Wednesday, December 19, 2018

Leonard D Greco Jr draws

Alphabetic Primer of Fairyland
 
"P” is for Pierrot (& Pollarded Trees) 

 https://boondocksbabylon.com

1 comment:

  1. Pierrot is lovelorn buffoon created by the commedia dell'arte troupe in Paris. Legitimate theater was confined to royally sanctioned venues, while uncensored Italian productions were performed outdoors. In time they performed at at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, the earliest public theater in France, then moved to the Petit Bourbon in 1645. In 1660 they moved to the Palais-Royal, where they performed in alternation with the troupe of Molière, but both were expelled in 1673, and they both moved to the Théâtre Guénégaud. La Maison de Molière was renamed the Comédie-Française in 1680, 7 years after the playwight's death, and granted a monopoly on spoken French drama, so the Italians assumed the Comédie-Italienne name and returned permanently to the Hôtel de Bourgogne. In 1658 the troupe had performed "Il Convitato di pietra" (The Stone Guest), which was the inspiration for Molière's "Dom Juan ou le Festin de pierre" (1665); his play was lambasted for allegedly offending the Catholic church as well as the king, and it was withdrawn after only 15 performances. Molière had added a character named Pierrot, and the Italian troupe incorporated him in its "Addendum to 'The Stone Guest'" in 1673. The character was created and performed by Giuseppe Giaratone until the king banished the Comédie-Italienne in 1697 to forestall its production of "La fausse prude" (The False Hypocrite), a play that directly ridiculed the wife of Louis XIV. But Pierrot had already gone international; within months of his introduction in 1673 Scaramouche Tiberio Fiorilli and other Comédie-Italienne members performed selections of their repertoire in London, and by 1717 he was appearing in English pantomimes. By then, in 1716, at the instigation of the French regent Philippe d'Orléans, had brought the Comédie-Française back to France, and Pierot was taken up by the marionette theaters and other popular entertainments, performed by acrobats and dancers, and taken up as a subject by painters and folksingers.

    Pollarding is a pruning system in which upper branches are removed in order to promote dense foliage. Pollards tend to grow slowly and tend to live longer than other trees. "Poll" was a name for the top of a head, and "to poll" was to crop hair.

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