William Davenport Adams

“ Most things go round, in fact; and who shall mock?
The clock goes round: that's why I love the clock.
In this genial little piece, presented at the Strand in 1876, Mr. Edward Terry was the monster, here called Monsta; Miss Lottie Venne and Miss Angelina Claude were the ladies Tilda and Vapid, and Mr. Harry Cox was the Prince Florian, here called Dorian. It will be remembered, by the way, that it has been the fate of one of Mr. Gilbert's comic operas to be parodied—surely a case of gilding refined gold! ”

“ VIII. BURLESQUE OF OPERA.
We have already seen that, in burlesquing mythology, faërie, and other matters, our comic playwrights have not been able to resist the temptation to introduce occasional travesties of things operatic. Opera, indeed, has always had a magnetic power over them. They have been unable to maintain their gravity in presence of the singularities which distinguish opera, even in its most modern guise, from the more natural and realistic drama. ”

“ My Veins—that's if they are veins—seem to glow——
I've muscles—yea—in quarts—I move them—so!
(Creaks horribly all over: fiddle business in orchestra.)
Horror! I've broken something, I'm afraid!
What's this material of which I'm made?
It seems to be a sort of clay—combined
With bits of flesh and wax—I'm well designed—
To see, to move, to speak I can contrive—
I wonder if I really am alive!
(Sings) If my efforts are vain and I can't speak plain,
Don't laugh my attempts to scorn!
For, as will be seen, I am but a machine
Who doesn't yet know if he's born. ”

“ To-day it is our pleasure to be drunk,
And this our queen shall be as drunk as we.
[Pg 14]
It was the fate of "Tom Thumb" to be transformed—so far as it was possible to transform it—into a burlesque of Italian opera as well as of conventional drama. "Set to music after the Italian manner," it was brought out in 1733 as "The Opera of Operas," and had considerable vogue in the new guise thus given to it. It had been preceded in 1727 by Gay's "Beggar's Opera"; but that famous work was a social and political satire rather than a travestie of the exotic lyrical drama. ”

“ Planché had taken the narrative of Apollonius Rhodius and the tragedy of Euripides, and had built upon them a composition in which he sought less to cast ridicule upon the legends selected than to travestie what he called "the modus operandi of the classical period, which really illustrates the old proverbial observation that there is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous." ”

“ Every now and then, the writer, rising superior to parody, produces a lyric which has a definite accent of its own. Here, for example, in "Riquet with the Tuft," is a song accorded to the grotesque and misshapen hero. It has genuine wit as well as genial philosophy:—
I'm a strange-looking person, I am,
But contentment for ever my guest is;
I'm by habit an optimist grown,
And fancy that all for the best is.
Each man has of troubles his pack,
And some round their aching hearts wear it ”

“ The fun is never very brilliant; and the "Knight of the Pestle," albeit by writers so distinguished, is not, for the present-day Englishman, particularly exhilarating reading. One can imagine, however, how droll it seemed to our ancestors, with whom it remained popular for over half a century, surviving till the time of Mistress Eleanor Gwynne, who once spoke the prologue to it.
Our first burlesque, then, was a satire upon exaggerated fiction. Our second was a satire upon extravagant plays. ”

“ Like a new one up will spring.
You may dye the coat of one that's needy,
Of stuff as coarse as baize;
But the robe is done for when 'tis seedy,
The robe of other days.
The first burlesque of "Romeo and Juliet" was brought out at the Strand in the same year as that which saw the birth of A'Beckett's "King John." The author was Maurice G. Dowling, who succeeded in producing something worthy to rank with his "Othello." ”

“ Alfred Wigan for its Ganem, Wigan himself for its O'Mustapha (he was an Irish Mussulman) , the beautiful Miss Fairbrother for its Abdallah, Keeley for its Hassarac, Miss Georgina Hodson for its Cogia, and Mrs. Keeley for its Morgiana. There was a cast for you! How many burlesque casts of our own time could lay claim to so much talent and beauty? Cassim, in this piece, had to make one admirable pun:—
Such heaps of gems I never saw before:
E'en Mortimer can't boast of such a Storr.
Elsewhere, O'Mustapha, who was a shoemaker, had to say:—
Business is dreadful bad—what's to be done? ”

“ If, within the last twenty years or so, travestie has been confined to a smaller number of theatres than before, and if it has been proportionately "depressed," that has been owing, chiefly, to the popularity of comic opera and farcical comedy, into the composition and exposition of which has been thrown, of necessity, very much of the talent which otherwise would have been devoted to the writing and acting of burlesque. ”

“ The business of burlesquing Shakespeare has never, so far as I can see, been taken up in a wholesale or an intentionally irreverent spirit. The seventeenth and eighteenth-century satirists left "the Bard" severely alone, and it was not until 1810 that the first formal travestie of Shakespeare—Poole's "Hamlet Travestie"—saw the light. [36] The author then made all due apology for his temerity, at the same time pointing out the absurdity of the idea that any amount or kind of burlesque could possibly sully the fame of the dramatist. ”

“ A stranger why will you despise?
The gods and goddesses are presented in "Midas" in a light more or less ludicrous, and the dialogue, songs, and [Pg 45] choruses are flavoured with contemporary allusion, more or less humorous. But the form given to the work is that of the old-fashioned burletta. Indeed, the chief merit of "Midas," from a historical point of view, lies in the fact that it was its successful revival, with Mme. Vestris as Apollo, which, coupled with the publication of Colman junior's story, "The Sun-Poker," suggested to Planché the composition of his first "classical" burlesque. ”

“ Meanwhile, the premier burlesque writers of the past thirty years are Mr. Burnand, Byron, and Mr. Reece, whose productions have been as notable for their multiplicity and variety as for their technical excellence. All three, like the ablest of their predecessors, have written extravaganza as well as travestie; and, in travestie, they have gone far afield, essaying and succeeding in all subjects and all styles. ”

“ In all these cases, however, the burlesque was general. It was of the nature of travestie, and of the vaguest sort. Of particular parody one finds but few signs in the Elizabethan drama. There is a little of it in Shakespeare, where he pokes fun at the turgidity of contemporary tragedy or at the obscurity of contemporary Euphuism. The Pyramus and Thisbe episode is less burlesque than satire. It is an exposé of the absurdities of the amateur performer, [Pg 2] for whom Shakespeare, as a professional actor, could have only an amused contempt. ”

“ So long as there is anything extravagant in literature or manners—in the way either of simplicity or of any other quality—so long will travestie find both food and scope. That is the raison d'être of theatrical burlesque—that it shall satirise the exaggerated and the extreme. It does not wage war against the judicious and the moderate. As H. J. Byron once wrote of his own craft ”

“ In a similar spirit Sir Fretful stigmatises the newspapers as "the most villainous—licentious—abominable—infernal—— Not that I ever read them—no. I make it a rule never to look into a newspaper."
[Pg 22]
In one respect Sheridan's work is quite unlike the Duke of Buckingham's. It contains no direct travestie or parody of any kind. The burlesque is "at large" throughout. The satire embodied in the dialogue between Puff and his friends reflects upon all old-fashioned playwriting of the "tragic" sort. ”

“ The next notable attempt at the burlesque of conventional tragedy was a return to the methods of "Chrononhotonthologos." In "Bombastes Furioso" (first played in 1816 [3] ) all satirical machinery was discarded; all that the author—William Barnes Rhodes—sought to do was to travestie his originals in a brief and telling story. "Bombastes" is not now so often performed as it used to be; but not so very long ago it was turned into a comic opera, under the title of "Artaxominous the Great," and its humours are fairly well known to the public. Some of these the world will not willingly let die. ”

“ Not even the transformed "Tom Thumb" [1] could be called an effective reductio ad absurdum of the Italian opera of those days. For that the public had to wait a short time longer.
Meanwhile, four years after the production of "Tom Thumb" came the "Chrononhotonthologos" of Henry Carey, author of "Sally in our Alley." This also is a burlesque tragedy, but the travestie is purely general. No individual play is directly satirised; the satire is aimed at a whole class of dramas—the same class as that which had suggested the composition of "Tom Thumb." ”

“ Of the Anglo-French melodrama of recent years, Mr. Burnand has been the frequent and successful satirist. He capped "Fedora" with "Stage-Dora" (Toole's, 1883) , "Theodora" with "The O'Dora" (same theatre, 1885) , and "La Tosca" with "Tra la la Tosca" (Royalty, 1890) . This last contained some of the happiest of its author's efforts, in the way both of ingenious punning and effective rhyming. Here, for example, is a song put into the mouth of the Baron Scarpia, the "villain" both of the play and of the travestie:—
I am the bad Baron Scarpia! ”

“ Have not all middle-aged playgoers seen and admired the younger Mathews as Sir Fretful Plagiary and Mr. Puff? Assuredly there are certain features of "The Critic" which everybody remembers. Everybody remembers Sir Fretful's famous lines on the plagiarists, who "serve your best thoughts as gypsies do stolen children—disfigure them to make 'em pass for their own"; as well as his special addendum about the "dexterous" writer who "might take out some of the best things in my tragedy and put them into his own comedy." ”

“ For the most part, the old school of burlesque did not rely upon a brilliant mise-en-scène. In the prologue to his "Alcestis," produced just forty-one years ago, we find Talfourd expressly drawing attention to the simplicity of the stage show. Speaking of the productions at the houses of serious drama, he said:—
Plays of the greatest and the least pretence
Are mounted so regardless of expense
That fifty nights is scarce a run accounted—
Run! They should gallop, being so well mounted
But with "Alcestis" it was to be different:—
What you enjoy must be all "on the quiet." ”

“ To call me by the name of "Airey Anne."
Among miscellaneous satires upon the conventional stage products may be named Byron's "Rosebud of Stinging-Nettle Farm" (Crystal Palace, 1862) , Mr. Reece's "Brown and the Brahmins" (Globe, 1869) , and Mr. Matthison's "More than Ever" (Gaiety and Court, 1882) —the last-named being written in ridicule of the modern Surrey-side "blood-curdler."
So much for the travestie of English melodrama. When we come to deal with the burlesque of melodrama derived from the French, a large field opens out before us. ”

“ They produced not only many admirable writers of the genre, but many admirable actors thereof. Planché was generous in his praise of the artists who helped so greatly to make his pieces "go"; and he did well to be so, for never, I suppose, was a comic writer so fortunate in his interpreters. During his first years at the Olympic he had the aid of the incomparable Vestris, of Rebecca Isaacs, of Miss Murray, of Mrs. Macnamara, of Mrs. Honey, of John Brougham, of James Bland, of James Vining, and of Charles James Mathews,—all in the first rank of their art. ”

“ No, I think, Cole-ridge is my favourite;
His melan-coally suits my situation;
My dinner always is a coald coal-lation,
Smoked pictures all things seem, whate'er may be'em,
A cyclorama, through the "Coal I see 'em"
More acceptible in, pantomime than in travestie, "Little [Pg 86] Red Riding Hood" has nevertheless been the heroine of at least one burlesque which has made its mark—namely, that which Leicester Buckingham brought out at the Lyceum just thirty years ago, under the auspices of Edmund Falconer. ”

“ What is of more importance in a new (and presumably young) writer is that he should have the root of the matter in him; and in all the essentials for a good story—character, 'go,' and incidents—Mr. Holland manifests great facility. Hugh Carton, the hero, is put through some sad and dramatic experiences, and not the least enthralling of these is his encounter with Richard Savill, the buccaneer. It is under the most extraordinary circumstances that Hugh makes his acquaintance. Savill is vigorously drawn, so that one is able to realise the man as he was in his habit. ”

“ Exeunt whispering.
"Well, sir," says Smith to Bayes, "but pray, why all this whispering?" "Why, sir," replies the dramatist, "because they are supposed to be politicians, and matters of state ought not to be divulg'd."
In its direct travestie "The Rehearsal" is often very happy. Dryden had claimed for his tragedies that they were written by "th' exactest rules"; so Bayes exhibits to his friends Smith and Johnson what he calls his "Book of Drama Commonplaces, the mother of many plays," containing "certain helps that we men of art have found it convenient to make use of." ”

“ Venus and Adonis have always been great favourites with the producers of travestie. Among those who have made them the central figures of burlesque are Mr. Burnand, whose work was brought out in 1864, and Mr. Edward Rose, whose "Venus," written in collaboration with the Mr. Augustus Harris, and first performed at the Royalty in 1879 (with Miss Nelly Bromley as the heroine) , was re-written for revival, and finally taken as the foundation of a third production in 1880.
In "The Deep, Deep Sea," brought out in 1833, Planché selected as the basis of his work the story of Perseus and Andromeda. ”

“ Among those travesties a prominent place has been taken by the pieces devoted to the burlesque of Shakespeare—not because they have been particularly numerous, for they have not been so—nor because they have been [Pg 122] uniformly successful, for the earlier specimens were singularly weak—but because of the general daring of the attempts, and because also of the genuine sense of fun exhibited by such baiters of "the Bard" as Gilbert a'Beckett, Francis Talfourd, Stirling Coyne, William Brough, Andrew Halliday (Duff) , F. C. Burnand, H. J. Byron, and W. S. Gilbert. ”

“ Burnand made Psyche the daughter of a king, who, because she will not marry and thus relieve him of the anxiety caused by a certain Prophecy, chains her to a rock on the sea-shore. To this he is incited by Venus, who regards Psyche as her rival [Pg 70] in beauty. Psyche is duly rescued and espoused by Cupid, who (as in the old myth) remains invisible to her until her curiosity gets the better of her prudence; and, in the end, Venus abates her enmity, and the union of the pair is duly recognised. In one place, Psyche, entering, distractedly, in search of Cupid, cries ”

“ The first English personage in burlesque, in point of historical order, is the legendary King Arthur, who was the chief figure in an "extravaganza" produced at the Haymarket in 1863. [33] Of this the author was William Brough, who owed considerably more to Malory than to Tennyson. There was a scene in which, as in the "Idylls," Vivien makes Merlin the victim of his own spell; but otherwise the laureate's withers were unwrung. Arthur (Miss Louise Keeley) becomes King of Britain by virtue of his power to draw the magic sword from the stone in which it is embedded. ”