The Midsummer-Night’s Dream, with Mr. Hilson as Snout and Mr. Placide as Bottom, was performed, “for the first time in America,” at the Park Theatre, New York, on the 9th of November, 1826, when the stage in this country was upwards of three-quarters of a century old, and had a literature of its own, comparatively rich in comedy and tragedy, and when its burlesque, such as it was, undoubtedly felt the influence of Pyramus and Thisbe.

The second great burlesque upon the British stage was The Rehearsal, by George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, in the reign of the Second Charles, first acted in 1672. It was original in design and brilliant in execution. It introduced a popular author, John Dryden, engaged in superintendence of a rehearsal of one of his own tragedies—the tragedy in this instance consisting of clever parodies of portions of all the dramas then in vogue. The Rehearsal does not seem to have been produced in this country, although The Critic of Sheridan, obviously based upon it, was performed at the John Street Theatre, New York, November 24th, 1788, when President Washington honored the entertainment with his presence. The cast has not been preserved, although William Winter believes Mr. Wignell to have played Puff, Mr. Ryan Whiskerandos, and Mrs. Morris (the second wife of Owen Morris) Tilberina. The Critic still survives, as Mr. Daly’s audiences well remember.

Burlesque upon the American stage, although not yet American burlesque, dates back to the very beginning of the history of the theatre in this country, when The Beggar’s Opera, by John Gay, “written in ridicule of the musical Italian drama,” was presented at the theatre in Nassau Street, New York, on the 3d of December, 1750, with Thomas Kean as Captain Macheath. The Beggar’s Opera was first acted at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1727, and took the town by storm. The Archbishop of Canterbury preached a sermon against it; Sir John Fielding, the police-justice, officially begged the manager not to present it on Saturday evenings, as it inspired the idle apprentices of London, who saw it on their night off, to imitate its hero’s thieving deeds; and a certain critic condemned it as “the parent of that most monstrous of all absurdities, the comic opera.” Nevertheless it was immensely popular, and enjoyed an unusually long run. As a literary production it is distinguished for its combination of nature, pathos, satire, and burlesque. It brought fame to its author, and, indirectly, something like wealth; and it made a duchess of Lavinia Fenton, who was the original Polly. As that monstrous absurdity the comic opera is without question the parent of that still more monstrous absurdity the burlesque proper, Polly Peachum and Captain Macheath may be considered the very Pilgrim Parents of burlesque in the New World. They were followed almost immediately (February 25, 1751) by Damon and Phillada, a Ballad Farce, by Colley Cibber. Their Plymouth Rock very soon became too small to hold them; their descendants have taken possession of the whole land, and every Mayflower that crosses the Atlantic to-day brings consignments of British blondes to swell their number. Before the Revolution Fielding’s Tom Thumb; or, The Tragedy of Tragedies, a clever travesty, with Mrs. Hallam (Mrs. Douglas) as Queen Dollalolla, and Kane O’Hara’s Midas, “a burlesque turning upon heathen deities, ridiculous enough in themselves, and too absurd for burlesque,” had taken out their naturalization papers. The Critic, as has been shown, declared his intentions very shortly after the establishment of peace; and Bombastes Furioso became a citizen of New York as early as 1816.

MRS. HALLAM (MRS. DOUGLAS).

As Satan in the proverb builds invariably a chapel hard by the house of prayer, so does the demon of burlesque as surely erect his hovel next door to the palace of the legitimate tragedian. He spoils by his absurd architecture every neighborhood he enters; he even cuts off the views from the Castle of Elsinore, and disfigures the approaches to the royal tombs of the ancient Danish kings. John Poole’s celebrated travesty of Hamlet, one of the earliest of its kind, was first published in London in 1811. George Holland, afterwards so popular upon the American stage for many years, presented Poole’s play on the occasion of his first benefit in this country, March 22, 1828, appearing himself as the First Grave-digger and as Ophelia. This was about the beginning of what, for want of a better term, may be styled “legitimate burlesque” in the United States. It inspired our managers to import, and our native authors to write, travesties upon everything in the standard drama which was serious and ought to have been respected; and it led to burlesques of Antony and Cleopatra, Douglas, Macbeth, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Manfred, The Tempest, Valentine and Orson, Richard the Third, The Hunchback, and many more; and between the years 1839, when William Mitchell opened the Olympic, and 1859, when William E. Burton made his last bow to the New York public, was laid out and built between Chambers Street and the site of Brougham’s Lyceum, on Broadway, corner of Broome Street, that metropolis of burlesque upon the ruins of which the dramatic antiquary, whose name is Palmy Days, now loves to sit and ponder.

The titles of its half-forgotten streets and buildings, collected at random from its old directories, then known as the bills of the play, will recall pleasant memories and excite gentle wonder. There were, among others, A Lad in a Wonderful Lamp, The Bohea Man’s Girl, Fried Shots [Freischütz], Her Nanny, Lucy Did Sham Her Moor, and Lucy Did Lamm Her Moor, Man Fred, Cinder Nelly, Wench Spy, Spook Wood, Buy It Dear, ’Tis Made of Cashmere [Bayadere; or, The Maid of Cashmere], The Cat’s in the Larder, or, The Maid with the Parasol [La Gazza Ladra; or, The Maiden of Paillaisseau], The Humpback, Mrs. Normer, and Richard Number Three.

MARK SMITH AS MRS. NORMER.