BURLESQUE OF FICTION AND SONG.

The writers of stage travestie have gone less to fiction for subject-matter than might have been expected. Half a dozen romances previous to Scott, half a dozen of Scott's own stories, about the same number of modern novels, and still fewer foreign masterpieces—these represent the sources of all the most important of the burlesques which have been based upon invented prose narrative.

The earliest of the tales which have been thus dealt with is "Robinson Crusoe." Of this time-honoured story, the first whimsical treatment was that which took the shape of a piece called "Crusoe the Second, or the Shipwrecked Milliners," presented at the Lyceum in 1847. This was written by Stocqueler, and had for interpreters Mr. and Mrs. Keeley, with Alfred Wigan (as Crusoe). It was followed, in 1860, at the Princess's, by the "Robinson Crusoe" of H. J. Byron. Seven years later, no fewer than six writers joined in the production of a perversion of Defoe's tale, brought out at the Haymarket in 1867, and bearing the names of H. J. Byron, W. S. Gilbert, T. Hood, jun., H. S. Leigh, W. J. Prowse, and Arthur Sketchley. In this (which was given at a matinÉe for the benefit of the family of Paul Gray, the artist) the parts were all sustained by well-known men of art and letters. After this there came, in 1876, at the Folly, the "Robinson Crusoe" of Mr. H. B. Farnie,[48] which, in its turn, was followed, just ten years later, by yet another arrangement of the story, in which Mr. Farnie had the co-operation of Mr. Reece.

To the Adelphi, in 1846, belongs an "extra extravagant extravaganza," founded by Gilbert Abbott a'Beckett and Mark Lemon on the "Peter Wilkins" of Robert Paltock (first printed in 1750). This burlesque had for its full title—"Peter Wilkins, or the Loadstone Rock and the Flying Indians," and had for its chief interpreters—Miss Woolgar as the hero, Paul Bedford as Jack Adams, and Miss E. Chaplin as Youriwkee. Dr. Johnson's "Rasselas" attracted the attention of William Brough, and was made, in 1862, the foundation of a burlesque produced at the Haymarket.

In 1765 Horace Walpole published his mediÆval imagining, "The Castle of Otranto," by which so many of us have in our youth been thrilled. In 1848 Gilbert Abbott a'Beckett set himself to make fun of its singularities, and the result was a very brightly written piece, enacted at the Haymarket.[49] In this, Manfred's son Conrad is found imprisoned under the gigantic helmet of Alphonso, and the distracted father at once begins to give way to comic word-splitting:—

In the opening scene, Hippolita, Conrad's mother, ventures to suggest to Manfred that the boy is not of marriageable age, sixteen summers not having yet passed o'er his head:—

In the year following the publication of "The Castle of Otranto," the "Vicar of Wakefield" was given to the world. It appears to have escaped travestie until 1885, when—thinking more, no doubt, of Mr. Wills's "Olivia" than of Goldsmith's chef d'oeuvre—Messrs. Stephens and Yardley brought out at the Gaiety "The Vicar of Wideawakefield," in which Mr. Arthur Roberts and Miss Laura Linden sought, not unsuccessfully, to reproduce and heighten some of the artistic peculiarities of Mr. Irving and Miss Ellen Terry. Mrs. Shelley's "Frankenstein," published in 1818, received its first dramatic reductio ad absurdum in 1849, when the Brothers Brough made it the subject of a burlesque;—its second in 1887, when Messrs. "Richard Henry" turned out at the Gaiety a travestie, of which I shall have something to say in my next chapter. In the Broughs' version Wright was Frankenstein and Paul Bedford the Monster, and much fun was made out of the finishing touches which Frankenstein gave to his work. "O." Smith, Miss Woolgar, and Miss Chaplin were also in the cast.

Sir Walter Scott's novels have obtained a fair amount of notice from the comic dramatists. "Ivanhoe," for example, has exercised the humorous powers of three—of Robert Brough (at the Haymarket in 1850), of H. J. Byron (at the Strand in 1862), and of T. F. Plowman (at the Court in 1871). Byron (who called his work "Ivanhoe in accordance with the Spirit of the Times"[50]) had the aid of Miss Charlotte Saunders as his Wilfred, of Charles Rice as his Brian de Bois-Guilbert, of "Johnny" Clarke as his Isaac of York, of Miss Eleanor Bufton as his Black Knight, of Miss Swanborough as Rowena, of Jenny Rogers as his Rebecca, and of Miss Polly Marshall, Miss Fanny Hughes, and Poynter in other parts. In the provinces he was his own Isaac of York.

"Isaac of York," by the way, was the title given by Mr. Plowman to his effort, which had a good deal of ingenuity and "go." Here, for example, is an extract from the scene at the banquet at which Cedric entertains his guests. Ivanhoe is soliloquising aside, and his utterances are interrupted by the demands of the personÆ sitting at table:—

In another scene Isaac gives vent to a piece of mock-heroic execration directed against Brian de Bois-Guilbert:—

Next to "Ivanhoe" in popularity for travestie we may place "Rob Roy." Mr. Sydney French took it in hand at the Marylebone in 1867, and Mr. William Lowe gave it a very Scotch rendering, in 1880, under the title of "Mr. Robert Roye, Hielan Helen his Wife, and Dougal the Dodger." But the "standard" burlesque on the subject is, of course, Mr. Burnand's "Robbing Roy" (Gaiety, 1879), in which Mr. Terry was such a diverting "Roy," with Miss Farren as Francis, Miss Vaughan as Diana, and Mr. Royce as an admirable Dougal. Of the "Bride of Lammermoor" there have been two burlesque versions—Oxberry's, at the Strand in 1848; and H. J. Byron's, at the Prince of Wales's in 1865. "Kenilworth" has been similarly honoured. There was the piece brought out at the Strand in 1858 by Andrew Halliday and a collaborator, and there was that which Messrs. Reece and Farnie contributed to the Avenue Theatre in 1885. "Guy Mannering" has engaged the attention of Mr. Burnand: we can all remember his "Here's another Guy Mannering," brought out at the Vaudeville in 1874. For the solitary travestie of "The Talisman," the late J. F. M'Ardle is responsible. It was first played at Liverpool in the year last named.

Lord Lytton's novels and romances have been ridiculed on the stage very much less frequently than have his dramas. "The Very Last Days of Pompeii," by Mr. Reece, and "The Last of the Barons," by Mr. Du Terreaux, are, so far as I know, the only stage works in which his prose fiction has been perverted. The former was seen at the Vaudeville in 1872, and the latter at the Strand in the same year. In "The Last of the Barons," Atkins was the Kingmaker, Mr. Edward Terry portraying Edward IV. as a great dandy, and endowing him with an amusing lisp.

When we turn to the stories of more recent times, we think at once of the "No Thoroughfare" of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, and of the "Foul Play" of Charles Reade and Dion Boucicault, as having suffered at the hands of the irreverent scribes. The former romance suggested to Hazlewood junior his "No Thorough-fair beyond Highbury, or the Maid, the Mother, and the Malicious Mountaineer." This was in 1868; and in the following year the elder George Grossmith emulated Hazlewood's example at the Victoria Theatre. "Foul Play" was parodied by Mr. Burnand, not only in the pages of Punch, but in "Fowl Play, or a Story of Chikkin Hazard," produced at the New Queers in 1868.[52] Of the bright writing in this "book," no better specimen could well be furnished than the song which Wylie sings in description of the scuttling of the Proserpine. This I give in full:—

Among other recent fictions which have obtained the distinction of stage travestie may be named "Lady Audley's Secret," "Little Lord Fauntleroy," and "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." In the first of these instances H. J. Byron was the operator—the scene, the St. James's Theatre in 1863. Mrs. Burnett's pretty conception was tortured into "The Other Little Lord Fondleboy" (1888), and Mr. Stevenson's weird invention into "The Real Case of Hide and Seekyll" (Royalty, 1888), for which the younger George Grossmith must bear the blame.

The literature of dramatic parody does not owe much to foreign fiction. Farnie gave us "Little Gil Bias" at the Princess's in 1870, and in the same year Mr. Arthur Wood produced at the Olympic a comic paraphrase of "Paul and Virginia." It was in 1870, too, that Messrs. Eldred and Paulton turned out, at Liverpool, "The Gay Musketeers," which was followed at the Strand in 1871 by "The Three Musket-Dears" of Messrs. J. and H. Paulton. Of the "Monte Cristo Junior" of Messrs. "Richard Henry" I shall have something to say anon.

Dividing Song for the moment into Poem and Ballad, we note that the poems of Lord Byron have been the inspiring cause of at least four notable burlesques. His lordship's "Don Juan" suggested the "Beautiful Haidee" of H. J. Byron (1863) and the "Don Juan Junior" of the "Brothers Prendergast" (1880); while his "Corsair" is the basis of William Brough's "Conrad and Medora" (Lyceum, 1856), and his "Bride of Abydos" prompted the piece with the same title which H. J. Byron wrote for the Strand Theatre. In "Conrad and Medora" Miss Marie Wilton was "the Little Fairy at the Bottom of the Sea," the title-parts being given to Miss Woolgar and Mrs. Charles Dillon, and that of Birbanto to Mr. Toole. The Bride of Abydos—Zuleika—had Miss Oliver for her representative.

With Byron it seems natural to associate his friend Tom Moore, whose "Lalla Rookh" has had exceptional favour with the parodists. Four of these have been fascinated by her charms—Mr. J. T. Denny in 1885, Mr. Horace Lennard in the previous year, Vincent Amcotts in 1866, and last, but not least, William Brough (at the Lyceum) in 1857. It was to be expected that, when travestying Moore, Brough should parody "The Minstrel Boy," and so we have from him the following lines, sung by Miss Woolgar as Feramorz:—

Elsewhere, Namouna, the Peri, gave utterance to the following reflections on the levelling power of love[53]:—

In this piece Mrs. Charles Dillon was the Lalla Rookh, and Mr. Toole represented "a fabulous personage, not found in the poem," called Khorsanbad.

One, at least, of our burlesque writers—Mr. Gilbert Arthur a'Beckett—has had the courage to tackle a poem of Coleridge; to wit, his "Christabel," from which, however, Mr. A'Beckett derived only certain suggestions for his work. In his "Christabel, or the Bard Bewitched," represented at the Court in 1872, the Bard, Bracy, was played by Mr. Righton, who made a special feature of a travestie of Mr. Irving in "The Bells." He pretended that he had murdered a muffin-man, and that, consuming all he could of the muffins left in the man's basket, he had deposited the remainder in the area. Miss Nelly Bromley was the Christabel.

Scott's "Lady of the Lake" gave Mr. Reece the idea for a burlesque performed at the Royalty in 1866. In the same year Andrew Halliday brought out at the Adelphi a comic piece, happily entitled "The Mountain Dhu, or the Knight, the Lady, and the Lake." Mr. Toole was the impersonator of the Mountain Dhu, Paul Bedford the Douglas, Miss Hughes the Malcolm Graeme, Miss Woolgar (Mrs. Mellon) the Fitzjames, and Miss Furtado the Lady of the Lake. "The Lady of the Lane" was the title given by H. J. Byron to the travestie from his pen which saw the light at the Strand in 1872. In this case Mr. Edward Terry was the Roderick and Miss Kate Bishop the Ellen, Mrs. Raymond making a great hit as the demented Blanche.

Our present Laureate provoked in 1870 the satiric powers of Mr. W. S. Gilbert, whose "Princess," played at the Olympic, was described by the author as "a whimsical allegory," as well as "a respectful perversion of Mr. Tennyson's poem."[54] In this production Mr. Gilbert wrote his lyrics to the melodies of popular airs, after the manner of the time. The major portion of the travestie is familiar to present-day audiences as having formed, in the main, the text of "Princess Ida," for which Sir Arthur Sullivan composed such charming music. Nevertheless, I cannot refrain from quoting, as a happy specimen of Mr. Gilbert's later manner in burlesque,[55] the speech addressed by the Princess to her disciples—a speech marked by agreeable naÏvÉtÈ and happy mock-heroics:—

Into the region of the Ballad the comic playwrights have made comparatively few incursions. "The Babes in the Wood," "Lord Bateman," "Billy Taylor," "Villikins and his Dinah," and "Lord Lovel,"—these are the stories which have been most in favour with burlesque purveyors. R. J. Byron took up the first-named subject in 1859, when the company at the Adelphi (where the piece was produced) included Miss Woolgar (Sir Rowland Macassar), Mr. Toole and Miss Kate Kelly (the Babes), Paul Bedford (the First Ruffian), and Mrs. Billington (the Lady Macassar). Then, in 1877, there came a provincial version by Messrs. G. L. Gordon and G. W. Anson; and, next, in 1884, at Toole's Theatre, the "Babes" of Mr. Harry Paulton, in which Mr. Edouin and Miss Atherton were the central figures. The first travestie of "Lord Bateman" was made by Charles Selby at the Strand in 1839; then there was the production by R. B. Brough in 1854 at the Adelphi; and, still later, there was the piece by H. J. Byron, at the Globe (1869). Passing over the "Billy Taylor" of Buckstone (1829), we arrive at "The Military Billy Taylor" of Mr. Burnand, which came out forty years later. It is to Mr. Burnand, also, that we owe "Villikins and his Dinah," played by amateurs at Cambridge, as well as "Lord Lovel and the Lady Nancy Bell," which he wrote for the same place and performers.