Pierrot a formulaic structure (Cassander, father of Columbine, and Pierrot, his dim-witted servant, undertake a mad pursuit of Columbine and her rogue lover, Harlequin). The formula has proven enduring: Pierrot is still a fixture at Bakken, the oldest amusement park in the world, where he plays the nitwit talking to and entertaining children, and at nearby Tivoli Gardens, the second oldest, where the Harlequin and Columbine act is performed as a pantomime and ballet. Pierrot—as "Pjerrot", with his boat-like hat and scarlet grin—remains one of the parks’ chief attractions. Ludwig Tieck's "The Topsy-Turvy World" (1798) is an early—and highly successful—example of
Pierrot lunaire (book) of the poem. In a familiar dichotomy of the Symbolists, "Pierrot lunaire" occupies a divided space: a public realm, over which the sun presides, and a private realm, dominated by the moon. The waking, sunlit world, populated by Pierrot's Commedia dell'Arte companions, is marked by deformity, degeneracy, avarice, and lust. Its Crispins are "ugly", and its Columbine "arches her back", apparently in expectation of sexual pleasure (1: "Theater"). The meretriciously multicolored Harlequin—"shining like a solar spectrum" (11: "Harlequin")—is an "artificial serpent" whose "essential goal" is "falsehood and deceit" (8: "Harlequinade"). An old serving-woman connives in his scheming by accepting a