Columbine

Pierrot, read by Thomas Peter.

Columbine, Pierrot's wife, read by Sonia.

Pierrette, maid and confidante of Columbine, read by TJ Burns.

Punchinelle, an old magician, read by Adrian Stephens.

Harlequin, read by Alan Mapstone.

Oh.

But do not be sad, beautiful black eyes, for our comedy will be incomparably played.

All the love in the world could never discover lovers' sighs anywhere which would be like those of Columbine.

some confusion comes to pass among the typical figures of the primitive italian play because harlequin on that conventional little stage of the past has a hero's place whereas when he interferes in human affairs he is only the auxiliary he might be lover and bridegroom on the primitive stage in the comedy of these few and unaltered types but when pantaloon clown and harlequin play with really human beings then harlequin can be no more than a friend of the hero the friend of the bridegroom the five figures of the old stage dance attendance they play around the business of those who have the dignity of mortality they poor immortals a clown who does not die a pantaloon never far from death who yet does not die, a Columbine who never attains Desdemona's death of innocence or Juliet's death of rectitude and passion, flit in the backward places of the stage.

Ariel fulfills his office and is not of one kind with those he serves.

Is there a memory of Harlequin in that delicate figure? Something of the subservient immortality, of the light indignity, proper to Pantaleone, Brighella, Arlecchino, Colombina, and the clown, hovers away from the stage when Ariel is released from the trouble of human things.

Immortality, did I say? it was immortality until Mercutio fell.

And if some claim be made to it still because Harlequin has transformed so many scenes for the pleasure of so many thousand children since Mercutio died, I must reply that our modern Harlequin is no more than a marionette.