Harlequinade "the lean and slippered Pantaloon". In the English harlequinade, Pantaloon emerged as the greedy, elderly father of Columbine who tries to keep the lovers separated but was no match for Harlequin's cleverness. His servant Clown's antics, however, slowed him in his pursuit of the lovers. Later, Pantaloon became Clown's assistant. Pierrot ("Pedroline") was a comic servant character, often Pantaloon's servant. His face was whitened with flour. During the 17th century, the character was increasingly portrayed as stupid and awkward, a country bumpkin with oversized clothes. During the 19th century, the Pierrot character became less comic, and more sentimental and romantic,
Pierrot important factor that probably hastened his degeneration was the multiplicity of his fairground interpreters. Not only actors but also acrobats and dancers were quick to seize on his role, inadvertently reducing Pierrot to a generic type. The extent of that degeneration may be gauged by the fact that Pierrot came to be confused, apparently because of his manner and costume, with that much coarser character Gilles, as a famous portrait by Antoine Watteau attests (note title of image at right). But in the 1720s, Pierrot at last came into his own. Antoine Galland's final volume of The "Thousand and One