Peter Holland

The Play of Eros: Paradoxes of Gender

in English Pantomime
Christmas pantomime, that peculiarly English form whose uncertain origins go back to the
early eighteenth century, has evolved its own distinctive typology of cross-dressed
characters, with a Principal Boy who is a girl, a Dame who is indisputably male, and even
those humanoid visitors from the animal kingdom known as 'skin parts'. David Mayer
explored The Sexuality of English Pantomime' in the seminal 'People's Theatre' issue of
the original Theatre Quarterly (TQ4, 1974), and twenty years on Peter Holland takes up
the debate in the light of recent developments in sexual politics, critical approaches to
gender- and, not least, the continuing and not always expected evolution of what remains
a very live form indeed. Peter Holland is about to move from his present post as Judith E.
Wilson Reader in Drama and Theatre in the Faculty of English at Cambridge to become
the new Director of the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford. An earlier version of his present
article was presented as a paper at the conference on 'Eros e commedia sulla scena
inglese', at the Terza Universita in Rome in December 1995.

PANTO is the single most popular form of 'slosh scene' in which two comic characters
British theatre, the cornerstone of the British are drenched with water, paint, soap-suds,
theatrical economy - its takings subsidizing or custard-pies; the 'community song' in
many theatres' work for the rest of the year. which the audience is taught to sing the
The listings for professional pantomimes in words from a large banner unfurled onstage
1995 show 19 in London, and 187 in the rest and is then encouraged to compete in
of the country.1 Statistical surveys of theatre sections, led by different members of the
audiences consistently demonstrate that, as cast, and including a sequence where child-
Peter Nichols states, 'the Christmas panto- ren from the audience are brought up onto
mime is the only live entertainment most the stage to sing and rewarded with toys
British people ever see'.2 In Poppy, Peter and sweets; and the final scene, known as
Nichols's post-colonialist rewriting of the the 'walk-down', where the cast process
genre, a character suggests, in pairs to the front edge of the stage in
glittering costumes not seen until this final
If [the Emperor] wants to understand moment, in a strict order that always ends
The real preoccupations of our land,
He could do worse than spend a little time with the young lovers, the girl now in a
Deciphering the British pantomime.3 wedding dress, while singing a medley of
songs from the production to the audience's
As a theatrical form, pantomime works applause.
through a succession of conventional mo- As conventional, as structured, and as
ments - the necessary incorporation in all fixed as these structural and immutable
pantomime performances, no matter what events are four characters whose interrela-
the narrative may be, of a series of events, tionships and actions underpin and control
some linked to the plot but most not, both the unfolding of the narrative and the
without which the audience would feel theatre performance. These four characters,
cheated: the opening chorus of towns- on whom the activities of eros turn and with
people; the introductory scene for a come- whom I shall be concerned, are the second
dian telling jokes and then throwing sweets comic, the Principal Girl, the Principal Boy
out to the children in the audience; the and the pantomime Dame.

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 Whether the narrative is Cinderella or What pleases me most is when a mother asks
Aladdin, Sleeping Beauty or Mother Goose, theto come to my dressing room after a matinee
four are present. While the second comic has and says, 'I had to bring the children to see
you because they wouldn't believe you were a
not acquired a technical, formal description man.'5
in panto, the other three are known by the
titles I have used. In some pantos the second Analysis of panto as a form of popular
comic may be a very subordinate figure; in culture has to engage with its intrinsic, fun-
some there may be two Dames - for instance damental fascination with cross-dressing.
in Cinderella, where the Dame roles are One result of the development in recent
Cinderella's sisters or step-sisters, always years of both feminist and gay cultural
known as the Ugly Sisters or, to panto studies has been a substantial interest in
performers, as the Uglies. It may be that the gender-transgressive costuming and cross-
Principal Boy role is an aristocrat like Prince gendered behavioural patterns. Marjorie
Charming or the son of an impoverished Garber's exhilarating study of what she
mother like Jack in Jack and the Beanstalk. Theterms 'cross-dressing and cultural anxiety'
Principal Girl may also traverse class - the in Vested Interests (1992), Lesley Ferris's fine
poor down-trodden Cinderella or the Prin- collection of essays Crossing the Stage (1993),
cess in Aladdin. Roger Baker's study of female impersona-
But the relationship between the figures tion in Drag (1994), and work on feminist
is fixed: a quadrilateral of desire, a field of performance like the studies edited by Sue-
erotic tension that generates actions which Ellen Case as Performing Feminisms (1990), or
will inevitably lead either to marriage or to on feminism and identity like Judith Butler's
disappointment, for the second comic, hope- exciting and provocative Gender Trouble
lessly in love with the Principal Girl, will (1990): these major texts in the analysis of
never marry her, excluded from the pattern the performance of gender all allude either
of marriage across classes, the aspiration directly or indirectly to pantomime.6
that panto embodies for a fantasy of upward Yet, whether because of the cultural
social mobility. background of the authors or a theoretical
programme or simply out of a cultural
contempt for the form, none seem to me
The Traditions of Cross-Dressing adequately to understand and explicate the
But the nature of these characters and their operation of gender and desire, the play of
place in panto's exploration of the erotic, the eros in contemporary pantomime. Rather
activity of sexuality and desire, of innocent than offer a sustained critical dissection of
love and pure lust, are complicated by what I would argue to be the shortcomings
something widely perceived as the central of such writings, I have preferred here
necessity of panto performance: the instead to let the activity of pantomime
Principal Boy is played by a young woman create its own specificity, making these
and the pantomime Dame by a middle-aged critics into walk-ons.
man. In Nichols's Poppy, Queen Victoria tries At some moments in the history of panto,
to explain the convention to the Emperor of the traditionally cross-dressed characters
China in the rhyming couplets traditionally have been redefined into a space of gender
used by the divine figures of panto: normalization. In 1956, for the first time in
modern panto, the principal male character,
Another is a superfluity or Principal Boy, was played by a male
Of blatant sexual ambiguity. performer when the comedian Norman
A man, for instance, always plays a Dame - Wisdom appeared as Aladdin in the panto
Yet he may have a son who by the same at the London Palladium. For the next
Perverse tradition struts on high-heeled shoes.4
fifteen years it seemed that the gender
change had become permanent, as singers
Douglas Byng, one of the greatest panto-
such as Cliff Richard and Frank Ifield, and
mime Dames, records:

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 even ex-National Theatre actors like Edward
Woodward, played the role. But in 1971,
also at the Palladium, the tradition was
reinstated by the pop singer Cilia Black. If
now principal boys are quite often played
by boys, there is still a general under-
standing that this is a deviation, seen essen-
tially as a transgression in its reversion to
gender identity between performer and role.
This has happened much less often with
the pantomime Dame, a figure who took
on his or her current form - the gender-
specificity of English pronouns is parti-
cularly aggravating and constricting when
talking about such figures - in the work of
Dan Leno, an actor who starred in the Drury
Lane pantos, the pinnacle of the form,
between 1888 and 1904, the year of his death
at the age of 44. Only Nellie Wallace, in a
long career through the 1920s and 1930s, has
been a successful female performer as a
pantomime Dame.
The temporary transition to a male actor
for the Principal Boy throws into sharp relief
the ambiguity of performance in the tradi-
tional label, for there is no suggestion in
the Principal Boy of any gender confusion.
From the first, the costume for the Principal
Harriet Vernon - an 'immense Principal Boy', in James
Boy has always made clear the performer's Agate's words, as Prince Charming in Cinderella.
gender. By the 1870s, the standard clothing
was tights, trunks, and a certain amount of dazzle with superb assurance and sheer
d6colletage. The legs were revealed, itself a weight'.9
breaking of conventions of Victorian display Wilson praised Harriett Vernon as 'an
of the body, but the body revealed was a immense Principal Boy'.10 Dorothy Ward,
powerful one. who began playing Principal Boy in her
thirties in 1939, is usually credited with the
transformation of the role towards some-
Posture and the Principal Boy
thing differently encoded as feminine, a
The critic James Agate suggested that a Prin- movement pinpointed by her unprece-
cipal Boy should 'convey the impression dented demand that her costumes should be
that she had dined on tripe-and-onions and made by a dressmaker, not a tailor.
stout',7 and described 'the big-bosomed, In high-heeled shoes, wearing tights and
broad-buttocked, butcher-thighed race' of a short tunic-top, with her legs revealed
Victorian Principal Boys as 'walking defi- up to the hips and buttocks, but with her
nitions of what the scientist means by breasts usually under-emphasized, the Prin-
"mass" and the Victorians by "statuesque".'8 cipal Boy is a remarkable complex of gender
As A. E. Wilson, the most important critic of markers. The emphasis on the legs - reminis-
panto in the middle of this century, argued, cent in part of the Restoration tradition of
the Principal Boy was, ideally, a 'robust' female actors appearing in 'breeches roles' -
artist 'who, ample in figure, could make an is supported by gesture. As the Encyclopedia
imposing entry, slap a handsome thigh, of Pantomime states:

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 Such actresses are most definitely not male The opening scenes of early pantomime,
impersonators and retain their femininity in between 1750 and 1870, were prologue to
the role, generally wearing flattering costumes the crucial moment of transformation.13 Pur-
showing off their legs - to which they draw en-
thusiastic attention by giving them an occasional sued by the evil characters, the young lovers
hearty slap - despite the fact that the character reached a point of desperation at which the
they play is generally of the strapping, undaunted, good fairy, known in panto as 'the bene-
even chauvinistic, masculine variety. (p. 159) volent agent', stepped in and transformed
all the characters to their roles in the
The perceived connection in Victorian pan-
harlequinade, with the young lovers becom-
tomime between the strapping male role
ing Harlequin and Columbine.
and the strapping female performer has now
The benevolent agent also equipped
split apart. Evelyn Laye, a famous Principal
Harlequin with new magic powers, giving
Boy, once argued that men could not play
him a magic bat (the original slapstick) with
Principal Boy, 'because of their knees'11 -
that is, the image of the legs must be empha- which he could engineer the subsequent
tically and elegantly female. But Dorothy transformations of the fluidly metamorphic
Ward argued for the character as a perfor- world of the chases that followed. Acrobatic
mer of an image of masculinity: and spectacular, the mimed harlequinade
led to a moment at which Harlequin lost his
When a Principal Boy swings one shapely leg magic bat, a sequence known as the dark
forward . . . she is imitating some lost vision of scene, before it was restored to him again by
man; when she adopts a resolute - and deliber- the benevolent agent just in time for the
ately unladylike - stance, feet firmly planted finale.
apart . . . she is assuming postures which are
meant to be recognized as manly, but 12 she is not As David Mayer has argued, the female
trying to create an illusion of manhood. benevolent agent is an asexual mother, not
the husband's wife but the boy's mother,
The statement that the performer makes who equips the boy with the slapstick, a
about masculinity is not mimetic and clear representation of the missing adult
illusory but a series of gestural devices, a phallus. The child is moved to adulthood
parodic imitation of manly postures. These and sexualized through the enabling power
postures, by being conjured up, underline of the mother to create masculinity, defined
the absent masculinity, a masculinity that is through the presence of the phallus, and to
also absent from the male. In performing restore its potency when lost by the child.14
maleness the Principal Boy both defines The Harlequin figure is handed the meta-
herself as not-male, and in addition defines morphic power of the phallus but is not
male behaviour as not-male - for those fully in control of it; he teeters on the brink,
attributes of masculinity that the Principal occupying the liminal space before potency,
Boy performs are absent from the rest of the a stage resolved by the movement towards
performance. The heroic male is a heavily heterosexuality, encoded as the marriage
marked gap in panto performance. with Columbine that ends the harlequinade.
But the manliness is itself doubly imi-
tative, for the Principal Boy is emphatically
Underplaying the Love Interest
boy not man, a figure who would like to be
adult or who in the course of the action may Panto still ends in marriage: the walk-down
become adult, but who occupies, particu- is a marriage-masque, a celebration of the
larly in the case of a lower-class Principal wedding of Aladdin and the Princess, of
Boy like Aladdin, a space of yearning for the Cinderella and Prince Charming, of Dick
adulthood of sexuality. This performance of Whittington and Alderman Fitzwarren's
the Principal Boy's narrative as a process daughter. But the forms of early panto were
through pubescence, a transition to maturity, rarely cross-dressed. Panto now underplays
is echoed in the origins of the role in the the love plot. John Morley, the finest con-
Harlequin of early pantomime. temporary writer of pantomime, whose Dick

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 Whittington (1986) is for me the epitome of
the modern form, has a stern warning for
potential writers in his description of the
first scene for the young lovers:
On no account must the two characters utter the
dreaded words 'I love you' as this will . . . pos-
sibly embarrass the adults. . . . Thus Maid Marian
turns to Robin Hood [in Babes in the Wood] not to
tell him of her everlasting love but with such a
plea as: 'Robin, thank goodness you're here! My
uncle the Sheriff has started to set fire to all the
farms round Nottingham because the farmers
can't pay the new taxes - what on earth are we
going to do?' The music starts and Robin replies
'Don't worry, Marian, I'll help them somehow'
and they go into the song, by the end of which
everyone in the audience will understand that
the two are in love.15

The Principal Girl, the object of the Principal

Boy's desire, is herself a caricature of femi-
ninity, a fantasy of girlhood. As the Encyclo-
pedia of Pantomime sums it up: 'the chief
attributes of actresses playing the Principal
Girl include a sweet disposition and an
ability to win over the audience's sympathy,
a melodic singing voice, and a pretty face'
(p. 160). Pretty but not beautiful, wholesome
and innocent, the Principal Girl is the fan-
tasy of the girl-next-door, the proper object
of desire, even if she is a princess. The figure
is de-eroticized: a focus not for sexual desire
but for sentimentalized, non-sexual, romantic
love.
An interesting variation on the model
appears in Old King Cole, or King Cole in
Space: a Pantomime Space Oddity (1984) by
Verne Morgan, a popular writer of modern
pantos. Here Nicholas, the Principal Boy,
Old King Cole's son, is haunted by dreams
of a figure identified only as the Dream Girl.
It will eventually appear that she was cursed
by a witch and could only be saved by
marrying a king. But their first dialogue Top: Principal Boy (without breeches) and Principal Girl
includes the following remarkable exchange: at the Empire, Sunderland, 1973. Bottom: the veteran
Dame, Dan Leno, as Mother Goose, Drury Lane, 1903.
NICHOLAS. Fantasy is the world of love.
DREAM GIRL. Love is but a 'discovery'. Once the circumscription of love as the asexual realm
discovery is made the pleasure's done. (p. 18) occupied in panto by two women, Principal
Boy and Principal Girl. There is in the
This sounds like Shakespeare in Sonnet 129 relationship between the two characters no
on the aftermath of sexual pleasure, but it trace of a submerged or suppressed lesbian
also and rather more strongly suggests the desire, as far as I can perceive it. Instead,

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 there is a restriction of romantic love to the is the sexuality of the animal released. The
concerns of the female. Love in panto is sequence involves the audience being en-
feminized, since men are apparently seen as couraged by Sally and Jack to call out every
excluded from its concerns. A writer in The time Randy moves towards Cherry, a move
Stage in the 1940s explained why a man designed to help the characters achieve the
cannot play Principal Boy: proper decorous suppression of desire:
He will have to persuade us that he is not merely JACK. Well, we're going to need some help
a person of rare and miraculous power but also a and all.
lover in earnest. With a Principal Boy who is SALLY. We certainly are. If we're to get rid of
obviously a masquerading girl we don't trouble the old farmyard England -
about these things.16 JACK. - and learn to hide our feelings -
SALLY. In spite of the way they insist on
In other words, the male performer, posses- showing.17
sing the miraculous power of the phallus,
cannot convincingly be in love, an emotion In the 1980s, David Cregan and Brian
antithetical to desire. Protheroe began writing a superb series of
pantomimes for performances at the Theatre
Royal, Stratford East, in London. Strikingly,
The 'Skin Parts' one of their major innovations, partly in the
The feminized space of romance extends in interests of what we would now see as poli-
pantomime to one of the most remarkable tical correctness, was the transformation of
features of its cross-dressed performers: the the winsome, innocent Principal Girl into a
group of roles known as 'skin' parts. Many woman yearning for independence from
pantos feature animals in the cast - Priscilla conventional models of female behaviour,
the Goose in Mother Goose, Dick Whitting- but aware of her inevitable constriction by
ton's Cat, or the many pantomime horses. them. Thus, Jenifer in Red Ridinghood (1986)
wants a
And these animal-skin roles may often be
strongly male. Hence, for instance, when
Life that is rash,
Dick Whittington first meets the cat in John Packed with daring and dash,...
Morley's version (1986), he tries out a Where vampires so gruesome
variety of names: Can break up a twosome
By swooping down and calling in for tea;
Marmalade? (The cat shakes its head.) Mary? On a sunny summer's day,
(At this there is violent head-shaking and These are games I want to play,
disgusted paw-waving.) Tommy? (The Cat They're exciting, they're inviting and they're me!
nods, pleased.) (p. 12) (p. 10)

But Tommy's status as male cat is simply a But she has to grow up and become Red
function of his aggression, his ability as Ridinghood. As the chorus sings,
rat-catcher. As a character whom the other
characters repeatedly pat on the head and Red Ridinghood
Jaunting, flaunting
whom the audience adore - 'the audience Bright and stridinghood -
loves Tommy and at each exit he can wave No more childish pranks
to them in the sure knowledge that he is She's a fully grown Ridinghood girl. (p. 21-2)
their friend' (p. x) - the cat is contained with-
in the sphere of romantic, affectionate, and The tomboy puts on female clothes and is
asexual desire. Hence the performer Morley forced to be reconciled to adulthood, to the
asks for is 'preferably female' (p. x). performance of the female as the object of
Only in the pantomime horse in Nichols's desire. As she sings, she must 'Be the girl
Poppy - the aptly-named Randy who pursues that everyone wants to adore' (p. 22) as she
the second horse, Cherry, 'a glamorous mare walks in her new clothes - in, according to
with long lashes', with lustful intentions - the stage direction, 'a very butch and gawky

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 manner'.18 But even in Cregan's reformu- still playing Dame in his seventies. But
lation the romantic outcome is the same. As beside this tradition of the 'believable Dame'
Peter Nichols puts it, there are now two further types of Dame:
some make the Dame into a performer of
Clever intellectuals may scoff camp drag - typified by Danny La Rue from
And say in life toff always marries toff; the 1960s23 - but most modern Dames play
Good honest folk subliminally know
That romance helps maintain the status quo.19
an 'over-the-top' Dame with ludicrously
exaggerated costumes and make-up. This is
less an expression of the excessive glamour
Dan Leno to Danny la Rue of camp than an exploration of the bizarre
(as for example in George Lacy's Dame outfit
If romantic love is not a space that can
representing a snooker-table). Where Leno's
release the erotic, then that, for panto, is the
Dames depended on the connection between
prerogative of the Dame. Since Dan Leno
character and performer - on the image
effectively invented the character in the
created being, as Wood phrased it, 'what
1890s, the Dame has changed. Leno was at
Dan Leno would have been if he had been
his best as the poor old woman, above all as
that particular woman' - the modern Dame
Mother Goose. Jay Hickory Wood, who
is always a man. There is no attempt to
wrote many of Leno's pantomimes at Drury
'pass' as a woman.24
Lane, described Leno's 'studies of women in
a humble walk of life': Up to the 1950s, the notion of credibility
was still paramount in critics' assumptions
He was homely, discursive, and confidential, not about audience response. The historian of
to say occasionally aggressive. . . . The impression popular theatre V. C. Clinton-Baddeley could
he left on my mind was not so much a picture of at that time still argue that
Dan Leno playing the part of a woman in a
particular walk of life as the picture of what Dan
Leno would have been if he had actually been A second-rate Dame always contrives to give the
that particular woman. impression that he is what he is - a man dressed
up in funny clothes. A first-rate Dame deludes
the imagination. . . . We believe in her - because
Leno's style was essentially benign in his the thing that really attracts us is the personality
view of gender. So Mother Goose may be beneath the bonnet. . . . You may always tell a
mocked when she becomes wealthy or when good Dame by his essential 25
likeness, not his un-
she abandons wealth in her desperate search likeness, to the feminine.
for beauty, but she is also pitied for that
aspiration. Wood commented on hearing For him, the Dame was a 'glorious embodi-
members of the audience, 'in the intervals of ment of whst every26 free British housewife
spasmodic laughter, remark with feeling, would like to be'. His approval of the
"Poor old soul! She makes me feel quite Dame as a 'positively lovable character'
sorry for her".'21 In his strange collection of depends on the avoidance of any appear-
musings, Leno himself defined the differ- ance of the male beneath the woman. But
ence between genders: George Lacy, who played Dames for over
fifty years from 1930 and is usually credited
What is that atom of bar-loafing clay called with the development of the fantastically
man? What is he good for? He does not know dressed Dame in outrageous costumes,
the magnitude of woman's operations. He does argued that occlusion of gender was the pre-
not know - till I tell him - that the women of rogative of the female impersonator, not of
England - the noble, devoted creatures - in one
year lost 595 million 22
hairpins. What can he do to the Dame: 'The female impersonator tries to
compare with that? pass himself off as a woman, but the Dame
is essentially comic, he makes no attempt to
27
A few modern Dames continue the Leno keep up the illusion.'
model - particularly Jack Tripp, the most Lacy's emphasis on the comedy lying
admired of contemporary Dames, who was in the visibility of the male performer is

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 crucial. The pantomime Dame was for purists The Dame is never effeminate; she is never
not to be equated with the drag artist, and a merely a drag artist, since she always retains her
male identity. The performer is clearly a man
female performer would even further have dressed as an absurd and ugly woman, and
obscured the comedy. As Henry Marshall, a much of the comedy is derived from the fact that
successful writer of pantos, claimed: she is burlesquing himself as a male actor. . . .
Such acts are, characteristically, harmless ways
A man can be a convincing woman, however of breaking certain sexual taboos. They evoke, for
grotesque. . . . A male Dame is essential for get- example, fears of feminine aggression and overt
ting laughs. . . . Children are not interested in sexuality at the same time as they play upon
a man's carbon copy of a woman, but only in how anxieties about male homosexuality; all of these
robustly funny a Dame can be.28 fears are subtly represented, and then detonated.31

The appeal to the children's response is con-

Dan Leno's dames hardly ever explored the
ventional - a means of protecting the adult
erotic. His Mother Goose may seek beauty
spectator from his or her own much more
but she is never sexualized. The modern
complex reaction. Barry Humphries, defin-
Dame is recurrently the focus for and
ing the distinction between his own stage-
expression of erotic desire. At one moment
character, the Australian housewife Edna
in Norman Robbins's The Wonderful Story of
Everage, and dames and drag queens, marks
Mother Goose (1986), Mother Goose enters 'in
the gap between the latter two figures:
a dazzling, outrageous costume with a very
The joke of the pantomime Dame is the tension low neckline':
between the female of the clothes and the stocky
footballer's legs and boots. The drag queen is the Do you like it girls? (She parades it.) It's my
other extreme, really a man on the one hand religious dress. Lo and Behold. (p. 31)
mocking a woman and at the same time trying to
titillate the audience.29
The pneumatic false breasts of the Dame -
The gap is the means of releasing laughter. and her costume always now includes
John Crocker, another writer of pantomime, extremely large breasts - become a parodic
argued that focus both for female display and male
desire, identifying and making socially
audiences will laugh more readily at a man acceptable the male gaze at women's cleav-
impersonating a woman involved in the mock age and constructing a posited female desire
cruelties of slapstick than at a real woman. For to attract that gaze. It both allows attention
this reason an actor playing a Dame should never
quite let us forget he is a man while giving a to the erotic and constructs the erotic gaze
sincere character performance of a woman; as safe and unembarrassed by asking for
further, he can be as feminine as he likes - but approval from the women in the audience:
never effeminate.30 'Do you like it girls?'
As a consequence of this exploration of
Deconstructing the Erotic Gaze
the erotic in the parodic female body,
modern Dames are frequently involved in
The performance of the feminine is a release undressing routines. In a scene in Verne
of laughter at women and an avoidance of Morgan's Mother Goose (1981), Mother Goose,
the effeminate. In other words, it is an ex- 'wearing a pair of long flannel knickers of
ploration of male attitudes towards women bright hue', is buying 'a trendy pair of nylon
and a homophobic awareness of the implicit panties':
threat of the gay male. Serious analysts of
the place of pantomime dames in the perfor- Undressing music commences. Mother Goose
mance of cross-dressing recognize the place removes her knickers, displaying a pair of a
of aggression and fear in the model, at the different colour underneath. She removes those
and discloses another pair of yet another hue. She
same time being wary of over-emphasizing realizes suddenly that the audience are watching
it. As Peter Ackroyd, in his study, Dressing and nips behind the counter, where she quickly
Up, perceptively sums up the argument: slips on the modern panties. (p. 16-17)

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 In Betty Astell's Aladdin (1977), an appar- the rows of infinitesimally-clothed damsels
ently similar sequence beautifully turns out who . . . are not the sort of spectacle to which it is
to be mocking male desire. As the Emperor judicious to introduce the 'young idea', especially
when it is at that age at which curiosity con-
and Aladdin are talking, Widow Twankey, cerning the forbidden is beginning to display
the Dame, is behind a folding-screen: itself. Over and over again must mothers have
blushed (if they were able to do so) at the
[The Emperor] suddenly sees a bra come over the exhibition of female anatomy to which the
top of the screen,... The next thing to come over 'highly respectable' pantomime has introduced
the top of the screen is a frilly blouse.... A pair their children.34
of panties comes over.... Suspender belt comes
over.... They quickly whisk away the screen. It
reveals Widow Twankey in full dress busy at the But Davenport Adams was also concerned
ironing board.32 (p. 16) at the effect of the importation of music-hall
artists into the casts of pantomimes, the
If the modern Dame is a parodic focus for forerunner of the modern presence of stars
male desire, she is also endlessly mocked for from television. Music-hall songs would, he
her own desire. The vicious mockery of the wrote,
middle-aged unattractive woman for daring
to continue to feel and express sexual desire not be tolerated by pater-familias in his drawing-
is a staple of comedy, reaching its apothe- room, and yet, when he takes his children to the
osis in classical theatre in Lady Wishfort pantomime, they are the most prominent portion
of the entertainment. No doubt he and his chil-
in Congreve's The Way of the World (1700). dren can stay away; but in that case it must be
Absent from nearly all of Dan Leno's openly avowed that pantomime is not virginibus
Dames, the desperation of sexual frustration puerisque, and if it is not, what, then, is its reason
in the Dame is a standard facet of the for existing?35
modern panto.
As Dame Dobb says in Norman Robbins's The concept of panto as designed for
Humpty Dumpty (1982), 'I've got to admit it, children was and is a convenient fiction,
he's exactly the kind of man I'd like to a protection of the adults both from the
marry. He's alive' (p. 15). But the rejection is embarrassment of admitting their pleasure
always complete. Thus, Martha Muffett in in folk tales but also from the open avowal
Robbins's The Grand Old Duke of York (1981) of the vulgar sexuality of panto humour. For
sends her photograph to a Lonely Hearts panto is quintessentially English precisely in
Club and receives it back with a letter: 'Dear its exploration of that comedy, the comedy
Martha, we're not that lonely' (p. 4-5). In of the ridiculousness of sex. It is a comedy
John Morley's pantomimes, the Dame char- openly accepted in working-class popular
acter is repeatedly identified in Morley's des- culture but only acknowledged with embar-
criptions of his characters as 'man-mad'.33 rassment by the middle class.
The frustrated, ridiculed sexual desire of the This is the humour of sex of which
middle-aged woman is the last space open George Orwell wrote so passionately in his
for the comic eros in the modern panto. defence of the comedy of the seaside post-
card in his brilliant essay on 'The Art of
Donald McGill'.36 Orwell linked the seaside
Panto as Seaside Postcard
postcard to the music hall, to the comedy of
Pantomime claims to be a theatre form proletarian rejection of establishment values,
safely directed to an audience of children, to the comedy 'where marriage is a dirty
but its exploration of the comedy of frus- joke or a comic disaster': it is, he argued,
trated desire belies the claim. As early as 'a sort of saturnalia, a harmless rebellion
1882, the critic Davenport Adams com- against virtue' (p. 194). Panto is appropri-
plained about the decline of the pantomime. ately a part of Christmas since, as George
Adams' concern was primarily about the Bernard Shaw suggested in 1898, panto
sexuality of pantomime performance. He 'professedly aims at developing the artistic
singled out the female chorus: possibilities of our saturnalia'.37

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 The comedy of knickers and bottoms, of 14. David Mayer, 'The Sexuality of Pantomime',
Theatre Quarterly, IV (1974), p. 55-64.
the enjoyable vulgarity of sexual desire, may 15. John Morley, 'How to Write a Pantomime', in
be condemned as childish, but it is also David Pickering and John Morley, Encyclopedia of
child-like. At a performance of Jack and the Pantomime (Andover, 1993), p. xi.
Beanstalk at the Theatre Royal, Stratford 16. Quoted in Wilson, Pantomime Pageant, p. 120.
17. Nichols, Plays: Two, p. 418-9.
East, when a slim actress came downstage 18. See also Rose's song in David Cregan's The
and announced to the audience that she was Sleeping Beauty (London, 1984): 'Give me my life/And
the Giant's wife, it was a ten-year-old child I'll take it again from the start./If I could only be me.... /
Let me be me' (p. 26-7).
who shouted back 'Not much of a fuck for 19. Nichols, Poppy, p. 31.
the giant, are you?' 38 Panto is the theatrical 20. J. Hickory Wood, Dan Lena (London, 1905),
form in which the child's curiosity about sex p. 119.
21. Ibid., p. 135.
is rediscovered and admitted in the adult; 22. Dan Leno, Hys Booke, ed. J. Duncan (London,
it is the comedy of a culture uneasy about 1968), p. 53.
admitting to the reality of sex or of believing 23. See his autobiography, Danny La Rue, From
Drags to Riches (London, 1987).
in sex as a mature activity. 24. On 'passing' or 'real disguise', see Baker, Drag,
It is no accident that the greeting of panto, p. 14-15. Baker discusses pantomime dames on p. 172-
'Hello, boys and girls', treats the whole of 83. See also F. Michael Moore, Drag! (Jefferson, N.C.,
1994).
the audience as a gathering of children. 25. V. C. Clinton-Baddeley, 'Traditions of Panto-
Panto serves British culture by releasing the mime', in All Right on the Night (London, 1954), p. 223.
comic eros of the child on the threshold 26. Ibid.
27. Anthony Everitt, 'George Lacy', Panto!, No. 3
of adolescence. Its central pleasure is also (1974), p. 15.
its central paradox: the mature delight in 28. Henry Marshall, 'Author! Author!', Panto!, No. 2
immaturity. (1973), p. 13.
29. Quoted in Lesley Ferris, 'Introduction: Current
Crossings', in Crossing the Stage (London, 1993), p. 11.
Notes and References 30. John Crocker, 'Production Note', Sinbad the
Sailor (London, 1980), unpaginated.
1. 'The Indispensable Pantomime Guide', The Times, 31. Peter Ackroyd, Dressing Up (New York, 1979),
22 November 1995, p. 37. p. 103-4.
2. Peter Nichols, Plays: Two (London, 1991), p. 407; 32. See also the stock scene exploring a heap of
on Poppy, see also W. B. Worthen, 'Deciphering the underwear in Widow Twankey's laundry in Aladdin,
British Pantomime: Poppy and the Rhetoric of Political e.g., John Morley, Aladdin (1981), p. 22-4.
Theatre', Genre, XIX (1986), p. 173-91. 33. See, for example, Mrs. Sinbad in Sinbad the Sailor
3. Peter Nichols, Poppy (London, 1982), p. 31 (the (1983) and Sarah the Cook in Dick Whittington (1986).
speech is cut from the revised version of the play in 34. W. Davenport Adams, 'The Decline of the
Nichols, Plays: Two). Pantomime', The Theatre, 1 February 1882, p. 89.
4. Ibid. 35. Ibid.
5. Douglas Byng, As You Were (London, 1970), p. 91. 36. George Orwell, "The Art of Donald McGill', in
6. See, for example, Garber, Chapter 7, and Baker, The Collected Essays, journalism, and Letters of George
p. 172-83. Orwell, Vol. 2 (Harmondsworth, 1970), p. 183-95.
7. Quoted by A. E. Wilson in his Pantomime Pageant 37. G. B. Shaw, Our Theatre in the Nineties, Vol. 3
(London, 1946), p. 119. (London, 1932), p. 279.
8. Quoted by Gerald Frow, 'Oh, Yes It Is!': a History 38. The anecdote is from Philip Hedley, Artistic
of Pantomime (London, 1985), p. 183. Director of the Theatre Royal, Stratford East - it may
9. Wilson, Pantomime Pageant, p. 119. well be true. Compare the following more certainly
10. A. E. Wilson, Christmas Pantomime (London, apocryphal story: 'In one memorable event in a per-
1934), p. 219. formance of King Cole, according to the actor who
11. Quoted by Frow, op. cit., p.183. played the villain, he had the heroine unconscious on a
12. Quoted by Frow, op. cit., p.183-4. sofa and uttered the line, 'Ah, my fair Miranda, you
13. On pantomime in this period, see also Michael R. know not what I have in mind.' Whereupon a voice
Booth, ed., English Plays of the Nineteenth Century: Vol. 5, called from the gallery, "Why don't you — her and get
Pantomimes, Extravaganzas, and Burlesques (Oxford, 1976), on with the pantomime!"' See Charles Kaplan, 'The
and Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson, Pantomime: Only Native British Art Form', Antioch Review, XLII
a Story in Pictures (London, 1973). (1984), p. 268.

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