The Harlequinade: An Excursion

A child's voice becomes your guide through one of the strangest theatrical experiments of the early 20th century. Dion Clayton Calthrop's 1914 work exists in the liminal space between play and poem, as young Alice explains the Harlequinade to her uncle with the grave authority of a professor and the wonder of a girl who truly believes that Columbine is a dove, that blue is her sacred color, and that every time a baby is born, a fragment of Psyche descends to earth. The traditional commedia dell'arte characters Harlequin, Columbine, Clown, and Pantaloon become something more profound here: souls in motley, ancient gods who have traded Olympus for the stage, wandering through desire and disappointment in search of joy. Written during the shadow of the First World War, this peculiar, charming excursion offers not quite a story but an incantation, a way of seeing theater and myth as the same ancient impulse to give human longing a mask and a costume. It will enchant readers who prefer wonder to plot, and who believe that the best art explains itself the way a child explains the world.