A Book of Burlesque: Sketches of English Stage Travestie and Parody. Adams William Davenport
he can play on the cornet,
And sing most musically;
And not a Duke in all the land
Can beat him at "Aunt Sally."
Venus and Adonis have always been great favourites with the producers of travestie. Among those who have made them the central figures of burlesque are Mr. Burnand, whose work was brought out in 1864, and Mr. Edward Rose, whose "Venus," written in collaboration with the Mr. Augustus Harris, and first performed at the Royalty in 1879 (with Miss Nelly Bromley as the heroine), was re-written for revival, and finally taken as the foundation of a third production in 1880.
In "The Deep, Deep Sea," brought out in 1833, Planché selected as the basis of his work the story of Perseus and Andromeda. He treated it with his usual reverence for the original legend. He represented Juno and the Nereids as being angry with King Cepheus, and sending the sea-serpent to devastate his shores. James Vining played the Serpent, and his approach was announced to the monarch in the following strain: —
Mighty monarch, stir your stumps as if Old Nick were following:
A serpent with an awful twist has landed on your shore;
Our gallant soldiers, guns and all, by regiments he's swallowing;
And munching up musicians and composers by the score!
Of counsel learned in the law but brief work he is making —
Apothecaries just as they were pills, sir, he is taking;
He snaps the parson right in two, as well as his oration;
And ere the beadle bolts the door, he bolts the congregation!
Mighty monarch, stir your stumps, for court and caravansary
Are emptied of inhabitants all crazy with affright;
The monster he is longer far than any suit in Chancery,
And beats the Court of Aldermen, by chalks, for appetite!
The Serpent, when he arrives, introduces himself to the king in an engaging fashion: —
All bones but yours will rattle when I say
I am the sea serpent from America.
Mayhap you've heard that I've been round the world;
I guess I'm round it now, mister, twice curled…
Of all the monsters through the deep that splash,
I'm "number one" to all immortal smash.
When I lie down, and would my length unroll,
There ar'n't half room enough 'twixt pole and pole.
In short, I grow so long that I've a notion
I must be measured soon for a new ocean.
The exaggeration which is so characteristic of American humour is here happily satirised. In another passage, Perseus, addressing himself to Andromeda, sings a neatly turned parody of "We met – 'twas in a Crowd": —
We met! 'twas at the ball,
Upon last Easter Monday;
I press'd you to be mine,
And you said, "Perhaps, one day."
I danced with you the whole
Of that night, and you only;
Ah, ne'er "cavalier seul"
Felt more wretched and lonely.
For when I squeezed your hand,
As we turned one another,
You frown'd and said, "Have done!
Or I'll speak to my mother!"
They called the Spanish dance,
And we flew through it fleetly —
'Twas o'er – I could not breathe,
For you'd blown me completely.
I led you to a seat
Far away from the dancers;
Quadrilles again began,
They were playing "the Lancers";
Again I squeezed your hand,
And my anguish to smother
You smiled, and said, "Dear Sir,
You may speak to my mother."
In 1861 Perseus and Andromeda reappeared upon the comic stage at the instance of William Brough, who made them the hero and heroine of a burlesque at the St. James's.
The story of Telemachus was the subject which engaged the attention of Planché immediately after he had done with Perseus. Fénelon's tale had become extremely familiar to the British schoolboy, who at that time was not thought to have "grounded" himself sufficiently in French until he had read the narrative in the original. Hence Planché's "Telemachus, or the Island of Calypso,"10 concerning which the author took credit to himself once more for having "preserved the well-known plot with the most reverential fidelity." Ten years later the same subject was treated in the "Telemachus" of Stirling Coyne, played at the Adelphi with Miss Woolgar in the title-part, Wright as Calypso (a ballet-dancer!) and Paul Bedford as the hero's Mentor or "tor-Mentor." In 1863 the story of the parents of Telemachus proved attractive to Mr. Burnand, whose "Patient Penelope" made her curtsey at the Strand, to be followed at the St. James's, two years later, by the same writer's "Ulysses."
Still tracing the course of Planché's labours in burlesque, we come next to the production, at the Haymarket in 1845, of "The Golden Fleece" – perhaps, on the whole, the most delightful of the series. In this ingenious and brilliant piece, the two parts of which were entitled respectively "Jason in Colchis" and "Medea in Corinth," Planché had taken the narrative of Apollonius Rhodius and the tragedy of Euripides, and had built upon them a composition in which he sought less to cast ridicule upon the legends selected than to travestie what he called "the modus operandi of the classical period, which really illustrates the old proverbial observation that there is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous." He brought again upon the stage the ancient Chorus, incarnated in a single person, who explained the action of the piece as it went on, not hesitating even to interrupt it when the humorous opportunity occurred. Charles Mathews undertook the part, heralded by a jocose announcement on the "bills" to the effect that "The lessee has, regardless of expense, engaged Mr. Charles Mathews to represent the whole body of the chorus, rendering at least fifty-nine male voices entirely unnecessary." In the opening scene, the Chorus thus described his functions: —
Friends, countrymen, lovers, first listen to me:
I'm the Chorus; whatever you hear or you see
That you don't understand, I shall rise to explain —
It's a famous old fashion that's come up again,
And will be of great service to many fine plays
That nobody can understand nowadays;
And think what a blessing if found intervening,
When the author himself scarcely knows his own meaning.
You may reap from it, too, an advantage still further:
When an actor is bent upon marriage or murther,
To the Chorus his scheme he in confidence mentions,
'Stead of telling the pit all his secret intentions;
A wondrous improvement you all will admit,
And the secret is just as well heard by the pit.
Verbum sat.– To the wise I'll not put one more word in,
Or instead of a Chorus, they'll think me a burden.
Later in the piece, announcing the approach of King Æetes (Bland), the Chorus interposed with: —
Æetes comes, looking as black
Played at the Olympic in 1834.