A Book of Burlesque: Sketches of English Stage Travestie and Parody

Aldiborontiphoscophornio!Where left you Chrononhotonthologos?

Chrononhotonthologos is the king, and we learn that he is in his tent, in a kind of waking slumber. Presently he enters, very much put out that he should be so inclined to doze, and very angry, consequently, with the God of Sleep. Says he: —

Sport not with Chrononhotonthologos,Thou idle slumb'rer, thou detested Somnus;

and "exits in a huff." Whereupon the two courtiers, who have retired, re-enter: —

Rigdum. The King is in a most cursed passion! Pray who is the Mr. Somnus he's so angry withal?Aldi. The son of Chaos and of Erebus,Incestuous pair! brother of Mors relentless,Whose speckled robe, and wings of blackest hue,Astonish all mankind with hideous glare:Himself, with sable plumes, to men benevolentBrings downy slumbers and refreshing sleep.Rigdum. This gentleman may come of a very good family, for aught I know; but I would not be in his place for the world.Aldi. But lo! the king his footsteps this way bending,His cogitative faculties immers'dIn cogibundity of cogitation.

Thereupon the king re-enters, followed almost immediately by the captain of the guard, who informs him that "th' antipodean pow'rs from realms below have burst the entrails of the earth" and threaten the safety of the kingdom. "This world is too incopious to contain them; armies on armies march in form stupendous" – "tier on tier, high pil'd from earth to heaven." The king, however, is not alarmed. He bids Bombardinian, his general, draw his legions forth, and orders the priests to prepare their temples for rites of triumph: —

Let the singing singers,With vocal voices, most vociferous,In sweet vociferation, out-vociferiseEv'n sound itself.

Happily the Antipodeans (who walk upon their hands) are badly beaten, and all run away except their king, with whom, alas! Fadladinida, the wife of Chrononhotonthologos, promptly falls in love. As she herself says to her favourite maiden: —

Oh, my Tatlanthe! Have you seen his face,His air, his shape, his mien, his ev'ry grace?In what a charming attitude he stands,How prettily he foots it with his hands!Well, to his arms – no, to his legs – I fly,For I must have him, if I live or die.

Meanwhile, Bombardinian has invited the King to drink wine with him in his tent. The King accepts, but, not content with liquor, asks for something more substantial: —

Hold, Bombardinian, I esteem it fit,With so much wine, to eat a little bit.

The cook suggests "some nice cold pork in the pantry," and is instantly slain by the irate monarch, who, deeming that Bombardinian is "braving" him, strikes him. Whereupon the General: —

A blow! shall Bombardinian take a blow?Blush! blush, thou sun! start back, thou rapid ocean!Hills! vales! seas! mountains! all commixing crumble,And into chaos pulverise the world;For Bombardinian has receiv'd a blow,And Chrononhotonthologos must die.[They fight. He kills the kingHa! what have I done?Go, call a coach, and let a coach be call'd;And let the man that calls it be the caller;And, in his calling, let him nothing call,But coach, coach, coach! Oh, for a coach, ye gods![Exit, raving

The doctor, pronouncing the king dead, is killed by the General, who then kills himself. The Queen mourns her widowhood, and Tatlanthe proposes that she should wed Rigdum-Funnidos. To this, however, Aldiborontiphoscophornio objects; and so, to save discussion, the Queen will give no preference to either: —

To make the matter easy,I'll have you both; and that, I hope, will please ye.

Produced in 1734, "Chrononhotonthologos" was performed at intervals until 1815, when it was seen at Drury Lane, with Oxberry in the title-part and Dowton as the General. After that it remained out of the theatrical repertory until 1880, when Mr. John Hollingshead revived it, for one representation, at the Gaiety.2 It is a slight piece of work, but contains some elements of comicality. It will always be esteemed by literary students, if only because the names of Rigdum-Funnidos and Aldiborontiphoscophornio struck the fancy of Sir Walter Scott, who bestowed them, in fun, upon the brothers Constable, the publishers. "Aldiborontiphoscophornio" is surely the perfection of mock-tragedy nomenclature.

It is to Carey that we owe, not only "Chrononhotonthologos," but the first really effective burlesque of Italian opera. In 1737 there was brought out at the Haymarket "The Dragon of Wantley," a "burlesque opera," of which Carey had written the dialogue and songs, and for which John Frederick Lampe had composed the music. Its object, according to the author, was "to display in English the beauty of nonsense, so prevailing in the Italian operas." The story was founded on the old ballad, with which, however, liberties were taken. In the first act, the natives of "that part of Yorkshire near Rotherham" are shown in much excitement, due to the ravages of the dragon, which has just entered the Squire's residence and consumed all the coffee, toast, and butter that was set out for breakfast. Says one Gubbins: —

This Dragon very modish, sure, and nice is:What shall we do in this disastrous crisis?

To which his daughter Margery replies: —

A thought, to quell him, comes into my Head;No Way more proper, than to kill him dead.

Not far hence lives "a valiant knight," named Moore, of Moore Hall, who may be trusted to destroy the dragon. Moore accordingly is approached, surrenders to the charms of Margery, and undertakes to do the deed. Meanwhile, Mauxalinda, an old flame of Moore's, becomes jealous of Margery, and seeks to slay her with a bodkin – a fate from which Moore happily rescues her. Mauxalinda is then threatened with quarter sessions; but she cries —

O give me not up to the Law,I'd much rather beg upon Crutches;Once in a Sollicitor's Paw,You never get out of his Clutches.

Moore thereupon prepares to start for the Dragon's den:

But first I'll drink, to make me strong and mighty,Six quarts of ale, and one of Aqua Vitæ.

Duly encountering the monster, Moore kills him (say the stage directions) with a kick in the rear, the Dragon crying "Oh, oh, oh! the Devil take your toe!" After that, Gubbins declares: —

The Loves of this brave Knight, and my fair Daughter,In Roratorios shall be sung hereafter.Begin your Songs of Joy; begin, begin,And rend the Welkin with harmonious Din.

Thereupon there is this general chorus: —

Sing, sing, and rorioAn Oratorio,To gallant Morio,Of Moore Hall.To MargereeniaOf Roth'ram Greenia,Beauty's bright Queenia,Bellow and bawl.

"The music," says the chronicler, "was made as grand and pompous as possible, to heighten the contrast between that and the words" – thus anticipating the comic method which has been utilised with so much success by Mr. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan.

From "The Dragon of Wantley," which, as might be expected, had a very considerable vogue, we come to "The Critic, or a Tragedy Rehearsed" – the last, and not the least, of Sheridan's dramatic works, produced in Drury Lane in 1779. Of so familiar a piece, what is there to be said? Is it not played with tolerable frequency at "benefits," for the sake of the "exceptional casts" it can supply? Have not all middle-aged playgoers seen and admired the younger Mathews as Sir Fretful Plagiary and Mr. Puff? Assuredly there are certain features of "The Critic" which everybody remembers. Everybody remembers Sir Fretful's famous lines on the plagiarists, who "serve your best thoughts as gypsies do stolen children – disfigure them to make 'em pass for their own"; as well as his special addendum about the "dexterous" writer who "might take out some of the best things in my tragedy and put them into his own comedy." Everybody remembers, too, Mr. Puffs no less famous catalogue of the varieties of réclame; his remark that "the number of those who undergo the fatigue of judging for themselves is very small indeed"; his explanation of the fact that he and Shakespeare had made use of the same thought; Lord Burleigh's shake of the head, which meant so much, and has become proverbial; the Spanish fleet, which could not be seen because it was not yet in sight; Tilburina, "mad in white satin" – and the like. It must be recollected, however, that "The Critic" as played and "The Critic" as written and printed are two very different things. In the acting version, the earlier scenes between Puff and Dangle and Sneer, as well as the latter portion of the "tragedy rehearsed," are very much compressed – no doubt with advantage to the public, for, clever as "The Critic" is as a whole, certain portions of it are out of date, and would not "go" well with a modern audience.

In glancing through the printed version, one is struck anew by the similarity that "The Critic" bears to "The Rehearsal," not only in form, but in detail. In both cases a dramatic author rehearses a tragedy in the presence of a couple of friends, who interject comments upon the performance. But the likeness does not end here – possibly because the theatrical world of 1779 was, in all essentials, very like the theatrical world of 1671. Bayes, in "The Rehearsal," says that he has "appointed two or three dozen" of his friends "to be ready in the pit" (at the première of his piece), "who, I'm sure, will clap." And so Sneer, in "The Critic," expects that he will not be able to get into Drury Lane on the first night of Puff's play, "for on the first night of a piece they always fill the house with orders to support it." Again, Bayes says that

Let a man write never so well, there are, nowadays, a sort of persons they call critics, that, egad, have no more wit in them than so many hobby-horses; but they'll laugh at you, sir, and find fault, and censure things that, egad, I'm sure they are not able to do themselves.

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."

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. Puff opens the second scene of his "Spanish Armada" with a clock striking four, which, besides recording the time, not only "begets an awful attention in the audience," but "saves a description of the rising sun, and a great deal about gilding the eastern hemisphere." He makes his characters tell one another what they know already, because, although they know it, the audience do not. He hears the stage cannon go off three times instead of once, and complains, "Give these fellows a good thing, and they never know when to have done with it." "Where they do agree on the stage," he says, in another hackneyed passage, "their unanimity is wonderful." In the rehearsed tragedy itself the travestie is general, not particular. Here Sheridan satirises a different class of tragedy from that which Buckingham dealt with. As the prologue (not by Sheridan, however) says: —

In those gay days of wickedness and wit,When Villiers criticised what Dryden writ,The tragic queen, to please a tasteless crowd,Had learn'd to bellow, rant, and roar so loud,That frighten'd Nature, her best friend before,The blustering beldam's company forswore.

The later "tragedy" took another tone: —

The frantic hero's wild delirium past,Now insipidity succeeds bombast;So slow Melpomene's cold numbers creep,Here dulness seems her drowsy court to keep.

Dulness, then, is what Sheridan is chiefly girding at, but he has a keen eye also for the unconscious banalities of the genre he is dealing with. How truly comic, for instance, is the prayer to Mars offered up by Leicester and his companions! —

Behold thy votaries submissive begThat thou wilt deign to grant them all they ask;Assist them to accomplish all their ends,And sanctify whatever means they useTo gain them.

How delicious, too, in their absolute nonsense, are the lines given to the distraught Tilburina! —

The wind whistles – the moon rises – see,They have killed my squirrel in his cage;Is this a grasshopper? – Ha! no; it is myWhiskerandos – you shall not keep him —I know you have him in your pocket —An oyster may be cross'd in love! – who saysA whale's a bird? – Ha! did you call, my love? —He's here! he's there! – He's everywhere!Ah me! he's nowhere!

For the rest, the text of the tragedy, as printed, is very dissimilar from the text as played. In representation, most of the fun is got out of intentional perversion of certain words or phrases. Thus, "martial symmetry" becomes "martial cemetery";

The famed Armada, by the Pope baptised,

becomes

The famed Armada, by the Pope capsised;

"friendship's closing line" is turned into "friendship's clothes-line"; "My gentle Nora" into "My gentle Snorer"; "Cupid's baby woes" into "Cupid's baby clothes"; "matchless excellence" into "matchless impudence," and so on. This is sorry stuff; and those who desire to appreciate Sheridan's travestie of the tragedy of his day must read "The Critic" in its published shape.

The next notable attempt at the burlesque of conventional tragedy was a return to the methods of "Chrononhotonthologos." In "Bombastes Furioso" (first played in 18163) all satirical machinery was discarded; all that the author – William Barnes Rhodes – sought to do was to travestie his originals in a brief and telling story. "Bombastes" is not now so often performed as it used to be; but not so very long ago it was turned into a comic opera, under the title of "Artaxominous the Great," and its humours are fairly well known to the public. Some of these the world will not willingly let die. One still thinks with amusement of the "army" of Bombastes, consisting of "one Drummer, one Fifer, and two Soldiers, all very materially differing in size"; of the General's exhortation to his troops —

Begone, brave army, and don't kick up a row;

and of the boastful challenge of the General, so promptly accepted by Artaxominous —

Who dares this pair of boots displaceMust meet Bombastes face to face.

And the piece bears re-perusal wonderfully well. Its literary merit is assuredly not less than that of "Chrononhotonthologos": it is perhaps even greater. The opening colloquy between the King and Fusbos is genuinely diverting, embodying as it does one of those mock similes so dear to the satirists of old-fashioned tragedy. The King admits to Fusbos that he is "but middling – that is, so so!" It is not, however, either the mulligrubs or the blue-devils that disturb him: —

King. Last night, when undisturb'd by state affairs,Moist'ning our clay, and puffing off our cares,Oft the replenish'd goblet did we drain,And drank and smok'd, and smok'd and drank again!Such was the case, our very actions such,Until at length we got a drop too much.Fusbos. So when some donkey on the Blackheath road,Falls, overpower'd, beneath his sandy load,The driver's curse unheeded swells the air,Since none can carry more than they can bear.

By-and-by the King confides to Fusbos that his heart is not wholly faithful to Queen Griskinissa – that he is also hopelessly in love with Distaffina, the acknowledged sweetheart of Bombastes. Under the circumstances he asks for Fusbos' advice: —

Shall I my Griskinissa's charms forego,Compel her to give up the regal chair,And place the rosy Distaffina there?In such a case, what course can I pursue?I love my queen, and Distaffina too.Fusbos. And would a king his general supplant?I can't advise, upon my soul I can't.King. So when two feasts, whereat there's nought to pay,Fall unpropitious on the self-same day,The anxious Cit each invitation views,And ponders which to take and which refuse:From this or that to keep away is loth,And sighs to think he cannot dine at both.

These, however, are not the best known of the mock similes in "Bombastes." For those we have to look to the scene in which the King, observing his General's abovementioned challenge, reviles Bombastes and knocks down his boots. Then we have the familiar lines: —

Bomb. So have I heard on Afric's burning shoreA hungry lion give a grievous roar;The grievous roar echo'd along the shore.King. So have I heard on Afric's burning shoreAnother lion give a grievous roar,And the first lion thought the last a bore.

Next comes the fight between the monarch and the warrior; the King is killed, and then Fusbos kills Bombastes. Finally, the two deceased (despite the assertion of Fusbos that they are "dead as herrings – herrings that are red") come to life again, and all ends happily.

Of ordinary parody there is little in the piece, and what there is can scarcely be said to be of the best. There is a suggestion, in one ditty, of "Hope told a flattering Tale." But better than this is the song suggested by "My Lodging is on the Cold Ground," which is happy both intrinsically and as an imitation. Fusbos is the singer: —

My lodging is in Leather Lane,A parlour that's next to the sky;'Tis exposed to the wind and the rain,But the wind and the rain I defy:Such love warms the coldest of spots,As I feel for Scrubinda the fair;Oh, she lives by the scouring of pots,In Dyot Street, Bloomsbury Square.Oh, were I a quart, pint, or gill,To be scrubb'd by her delicate hands,Let others possess what they willOf learning, and houses, and lands;My parlour that's next to the skyI'd quit, her blest mansion to share;So happy to live and to dieIn Dyot Street, Bloomsbury Square.And oh, would this damsel be mine,No other provision I'd seek;On a look I could breakfast and dine,And feast on a smile for a week.But ah! should she false-hearted prove,Suspended, I'll dangle in air;A victim to delicate love,In Dyot Street, Bloomsbury Square.

At this point, English stage burlesque suddenly takes a new departure, combining, with satire of the contemporary native "boards," satire not less keen of certain products of the foreign muse. The incident came about in this way: – Just before the close of the eighteenth century, the English book-market had been flooded with translations of certain German plays, including Schiller's "Robbers" and "Cabal and Love," Goethe's "Stella," and Kotzebue's "Misanthropy and Repentance" ("The Stranger") and "Count Benyowsky." Canning, Ellis, and Frere, who were then bringing out The Anti-Jacobin, were struck by the absurdities contained within these dramas, and accordingly composed and printed (in June 1798) that well-known skit, "The Rovers, or the Double Arrangement." In this the plays chiefly parodied are "Stella," "The Stranger," and "Count Benyowsky." By "Stella" was suggested not only "the double arrangement" (by which Matilda and Cecilia share the affections of their lover Casimere), but the famous scene in which the two women, before they know they are rivals, become, on the instant, bosom friends. Both admit that they are in love, and then —

Cecilia. Your countenance grows animated, my dear madam.Matilda. And yours is glowing with illumination.Cecilia. I had long been looking out for a congenial spirit! My heart was withered, but the beams of yours have rekindled it.Matilda. A sudden thought strikes me: let us swear an eternal friendship.Cecilia. Let us agree to live together!Matilda. Willingly.Cecilia. Let us embrace.(They embrace.)

"The Rovers," however, would hardly come within the scope of the present volume, were it not that, in 1811, at the Haymarket, there was produced, by Colman junior, a piece called "The Quadrupeds of Quedlinburgh, or the Rovers of Weimar," in which the adapter made use of the squib in The Anti-Jacobin. Colman's aim in this work was to ridicule not only the German plays, including Kotzebue's "Spaniards in Peru" ("Pizarro"), which had lately been brought before the English playgoer, but also the prevailing fancy for bringing animals upon the stage. At Astley's horses had figured both in "Blue Beard" and in "Timour the Tartar," and dogs had previously been seen in "The Caravan." To this, as well as to the unhealthy importations from Germany, allusion was made in the prologue: —

To lull the soul by spurious strokes of art,To warp the genius and mislead the heart,To make mankind revere wives gone astray,

(a hit at "The Stranger"),

Love pious sons who rob on the highway,For this the foreign muses trod our stage,Commanding German schools to be the rage…Your taste, recovered half from foreign quacks,Takes airings now on English horses' backs;While every modern bard may raise his name,If not on lasting praise, on stable fame.

"The Quadrupeds of Quedlinburgh" was not printed, and one does not know to what extent Colman took advantage of the text of "The Rovers." It is certain, however, that Casimere, Matilda, and Cecilia, as well as Rogero (a creation of the original parodists), all appeared in the burlesque, being enacted respectively by Munden, Mrs. Glover, Mrs. Gibbs, and Liston, Elliston taking the rôle of Bartholomew Bathos, a lineal descendant (no doubt) of Bayes and Puff. We read that, in addition to the travestie supplied by The Anti-Jacobin, fun was poked at the sentimental sentinel in "Pizarro," and the last scene of "Timour the Tartar" was closely imitated. The piece was acted thirty-nine times, and must therefore have been what, in those days, was accounted a success.

We come now to a travestie of the old-fashioned tragedy which helps to connect the Old burlesque with the New, inasmuch as it was the production of James Robinson Planché. Of his "Amoroso, King of Little Britain: a serio-comick bombastick operatick interlude," played at Drury Lane in 1818, Planché was not particularly proud. He was very young when he wrote it; he wrote it for amateur performance; and it got on to the stage of Drury Lane without his knowledge and consent. Harley, the comedian, appears to have seen or read the little trifle, and to have recommended it to the manager of "the national theatre." He himself represented Amoroso; Knight was Roastando (a cook); Smith was Blusterbus (a yeoman of the guard); Mrs. Bland was Coquetinda (the Queen of Little Britain), and Mrs. Orger was Mollidusta (a chambermaid). The piece was much applauded, and had the distinction of being quoted in the Times. It opens with the King being awakened by his courtiers, to whom he angrily exclaims: —

Leave at what time you please your truckle beds —But if you break my rest I'll break your heads.I swear I'm quite disordered with this rout.Ahem! My lords and gentlemen – get out!

The Times applied the last line to a Parliamentary incident which had just occurred; and Planché admits that he was flattered by the compliment. But he would not include "Amoroso" in the testimonial edition of his burlesques and extravaganzas, – mainly, I imagine, because the piece is so obviously an imitation of "Bombastes Furioso," which it by no means equals in literary distinction.

The plot is simplicity itself. Amoroso is in love with Mollidusta, Mollidusta with Blusterbus, and the Queen with Roastando. "The King sees Roastando and the Queen salute: he discharges Roastando. The Queen sees the King and Mollidusta together: she stabs Mollidusta. The King stabs the Queen, Roastando stabs the King, the King stabs Roastando." In the end, all come to life again. In the course of the play the King thus declares his passion to Mollidusta: —

When gooseberries grow on the stem of a daisy,And plum-puddings roll on the tide to the shore,And julep is made from the curls of a jazey,Oh, then, Mollidusta, I'll love thee no more.When steamboats no more on the Thames shall be going,And a cast-iron bridge reach Vauxhall from the Nore,And the Grand Junction waterworks cease to be flowing,Oh, then, Mollidusta, I'll love thee no more.

Amoroso also sings the following pseudo-sentimental ditty: —

Love's like a mutton-chop,Soon it grows cold,All its attractions hopEre it grows old.Love's like the colic sure,Both painful to endure,Brandy's for both a cure.So I've been told!When for some fair the swainBurns with desire,In Hymen's fatal chainEager to try her,He weds soon as he can,And jumps (unhappy man!)Out of the frying-panInto the fire.

Not to be outdone by the other lovers, the Queen and Roastando warble a duet, in which they confess their feelings for each other: —

She. This morning I to Covent Garden went,To purchase cabbages was my intent,But, my thoughts dwelling on Roastando's looks,Instead of cabbages I asked for cooks!He. Last night, neglecting fricassés for stews,On Coquetinda's charms I paused to muse,And, 'stead of charcoal, did my man desireTo put some Coquetinda on the fire.

Three months after "Amoroso" had been seen at Drury Lane, there was produced at the English Opera House a "serio-comic-bombastic-operatic interlude," written by George Daniel, and called "Doctor Bolus" – yet another burlesque of the old-fashioned drama, owing quite as much to "Bombastes Furioso" as did "Amoroso." In this piece the King, Artipadiades (Harley), is in love with Poggylina, a maid of honour, while the Queen, Katalinda (Miss Kelly), is enamoured of General Scaramoucho (Chatterley). The General revolts, and is defeated by the King. His amour is discovered, and, while the Queen is poisoned with one of Bolus's "infallible" pills, the General is stabbed by Artipadiades. The Queen, however, revives, and is thereupon stabbed by the King, who also stabs himself. But, in the end, as in "Amoroso," all the dead people are resuscitated. There are some gleams of humour in the dialogue, but not many. Bolus was played by John Wilkinson.