Editing Pierrot (section)

===Pantomime of Deburau at the Théâtre des Funambules===
[[File:Jean-Gaspard Deburau.jpg|thumb|[[:fr:Auguste Bouquet|Auguste Bouquet]]: ''[[Jean-Gaspard Deburau]]'', {{circa|1830}}]]
The [[Théâtre des Funambules]] was a little theater licensed in its early years to present only mimed and acrobatic acts.<ref>The chief historian of the Funambules is [[Louis Péricaud]].</ref> It was the home, beginning in 1816, of [[Jean-Gaspard Deburau]] (1796–1846),<ref>On Deburau's life, see Rémy, ''Jean-Gaspard Deburau''; on his pantomime, see Storey, ''Pierrots on the stage'', pp. 7–35, and Nye (2014), Nye (2015-2016), and Nye (2016).</ref> the most famous Pierrot ever. He was immortalized by [[Jean-Louis Barrault]] in [[Marcel Carné]]'s film ''[[Children of Paradise]]'' (1945).

Deburau, from the year 1825, was the only actor at the Funambules to play Pierrot,<ref>Nye (2016), p. 18, n. 12.</ref> and he did so in several types of pantomime: rustic, melodramatic, "realistic", and fantastic.<ref>See Storey, ''Pierrots on the stage'', pp. 15-23.</ref> His style, according to [[Louis Péricaud]], formed "an enormous contrast with the exuberance, the superabundance of gestures, of leaps, that ... his predecessors had employed".<ref>[[Louis Péricaud|Péricaud]], [http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k204363m/f31.image p. 28]; tr. Storey, ''Pierrots on the stage'', pp. 31–32.</ref> He altered the costume: he dispensed with the frilled collaret, substituted a skullcap for a hat, and greatly increased the wide cut of both blouse and trousers. Deburau's Pierrot avoided the crude Pierrots—timid, sexless, lazy, and greedy—found in earlier pantomime.<ref>On the early Pierrots, see Storey, ''Pierrots on the stage'', pp. 12–13.</ref>

The Funambules Pierrot appealed to audiences in the faery-tale style which incorporate the ''commedia'' types. The plot often hinged on Cassander's pursuit of Harlequin and Columbine, having to deal with a clever and ambiguous Pierrot. Deburau early—about 1828—caught the attention of the [[Romanticism|Romantics]].<ref>For a full discussion of the connection of all these writers with Deburau's Pierrot, see Storey, ''Pierrot: a critical history'', pp. 104, 110–112, and Storey, ''Pierrots on the stage'', pp. 7, 74–151.</ref> In 1842, Théophile Gautier published a fake review of a "Shakespeare" pantomime he claimed to have seen at the Funambules.<ref>{{Cite book |chapter-url=https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781400854820.105/html |chapter=IV. Pierrot posthume: Théophile Gautier |date=2014-07-14 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-1-4008-5482-0 |language=en |doi=10.1515/9781400854820.105|title=Pierrots on the Stage of Desire |pages=105–126 }}</ref> It placed Pierrot in the company of over-reachers in high literature such as [[Don Juan]] or [[Macbeth (character)|Macbeth]].