A little farther on Dandino and the Prince, who are about to exchange characters for the nonce, have the following little contest in pun-making:—
An even better instance of Byron's tendency to run a pun to death is to be found in this colloquy between the Prince and Cinderella. The latter says:—
More acceptible in, pantomime than in travestie, "Little 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. He had Miss Lydia Thompson for his Blondinette (Red Riding Hood), and Miss Cicely Nott for the young lady's lover, Colin. The fairy element was freely introduced, and instead of the wolf of the original there was a Baron Reginald de Wolf ("the would-be abductor of Blondinette, who finds he is sold when she 'ab duck'd herself to escape him"). Here and there one gets in the "book" a glimpse of parody; as in—
Or, again, in—
Passing over "Jack the Giant Killer," which H. J. Byron made the subject of a burlesque, and "Jack and the Beanstalk," which was treated in the same vein by the late Charles Millward, we come to the travesties suggested by stories in the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments." These are fairly numerous. We may note, in particular, some of the versions of the tales of Aladdin, Ali Baba, Prince Camaralzaman, and Abon Hassan, which seem to have offered most attractions to our comic writers.
The first "Aladdin" of importance was that given to the world by Gilbert Abbott a'Beckett in 1844. This was entitled "The Wonderful Lamp in a New Light," and had Wright for its Aladdin and Paul Bedford for its Magician. Next in order of time comes H. J. Byron's "Aladdin, or the Wonderful Scamp,"[26] which has shared the fate of his "Cinderella" as a basis for pantomimes. In this his fondness for jeux de mots is as patent as ever, as well as the ease (without conspicuous finish) with which he fitted words to the songs of the day. Of direct parody there is little in this "Aladdin," which, however, opens with a brief suggestion of "The sea, the sea," sung by the Vizier:—
During the last twenty years there have been four other notable burlesques on the "Aladdin" subject—Mr. Alfred Thompson's (1870), Mr. Green's (1874), Mr. Reece's (1881), and Mr. Geoffrey Thorn's (1890). With Mr. Reece's are associated pleasant memories of the bright "street boy" of Miss Farren, Mr. Edward Terry's whimsical magician, and the grace and refinement of Miss Kate Vaughan's Badroulbadour.
Second only to "Aladdin" in acceptability both to authors and to public, is the story of "Ali Baba, or the Forty Thieves." Here, again, A'Beckett is (with Mark Lemon) to the fore with the travestie called "Open Sesame, or a Night with the Forty Thieves." This was produced at the Lyceum Theatre, and had Mr. Frank Matthews for its Ali Baba, Mrs. 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:—
Elsewhere, O'Mustapha, who was a shoemaker, had to say:—
A'Beckett, however, did not lay himself out for punning in and out of season. His chief merit is the neatness of his style and the pervading nature of his wit.
The most famous of all the Ali Baba travesties was that "joint-stock" burlesque, "The Forty Thieves," written by members of the Savage Club, and performed by the authors themselves at the Lyceum, in 1860, for the benefit of the families of two literary men just then deceased. Planché wrote the prologue for this piece, and it was at once so brilliant and so admirably delivered by Leicester Buckingham that it nearly obtained the extraordinary honour of an encore. It was followed, three years later, by H. J. Byron's "Ali Baba, or the Thirty-Nine Thieves (in accordance with the author's habit of taking one off!)."[27] Abdallah, the captain of the thieves (played by Miss Ada Swanborough), was here depicted as a rascal of the quiet, elegant order, in sharp contrast to the Surrey-side villainy of his lieutenant, Hassarac. A colloquy between these gave Byron an opportunity of satirising the melodramatic criminal of the "good old times":—
In 1872 Mr. Reece wrote for the Gaiety a piece called "Ali Baba à la Mode"; in 1880 he prepared for the same theatre another version called "The Forty Thieves."[28] This latter, if I remember rightly, was the first of the burlesques in three acts. It presented in Mr. Terry (Ali Baba), Miss Farren (Ganem), Mr. Royce (Hassarac), and Miss Vaughan (Morgiana), a quartett which is specially well remembered for the verve and vivacity of its performance.
The fortunes of Prince Camaralzaman have been pictured on the burlesque stage by the Brothers Brough, by Messrs. Bellingham and Best, by H. J. Byron, and by Mr. Burnand.[29] "Camaralzaman and Badoura, or the Peri who loved the Prince," was the Broughs' title, and they had the assistance of Mrs. Keeley, of Keeley (as a Djinn), of Bland (as the Emperor Bung), of Miss Reynolds (as Badoura), and of Miss Horton (as the hero). Dimpl Tshin was the name given to one of the characters, and Skilopht that of another. The original story was followed in the main. Camaralzaman declines to marry at his father's request, and is incarcerated. In that position he soliloquises:—
Camaralzaman then breaks out into the following little bit of vocal parody:—
The Broughs were always ingenious in their word-plays. Says one of the characters in this burlesque:—
Again:—
Says Badoura to a suitor whom she does not favour:—
to which he replies:—
In the piece by Messrs. Bellingham and Best—"Prince Camaralzaman, or the Fairies' Revenge"[30]—we find, amid many well-conceived and well-executed puns, a rather successful adaptation of the "To be, or not to be" soliloquy, possessing the merit of being quite in keeping with the character of the matrimony-scorning Camaralzaman:—
In another passage, the "spiritualistic" craze is satirised in a so-called "chant":—
Two of the burlesques on "Arabian Nights" topics are from the pen of Francis Talfourd. First came—in 1852, at the Olympic—"Ganem, the Slave of Love" (with Miss Fanny Maskell as Fetnah, the caliph's favourite); and later—in 1854, at the St. James's—"Abon Hassan, or the Hunt after Happiness" (with Mr. Toole as Haroun-al-Raschid). In the former piece the wealth of felicitous punning is remarkable. Thus, in his very, first speech, Ganem, coming in intoxicated, says:—
In other places we read:—
(which is as true as it is witty);
"Abon Hassan" is less freely endowed with verbal pleasantry, but it has its fair share of puns, and the songs are numerous and bright. At the close, the hero, addressing the audience, allows himself to drop into the reflective mood:—
On German faërie our comic dramatists have not drawn at all largely. Such pieces as Gilbert Abbott a'Beckett's "Knight and the Sprite, or the Cold-Water Cure," with Ondine as its heroine; H. J. Byron's "Nymph of the Lurleyburg, or the Knight and the Naiads," based on the Lurline legend; and Mr. Burnand's "Rumpelstiltskin, or the Woman at the Wheel," founded on one of the Brothers Grimm's narratives, are exceptional incursions in this field. The first was seen at the Strand in 1884, with Mrs. Walter Lacy as Sir Hildebrand, and with Hall and Romer in other parts. "The Nymph of the Lurleyburg" has often done duty for the purposes of Christmas extravaganza. When it was first performed—in 1859—Miss Woolgar was the Sir Rupert the Reckless, Mr. Toole the Seneschal, and Paul Bedford the Baron Witz, the locale being the Adelphi. Mr. Burnand introduced into "Rumpelstiltskin" (Royalty, 1864) a few modifications of the German tale, inventing and importing new characters. In one of the scenes he furnished a diverting suggestion of the situation in "The Ticket of Leave Man," when there comes the sudden and effective revelation of "Hawkshaw the Detective!" Among the personæ are King Tagarag the Tremendous, Prince Poppet, Baron Higgle-de-Piggle, Wriggleletto (the court spy), Jolinosio (a miller), and Fraulein Splitaharter (the belle of the village). Miss Ada Cavendish was the Princess Superba.
"The Vampire"—a burlesque by Mr. Reece, which was played at the Strand in 1872—appears to have owed its origin about equally to the German legend, the romance which Lord Byron wrote on the subject, and the play which Dion Boucicault founded on the topic in 1852. As, however, the legend was the inspiration alike of romance, play, and travestie, the travestie may be mentioned here. Mr. Reece had drawn the Vampire as a being so fond of "blood," that he sought to possess it in the shape of the notebooks of two "sensation"-novelists, one of whom, Lady Audley Moonstone, was admirably represented by Mrs. Raymond.[32] The following specimen of the dialogue has been handed down to us. Some one says to a Welsh corporal:—
In the realm of Spanish legend there have been still fewer explorers. Albert Smith took one of Washington Irving's tales of the Alhambra, and fashioned it into "The Alhambra, or The Beautiful Princess," played at the Princess's in 1851, with the Keeleys, Wigan, Harley, Flexmore, and Miss Vivash. H. J. Byron afterwards went to the same source for "The Pilgrim of Love," in the first cast of which—at the Haymarket in 1860—we find the names of Mrs. Buckingham White as the Pilgrim, Chippendale as his tutor, Compton as the King of Toledo, Rogers as the King of Granada, and C. Coghlan as Mafoi, a Frenchman: a rather notable collocation of distinguished players.
The Fables of Æsop have inspired at least one travestie—"Leo the Terrible," by Stirling Coyne and Francis Talfourd. In this piece (brought out at the Haymarket in 1852) all the characters but four wore the heads of beasts or birds—a lion (Bland), a wolf (Buckstone), a fox, an owl, a ram, a poodle, a cat (Miss Maskell), and so on. The four exceptions were Sir Norval de Battersea, Timoleon Sindbad Potts (Keeley), Æsop, and Gay; and the play opened with a rencontre between the two last-named worthies. Æsop began with a vocal parody on "The Light of other Days":—
In the end, the various animals express repentance for the wrong they have committed; and Æsop, in recognition thereof, restores them to the shapes they formerly presented.
BURLESQUE OF HISTORY.
In this department the artists in travestie have not done so much as might have been expected. Even when we include in the word "history" such things as myths, legends, and traditions, we find that the historical, in comparison with the other fields open to the parodists, has been quite "second favourite." 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 story of Rome has supplied subjects for two of the most notable burlesques of the past twenty years—the "Romulus and Remus" of Mr. Reece, and the "Field Marshal Julius Cnæsar" of Mr. Burnand. The former was played at the Vaudeville in 1872, and had for its chief interpreters Messrs. James and Thorne, who had not yet wholly surrendered burlesque for comedy. Mr. James was Romulus, and Mr. Thorne was Remus; and they came on in the first scene as children, dressed in pinafores and socks, and carrying toys. The pair begin by quarrelling as to which of them was born first. Remus rests his claim on his superior size:—
To which Romulus replies:—
When the two grow up (as they do between the first scene and the second), the question is, which is to be King of Rome—a question decided eventually by personal combat, in which Remus falls. Ultimately the pair decide to be partners in the throne—an obvious allusion to the position held by the two actors in reference to the Vaudeville Theatre.
The date of the production of "Romulus and Remus" (1872) could be fixed by the aid of a brief passage introduced in travestie of a scene between Cromwell and the King in Mr. Wills's "Charles I.," then "running" at the Lyceum. Early in the piece we have these lines:—
Later, Remus says to Romulus:—
In this piece Apollo (Miss Nelly Power) figures as a sort of Chorus, commenting on the action and interposing in it; while Baccharia (Miss Maria Rhodes) is represented as the sister of Tatius and a husband-huntress. The burlesque has all Mr. Reece's ingenuity in jeu-de-mot work. For instance:—
Mr. Burnand's "Julius Cnæsar" made the walls of the Royalty resound with laughter in the autumn of 1870. In the spring of 1869 William Brough had brought out at the Strand his version of the tale of Joan of Arc, whom he represented as the leader of a troop of Amazons, extremely interested in Woman's Rights. She comes, as in history, to the French king's assistance; but, falling in love with a young English soldier, is captured by the invaders and condemned to resume female attire,—a sentence which in the end she manages to evade. A leading part is played by the Duke of Burgundy, who is for ever uncertain on which side he shall fight, and whose name provides frequent opportunity for punning. Thus:—
Again:—
Here, too, is a clever bit of word-play:—
On this occasion Joan was impersonated by Mr. Thomas Thorne, Mr. David James being the Duke of Burgundy, Miss Eleanor Button the King, Miss Bella Goodall the Dunois, and Miss Amy Sheridan the Lionel. In the present year Joan of Arc has again become the subject of "respectful perversion,"—this time by Messrs. J. L. Shine and "Adrian Ross," and after a fashion to which I shall draw attention in my final chapter.
Of foreign notabilities, the only other subject of burlesque worth mentioning is Christopher Columbus, who gave the title to, and was the principal character in, a piece written by Mr. Alfred Thompson, and performed at the Gaiety two-and-thirty years ago. He was also the hero of a travestie by John Brougham, played in America.
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. He is looking forward to wed Guinevere (Miss Wright), when suddenly she is captured by Cheldric, the Saxon invader, from whom, however, she is successfully re-captured by the aid of Vivien (Miss Romer) as the wielder of Merlin's wand. Sir Launcelot (Miss Lindley) is exhibited less as the lover of Guinevere than as a warrior; another prominent knight is the cowardly Sir Key, represented by Compton. Of direct parody, as I have said, the piece has little; of punning, as usual, it is all compact. Vivien says to Merlin:—
And again,—
Arthur says to Guinevere:—
Also, when he has lost his ladle-love:—
Guinevere, on her part, is equally afflicted with the punning mania. While immured in Cheldric's castle, she soliloquises:—
In Australia, twenty-three years ago, there was produced a burlesque called "King Arthur, or Launcelot the Loose, Gin-ever the Square, and the Knights of the Round Table, and other Furniture"; the perpetrator's name was W. M. Akhurst. Of recent years, the only prominent travestie of the subject has been that produced in 1889, by Messrs. Richard Butler and Henry Chance Newton ("Richard-Henry"), who entitled their work "Launcelot the Lovely, or the Idol of the King." Here, again, Tennyson and Malory were both very loyally and lightly treated, and, though Mr. Arthur Roberts as Launcelot was eminently funny, the prepossessions of the audience were in no way shocked.
The romantic tale of the loves of Fair Rosamond and His Majesty Henry II. has naturally attracted the notice of the travestie writers. In one instance, I regret to record, it fared very ill at the hands of the "dramatist." One T. P. Taylor brought out at Sadler's Wells in the 'thirties a one-act piece which he called "Fair Rosamond according to the History of England," in which the story was at once modernised and degraded. Henry became a Mr. Henry King—"a ruler, having been a stationer"; the Queen necessarily figured as "Mrs. Ellinor King." Rosamond herself was transmogrified into "a black girl, fair yet faulty," talking in "darkey" patois, and furnished with a father, black like herself, who combined the profession of fiddler and boot-black. The piece appears to have been successful in its day, but, to read, it is both vulgar and without a spark of wit.
Happily, the subject was taken up in our own time by Mr. Burnand, whose "Fair Rosamond, or the Maze, the Maid, and the Monarch," seen at the Olympic in 1862, is among the most vivacious of his productions.[34] Here the writer boldly breaks away from historical tradition. He makes Henry in love with Rosamond, it is true; but Rosamond (Miss Hughes), on her side, has given her heart to Sir Pierre de Bonbon (Horace Wigan)—a Frenchman, as his name betokens. As Rosamond sings in the finale:—