Gilles (stock character) disparate Foire genres—puppet shows, comic operas, and every imaginable permutation of both mute and spoken theater—his character began inevitably to coarsen. It is therefore not surprising that Colombine should call Pierrot a "Gille" in Alexis Piron's "L'Ane d'Or" (The Golden Ass, 1725) or that a police report detailing the suspicious goings-on in Lesage's prologue to "Arlequin, valet de Merlin" (Harlequin, Merlin's Valet, 1718) should refer to Pierrot indiscriminately as "Pierrot" or as "Gilles". (It should also not be surprising that, when the illustrious Pierrot Hamoche was forbidden, in 1721, to play "opéras-comiques", impelling Lesage and Dorneval to lay his Pierrot
Columbine cup the dove genus "Columbina", and the character of Columbina (the "little dove") in the theatrical genre of "Commedia dell'arte". Columbine cups were first produced in Nuremberg in the sixteenth century, often as masterpieces to demonstrate the skills required to enter a craft guild. They are first mentioned in 1513 and from 1531 to 1572 were the most important of three items that apprentices were required to submit to the guild in order to move up from journeyman to master status. The others were a gold ring set with a precious stone and a die for a steel seal. One of