During the present year, the interest gradually excited by successive performances of plays by Henrik Ibsen has culminated in the production of the inevitable burlesques. More than one clever travestie of Ibsen has been printed—e.g., those by Mr. J. P. Hurst and Mr. Wilton Jones; but the first to be performed was that entitled "Ibsen's Ghost, or Toole up to Date," which is from the witty pen of Mr. J. M. Barrie. This starts as a sort of sequel to "Hedda Gabler," which it mainly satirises; but there are allusions also to "Ghosts" and to "A Doll's House," with some general sarcasm at the expense of Ibsen's peculiarities. The dialogue is in prose, with a concluding vocal quartett; the writer's touch is as light as it is true; and the composition, as a whole, is thoroughly exhilarating. The three-act piece, "The Gifted Lady," in which Mr. Robert Buchanan sought to ridicule not only Ibsen but other "emancipating" agencies of the time, was, unfortunately, not so successful as Mr. Barrie's slighter and brighter work. It abounded in excellent epigram, but lacked geniality and humour. In "Ibsen's Ghost" Mr. Toole and Miss Eliza Johnstone renewed old successes, while Miss Irene Vanbrugh gave signs of aptitude for burlesque. In "The Gifted Lady" Miss Fanny Brough, Miss Cicely Richards, Mr. W. H. Vernon, and Mr. Harry Paulton showed all their usual skill, but, unfortunately, to no purpose.
[VIII.]
BURLESQUE OF OPERA.
We have already seen that, in burlesquing mythology, faërie, and other matters, our comic playwrights have not been able to resist the temptation to introduce occasional travesties of things operatic. Opera, indeed, has always had a magnetic power over them. They have been unable to maintain their gravity in presence of the singularities which distinguish opera, even in its most modern guise, from the more natural and realistic drama. Operatic conditions demand, of necessity, certain stereotyped regulations, especially of stage management, which detract from probability and excite derision. Especially is this so in the case of the older school of Opera, and notably in that of the Italian school, whose products were largely on the same simple and ingenuous model—a model on which the travestie writers were able to construct some genuinely entertaining imitations.
Beginning, then, with the Italian school, we note that Donizetti has been particularly favoured by the parodists. His "Lucrezia Borgia," "Linda di Chamouni," "Elisir d' Amore," and "Fille du Régiment" have all had to submit to deliberate perversion. Of "Lucrezia" there have been three notable burlesques—one by Leicester Buckingham, at the St. James's, in 1860; another by Sydney French, at the Marylebone, in 1867; and the third by H. J. Byron, at the Holborn, in 1868. Buckingham's was entitled "Lucrezia Borgia! at Home, and all Abroad," and had Charles Young for the exponent of the title character. Miss Wyndham was Johnny Raw ("known as Gennaro, through the defective pronunciation of his Italian friends—a British shopkeeper, who has left for awhile the countertenor of his way, and is travelling on the Continent for his pleasure"). Miss Cecilia Ranoe was Alfonso, and a small part was played by Miss Nellie Moore. Lucrezia figures in this piece as a dabbler in monetary speculations, the failure of which gives opportunity for a speech parodying some Shakespearean lines with more freshness than such things usually possess:—
Oh! that dishonoured notes of hand would melt,
Thaw, and dissolve themselves when overdue,
And never leave the holder time to sue;
Or that in pickle no such sharp rod lay
As the unpleasant writ called a ca sa!
How weary, flat, unprofitable, stale,
To kick one's heels inside a debtor's gaol!
Fie on't! 'Tis an unweeded garden clearly;
Blackguards and seedy swells possess it merely.
That it should come to this! At two months' date!—
No, not two months; six weeks is less than eight.
So excellent a bill! The blow will floor me!
Is this a bailiff that I see before me,
A capias in his hand? Come, let me dodge thee;
Or in a sponging-house I know thou'lt lodge me.
I've turned my back, and yet I see thee still!
Canst thou then be two gentlemen at will?
Or art thou but a grim dissolving view—
A phantom officer—in short, a do?
I see thee yet—so palpable in form,
My prospects seem uncomfortably warm.
Thou marshall'st me to Whitecross Street, I see,
Clutching protested bills endorsed by me;
Indictments, too, for fraud and false pretences!
Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses,
Or else I'm tight! I see thee still, my man;
And by thy side appears the prison van,
Which was not so before. There's no such thing!
In the course of the piece, Johnny Raw is poisoned by Alfonso with publican's port, and afterwards Lucrezia seeks to destroy Orsini and his companion with London milk. Byron's burlesque on the subject was called "Lucrezia Borgia, M.D."
"Linda di Chamouni" exercised the wit both of Mr. Conway Edwardes and of Mr. Alfred Thompson. The former writer's "Linda di Chamouni, or the Blighted Flower," was played at Bath in 1869; the latter's work was presented, later in the same year, at the Gaiety. In Mr. Edwardes' book one is most struck by the multiplicity and occasional felicity of the "word-plays." Here, for instance, is what Pierotto says when he is asked to take a cup of wine:—