Harlequin
His role is that of a light-hearted, nimble, and astute servant, often acting to thwart the plans of his master, and pursuing his own love interest, Columbine, with wit and resourcefulness, often competing with the sterner and melancholic Pierrot.
It originates with an Old French term herlequin, hellequin, first attested in the 11th century, by the chronicler Orderic Vitalis, who recounts a story of a monk who was pursued by a troop of demons when wandering on the coast of Normandy, France, at night.
[7] Hellequin was depicted as a black-faced emissary of the devil, roaming the countryside with a group of demons chasing the damned souls of evil people to Hell.
[15] Zan Ganassa, whose troupe is first mentioned in Mantua in the late 1560s, is one of the earliest known actors suggested to have performed the part,[4] although there is "little hard evidence to support [it]".
[16] Ganassa performed in France in 1571, and if he did play the part there, he left the field open for another actor to take up the role, when he took his troupe to Spain permanently in 1574.
[17] Among the earliest depictions of the character are a Flemish painting (c. 1571–1572) in the Museum of Bayeux[13][14] and several woodblock prints probably dating from the 1580s in the Fossard collection, discovered by Agne Beijer in the 1920s among uncatalogued items in the Nationalmuseum, in Stockholm.
[18] Tristano Martinelli is the first actor definitely known to have used the name "Harlequin" (or "Arlequin") from French folklore and adapted it for the comic secondo Zanni role, and he probably first performed the part in France in (or just before) 1584 and only later did he bring the character to Italy, where he became known as Arlecchino.
[20] Martinelli's great success contributed to the perpetuation of his interpretation of the Zanni role, along with the name of his character, after his death in 1630, among others, by Nicolò Zecca, active c. 1630 in Bologna as well as Turin and Mantua.
[21] The character was also performed in Paris at the Comédie-Italienne in Italian by Giambattista Andreini and Angelo Costantini (c. 1654–1729) and in French as Arlequin in the 1660s by Dominique Biancolelli [it] (1636–1688), who combined the Zanni types, "making his Arlecchino witty, neat, and fluent in a croaking voice, which became as traditional as the squawk of Punch".
[4] The Italians were expelled from France in 1697 for satirizing King Louis XIV's second wife, Madame de Maintenon,[22] but returned in 1716 (after his death), when Tommaso Antonio Vicentini ("Thomassin", 1682–1739) became famous in the part.
He is therefore always on the go, very agile and more acrobatic than any of the other Masks.Early characteristics of Arlecchino paint the character as a "second" Zanni servant from northern Italy with the paradoxical attributes of a dimwitted fool and an intelligent trickster.
[11] Physically, Arlecchino is described as wearing a costume covered in irregular patches, a hat outfitted with either a rabbit or fox's tail, and a red and black mask.
[5] The mask itself is identified by carbuncles on the forehead, small eyes, a snub nose, hollow cheeks, and sometimes bushy brows with facial hair.
Arleqin often had a love interest in the person of Columbine, or in older plays any of the soubrette roles, and his lust for her was only superseded by his desire for food and fear of his master.
Occasionally, Harlequin would pursue the innamorata, although rarely with success, as in the Recueil Fossard of the 16th century where he is shown trying to woo Donna Lucia for himself by masquerading as a foreign nobleman.
Clown's costume was "garishly colourful ... patterned with large diamonds and circles, and fringed with tassels and ruffs", instead of the tatty servant's outfit that had been used for a century.
[37] The most influential pair playing Harlequin and Clown in Victorian England were the Payne Brothers, active during the 1860s and 1870s,[38] who contributed to the development of 20th-century "slapstick" comedy.
Video game representations of the character include the Knave from Genshin Impact, Fourth of the Eleven Fatui Harbingers and Father of the House of the Hearth, Arlecchino, King of Riddles from Lies of P, as part of the "Les Quatre" from Karakuri Circus and Arlecchino from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, a French Army soldier from the commedia della morte.
