Gilles (stock character) disparate Foire genres—puppet shows, comic operas, and every imaginable permutation of both mute and spoken theater—his character began inevitably to coarsen. It is therefore not surprising that Colombine should call Pierrot a "Gille" in Alexis Piron's "L'Ane d'Or" (The Golden Ass, 1725) or that a police report detailing the suspicious goings-on in Lesage's prologue to "Arlequin, valet de Merlin" (Harlequin, Merlin's Valet, 1718) should refer to Pierrot indiscriminately as "Pierrot" or as "Gilles". (It should also not be surprising that, when the illustrious Pierrot Hamoche was forbidden, in 1721, to play "opéras-comiques", impelling Lesage and Dorneval to lay his Pierrot
Pantomime dame Pantomime dame A pantomime dame is a traditional role in British pantomime. It is a continuation of "travesti" portrayal of female characters by male actors in drag. They are often played either in an extremely camp style, or else by men acting 'butch' in women's clothing. They wear big make up and big hair, have exaggerated physical features, and perform in a melodramatic style. While not from pantomime, possibly the best known of this type of character is Dame Edna Everage whose name plays on two meanings of "dame": this tradition and the title equivalent to "Sir". Characters who are