ing to the art of the Mime. Its conventional and de-
scriptive gesticulation was most rudimentary; it required
no special knowledge: the roles in it were generally en-
trusted to former or retired dancers, or even to any
actor versed in the art of carrying a candelabra.

The Commedia dell'arte, commonly thought to be
a kind of improvised comedy, closely combines gestures,
and the spoken word. How far we are from a system of
exclusively bodily images!

Finally, there is the circus. The most important fig-
ure, the poet, is that master of fantasy: the clown. In
spite of his acrobatic skill (the true worthy is a former
tumbler) and of all his evocative power, we do not con-
sider him as a mime. His tricks and gags are limited to
obvious comical situations, to accessories, and to the
relations of objects. So the clown has knowingly re-
duced his field of action.

Why does one encounter difficulties in retracing the
evolution of the Mime? Why this dispersion: circus,
music hall, Commedia dell'arte, mime of the dancer?
Why has the disappearance of a great mime always
brought about the disappearance of the Mime itself?
It must be assumed that the age of the Mime, in the
Western world, at least, had not yet arrived. Lacking
its own idiom, school, tradition, and stage for mimo-
dramas, the Mime was perforce unable to have its own
History.

The first page of this History has just been written,
beneath the clear sky of the Ile-de-France, with Étienne
Decroux, Jean-Louis Barrault, Marcel Marceau, Éliane
Guyon.

-xvii-