HARLEQUIN  , in

modern pantomime, the posturing and acrobatic character who gives his name to the " harlequinade," attired in mask and parti-coloured and spangled tights, and provided with a sword like a bat, by which, himself invisible, he works wonders . It has generally been assumed that Harlequin was transferred to France from the "Arlecchino" of Italian medieval and Renaissance popular comedy; but Dr Driesen in his Ursprung des Harlekins (Berlin, 1904) shows that this is incorrect . An old French " Harlekin " (Herlekin, Hellequin and other variants) is found in folk-literature as early as 1100; he had already become proverbial as a ragamuffin of a demoniacal appearance and character; in 1262 a number of harlekins appear in a play by Adam de la Halle as the intermediaries of King Hellekin, prince of Fairyland, in courting Morgan le Fay; and it was not till much later that the French Harlekin was transformed into the Italian Arlecchino . In his typical French form down to the time of Gottsched, he was a spirit of the air, deriving thence his invisibility and his characteristically light and aery whirlings . Subsequently he returned from the Italian to the French stage, being imported by Marivaux into light comedy; and his various attributes gradually became amalgamated into the latter form taken in pantomime .