Burlesque (genre)
Encyclopedia
Victorian burlesque, sometimes known as travesty or extravaganza, is a genre of theatrical entertainment that was popular in Victorian
England and in the New York theatre of the mid 19th century. It is a form of parody
in which a well-known opera or piece of classical theatre or ballet is adapted into a broad comic play, usually a musical play, usually risqué in style, mocking the theatrical and musical conventions and styles of the original work, and often quoting or pastiching
text or music from the original work. Victorian burlesque is one of several forms of burlesque
.
Like ballad opera
, burlesques featured musical scores drawing on a wide range of music, from popular contemporary songs to operatic arias, although later burlesques, from the 1880s, sometimes featured original scores. Dance played an important part, and great attention was paid to the staging, costumes and other spectacular elements of stagecraft, as many of the pieces were staged as extravaganza
s. Many of the male roles were played by actresses as breeches role
s, purposely to show off their physical charms, and some of the older female roles were taken by male actors.
Originally short, one-act pieces, burlesques were later full-length shows, occupying most or all of an evening's programme. Authors who wrote burlesques included J. R. Planché, H. J. Byron, G. R. Sims, F. C. Burnand, W. S. Gilbert
and Fred Leslie.
. The word "burlesque" is derived from the Italian burla, which means "ridicule or mockery". According to the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
, Victorian burlesque was "related to and in part derived from pantomime
and may be considered an extension of the introductory section of pantomime with the addition of gags and 'turns'." Another antecedent was ballad opera
, in which new words were fitted to existing tunes.
Madame Vestris produced burlesques at the Olympic Theatre
beginning in 1831 with Olympic Revels by J. R. Planché. In these pieces, comedy stemmed from the incongruity and absurdity of the grand classical subjects, with realistic historical dress and settings, being juxtaposed with the everyday modern activities portrayed by the actors. For example, Olympic Revels opens with the gods of Olympus in classical Greek dress playing whist
. In the early burlesques, the words of the songs were written to popular music, as had been done earlier in The Beggar's Opera
. Later in the Victorian era, burlesque mixed operetta
, music hall
and revue
, and some of the large-scale burlesque spectacles were known as extravaganza
s. The English style of burlesque was successfully launched in New York in the 1840s by the manager and comedian William Mitchell, who had opened his Olympic Theatre in December 1839. Like the London prototypes, his burlesques included characters with nonsensical names such as Wunsuponatyme and The King of Neverminditsnamia, and made fun of all kinds of music currently being presented in the city.
Unlike pantomime, which aimed at all ages and classes, burlesque was aimed at a narrower, highly literate audience; some writers, such as the Brough brothers, aimed at a conservative middle class audience, and H. J. Byron's success was attributed to his skill in appealing to the lower middle classes. Some of the most frequent subjects for burlesque were the plays of Shakespeare and grand opera. From the 1850s onwards, burlesquing of Italian, French and, later in the century, German opera was popular with London audiences. Verdi
's Il trovatore
and La traviata
received their British premieres in 1855 and 1856 respectively; British burlesques of them followed quickly. Our Lady of the Cameleon by Leicester Silk Buckingham
and Our Traviata by William F. Vandervell (both 1857) were followed by five different burlesque treatments of Il trovatore, two of them by H. J. Byron: Ill Treated Trovatore, or the Mother the Maiden and the Musicianer (1863) and Il Trovatore or Larks with a Libretto (1880). The operas of Bellini
, Bizet
, Donizetti
, Gounod
, Handel
, Meyerbeer
, Mozart
, Rossini, Wagner
and Weber
were burlesqued. In a 2003 study of the subject, Roberta Montemorra Marvin noted:
W. S. Gilbert
wrote five opera burlesques early in his career, beginning with Dulcamara, or the Little Duck and the Great Quack
(1866), the most successful of which was Robert the Devil
(1868). In the 1870s, Lydia Thompson
's burlesque troupe, with Willie Edouin
, became famous for their burlesques, by such authors as H. B. Farnie and Robert Reece
, both in Britain and the U.S.
The Shakespeare scholar Stanley Wells
notes that although parodies of Shakespeare had appeared even in Shakespeare's lifetime, the heyday of Shakespearean burlesque was the Victorian era. Wells observes that the typical Victorian Shakespeare burlesque "takes a Shakespeare play as its point of departure and creates from it a mainly comic entertainment, often in ways that bear no relation to the original play." Wells gives, as an example of the puns in the texts, the following: Macbeth and Banquo make their first entrance under an umbrella. The witches greet them with "Hail! hail! hail!": Macbeth asks Banquo, "What mean these salutations, noble thane?" and is told "These showers of 'Hail' anticipate your 'reign'". Musically, Shakespearean burlesques were as varied as the others of the genre. An 1859 burlesque of Romeo and Juliet
contained 23 musical numbers, some from opera, such as the serenade from Don Pasquale
, and some from traditional airs and popular songs of the day including "Buffalo Gals
", and "Nix my Dolly".
The dialogue for burlesques was generally written in rhyming couplets, or, less often, in other verse forms, such as blank verse; it was notable for its bad pun
s. For example, in Faust up to Date
(1888), a couplet reads:
According to Grove, although "an almost indispensable element of burlesque was the display of attractive women dressed in tights, often in travesty roles
... the plays themselves did not normally tend to indecency." Some contemporary critics took a sterner view; in an 1885 article, the critic Thomas Heyward praised Planché ("fanciful and elegant") and Gilbert ("witty, never vulgar"), but wrote of the genre as a whole, "the flashy, 'leggy', burlesque, with its 'slangy' songs, loutish 'breakdowns', vulgar jests, paltry puns and witless grimacing at all that is graceful and poetic is simply odious. … Burlesque, insensate, spiritless and undiscriminating, demoralizes both the audience and the players. It debases the public taste." Gilbert expressed his own views on the worth of burlesque:
In his 1859 Longfellow
burlesque Hi-A-Wa-Tha, the American playwright Charles Walcot encapsulated the character of burlesque in the epilogue, addressed to the audience by Mrs. John Wood
as Minnehaha:
In a similar vein, ten years later, Gilbert gave an English viewpoint on burlesque, in his epilogue to The Pretty Druidess
:
Burlesque became the specialty of London's Gaiety Theatre
and Royal Strand Theatre
from the 1860s to the early 1890s. In the 1860s and 1870s, burlesques were often one-act pieces running less than an hour and using pastiche
s and parodies of popular songs, opera aria
s and other music that the audience would readily recognize. Nellie Farren
starred as the theatre's "principal boy" from 1868, and John D'Auban
choreographed the Gaiety burlesques from 1868 to 1891. Edward O'Connor Terry
joined the theatre in 1876. Early Gaiety burlesques included Robert the Devil
(1868, by Gilbert), The Bohemian G-yurl and the Unapproachable Pole (1877), Blue Beard (1882), Ariel (1883, by F. C. Burnand) and Galatea, or Pygmalion Reversed
(1883).
Beginning in the 1880s, when comedian-writer Fred Leslie joined the theatre, composers like Meyer Lutz
and Osmond Carr contributed original music to the burlesques, which were extended to a full-length two or three act format. These later Gaiety burlesques starred Farren and Leslie. They often included Leslie's libretti, written under his pseudonym, "A. C. Torr", and were usually given an original score by Lutz: Little Jack Sheppard
(1885), Monte Cristo, Jr. (1886), Pretty Esmeralda (1887), Frankenstein, or The Vampire's Victim
(1887), Mazeppa and Faust up to date
(1888). Ruy Blas and the Blasé Roué
(1889) made fun of the play Ruy Blas
by Victor Hugo
. The title was a pun, and the worse the pun, the more Victorian audiences were amused. The last Gaiety burlesques were Carmen up to Data
(1890), Cinder Ellen up too Late
(1891), and Don Juan (1892, with lyrics by Adrian Ross
).
In the early 1890s, Farren retired, Leslie died, and musical burlesque went out of fashion in London, as the focus of the Gaiety and other burlesque theatres changed to the new genre of Edwardian musical comedy
. In 1896, Seymour Hicks
declared that burlesque "is dead as a doornail and will never be revived." From her retirement, Nellie Farren endorsed this judgment.
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
England and in the New York theatre of the mid 19th century. It is a form of parody
Parody music
Parody music, or musical parody, involves changing or recycling existing musical ideas or lyrics — or copying the peculiar style of a composer or artist, or even a general style of music. Although the result is often funny, and this is the usual intent — the term "parody" in musical terms also...
in which a well-known opera or piece of classical theatre or ballet is adapted into a broad comic play, usually a musical play, usually risqué in style, mocking the theatrical and musical conventions and styles of the original work, and often quoting or pastiching
Pastiche
A pastiche is a literary or other artistic genre or technique that is a "hodge-podge" or imitation. The word is also a linguistic term used to describe an early stage in the development of a pidgin language.-Hodge-podge:...
text or music from the original work. Victorian burlesque is one of several forms of burlesque
Burlesque
Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects...
.
Like ballad opera
Ballad opera
The term ballad opera is used to refer to a genre of English stage entertainment originating in the 18th century and continuing to develop in the following century and later. There are many types of ballad opera...
, burlesques featured musical scores drawing on a wide range of music, from popular contemporary songs to operatic arias, although later burlesques, from the 1880s, sometimes featured original scores. Dance played an important part, and great attention was paid to the staging, costumes and other spectacular elements of stagecraft, as many of the pieces were staged as extravaganza
Extravaganza
An extravaganza is a literary or musical work characterized by freedom of style and structure and usually containing elements of burlesque, pantomime, music hall and parody. It sometimes also has elements of cabaret, circus, revue, variety, vaudeville and mime...
s. Many of the male roles were played by actresses as breeches role
Breeches role
A breeches role is a role in which an actress appears in male clothing .In opera it also refers to any male character that is sung and acted by a female singer...
s, purposely to show off their physical charms, and some of the older female roles were taken by male actors.
Originally short, one-act pieces, burlesques were later full-length shows, occupying most or all of an evening's programme. Authors who wrote burlesques included J. R. Planché, H. J. Byron, G. R. Sims, F. C. Burnand, W. S. Gilbert
W. S. Gilbert
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S...
and Fred Leslie.
History
Burlesque theatre became popular around the beginning of the Victorian eraVictorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
. The word "burlesque" is derived from the Italian burla, which means "ridicule or mockery". According to the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, it is the largest single reference work on Western music. The dictionary has gone through several editions since the 19th century...
, Victorian burlesque was "related to and in part derived from pantomime
Pantomime
Pantomime — not to be confused with a mime artist, a theatrical performer of mime—is a musical-comedy theatrical production traditionally found in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, India, Ireland, Gibraltar and Malta, and is mostly performed during the...
and may be considered an extension of the introductory section of pantomime with the addition of gags and 'turns'." Another antecedent was ballad opera
Ballad opera
The term ballad opera is used to refer to a genre of English stage entertainment originating in the 18th century and continuing to develop in the following century and later. There are many types of ballad opera...
, in which new words were fitted to existing tunes.
Olympic Theatre
The Olympic Theatre, sometimes known as the Royal Olympic Theatre, was a 19th-century London theatre, opened in 1806 and located at the junction of Drury Lane, Wych Street, and Newcastle Street. The theatre specialised in comedies throughout much of its existence...
beginning in 1831 with Olympic Revels by J. R. Planché. In these pieces, comedy stemmed from the incongruity and absurdity of the grand classical subjects, with realistic historical dress and settings, being juxtaposed with the everyday modern activities portrayed by the actors. For example, Olympic Revels opens with the gods of Olympus in classical Greek dress playing whist
Whist
Whist is a classic English trick-taking card game which was played widely in the 18th and 19th centuries. It derives from the 16th century game of Trump or Ruff, via Ruff and Honours...
. In the early burlesques, the words of the songs were written to popular music, as had been done earlier in The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satirical ballad opera to remain popular today...
. Later in the Victorian era, burlesque mixed operetta
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...
, music hall
Music hall
Music Hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment which was popular between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to:# A particular form of variety entertainment involving a mixture of popular song, comedy and speciality acts...
and revue
Revue
A revue is a type of multi-act popular theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance and sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century American popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural presence of its own during its golden years from 1916 to 1932...
, and some of the large-scale burlesque spectacles were known as extravaganza
Extravaganza
An extravaganza is a literary or musical work characterized by freedom of style and structure and usually containing elements of burlesque, pantomime, music hall and parody. It sometimes also has elements of cabaret, circus, revue, variety, vaudeville and mime...
s. The English style of burlesque was successfully launched in New York in the 1840s by the manager and comedian William Mitchell, who had opened his Olympic Theatre in December 1839. Like the London prototypes, his burlesques included characters with nonsensical names such as Wunsuponatyme and The King of Neverminditsnamia, and made fun of all kinds of music currently being presented in the city.
Unlike pantomime, which aimed at all ages and classes, burlesque was aimed at a narrower, highly literate audience; some writers, such as the Brough brothers, aimed at a conservative middle class audience, and H. J. Byron's success was attributed to his skill in appealing to the lower middle classes. Some of the most frequent subjects for burlesque were the plays of Shakespeare and grand opera. From the 1850s onwards, burlesquing of Italian, French and, later in the century, German opera was popular with London audiences. Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
's Il trovatore
Il trovatore
Il trovatore is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Salvadore Cammarano, based on the play El Trovador by Antonio García Gutiérrez. Cammarano died in mid-1852 before completing the libretto...
and La traviata
La traviata
La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...
received their British premieres in 1855 and 1856 respectively; British burlesques of them followed quickly. Our Lady of the Cameleon by Leicester Silk Buckingham
Leicester Silk Buckingham
Leicester Silk Buckingham was an English dramatist, who achieved considerable popularity as a playwright, several of his free adaptations of French comedies being produced in London between 1860 and 1867.-Early life:...
and Our Traviata by William F. Vandervell (both 1857) were followed by five different burlesque treatments of Il trovatore, two of them by H. J. Byron: Ill Treated Trovatore, or the Mother the Maiden and the Musicianer (1863) and Il Trovatore or Larks with a Libretto (1880). The operas of Bellini
Vincenzo Bellini
Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini was an Italian opera composer. His greatest works are I Capuleti ed i Montecchi , La sonnambula , Norma , Beatrice di Tenda , and I puritani...
, Bizet
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet formally Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, was a French composer, mainly of operas. In a career cut short by his early death, he achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, became one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertory.During a...
, Donizetti
Gaetano Donizetti
Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti was an Italian composer from Bergamo, Lombardy. His best-known works are the operas L'elisir d'amore , Lucia di Lammermoor , and Don Pasquale , all in Italian, and the French operas La favorite and La fille du régiment...
, Gounod
Charles Gounod
Charles-François Gounod was a French composer, known for his Ave Maria as well as his operas Faust and Roméo et Juliette.-Biography:...
, Handel
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
, Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer was a noted German opera composer, and the first great exponent of "grand opera." At his peak in the 1830s and 1840s, he was the most famous and successful composer of opera in Europe, yet he is rarely performed today.-Early years:He was born to a Jewish family in Tasdorf , near...
, Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
, Rossini, Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
and Weber
Carl Maria von Weber
Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber was a German composer, conductor, pianist, guitarist and critic, one of the first significant composers of the Romantic school....
were burlesqued. In a 2003 study of the subject, Roberta Montemorra Marvin noted:
By the 1880s, almost every truly popular opera had become the subject of a burlesque. Generally appearing after an opera's premiere or following a successful revival, they usually enjoyed local production runs, often for a month or longer. The popularity of stage burlesque in general and operatic burlesque in particular seems to have stemmed from the many ways in which it entertained a diverse group, and the manner in which it fed and fed on the circus-like or carnivalesque atmosphere of public Victorian London.
W. S. Gilbert
W. S. Gilbert
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S...
wrote five opera burlesques early in his career, beginning with Dulcamara, or the Little Duck and the Great Quack
Dulcamara, or the Little Duck and the Great Quack
Dulcamara, or the Little Duck and the Great Quack, is one of the earliest plays written by W.S. Gilbert, his first solo stage success. The work is a musical burlesque of Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore, and the music was arranged by Mr. Van Hamme...
(1866), the most successful of which was Robert the Devil
Robert the Devil (Gilbert)
Robert the Devil, or The Nun, the Dun, and the Son of a Gun is an operatic parody by W. S. Gilbert of Giacomo Meyerbeer's romantic opera Robert le diable, which was named after, but bears little resemblance to, the medieval French legend of the same name. Gilbert set new lyrics to tunes by...
(1868). In the 1870s, Lydia Thompson
Lydia Thompson
Lydia Thompson, born Eliza Hodges Thompson , was an English dancer, actress and theatrical producer....
's burlesque troupe, with Willie Edouin
Willie Edouin
Willie Edouin was an English comedian, actor, dancer, singer, writer, director and theatre manager.After performing as a child in England, Australia and elsewhere, Edouin moved to America, where he joined Lydia Thompson's burlesque troupe, performing with this company both in the U.S. and Britain...
, became famous for their burlesques, by such authors as H. B. Farnie and Robert Reece
Robert Reece
Robert Reece was a British comic playwright and librettist active in the Victorian era. He wrote many successful musical burlesques, comic operas, farces and adaptations from the French, including the English-language adaptation of the operetta Les cloches de Corneville, which became the...
, both in Britain and the U.S.
The Shakespeare scholar Stanley Wells
Stanley Wells
Stanley William Wells, CBE, is a Shakespeare scholar and Chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.Wells took his first degree at University College, London, and was awarded an honorary DLitt by the University of Warwick in 2008...
notes that although parodies of Shakespeare had appeared even in Shakespeare's lifetime, the heyday of Shakespearean burlesque was the Victorian era. Wells observes that the typical Victorian Shakespeare burlesque "takes a Shakespeare play as its point of departure and creates from it a mainly comic entertainment, often in ways that bear no relation to the original play." Wells gives, as an example of the puns in the texts, the following: Macbeth and Banquo make their first entrance under an umbrella. The witches greet them with "Hail! hail! hail!": Macbeth asks Banquo, "What mean these salutations, noble thane?" and is told "These showers of 'Hail' anticipate your 'reign'". Musically, Shakespearean burlesques were as varied as the others of the genre. An 1859 burlesque of Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...
contained 23 musical numbers, some from opera, such as the serenade from Don Pasquale
Don Pasquale
Don Pasquale is an opera buffa, or comic opera, in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. The librettist Giovanni Ruffini wrote the Italian language libretto after Angelo Anelli's libretto for Stefano Pavesi's Ser Marcantonio ....
, and some from traditional airs and popular songs of the day including "Buffalo Gals
Buffalo Gals
"Buffalo Gals" is a traditional American song, written and published as "Lubly Fan" in 1844 by the blackface minstrel John Hodges, who performed as "Cool White." The song was widely popular throughout the United States...
", and "Nix my Dolly".
Pun
The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use and abuse of homophonic,...
s. For example, in Faust up to Date
Faust up to date
Faust up to Date is a musical burlesque with a score written by Meyer Lutz . The libretto was written by G. R. Sims and Henry Pettitt...
(1888), a couplet reads:
- Mephistopheles: "Along the Riviera dudes her praises sing."
- Walerlie: "Oh, did you Riviera such a thing?"
According to Grove, although "an almost indispensable element of burlesque was the display of attractive women dressed in tights, often in travesty roles
Breeches role
A breeches role is a role in which an actress appears in male clothing .In opera it also refers to any male character that is sung and acted by a female singer...
... the plays themselves did not normally tend to indecency." Some contemporary critics took a sterner view; in an 1885 article, the critic Thomas Heyward praised Planché ("fanciful and elegant") and Gilbert ("witty, never vulgar"), but wrote of the genre as a whole, "the flashy, 'leggy', burlesque, with its 'slangy' songs, loutish 'breakdowns', vulgar jests, paltry puns and witless grimacing at all that is graceful and poetic is simply odious. … Burlesque, insensate, spiritless and undiscriminating, demoralizes both the audience and the players. It debases the public taste." Gilbert expressed his own views on the worth of burlesque:
The question whether burlesque has a claim to rank as art is, I think, one of degree. Bad burlesque is as far removed from true art as is a bad picture. But burlesque in its higher development calls for high intellectual power on the part of its professors. AristophanesAristophanesAristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete...
, Rabelais, Geo CruikshankGeorge CruikshankGeorge Cruikshank was a British caricaturist and book illustrator, praised as the "modern Hogarth" during his life. His book illustrations for his friend Charles Dickens, and many other authors, reached an international audience.-Early life:Cruikshank was born in London...
, the authors of the Rejected Addresses, John LeechJohn LeechJohn Leech was an English caricaturist and illustrator.-Early life:John Leech was born in London...
, Planché were all in their respective lines professors of true burlesque.
In his 1859 Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline...
burlesque Hi-A-Wa-Tha, the American playwright Charles Walcot encapsulated the character of burlesque in the epilogue, addressed to the audience by Mrs. John Wood
Mrs. John Wood
Mrs. John Wood , born Matilda Charlotte Vining, was an English actress and theatre manager.-Biography:...
as Minnehaha:
- Ye who love extravaganza,
- Love to laugh at all things funny,
- Love the bold anachronism.
- And the work of paste and scissors,
- And "the unities" destruction,
- Nigger airs, old glees, and catches,
- Interspersed with gems of Op'ra,
- Jokes and puns, good, bad, and so-so, –
- Come and see this mutilation,
- This disgraceful Hiawatha, Mongrel, doggerel Hiawatha!
In a similar vein, ten years later, Gilbert gave an English viewpoint on burlesque, in his epilogue to The Pretty Druidess
The Pretty Druidess
The Pretty Druidess; Or, The Mother, The Maid, and The Mistletoe Bough is an operatic burlesque by W. S. Gilbert. It was produced at the opening of the new Charing Cross Theatre on 19 June 1869 and ran until September of that year....
:
- So for burlesque I plead. Forgive our rhymes;
- Forgive the jokes you've heard five thousand times;
- Forgive each breakdown, cellar-flap, and clog,
- Our low-bred songs – our slangy dialogue;
- And, above all – oh, ye with double barrel –
- Forgive the scantiness of our apparel!
Gaiety Theatre
Gaiety Theatre, London
The Gaiety Theatre, London was a West End theatre in London, located on Aldwych at the eastern end of the Strand. The theatre was established as the Strand Musick Hall , in 1864 on the former site of the Lyceum Theatre. It was rebuilt several times, but closed from the beginning of World War II...
and Royal Strand Theatre
Royal Strand Theatre
The Royal Strand Theatre was located in Strand in the City of Westminster. The theatre was built on the site of a panorama in 1832, and in 1882 was rebuilt by the prolific theatre architect Charles J. Phipps...
from the 1860s to the early 1890s. In the 1860s and 1870s, burlesques were often one-act pieces running less than an hour and using pastiche
Pastiche
A pastiche is a literary or other artistic genre or technique that is a "hodge-podge" or imitation. The word is also a linguistic term used to describe an early stage in the development of a pidgin language.-Hodge-podge:...
s and parodies of popular songs, opera aria
Aria
An aria in music was originally any expressive melody, usually, but not always, performed by a singer. The term is now used almost exclusively to describe a self-contained piece for one voice usually with orchestral accompaniment...
s and other music that the audience would readily recognize. Nellie Farren
Nellie Farren
Nellie Farren was an English actress and singer best known for her roles as the "principal boy" in musical burlesques at the Gaiety Theatre.Born into a theatrical family, Farren began acting as a child...
starred as the theatre's "principal boy" from 1868, and John D'Auban
John D'Auban
Frederick John D'Auban was an English dancer, choreographer and actor of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Famous during his lifetime as the ballet-master at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, he is best remembered as the choreographer of many of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas.After performing as a...
choreographed the Gaiety burlesques from 1868 to 1891. Edward O'Connor Terry
Edward O'Connor Terry
Edward O'Connor Terry , English actor, who became one of the most influential actors and comedians of the Victorian era.-Life and career:...
joined the theatre in 1876. Early Gaiety burlesques included Robert the Devil
Robert the Devil (Gilbert)
Robert the Devil, or The Nun, the Dun, and the Son of a Gun is an operatic parody by W. S. Gilbert of Giacomo Meyerbeer's romantic opera Robert le diable, which was named after, but bears little resemblance to, the medieval French legend of the same name. Gilbert set new lyrics to tunes by...
(1868, by Gilbert), The Bohemian G-yurl and the Unapproachable Pole (1877), Blue Beard (1882), Ariel (1883, by F. C. Burnand) and Galatea, or Pygmalion Reversed
Galatea, or Pygmalion Reversed
Galatea, or Pygmalion Re-Versed is a musical burlesque that parodies the Pygmalion legend, and specifically W. S. Gilbert's play Pygmalion and Galatea. The libretto was written by Henry Pottinger Stephens and W. Webster. The score was composed by Wilhelm Meyer Lutz...
(1883).
Beginning in the 1880s, when comedian-writer Fred Leslie joined the theatre, composers like Meyer Lutz
Meyer Lutz
Wilhelm Meyer Lutz was a German-born English composer and conductor who is best known for light music, musical theatre and burlesques of well-known works....
and Osmond Carr contributed original music to the burlesques, which were extended to a full-length two or three act format. These later Gaiety burlesques starred Farren and Leslie. They often included Leslie's libretti, written under his pseudonym, "A. C. Torr", and were usually given an original score by Lutz: Little Jack Sheppard
Little Jack Sheppard
Little Jack Sheppard is a burlesque melodrama written by Henry Pottinger Stephens and William Yardley, with music by Meyer Lutz, with songs contributed by Florian Pascal, Corney Grain, Arthur Cecil, Michael Watson, Henry J. Leslie, Alfred Cellier and Hamilton Clarke...
(1885), Monte Cristo, Jr. (1886), Pretty Esmeralda (1887), Frankenstein, or The Vampire's Victim
Frankenstein, or The Vampire's Victim
Frankenstein, or The Vampire's Victim is a musical burlesque written by Richard Henry . The music was composed by Meyer Lutz...
(1887), Mazeppa and Faust up to date
Faust up to date
Faust up to Date is a musical burlesque with a score written by Meyer Lutz . The libretto was written by G. R. Sims and Henry Pettitt...
(1888). Ruy Blas and the Blasé Roué
Ruy Blas and the Blase Roue
Ruy Blas and the Blasé Roué is a burlesque written by A. C. Torr and Herbert F. Clark with music by Meyer Lutz. It is based on the Victor Hugo drama Ruy Blas. The piece was produced by George Edwardes. As with many of the Gaiety burlesques, the title is a pun...
(1889) made fun of the play Ruy Blas
Ruy Blas
Ruy Blas is a tragic drama by Victor Hugo. It was the first play presented at the Théâtre de la Renaissance and opened on November 8, 1838. Though considered by many to be Hugo’s best drama, the play initially met with only average success....
by Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
. The title was a pun, and the worse the pun, the more Victorian audiences were amused. The last Gaiety burlesques were Carmen up to Data
Carmen up to Data
Carmen up to Data is a musical burlesque with a score written by Meyer Lutz. The piece was a spoof of Bizet's 1875 opera Carmen. The libretto was written by G. R. Sims and Henry Pettitt....
(1890), Cinder Ellen up too Late
Cinder Ellen up too Late
Cinder Ellen up too Late is a musical burlesque written by Frederick Hobson Leslie and W. T. Vincent, with music arranged by Meyer Lutz from compositions by Lionel Monckton, Sidney Jones, Walter Slaughter, Osmond Carr, Scott Gatti, Jacobi, Robertson, and Leopold Wenzel. Additional lyrics were...
(1891), and Don Juan (1892, with lyrics by Adrian Ross
Adrian Ross
For the NFL player see Adrian Ross Arthur Reed Ropes , better known under the pseudonym Adrian Ross, was a prolific writer of lyrics, contributing songs to more than sixty British musical comedies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries...
).
In the early 1890s, Farren retired, Leslie died, and musical burlesque went out of fashion in London, as the focus of the Gaiety and other burlesque theatres changed to the new genre of Edwardian musical comedy
Edwardian Musical Comedy
Edwardian musical comedies were British musical theatre shows from the period between the early 1890s, when the Gilbert and Sullivan operas' dominance had ended, until the rise of the American musicals by Jerome Kern, Rodgers and Hart, George Gershwin and Cole Porter following World War I.Between...
. In 1896, Seymour Hicks
Seymour Hicks
Sir Arthur Seymour Hicks , better known as Seymour Hicks, was a British actor, music hall performer, playwright, screenwriter, theatre manager and producer. He married the actress Ellaline Terriss in 1893...
declared that burlesque "is dead as a doornail and will never be revived." From her retirement, Nellie Farren endorsed this judgment.
External links
- Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911: "Burlesque"
- Information about Burlesque from the PeoplePlay UK website
- Further information from the PeoplePlay UK website
- History of Burlesque at Musicals101.com, The Cyber Encyclopedia of Musical Theatre, TV and Film
- "A Guide to Classical Burlesque - Funny Ha Ha or Funny Peculiar?" Allan, K., The Curious Adventures of Kittie
- Behind the Burly Q. 2010 documentary film by Leslie ZemeckisRobert ZemeckisRobert Lee Zemeckis is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Zemeckis first came to public attention in the 1980s as the director of the comedic time-travel Back to the Future film series, as well as the Academy Award-winning live-action/animation epic Who Framed Roger Rabbit ,...