A History of Pantomime

R.J. Broadbent's 1964 scholarly examination traces pantomime from its earliest manifestations in prehistoric human behavior through to its sophisticated development in ancient Greece and Rome. Rather than simply cataloguing dates and performances, this work treats pantomime as a fundamental mode of human expression, one that predates written language and emerges from the same imitative instincts observed throughout the animal kingdom. Broadbent argues that physical gesture and silent movement constitute a universal grammar of communication, making his history not merely theatrical commentary but an inquiry into how humans have always told stories without words. The book fills a significant gap in theatrical scholarship, providing the first comprehensive English-language attempt to map pantomime's evolutionary journey from primitive ritual to codified art form. For readers interested in performance studies, theater history, or the hidden architectures of dramatic tradition, this remains a valuable and strangely prescient work, particularly in its insistence that the body speaks a language older than speech.