THE2000
Summer 2017
Theatre Appreciation
Lust, Annette Bercut. From the Greek Mimes to Marcel Marceau and Beyond: Mimes, Actors, Pierrots, and Clowns.
Lanham, Maryland and London: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2000
The Meaning of Mime and Pantomime
Are there real differences between mime and pantomime? If so, what are these differences?
And how have their meanings changed throughout the centuries?
As the arts of mime and pantomime have evolved, differences have shifted and sometimes
even disappeared. Both mime and pantomime stem from the word mimesis, an imitative process by
which the primitive dancer or singer interpreted someone or something other than himself, using
animal, human, or even superhuman disguises. In antiquity, mime, the ancestor of pantomime, was
an imitative art that portrayed life in all of its aspects. This meaning soon became subsidiary or was
ignored.
Although among the ancient’s expressive movement essentially comprised both mime and
pantomime, the general distinction was that in mime words combined with movement. Among the
Greeks and Romans, mime – from the Greek mimos and the Latin mimus, meaning “imitator” – was a
short comedy written in prose or verse that portrayed life and consisted of expressive gestures or
dances, especially among the Romans, which were more prevalent than the spoken text. It also
referred to the mime-actor who performed in such a play, as well as to the buffoon who played in
popular entertainments. Among the Greeks it was extended to mean anyone who made grimaces.
Pantomime has not always been clearly distinguished from mime. In The Dictionary of Latin
Literature, pantomime and mime have the same definition. However, pantomime – from the Greek
pantos, meaning “all”, and mimos, meaning “imitator” – was born when recitation and song
separated from mimetic art. Among the Romans, with whom pantomime was especially popular, it
denoted a performer, with different masks, playing all characters and portraying objects and animals
by means of rhythmical movements and gestures while a singer or chorus accompanied him.
The ancient pantomime actor´s art included both acting and directing. In his essay on
pantomime, Greek author Lucian describes the pantomimus as a dancer who is, above all, an actor.
Because his movements were expressive and rhythmical, the saltator (mime-dancer) among the
Romans was, in effect, also a pantomimic performer. The function of both dancer and actor are also
implied by the term histrio, the Roman actor of tragedy and comedy, originating from the Etruscan
hister, meaning “a performer”. The first histriones from Etruria were pantomimic dancers who
performed to flute music. During the Roman Empire, histrio, mimus, pantomimus, and ludio (player)
were often used synonymously. These terms, also allied to saltator (dancer) and joculator, or jongleur
(minstrel-buffon), were retained until the late Middle Ages.
During and after the Middle Ages, mime acquired several meanings. It meant not only the
performer or his performance, but also the art of gesture practiced by all sorts of entertainers. By the
ninth century, mimus implied a singer, dancer, or actor. Like the ioculatores, prestidigitators, and
puppeteer of the Middle Ages, they were, broadly speaking, imitators of all human things. Similarly,
the masked commedia dell’ arte players of the Renaissance, who mimed, sang, and performed
acrobatics, were imitators of life.
Since the sixteenth century, these meanings have expanded. Pantomime alluded (especially from the
eighteenth century on) to the all-mute entertainment rather than to the performer. It also referred to
the lazzi, or short, comic scenes in dumb shows (for example, Harlequin catching flies and pulling off
their wings) played by the Italian comedians. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
allegorical and mythological, pageant-type ballet-pantomimes were performed at the courts and in
the theatres of Europe. The traditional dumb show in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French
and English melodramas, as well as the Elizabethan dumb shows, were also called pantomimes. In
France, after the Italian Comedy was prohibited from playing in the official theatres, and spoken
dialogues and monologues were also forbidden, pantomimes with commedia-type
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THE2000
Summer 2017
Theatre Appreciation
characters played at the Théâtres de la Foire. When staged in the English music halls at Christmas,
they were called harlequinades. By the end of the nineteenth century, English Christmas pantomimes
such as Cinderella and Jack and the Beanstalk contained spectacular scenic effects and popular music
hall interludes with dialogue, acrobatics, singing, and dancing in which Clown had replaced Harlequin
and Pierrot. The Christmas pantomime had almost no mime or dumb show. Yet even when dialogue,
singing, and dancing were more predominant in such entertainments as these, they were still called
pantomimes or dumb shows because they contained some elements, however remote, of the
technique and art of miming. In nineteenth-century England and America, pantomime was
incorporated into circus acts, as in clown George Fox’s Humpty Dumpty and in the performances of
the Hanlon-Lees. Meanwhile, in France, Jean Gaspard Deburau had immortalized the silent Pierrot
pantomimes, which we today call pantomime blanche because of the whiteface worn by the artist.
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