The article is devoted to the specific features and genesis of Harlequin in a play «Harlequin Beggar» by Elena Guro (1877-1913) from her first book «Hurdy-Gurdy» (1909). According to a few articles on this topic, the play was inspired by «Balaganchik» of A. Blok (1906), and Guro's Harlequin is a combination of Blok's Pierrot and Harlequin. The current article proves with methods of motivic and hermeneutic analysis that Guro's character has features of traditional Harlequin and Don Quixote, as the Knight of the Sad Countenance appeared as the significant figure in later works by Guro. There is also a comparison of the harlequinade semantics in the writings of Blok and A. Bely, which are contextually similar to Guro's play, to the semantics of the image of Harlequin in «Harlequin Beggar». While the symbolists use the harlequinade to express their ironic attitude to their failed ideas, Guro uses it to show a triumph of creative imagination producing illusions. Guro's positive estimation of the illusion and ficti