Pierrot respectively); and Ernest Dowson wrote the verse-play "Pierrot of the Minute" (1897, illustrated by Beardsley). (The American poet William Theodore Peters, who commissioned Dowson's piece and would play Pierrot in its premiere, published a poetic "Epilogue" for it in 1896, and the composer Sir Granville Bantock would later contribute an orchestral prologue [1908].) One of the gadflies of Aestheticism, W. S. Gilbert, introduced Harlequin and Pierrot as love-struck twin brothers into "Eyes and No Eyes, or The Art of Seeing" (1875), for which Thomas German Reed wrote the music. And he ensured that neither character, contrary to many an Aesthetic
Pierrot where he appears. Pierrot, on the other hand, as a "second" "zanni", is a static character in his earliest incarnations, "standing on the periphery of the action", dispensing advice that seems to him sage, and courting—unsuccessfully—his master's young daughter, Columbine, with bashfulness and indecision. His origins among the Italian players in France are most unambiguously traced to Molière's character, the lovelorn peasant Pierrot, in "Don Juan, or The Stone Guest" (1665). In 1673, probably inspired by Molière's success, the Comédie-Italienne made its own contribution to the Don Juan legend with an "Addendum to "The Stone Guest"", which included Molière's Pierrot.