There is a diverting parody on "My Mother":—
Who guided you o'er lake and fell,
Who told you all there was to tell,
Ne'er missed a place, but showed it well?
Your Murray!
In 1869 Mr. Burnand was to the fore again with "Very Little Faust and More Marguerite," which was played at the Charing Cross Theatre (as the building was then called). A few years later—in 1877—H. J. Byron entered the field with "Little Doctor Faust," in which he had for interpreters the Gaiety artists, headed by Miss Farren and Mr. Edward Terry. Later still—in 1885—came a provincial writer with "Faust in Forty Minutes." In 1886 we had at the Royalty a piece called "Mephisto," of which the only characteristic feature was an imitation of Mr. Irving by Mr. E. J. Henley, clever in its way, but not to be compared for sustained truthfulness to the performance given by Mr. H. E. Dixey in "Adonis" (at the Gaiety) a week or two previously. In 1886, also, Mr. Burnand brought out at Toole's—with Mr. Toole as Mephistopheles (à la Irving)—"Faust and Loose"; and, two years after, we had at the Gaiety the "Faust up to Date" of Messrs. G. R. Sims and Henry Pettitt, of which more hereafter. A notable fact about "Faust and Loose" is the appearance on the stage, for the first time, of Marguerite's mother—a lady unaccountably neglected by all previous writers, serious or otherwise! In the burlesque she thus introduces herself:—
My name it is—— Really,
I can't state it clearly;
But I'll observe, merely,
That I'm not to blame.
To save further bother,
I'm Margaret's mother,
And, as I've no other,
Why, that is my name.
They can't do without me,
The play's all about me,
They flout me, they scout me;
Oh! I call it mean!
Each version where Ma is,
In London or Paris,
Makes me Mrs. Harris,
Much talked of, not seen.
I'm griping and grasping,
I'm snoring, I'm gasping,
With fear my voice rasping
Miss Marguerite fills.
They speak thus behind me—
You'll speak as you find me—
But all have maligned me,
From Goethe to Wills!
English serious opera has not often fallen a prey to the untender mercies of the parodist. Balfe and Vincent Wallace alone have been victimised in that way—Balfe through his "Bohemian Girl" and "Rose of Castile"; Wallace through his "Maritana." The "Bohemian Girl" has taken four different shapes on the burlesque boards. In 1851, as transmogrified by the Brothers Brough, she figured at the Haymarket as "Arline." In 1864, under the auspices of Messrs. Best and Bellingham, she appeared at Sadler's Wells under the same designation. At the command of Mr. W. S. Gilbert she posed at the Royalty in 1868 as "The Merry Zingara." In 1877, as portrayed by H. J. Byron at the Opéra Comique and Gaiety, she appeared as "The Bohemian Gy-url." For his Arline Mr. Gilbert had Miss "Patty" Oliver; for his Gipsy Queen, Miss Charlotte Saunders; for his Count Arnheim, Fred Dewar; and for his Devilshoof, Danvers. Byron's piece was interpreted by the Gaiety Company. "The Rose of Castile," as treated by Mr. Conway Edwardes, was seen in 1872 at the Brighton Theatre as "The Rows of Castile." "Maritana," of course, was the origin and basis of Mr. Burnand's "Mary Turner" (Holborn Theatre, 1867), as well as of Byron's "Little Don Cæsar de Bazan" (Gaiety, 1876), in which Mr. Terry was such an entertaining King Charles.