Rosamond, therefore, being innocent, it stands to reason that it would not be fair to poison her, as in the story; and so the Queen (played originally by Robson) is made to excuse her clemency in not forcing the girl to accept the "cup" she offers her:—
One of the most amusing scenes in the burlesque is that in which Ellinor meets Henry for the first time after hearing of his infidelity:—
Following the stream of time, we arrive next at a travestie of the insurrection, in the reign of Richard II., in which Wat Tyler was the prime mover. Tyler deserves celebration in the history of burlesque as the hero of the only work of this kind produced by Mr. George Augustus Sala. This well-known littérateur came out as a writer of travestie at the Gaiety in 1869, but has not been tempted to repeat the achievement. The fact is to be regretted, for his "Wat Tyler, M.P." had many strokes of wit and satire. Wat, being named Tyler, naturally became, in a piece of this genre, a hatter. He is portrayed as aspiring to Parliament, succeeding in his candidature, resisting payment of a tax upon chignons, heading a revolt against the powers that were, penetrating triumphantly into the royal palace, there getting drunk, and being, in the end, overpowered by the forces of the King. In his address to the electors from the hustings, there is a pleasant amalgam of pun and sarcasm. Tyler (who was impersonated by Mr. Toole) begins by saying:—
Beaumanners, who is in love with Tyler's daughter Ellen (Miss Constance Loseby), was represented by Miss Ellen Farren,[35] to whom Mr. Sala assigned the delivery of some of his best puns—as, for instance:—
Jane Shore has been the heroine of a burlesque written by Mr. Wilton Jones, and brought out in the provinces eleven years ago. Messrs. "Richard Henry" have also composed a travestie of her story, as handed down by chroniclers. In Mr. Jones's piece reliance was placed, as of old, upon humorous situation and ear-splitting pun. I give an example of both qualities. Jane has denounced Richard, Duke of Gloucester, as the murderer of the Princes in the Tower, and he now proclaims her doom:—
In three well-known travesties, Henry VIII. plays the most conspicuous part—in William Brough's "Field of the Cloth of Gold" (1868, Strand), in Mr. Burnand's "Windsor Castle" (Strand, 1865), and Mr. Conway Edwardes' "Anne Boleyn" (Royalty, 1872). I name these in the order in which they deal with historical events. In "The Field of the Cloth of Gold" Katherine of Arragon is Queen, with Anne Boleyn (Miss F. Hughes) as maid of honour and (as Her Majesty suspects) a rival. To this suspicion Anne makes reference in the following lines:—
In "Windsor Castle" the King is in love, more or less, with Anne (Mr. Thomas Thorne), but inclined to let his vagrant fancy wander after Mabel Lynwood (Miss Ada Swanborough), who turns out to be Anne's sister. Anne, it is recorded, sang like a siren, and was especially addicted to a few French ditties. Of these Mr. Burnand makes her sing a diverting parody, printed, in "the book of the play," in French "as she is pronounced." The song is called
Charnsunnette d'Anne Boleyn,
Arngtitulay
"Ler Shevaliay ay sar Bellay."
I.
In "Anne Boleyn," again, Anne (E. Danvers) is at last Queen, but with her life embittered by King Henry's flirtations with Jane Seymour (Miss Harriet Coveney). Thus, in one place, Anne exclaims:—
The King himself describes the course of his feelings towards Anne in the following ditty:—
"The Field of the Cloth of Gold" (which was revived in London, with only tolerable success, a year or two ago) has to do mainly with the meeting of Henry VIII. and Francis I. (Mr. David James) on that historic spot—an event which is here surrounded with the most ludicrous circumstances possible. There is a sub-plot which deals with the loves of Constance de Grey (Miss A. Swanborough) and the Earl of Darnley (Miss Lydia Thompson), as interrupted and jeopardised by the pretensions and machinations of Sir Guy the Cripple (Mr. Thomas Thorne). The comic incidents are somewhat pantomimical, and the main merit of the piece lies in the humour of its dialogue, which is always sparkling. One of the puns in this burlesque is among the very best ever perpetrated, and is, indeed, a historical possession. Need I quote it? The King has crossed over from Dover to Calais on a stormy day, and arrives in a very "indisposed" condition:—
But the piece is full of quips almost equally good. Mark the puns that the two kings fire off at each other when they foregather on the Field of the Cloth of Gold:—
After this, one thinks comparatively little of such sallies as:—
At one point we have:—
Surrey, in "Windsor Castle," is represented not only as poet but as composer, and in the combined characters puts together a love song addressed to his Geraldine. Unfortunately, when he comes to sing it to her, he finds he has forgotten some of the words:—
"Anne Boleyn" is particularly prolific in good puns, in the making of which the author showed himself an adept. It would be a pleasure to quote a few of them, but I give instead some lines in which, speaking through the mouth of one of his characters, the writer satirises the methods of the old-fashioned drama:—
Good Queen Bess was added to Mr. Burnand's gallery in 1870, when his "E-liz-a-beth, or the Don, the Duck, the Drake, and the Invisible Armada," was brought out at the Vaudeville, with Mr. Thorne as the Queen, Mr. David James as Whiskerandos, and George Honey as Drake. The "Maiden Queen" has not been greatly tantalised by the burlesque writers, who, on the other hand, have made very free with a gentleman who much disturbed her successor—Guy Fawkes. Mr. Burnand handled him in 1866 (at the Strand); H. J. Byron followed suit at the Gaiety in 1874; last year we had the "Guy Fawkes, Esq." of Messrs. "A. C. Torr" (Fred Leslie) and H. F. Clark; and I believe that Mr. Wilton Jones, too, has written a travestie on the subject. Charles II. was burlesqued by Mr. Gilbert Arthur a'Beckett in 1872, the locale being the Court Theatre, and the full title of the piece "Charles II., or Something like History." In this, as in Mr. Reece's "Romulus and Remus," there was some parody of the Lyceum "Charles I."—Mr. Righton, as Cromwell, imitating both Mr. Irving and George Belmore, besides indulging in the cancan! W. J. Hill was the King, and Mme. Cornèlie D'Anka the Queen (Catherine of Braganza). Pepys, Rochester, and Lily the Astrologer also figured in the piece. Cromwell was afterwards the leading personage in the "Oliver Grumble" of Mr. George Dance (Novelty, 1886).
About the names of such heroes and heroines as the Lady Godiva, Dick Whittington, Robin Hood, Herne the Hunter, and those distinguished footpads Claude Duval and Dick Turpin, there hangs a good deal that is clearly mythical. Still, some myths have more real vitality than absolute fact; and who does not believe firmly that the Lady Godiva rode round Coventry "clothed on" with nothing but her chastity, and, by taking away a grinding tax, "built herself an everlasting name"? Her adventure has been burlesqued at least twice—once by Francis Talfourd and a collaborator, at another time by Mr. H. Chance Newton. The Talfourd piece was called "Godiva, or Ye Ladye of Coventrie and Ye Exyle Fayrie" and produced at the Strand in 1851. Mr. Newton christened his work "Giddy Godiva." In the earlier burlesque, "ye exyle fayrie" Ignota (Miss Romer) is introduced merely as a dea ex machinâ in the interests of the heroine (Miss Marshall), who, in a passage of Shakespearean reminiscence, discusses the undertaking to which she has been incited by her husband:—
A prominent character in the piece is Our Own Reporter, "Ye Specyall Commyssionere and Correspondente of ye Busie Bee" (John Reeve), who would fain play the part of Peeping Tom, and who, early in the play, sings a song wittily descriptive of his ordinary avocations:—
Three burlesques have been devoted to the life and adventures of Sir Richard Whittington. There was, first, the "Whittington Junior, and his Sensation Cat," of Mr. Reece (Royalty, 1870); next, the "Young Dick Whittington" of Mr. Wilton Jones (Leicester, 1881); and next, the "Whittington and his Cat" of Mr. Burnand (Gaiety, 1881). Mr. Reece had Miss Henrietta Hodson (Mrs. Labouchere) for his Whittington, while Miss Farren was Mr. Burnand's. Robin Hood has had at least as many burlesque biographies as Whittington. A travestie, written by Stocqueler, Shirley Brooks, and Charles Kenny, and produced at the Lyceum in 1846, with the Keeleys, Wigan and Frank Matthews, was followed in 1862, at the Olympic, by one from the pen of Mr. Burnand. Mr. Reece wrote one, called "Little Robin Hood," which was seen at the Royalty in 1871, and this was revived—in three-act form—at the Gaiety in 1882, with Mr. Arthur Williams as a particularly droll Richard I. Robin Hood, it may also be noted, was a prominent character in Mr. Burnand's "Hit or 'Miss,'" at the Olympic in 1868. Herne the Hunter (who has a place in Mr. Burnand's "Windsor Castle") was made the leading personage in, and gave the title to, a travestie composed by Messrs. Reece and Yardley, and performed at the Gaiety in 1881. Five years later, at the Folly, we had "Herne the Hunted," in which Mr. H. P. Stephens had a hand, as well as Messrs. Yardley and Reece. Claude Duval was turned into a burlesque hero by Mr. Burnand, and strutted his hour upon the stage at the Royalty in 1869; followed longo intervallo by Turpin—here called "Dandy Dick Turpin, the Mashing Highwayman,"—whom Mr. Geoffrey Thorn (Charles Townley) made the chief personage of a travestie performed in London in 1889.
BURLESQUE OF SHAKESPEARE.
Travestie of the drama and things dramatic has naturally played a large part in the history of English stage burlesque. Side by side with the producers and interpreters of tragedy, melodrama, and plays of sentiment, have been the possessors of the humorous spirit, who—whether as writers or as actors—have been quick to see the points in which works of serious plan and treatment have been open to the shafts of ridicule and raillery. As we have seen, most of the earliest efforts in English stage burlesque were directed against the extravagant tragedies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As time went on, and the limits of the serious drama became more extended, so did the limits of burlesque expand, and, from the days of John Poole downwards, the large variety of serious dramatic production has co-existed with a corresponding variety in the subject and style of the travesties submitted to the public.
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 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 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. Two years later, in the course of his preface to the fourth edition of his work, Poole ironically congratulated "those who, on its first appearance, were apprehensive for the reputation of Shakespeare," upon the fact "that, notwithstanding Three Editions already before the public, he is neither expelled from our libraries, nor banished from our stage."
The truth is, a brilliant burlesque does harm to nobody; and a bad burlesque does but recoil upon the head of its author and his exponents. Poole's "Hamlet Travestie" is marked by the best intentions, but, as a whole, it makes dreary reading. The opening colloquy between Hamlet, King Claudius, and Queen Gertrude will give, to those who have not already perused the piece, a notion of the quality of the dialogue:—
It was part of Poole's method to put the soliloquies into the form of songs, and so we find the lines beginning "O that this too too solid flesh would melt!" appearing in the following form:—
The time-honoured "To be or not to be" is sung in this version to the tune of "Here we go up, up, up":—
The "annotations" appended to the text of the burlesque are in parody of the performances of the commentators, who at least are fair game for chaff of this sort, and on whom Poole, in his preface, lavishes some excellent indignation.
Of subsequent burlesques of "Hamlet" there have not been many, but some of them have been really clever and commendable. There was, for instance, Talfourd's, published at Oxford in 1849; there was the "Hamlet à la Mode" of Messrs. G. L. Gordon and G. W. Anson, performed at Liverpool in 1877; there was the "Very Little Hamlet" of Mr. William Yardley, seen at the Gaiety in 1884; and last, but assuredly not least, we have had the "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern" of Mr. Gilbert, which, written originally without thought either of public or of private representation, has been enacted at a benefit matinée during the present year.
In "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern," which is an unpretentious little "skit," covering only some sixteen or seventeen printed pages, Mr. Gilbert supposes that Hamlet is the son (not the step-son) of Claudius. "Rosencrantz is a lover of Ophelia, to whom Hamlet is betrothed, and they lay their heads together to devise a plan by which Hamlet may be put out of the way. Some Court theatricals are in preparation." Now, once upon a time, Claudius had written a tragedy, which was damned, and to which no one is allowed to make reference on pain of death. "Ophelia and Rosencrantz persuade Hamlet to play his father's tragedy before the king and court. Hamlet, who is unaware of the proscription, does so; and he is banished, and Rosencrantz happily united to Ophelia."
In the first act, Rosencrantz, who has never seen Hamlet (apparently, because the former has been abroad), asks Ophelia what the Prince is like, and that gives Mr. Gilbert an opportunity for some characteristic satire. Ophelia says of Hamlet that he is "alike for no two seasons at a time":—