The colourful history of pantomime dames
Who was the first pantomime dame? How have panto dames — and their costumes and jokes — become staples of the art form? Here is a look at the history.
Image: Late-Victorian music hall performer Dan Leno largely invented the pantomime dame as we know her today | stock.adobe.com
In the UK, panto is a beloved Christmas tradition. When watching a pantomime show, it’s easy to spot the ‘dame’ — an older female character often sharing puns and lewd jokes with the audience.
It’s long been traditional for the dame to be played by an older man, with little effort made to disguise this. Indeed, that’s where much of the humour surrounding the dame comes from, with their minimal makeup and stocky build.
Many modern-day celebrities, including Sir Ian McKellen, Julian Clary and Christopher Biggins, have trodden the boards to play panto dames. Has the dame always been such an intrinsic part of the panto experience?
Early precursors of panto dames
There’s a long history of cross-dressing in theatre. In early Greek and Roman theatre, women were banned from acting — leaving men to play the female roles.
Women were also kept away from the English theatrical stages of the Elizabeth and Jacobean eras. This tradition became particularly comedic when, in Shakespeare plays like Twelfth Night, female characters would disguise themselves as men.
Female actors were eventually permitted during the Restoration era of the late 17th century. However, by then, the custom of men playing women was firmly established. It continued to be preserved in British interpretations of commedia dell’arte.
What was ‘commedia dell’arte’?
This eccentric form of Italian theatre emerged in the 15th century. Companies would tour various European countries — including Italy, France and England — with comedy shows starring professional actors portraying quirky stock characters.
Theatre impresario John Rich was so impressed by these characters that he incorporated them into a new genre of theatre show, the Harlequinade. With its use of comedy and slapstick, this can be seen as a forerunner of the modern pantomime.
As Harlequinades became popular, theatres sought to create their own. One pivotal aspect of the Harlequinade was its acrobatic Clown character, with famed Regency comedian Joseph Grimaldi portraying him as an undisputed agent of chaos.
From Harlequinade clowns to panto dames!
John Rich has been credited with producing England’s first-ever pantomime, The Magician, in 1721. So, who was the first ever panto dame?
One theory is that it was Grimaldi, when he brought his Clown character to the stage of the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden on 29th December 1806. The play on that occasion was titled Harlequin, and the Mother Goose; or, The Golden Egg.
Grimaldi was a top celebrity of his day — and, as alluded to earlier, we now expect stars of TV and film to appear in panto. This tradition can be traced back to the 1860s, when music hall stars began flooding into the pantomime world.
The rise of Dan Leno
One late-Victorian music hall performer who made an especially successful leap into panto is Dan Leno. He starred in the Drury Lane Theatre’s festive panto yearly from 1888 to 1904, in the process largely inventing the panto dame as we now know her.
Leno took on several dame roles still featuring in today’s pantos. His panto debut was as Dame Durden in Peter Pan. Leno was also perhaps the best-known actor to play Widow Twankey, named derisively after a cheap brand of Chinese tea.
One of Leno’s last panto roles — Sister Anne in Bluebeard — was described as 'quite peculiar and original' by The Times on 29th December 1901.
How the look of panto dames evolved
The Times also wrote of how Leno’s Sister Anne 'wears the oddest of garments and dresses her hair like [Dickensian character] Miss Morleena Kenwigs'. It’s a sure sign of Leno’s enduring legacy that outlandish costumes and unconventional hairstyles are now familiar hallmarks of panto dames.
Today, it’s not unusual to see panto dames sporting crimped hair and huge crinoline skirts and petticoats. This all reflects how aesthetic styles of 19th-century women inspired the ‘classic’ look of a panto dame.
What to expect with today’s panto dames
When watching a panto this Christmas, you can have fun spotting what other historical conventions of the dame have trickled through to the modern day.
Today’s dames are brimming with puns and innuendos — and like to break the fourth wall by speaking directly to the audience. Amazingly, however, many pantos were actually silent before the Theatres Act 1843 let them go beyond miming and dancing.
With drag queens like Paul O’Grady’s Lily Savage having also taken up the dame role, the line between panto and the drag scene has blurred. It’s just one example of how the dame role, like pantomime more broadly, has subtly changed with the times.
