Burlesque

“ Nothing could be wronger
Than such a thing——
Lady M. Well, hold your tongue,
And wait a little longer!
The first burlesque of "The Tempest" made its appearance at the Adelphi in 1848. It was from the pen of the Brothers Brough, and was entitled "The Enchanted Isle, or Raising the Wind on the most Approved Principles." "O." Smith was Prospero, with Miss Taylor as his daughter Miranda; Miss Woolgar being the Ferdinand, with Paul Bedford for her father—the Ariel Mme. Celeste, and the Caliban Munyard. Some years were destined to elapse before the subject again attracted the burlesque writer ”

“ Yes, and "burrail" is the loud romping of children, and "burrall" is weeping and wailing in a deep-toned howl. Another etymologist takes the Italian "burla," waggery or banter, as diminutive from the Latin "burra," which means a rough hair, but is used by Ausonius in the sense of a jest. That etymology no doubt fits burlesque to a hair, but, like Launce's sweetheart, it may have more hair than wit.
The first burlesque in this volume—Chaucer's "Rime of Sir Thopas," written towards the close of the fourteenth century—is a jest upon long-winded story-tellers, who expatiate on insignificant detail ”

“ 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. ”

“ Mr. H. B. Farnie had a considerable vogue in burlesque from 1870 to 1885, but never displayed the neatness or the spontaneity of the writers above mentioned. He was fluent, but that was all. Mr. Alfred Thompson at one time did good things in this direction, and so did Mr. Conway Edwardes. Mr. G. A. Sala composed one burlesque, but has not been induced to give it a successor. Mr. Herman Merivale has been content to write two: that he has not written more is to be regretted. Among other recent writers of travestie may be named—Mr. ”

“ With its jog-trot meter, insinuating swiftness, and jarring double and triple rhymes, the Hudibrastic couplet was ideally suited to the mockery performed by low burlesque. All burlesque works by an incongruity between subject and style; the particular function of low burlesque is to debase an elevated subject by treating it in an undignified manner. [4] So it was that Butler, with the assistance of a crazy style, had exploited the gap between the high pretensions and the ridiculous performances of a Puritan knight and his squire. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Spirit of Burlesque, in “The Universal Review” for October, 1888, by F. C. Burnand, himself probably the most prolific of all modern English authors of Parody and Burlesque.
Reminiscences of the New Royalty, by F. C. Burnand, containing an illustrated history of his immensely successful burlesque, “Black Eyed Susan.” See “The Universal Review,” December, 1888. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Theatrical Burlesques and Travesties.
n the following Table a rather wide interpretation has been given to the word Burlesque, so that some of J. R. Planché’s witty extravaganzas have been included, and a few even of the clever pantomime openings written by the late Mr. E. L. Blanchard. The object aimed at being to insert particulars of every Dramatic production which professed to be a Burlesque, or a Travestie of any well-known Play, Novel, Poem, or Poetical Legend. ”

“ Particularly little has been achieved in the burlesque of foreign persons and events; and, in the case of our own celebrities, the only really familiar figure on the comic stage has been that of "Bluff King Hal." King Arthur, Alfred the Great, Elizabeth, Oliver Cromwell, have made rare appearances in motley. In the by-paths of history, general and local, the burlesque writers have devoted themselves most frequently to popular personages like Herne the Hunter, the Lady Godiva, Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Guy Fawkes, Claude Duval, and Richard Turpin. ”

“ The meaning and diction will be worthy of each other, and criticism may justly doom them to perish together.
Nor even though another Butler should arise, would another Hudibras obtain the same regard. Burlesque consists in a disproportion between the style and the sentiments, or between the adventitious sentiments and the fundamental subject. It therefore, like all bodies compounded of heterogeneous parts, contains in it a principle of corruption. All disproportion is unnatural; and from what is unnatural we can derive only the pleasure which novelty produces. ”

“ The Splendid Shilling, which is far the least considerable, has the more general reputation, and perhaps hinders the character of the rest. The style agreed so well with the burlesque, that the ignorant thought it could become nothing else. Every body is pleased with that work. ”

“ VOLTAIRE'S CANDIDE & JOHNSON'S RASSELAS.
PLAYS and POEMS by BEN JONSON.
LEVIATHAN. By Thomas Hobbes.
HUDIBRAS. By Samuel Butler.
IDEAL COMMONWEALTHS.
CAVENDISH'S LIFE OF WOLSEY.
DON QUIXOTE. In Two Volumes.
BURLESQUE PLAYS and POEMS.
"Marvels of clear type and general neatness."
Daily Telegraph.
[Pg 5]
INTRODUCTION. ——♦——
The word Burlesque came to us through the French from the Italian "burlesco"; "burla" being mockery or raillery, and implying always an object. ”

“ In dramatic burlesques the most notable example is Molière in France, and of the lighter order, Burnand, W. S. Gilbert and Plandie in England. The Gil Blas of Le Sage and Don Quixote of Cervantes are renowned examples of burlesque. In England many instances of burlesque and diverting poetic effusion are to be met with in the poems of Thomas Hood, Praed, Cocker, Calverley and Dobson. In this country plentiful examples will be found in the writings of Dr. ”

“ This passage is remarkable as being the cause of Boileau's first appearance at court, of which further mention will be made. This episode is the jewel of the whole poem. Burlesque becomes tiresome when long drawn: though there are verses interspersed throughout full of sarcasm the most pointed, and ridicule the most happy, we are fatigued by a sort of monotony of tone, and the unvarying spirit of parody or irony that reigns throughout. The third canto is taken up by the enterprise of the three, who enter the sacristy to seize upon the Lutrin. ”

“ The Governor waved a half—consumed cigarette until its ash fell. “Never fear. Do you think a thousand Jeff Bairds could make the picture public laugh at the old stuff when it’s played straight? They laughed last night, yes; but not so much at the really fine burlesque; they guffawed at the slap-stick stuff that went with it. Baird’s shrewd. He knows if he played straight burlesque he’d never make a dollar, so notice how he’ll give a bit of straight that is genuine art, then a bit of slap-stick that any one can get. The slap-stick is what carries the show. Real burlesque is criticism, my boy ”

“ Burnand has written more "classical" burlesques than any man living or dead. A university man, like Talfourd, he has displayed complete mastery of mythologic themes, submitting them to ingenious perversion, and adorning them with a wealth of pun and parody of which it is impossible, in these brief limits, to give more than a few samples. He has shown special interest in the legends connected with the siege of Troy, [14] producing three burlesques more or less connected with that event. ”

“ In this work, James Bland, the son of the lady who "created" Planché's Coquetinda, made his first appearance in burlesque, and among the female Bacchantes who took part in the groupings was a clever young girl, named Leonora Pincott, who was destined one day to be a great public favourite as "Mrs. Alfred Wigan." In "Olympic Devils" Planché's style is seen to excellent effect. Note, as an instance, the remarks addressed by Minos, Lord Low Chancellor, to the Fates:—
I vow you Fates are most industrious spinsters! ”

“ 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. ”

“ The verse of Planché and A'Beckett is smoothness itself, and they do not descend to word-torturing. Talfourd and the Broughs took more licence in this latter respect, but they never sank into drivel. Above all, not one of these five masters of burlesque permitted themselves to be vulgar either in general treatment or in verbal detail. They were nice in their choice of subjects, and, like Mr. W. S. Gilbert [Pg 35] in the case of "The Princess," perverted them respectfully. One finds no horseplay in the fun of these genuine humourists. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Vestris was the Princess Emeralda, and James Bland Green Horn the Great—Rebecca Isaacs, then only a little girl, being the Mother Bunch. The result was complete success, carrying with it great encouragement to the dramatist to persevere in the new path on which he had entered.
These fairy pieces of Planché's were not burlesques quite [Pg 73] in the sense in which his classical pieces were, but they belong, nevertheless, to the burlesque genre. Each treats lightly and humorously a story already in existence ”

“ 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. ”