him in Corsica, introduced him to 

 Dr Johnson, who described him as having ' the 

 loftiest port of any man he had ever seen. The 

 two became warm friends ; at Paoli's house John- 

 son wrote to Mrs Thrale he loved to dine. Twenty 

 years later the French Revolution recalled Paoli to 

 Corsica, of which, as a free department of France, 

 he consented to become lieutenant-general and 

 governor ; but the excesses of the Convention soon 

 alienated his sympathies, and he organised a fresh 

 insurrection. Despairing of maintaining unaided 

 the independence of the island, he promoted its 

 union with England, but failed to obtain the 

 post of viceroy, and returned a disappointed man 

 to England in 1796. He died near London, 5th 

 February 1807 ; and in 1889 his remains were 

 exhumed from Old St Pancras Churchyard, and 

 reinterred in his native island. 



See Boswell's Account of Corsica (1768), and the Lives 

 of Paoli by Arrighi ( Paris, 1843 ), Klose ( Brunswick, 1853 ), 

 Bartoli (Ajaccio, 1867), and Oria (Genoa, 180'J). 



Pa'pa (Lat., 'father'), the Latin form of the 

 title now, in the Western Church, given exclu- 

 sively to the Bishop of Rome (see POPE). Origin- 

 ally, however, meaning simply ' father,' it was 

 given indiscriminately to all bishops. In the 

 Greek Church, whether in Greece Proper or in 

 Russia, papa is the common appellation of the 

 clergy. 



Papacy. See POPE. 



Papain is a nitrogenous body, isolated from 

 the juice of the tropical Papaw (q.v.). The juice 

 from which it is extracted is a milky, white, in- 

 odorous fluid, obtained by making incisions in the 

 ripe fruit. From this papa'in is isolated by precipi- 

 tation with alcohol after the fatty matters present 

 have been removed. The juice has been for a long 

 time used in the West Indies for making meat 

 tender ; but it has only recently been shown that 

 papa'in possesses, like pepsin and trypsin, the 

 power of digesting meat-fibre ; and this digestion 

 will go on in an alkaline, a neutral, or an acid 

 solution. Hence it belongs to the group of diges- 

 tive ferments, and like them is employed in some 

 cases of dyspepsia, being either administered inter- 

 nally or employed for the pre-digestion of food. 

 It lias also been used for the removal of warts 

 and for the solution of the 'false membrane' in 

 cases of diphtheria. 



Papal States. See CHURCH (STATES OF THE). 



Papaveraceae, a natural order of exogenous 



plants, herbaceous or half shrubby, usually with a 



milky or coloured juice. The leaves are alternate, 



