Pierrot a formulaic structure (Cassander, father of Columbine, and Pierrot, his dim-witted servant, undertake a mad pursuit of Columbine and her rogue lover, Harlequin). The formula has proven enduring: Pierrot is still a fixture at Bakken, the oldest amusement park in the world, where he plays the nitwit talking to and entertaining children, and at nearby Tivoli Gardens, the second oldest, where the Harlequin and Columbine act is performed as a pantomime and ballet. Pierrot—as "Pjerrot", with his boat-like hat and scarlet grin—remains one of the parks’ chief attractions. Ludwig Tieck's "The Topsy-Turvy World" (1798) is an early—and highly successful—example of
Gilles (stock character) did Gilles "wear the same costume" as Pierrot, but both generally "had the same character" throughout the 18th century: Pierrot, like Gilles, "was a farcical creature, not a tragic or sensitive one". (Pierrot will become tearful and incipiently tragic only in the middle of the 19th century, in the hands of Paul Legrand.) "It is", writes Haskell, "hard to resist the conclusion that the consumptive Watteau has invested the figure of Gilles with some degree of self-identification, and Mrs. [Erwin] Panofsky has also pointed out that on many other occasions when painting Pierrot figures Watteau not only gave them a