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 The Naturalists—Émile Zola especially, who wrote glowingly of them—were captivated by their art. Edmond de Goncourt modeled his acrobat-mimes in his "The Zemganno Brothers" (1879) upon them; J.-K. Huysmans (whose "Against Nature" [1884] would become Dorian Gray's bible) and his friend Léon Hennique wrote their pantomime "" (1881) after seeing them perform at the Folies Bergère. (And, in turn, Jules Laforgue wrote his pantomime "Pierrot the Cut-Up" ["Pierrot fumiste", 1882] after reading the scenario by Huysmans and Hennique.) It was in part through the enthusiasm that they excited, coupled with the Impressionists’ taste for popular entertainment, like the circus and