"Alfred the Great," one of Knowles' historical plays, suggested portions of the burlesque called "Alfred the Great, or the Minstrel King," which Robert B. Brough wrote for the Olympic in 1859. In this, Robson was the King, Miss Herbert his aide-de-camp, and F. Vining his commander-in-chief, with other parts by Horace Wigan and Miss Hughes. Knowles's "William Tell" (1825), or the story embodied in it has been the basis of half a dozen travesties. First came Mr. Burnand's "William Tell," at Drury Lane, in 1856; next, Leicester Buckingham's, at the Strand, in 1857; next, Talfourd's "Tell! and the Strike of the Cantons, or the Pair, the Meddler, and the Apple!" at the Strand, in 1859-60; next, again, Byron's "William Tell with a Vengeance! or the Pet, the Parrot, and the Pippin," at the Strand, in 1867; a few days later, A. J. O'Neill's "William Tell," at Sadler's Wells; and, lastly—so far—Mr. Reece's "William Tell told Over Again," at the Gaiety, in 1876. "The Hunchback" has been "guyed" less often than might have been expected, considering its popularity. Mr. Burnand brought out at the Olympic, in 1879, "The Hunchback Back Again," and this comic version of the hackneyed old play is not likely to be superseded.
The first Lord Lytton's verse-plays—bristling as they do with fustian and bombast—have naturally been frequently travestied. Note the number of occasions on which "The Lady of Lyons" has fallen a prey to the irreverent. Altogether there have been six notable burlesques of this drama. H. J. Byron wrote two, the first of which—"The Latest Edition of the Lady of Lyons"—was produced at the Strand in 1858. This, in the following year, was freshened up and re-presented to the public as "The Very Latest Edition" of the popular drama.
In 1878, at the Gaiety, came Mr. Herman Merivale's "vaudeville," "The Lady of Lyons Married and Settled," which is not only quite the best of the travesties on this topic, but one of the cleverest ever written. It sparkles with good things from beginning to end. Claude, it seems, has "taken to philosophy, and says we are all descended from monkeys." It is not surprising, therefore, to find him singing a long song in praise of the Darwinian theory:—
Power to thine elbow, thou newest of sciences,
All the old landmarks are ripe for decay;
Wars are but shadows, and so are alliances,
Darwin the Great is the man of the day.
All other 'ologies want an apology;
Bread's a mistake—Science offers a stone;
Nothing is true but Anthropobiology—
Darwin the Great understands it alone.
Mighty the great evolutionist teacher is,
Licking Morphology clean into shape;
Lord! what an ape the professor or preacher is,
Ever to doubt his descent from an ape.
Man's an Anthropoid—he cannot help that, you know—
First evoluted from Pongos of old;
He's but a branch of the cat-arrhine cat, you know—
Monkey, I mean—that's an ape with a cold.
Fast dying out are man's later Appearances,
Cataclysmitic Geologies gone;
Now of Creation completed the clearance is,
Darwin alone you must anchor upon.
Primitive Life-Organisms were chemical,
"Busting" spontaneous under the sea;
Purely subaqeous, panaquademical,
Was the original Crystal of Me.