The pantomime, Pierrot Assassin of His Wife—one of the most extraordinary solo performances of the late 19th century—was first created in 1881 by a stage-struck twenty-one-year-old Parisian student, Paul Margueritte, who spent his summer vacations outside the city putting on amateur theatre in an old barn loft. For the rest of the decade, Margueritte, although embarked upon a successful literary career, continued to present his pantomime whenever and wherever he could—for friends and relatives, before peasants in rented rural ballrooms, in fashionable Parisian salons for elite private audiences of artists and writers, and at special showings in professional theatres.

A radically new interpretation of the traditional comic figure derived from cornmedia dell'arte, Margueritte's macabre Pierrot contributed directly to the revival of pantomime that characterized the 1880's: Margueritte quickly became celebrated, and his work was written up in popular magazines; Stéphane Mallarmé, Edmond de Goncourt, Alphonsé Daudet, and André Antolne were among the admirers of Pierrot Assassin of His Wife.