Pierrot gave kicks and no longer received them; Harlequin now scarcely dared brush his shoulders with his bat; Cassander would think twice before boxing his ears. Deburau seems to have had a predilection for "realistic" pantomime—a predilection that, as will later become evident here, led eventually to calls for Pierrot's expulsion from it. But the pantomime that had the greatest appeal to his public was the ""pantomime-arlequinade-féerie"", sometimes "in the English style" (i.e., with a prologue in which characters were transformed into the "commedia" types). The action unfolded in fairy-land, peopled with good and bad spirits who both advanced and impeded
Pierrot the introduction of the "commedia dell'arte" characters into parodic metatheater. (Pierrot is a member of the audience watching the play.) The penetration of Pierrot and his companions of the "commedia" into Spain is documented in a painting by Goya, "Itinerant Actors" (1793). It foreshadows the work of such Spanish successors as Picasso and Fernand Pelez, both of whom also showed strong sympathy with the lives of traveling saltimbancos. When, in 1762, a great fire destroyed the Foire Saint-Germain and the new Comédie-Italienne claimed the fairs’ stage-offerings (now known collectively as the Opéra-Comique) as their own, new enterprises began to attract