Harlequin cheeks, and sometimes bushy brows with facial hair. Arlecchino is often depicted as having a wooden sword hanging from a leather belt on his person. Aside from his acrobatics, Arlecchino is also known for having several specific traits such as: and several other techniques. One of the major distinctions of "commedia dell'arte" is the use of regional dialects. Arlecchino's speech evolved with the character. Originally speaking in a Bergamo dialect, the character adopted a mixture of French and Italian dialects when the character became more of fixture in France so as to help the performers to connect to the common
Pierrot important factor that probably hastened his degeneration was the multiplicity of his fairground interpreters. Not only actors but also acrobats and dancers were quick to seize on his role, inadvertently reducing Pierrot to a generic type. The extent of that degeneration may be gauged by the fact that Pierrot came to be confused, apparently because of his manner and costume, with that much coarser character Gilles, as a famous portrait by Antoine Watteau attests (note title of image at right). But in the 1720s, Pierrot at last came into his own. Antoine Galland's final volume of The "Thousand and One