Gilles (stock character)  Gilles ()—sometimes Gille—is a stock character of French farce and Commedia dell'Arte. He enjoyed his greatest vogue in 18th-century France, in entertainments both at the fairgrounds of the capital and in private and public theaters, though his origins can be traced back to the 17th century and, possibly, the century previous. A "zanni", or comic servant, he is a type of bungling clown, stupid, credulous, and lewd—a character that shares little, problematically, with the sensitive figure in Watteau's famous portrait that, until the latter half of the 20th century, bore his name alone. Gilles fades from view in the 19th century, to persist in the 20th and 21st as the Belgian Gilles of Binche Carnival. Gilles' origins are obscure. There was a "zanni" Giglio in the Italian troupe of the academic "Intronati" as early as 1531, and some historians link him to Gilles. But no line of succession has been traced. The French expression ""faire gilles"", meaning "to go bankrupt" or "to run away", dates from the 16th century, and some dictionaries find a source for both the name and the character in the phrase, since "the Gilles of the fair", by their authority, "is he who runs away when he is called." The most likely origin of the name and type is the 17th-century Gilles le Niais (Gilles the Simpleton), a character who may or may not have known multiple incarnations. According to some lines in "Les Véritables prétieuses" (1660) by Antoine Baudeau de Somaize, Gilles le Niais was the creation of a single actor, the Sieur de la Force, said to have descended from a venerable line of French "farceurs", most immediately from . His small troupe performed, around 1646, farces that he himself composed, laced with songs that were popular among the idlers and "flâneurs" of the Pont-Neuf. His name appears among several of the Mazarinades following the uprising of the Fronde: "Le Dialogue burlesque de Gilles le Niais et du capitan Spacamon" (The Burlesque Dialogue between Gilles le Niais and Captain Spacamon, 1649), "Les Entretiens sérieux de et de Gilles le Niais, rétourné de Flandres, sur le temps présent" (The Serious Discussions of Jodelet with Gilles le Niais, back from Flanders, on the Present Times, 1649), and "Le Véritable Gilles le Niais, en vers burlesques" (The Real Gilles le Niais, in Burlesque Verse, n.d.).