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
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,