Pierrot the plot, which was interlarded with comically violent (and often scabrous) mayhem. As in the Bakken pantomimes, that plot hinged upon Cassander's pursuit of Harlequin and Columbine—but it was complicated, in Baptiste's interpretation, by a clever and ambiguous Pierrot. Baptiste's Pierrot was both a fool and no fool; he was Cassandre's valet but no one's servant. He was an embodiment of comic contrasts, showing imperturbable sang-froid [again the words are Gautier's], artful foolishness and foolish finesse, brazen and naïve gluttony, blustering cowardice, skeptical credulity, scornful servility, preoccupied insouciance, indolent activity, and all those surprising contrasts that must be expressed by
Pantomime and 18th centuries such as Claude-François Ménestrier (1631–1705), John Weaver (1673–1760), Jean-Georges Noverre (1727–1810) and Gasparo Angiolini (1731–1803), earned it respectability and attested to the capability of dance to render complex stories and express human emotion. In the Middle Ages, the Mummers Play was a traditional English folk play, based loosely on the Saint George and the Dragon legend, usually performed during Christmas gatherings, which contained the origin of many of the archetypal elements of the pantomime, such as stage fights, coarse humour and fantastic creatures, gender role reversal, and good defeating evil. Precursors of pantomime also included the masque,