Harlequin Cock Robin and Jenny Wren

Harlequin Cock Robin and Jenny Wren; or, Fortunatus and the Water of Life, the Three Bears, the Three Gifts, the Three Wishes, and the Little Man who Woo'd the Little Maid was a pantomime written by W. S. Gilbert. As with many pantomimes of the Victorian era, the piece consisted of a story involving evil spirits, young lovers and "transformation" scenes, followed by a harlequinade.

The piece premiered at the Lyceum Theatre, London on 26 December 1867. It was the only pantomime written by Gilbert alone, although before and afterwards he collaborated with other authors on pantomimes for the London stage. It was written early in his career, when he was not yet an established playwright, and the script was regarded as of less importance than the spectacle. The first night was under-rehearsed, and the spectacular effects and scenery failed to work properly. Later performances were satisfactory in that respect, and the piece received some good reviews.

Gilbert had always been fascinated by pantomime. In 1865, he had written Pantomimic Presentiments, one of his Bab Ballads, satirising pantomime and complaining that "I'm beginning to get weary of dramatic desert dreary,/ And I ask myself a query, when will novelties begin?" Gilbert had collaborated on an earlier pantomime, Hush-a-Bye, Baby, on the Tree Top, in 1866. Immediately following his production of Harlequin Cock Robin, Gilbert published an article called "Getting Up a Pantomime". His 1875 opera with Arthur Sullivan, Trial by Jury, included a pantomime-style transformation scene (especially prominent in the 1884 version), and he collaborated on The Forty Thieves, a pantomime written as a charity fund-raiser in 1878, in which he played Harlequin. His last full-length play, The Fairy's Dilemma (1904), drew heavily on (and satirised) pantomimic conventions. But Harlequin Cock Robin was Gilbert's only solo essay in the genre of traditional pantomime.

In the West End, during the mid-19th century, pantomimes traditionally opened at the major theatres on 26 December, known in England as Boxing Day, intended to play for only a few weeks into the new year. Gilbert's pantomime opened on the same night as rival shows at the Drury Lane Theatre, Covent Garden, Sadler's Wells, and eight other London theatres. Less well-established pantomime venues opened on Christmas Eve to give themselves an edge over the competition; seven such shows opened on 24 December 1867. The writers of the rival shows included established authors such as Mark Lemon, Gilbert à Beckett, C. H. Hazlewood and E. L. Blanchard. Gilbert's piece ran until the end of February 1868, being given about 83 performances. So, notwithstanding Gilbert's statement about it in 1868, it gained average success for a Christmas pantomime.

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