Beschreibung:
<jats:p> It was by chance rather than by design that the London premiere of Charley's Aunt coincided with the pantomime season when it opened at the tiny Royalty Theatre in Soho on 21 December 1892. Yet in the central character of the cross-dressed male, Lord Fancourt Babberly disguised as Charley's aunt, the play shares its most salient feature of performance with pantomime. During the latter years of the nineteenth century, conservative critics lamented the annual corruption of pantomime. Elements deemed offensive, introduced most notably in houses with a reputation for lavish production, such as Drury Lane, were the bawdy music hall turns taken by star performers and excessive theatrical display in lengthy processions and ballets. This essay sets out to trace relations between the traditional pantomime Dame and his farcical double in Brandon Thomas's Charley's Aunt, through the use of meta-theatrical elements, and the remnants of the pantomime harlequinade. </jats:p>