Gilbert's pantomime opened on the same night as rival shows at the Drury Lane Theatre, Covent Garden, Sadler's Wells, and eight other London theatres. In the West End, during the mid-19th century, pantomimes traditionally opened at the major theatres on 26 December, known in England as Boxing Day, intended to play for only a few weeks into the new year. But Harlequin Cock Robin was Gilbert's only solo essay in the genre of traditional pantomime. His last full-length play, The Fairy's Dilemma (1904), drew heavily on (and satirised) pantomimic conventions. His 1875 opera with Arthur Sullivan, Trial by Jury, included a pantomime-style transformation scene (especially prominent in the 1884 version), and he collaborated on The Forty Thieves, a pantomime written as a charity fund-raiser in 1878, in which he played Harlequin. Immediately following his production of Harlequin Cock Robin, Gilbert published an article called "Getting Up a Pantomime". In 1865, he had written Pantomimic Presentiments, one of his Bab Ballads, satirising pantomime and complaining that "I'm beginning to get weary of dramatic desert dreary,/ And I ask myself a query, when will novelties begin?" Gilbert had collaborated on an earlier pantomime, Hush-a-Bye, Baby, on the Tree Top, in 1866. Gilbert had always been fascinated by pantomime. Later performances were satisfactory in that respect, and the piece received some good reviews. The first night was under-rehearsed, and the spectacular effects and scenery failed to work properly. ![]() It was written early in his career, when he was not yet an established playwright, and the script was regarded as of less importance than the spectacle. It was the only pantomime written by Gilbert alone, although before and afterwards he collaborated with other authors on pantomimes for the London stage. ![]() The piece premiered at the Lyceum Theatre, London on 26 December 1867. As with many pantomimes of the Victorian era, the piece consisted of a story involving evil spirits, young lovers and "transformation" scenes, followed by a harlequinade. Harlequin Cock Robin and Jenny Wren or, Fortunatus and the Water of Life, the Three Bears, the Three Gifts, the Three Wishes, and the Little Man who Woo'd the Little Maid was a pantomime written by W.
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