Molly, walking in her sleep, enters Rodolpho's apartment, and is found there by Swelvino, but is vindicated, like her prototype in the opera, by being subsequently discovered in a somnambulant condition. The story of "La Sonnambula" is, in fact, followed closely, but caricatured throughout. W. Rogers, who was the Swelvino, and Mitchell, who was the Molly, appear to have been highly successful in exciting the hilarity of their audiences. The latter portrayed the heroine as "a waddling, thick-set, red-and-ruddy, blowzy-faced goblin, with turn-up nose and carroty hair, wrapt in a pea-soup or camomile-tea-coloured negligée, and carrying," in the sleep-walking scene, "a farthing rushlight in one of Day & Martin's empty blacking-bottles." Of Swelvino's appearance we may judge from a remark made by Molly to her lover:—
I, by looking in your face, can tell
What are your feelings excellently well.
Oh, yes! the fulness of that ruby nose
Your love for me doth passing well disclose;
Your agitated whisker shows full well
What throbs of passion underneath it dwell!
The two other skits upon the opera were the work of H. J. Byron, who produced the first at the Prince of Wales's in 1865, under the title of "La! Sonnambula! or the Supper, the Sleeper, and the Merry Swiss Boy; being a passage in the life of a famous 'Woman in White': a passage leading to a tip-top story." Miss Marie Wilton was the Merry Swiss Boy (Alessio); Miss Fanny Josephs was Elvino; Mr. Dewar, Rodolpho; "Johnny" Clarke, Amina; Miss Bella Goodall, Lisa; Mr. Harry Cox undertaking the rôle of "a virtuous peasant (by the kind permission of the Legitimate Drama)." This was Miss Wilton's first production at the Prince of Wales's, and it was a great success. In 1878 Byron brought out at the Gaiety a piece which he called "Il Sonnambulo, or Lively Little Alessio." In this he introduced several variations on the operatic story; making the Count (Edward Terry) the somnambulist, instead of Amina—in burlesque of Mr. Henry Neville's sleep-walking scene in Wilkie Collins's "Moonstone." Miss Farren was the lively little Alessio, and Mr. Royce the "local tenor," Elvino.
Of Bellini's "Norma" the first burlesque produced was that which W. H. Oxberry, the comedian, contributed to the Haymarket in 1841. In this the title-part was played by Paul Bedford, with Wright as Adalgisa and Mrs. H. P. Grattan as Pollio. The piece had no literary pretensions, and it would be unfair to compare it, in that or any other respect, with "The Pretty Druidess, or the Mother, the Maid, and the Mistletoe Bough," which Mr. W. S. Gilbert wrote for the Charing Cross Theatre (now Toole's) just twenty-eight years later. This was one of the best of Mr. Gilbert's operatic travesties, the dialogue being characterised by especial point and neatness. Here, for example, is the advice given by Norma (Miss Hughes) to the ladies presiding over the stalls at a fancy fair. Hamlet's address to the players is very happily suggested:—
With pretty speech accost both old and young,
And speak it trippingly upon the tongue;
But if you mouth it with a hoyden laugh,
With clumsy ogling and uncomely chaff—
As I have oft seen done at fancy fairs,
I had as lief a huckster sold my wares.
Avoid all so-called beautifying, dear.
Oh! it offends me to the soul to hear
The things that men among themselves will say
Of some soi-disant "beauty of the day,"
Whose face, when with cosmetics she has cloyed it,
Out-Rachels Rachel!—pray you, girls, avoid it.
Neither be ye too tame—but, ere you go,
Provide yourselves with sprigs of mistletoe;
Offer them coyly to the Roman herd—
But don't you "suit the action to the word,"
For in the very torrent of your passion
Remember modesty is still in fashion.
Oh, there be ladies whom I've seen hold stalls—
Ladies of rank, my dear—to whom befalls
Neither the accent nor the gait of ladies;
So clumsily made up with Bloom of Cadiz,
Powder-rouge—lip-salve—that I've fancied then
They were the work of Nature's journeymen.
The "Gazza Ladra" of Rossini lives on the burlesque stage in the counterfeit presentment furnished by Byron's "Maid and the Magpie, or the Fatal Spoon." This was one of the writer's greatest triumphs in the field of travestie. Produced at the Strand in 1854, with Miss Oliver as Ninette, Miss Marie Wilton as Pippo, Bland as Fernando, and Clarke as Isaac (the old-clothes man), it at once hit the public taste, as it well deserved to do, for it is full of clever writing and ingenious incidents. The best scene of all, perhaps, is that in which the broken-down Fernando reveals himself to Ninette—a happy satire upon a familiar melodramatic situation:—
Ninette (entering). A stranger here!
Fernan. How beautiful she's grown! I say, my dear!
(she starts) Start not—ha, ha!—do I alarm you?
Ninette (uneasily). Rather!