Sir,—Your correspondent “Mr. Kennedy” speaks of a proposed new version of The Tempest, of a more or less burlesque character, as if I and Mr. Burnand had discovered a new crime. The World (in the absence of Mr. Yates) also follows suit. Messrs. F. Talfourd, Andrew Halliday, Robert Brough, and others were not afraid to to draw upon Shakespeare for their burlesques, and in the so-called “palmy days” of the drama the parodies of Shakespeare were frequent, coarse, and brutal. The subjects of many of Shakespeare’s plays were the common property of the dramatist long before the advent of the master, and if he were now alive he would probably be the last to object to treatment such as Goethe has received in every city in Europe.—I am, &c., John Hollingshead.—Gaiety Theatre, Strand.”
Sir,—This stir about The Tempest seems a storm in a teacup. Both “Mr. W. Kennedy, of Hampstead,” who naturally takes high ground, and your dramatic critic would have acted more justly to my forthcoming piece had they waited to see what it was before attempting to excite public prejudice against my work. There is an important distinction between what is commonly understood by “burlesquing Shakespeare,” by which is meant taking his lines and sentiments and giving them an absurd turn, and writing what is now-a-days styled a “burlesque version” (which is really an extravaganza) of a fairy tale which Shakespeare has immortalised, especially when Shakespeare himself has given the keynote for the fun, as he has done in The Tempest, no doubt with a full consciousness of its humour.
As the lawyer’s wisdom is popularly supposed to reside mainly in the wig, so the poet has made all Prospero’s magic art lie in his book, wand, and magic robes, without which he is powerless. When he does not wish to be professionally engaged he puts aside his “magic properties” and says “lie there my art.” When he is renouncing conjuring he buries his books of legerdemain, and has done with it for ever, retaining no sort of power independently of this magic receipt book, or as I shall struggle not to call it, in deference to Mr. Kennedy, of Hampstead to whom a pun on anything Shakespearian must appear quite too-too dreadful, his “spelling book.” Caliban is aware of this, and directs his efforts to possessing himself of this book. This perfectly admissible view of Prospero, together with the notion that he himself gives as to Ariel’s true character, has furnished me with the materials for an extravaganza at the Gaiety, which will be entitled Ariel, or, the King of the Caliban Island, of which the critics and public will form their judgment when it appears. En attendant, to raise a prejudice against my work is clearly unjust. Let me have fairplay even for an extravaganza founded on a Shakespearian fairy tale. “Atlas,” in the World, had an unfair note on this subject. I have written to him much as I have to you, but with a special “P.S.,” which I trust he will have the generosity to publish, pointing out that “Atlas” should be the last to brand as a crime burlesquing anything Shakesperian, as in his own paper a few weeks ago appeared the story of Hamlet travestied, and adapted to “nineteenth century” readers.—Yours faithfully,
F. C. Burnand.
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(To the Editor of the Daily News.)—Sir,—We are told that a parody in three or four acts of The Tempest is in preparation, and we are asked by the author to suspend judgment until its production. The appeal is at any rate superficially fair. But Mr. Burnand’s letter is not very reassuring. For instance, he calls the great play “a fairy tale,” i.e., he seems to put it on a level with “The White Cat” and “Puss in Boots.” But let that pass. All who reverence the great name of Shakespeare, and who are grateful for his noble plays (and they are numerous, whatever Mr. Burnand and Punch may think), will patiently await The King of the Caliban Island (what charming wit and taste!) leaning upon their swords. In any case Shakespeare’s memory cannot suffer. What is to be feared is the degradation of the stage which he ennobled, and of the actors and dramatic authors of whom he ought to be the proudest and most sacred boast.—I am, Sir, yours faithfully, An Old Playgoer.
August 20, 1883.
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In the next weekly column of The Theatres (August 27, 1883,) Mr. Moy Thomas inserted another long letter, which had been addressed to him by Mr. F. C. Burnand, referring to his forthcoming burlesque upon Shakespeare’s Tempest:—
“I know you are not friendly to burlesques—and probably not to burlesque writers; still, as a critic, as a judge who will have to try the case, it is hardly fair to range yourself on the adverse side, and to make your verdict a foregone conclusion. Patience a moment, and hear—or read. The existence of Robson was an excuse for a burlesque on Shylock, and for one on Macbeth; also on Medea. Now, in looking about for a character, a novelty, for Miss Nelly Farren, who is a genius in her way, as Robson was in his—the notion of an Ariel struck me, and the more I considered it the more I liked it. I read the Tempest carefully, and saw how Shakespeare had given the chance of such a view of Ariel as the spirit of enterprise, and had struck the keynote of any amount of fun in the humorous notion of Prospero being absolutely dependent upon his “properties” for his magic power. Evidently he had not had them with him when he was turned adrift by Gonzago in a boat with his child; or rather, as he must have had them with him (according to his own account) they were so packed up he couldn’t get at them; otherwise, where would his enemies have been? Caliban’s one idea was to possess himself of the book. Well, in him I see a backward boy (done out of his rights, by the way), who, however, wants to acquire knowledge, and who does so in the end. How dull Miranda found the island you can judge from her speeches, and from her going to sleep when her father is prosing. The conspirators, and the remorseful king, are minor characters, calling for no particular remark, except as padding to sustain a weakish plot. Now what do I do? Burlesque it? Not in the sense in which I understand burlesque, as, for instance, I burlesqued Fédora, Diplomacy, Ouida’s Strathmore, &c., &c. No; but I take the story and give it a turn similar (though not the same) to what Thackeray gave to Ivanhoe in Rebecca and Rowena. He took up the tale where Scott left off, but he reproduced the scenes and characters under changed conditions. I take the story with its leading characters; I omit the tempest entirely (only a sea-fog, when Prospero had forecasted a “disturbance”), and Ariel, capable of assuming all sorts of shapes and forms, does so and wrecks the ship. The arrangement of scenes doesn’t follow the play. Of course Trinculo and Stephano are not in it, for no one making a new comic story could take them or Caliban as far as he is associated with them and make them more funny, whether in dialogue or in business (I know it all, having studied it) than they are in the piece. No one could take the Midsummer Night’s Dream and produce a modern extravaganza, though they might (as Planché did) use the fairies out of it, who are immortal. No one deprecates a vulgar, coarse piece of buffoonery by way of burlesque more than I do. I have undertaken this very work as an advance on Blue Beard, as Blue Beard was (though you would not recognise it) a distinct advance on what had preceded it. It forms one of the “burlesque drama” series—a generic title to which I have objections, but by which Mr. John Hollingshead sets store—and as it is a matter of indifference to the public whether what is really an extravaganza comes under the above heading, I havn’t any more to say, but the sum is that I am distinctly not burlesquing Shakespeare’s Tempest, as by burlesquing I understand my mode of treatment of Sardou’s Fédora, Diplomacy, Ouida’s Strathmore, &c., &c.”