Mr. Burnand has written two burlesques on "Antony and Cleopatra"—one brought out under that title at the Haymarket in 1866; the other produced at the Gaiety in 1873, under the name of "Our Own Antony and Cleopatra." A third travestie of the tragedy, called "Mdlle. Cleopatra," and written by Mr. W. Sapte, junior, was seen at the Avenue in the present year.
[VII.]
BURLESQUE OF MODERN DRAMA.
We now pass to a department of burlesque writing larger in extent and greater in variety than any other—that in which the finger of ridicule has been pointed at poetic and melodramatic plays (other than those of Shakespeare). This department is far-reaching in the matter of time. It goes back, for subject, so far as Lee's high-sounding "Alexander the Great" (better known, perhaps, as "The Rival Queens"), which, first produced in 1678, was travestied by Dibdin, in "Alexander the Great in Little," a "grand tragi-comic operatic burlesque spectacle," originally seen at the Strand in 1837, with Hammond as Alexander and Mrs. Stirling as Roxana. Seven years later there was performed at the Surrey a burlesque, by Montagu Corri, of Lillo's famous tragedy "George Barnwell" (1730), here called "Georgy Barnwell"—a title which H. J. Byron altered to "George De Barnwell" when in 1862 he travestied the old play at the Adelphi.
Home's "Douglas", which was given to the public in 1756, appears to have escaped stage satire until 1837, when it was taken in hand by William Leman Rede. The Adelphi was the scene of the production, and the performers included "O." Smith as Glenalvon, J. Reeve as Norval, and Mrs. Stirling as Lady Randolph. The piece does not supply very exhilarating reading. The ultra-familiar soliloquy, "My name is Norval," is here put into lyric form, and comes out as follows:—
My name is Norval, sir; upon the Grampian Hills
My father feeds his flocks, beside the streams and rills.
He often said to me, "Don't roam about at nights."
But I had heard of sprees, of larks, and rows, and fights.
Tol de rol lol tol lol, tol de rol lol lol lay.
Tol de rol lol tol lol—list to what I say.
The moon rose up one night, as moons will often do,
And there came from left and right a ragged ruffian crew;
They broke into our house, they swigged our beer and ale,
They stole our flocks and herds, and caught our pig by the tail.
Tol, lol, etc.