All. Shame! oh, shame!
Thal. And as for me, my place—a pretty pass!—
Is taken by a vulgar thing, called Farce.
Apol. But where is Shakspeare?
Thal.Bless me, don't you know?
Shakspeare is trampled on.
Apol.By whom?
Thal.Ducrow.
F. C. Burnand
Mr. Burnand has written more "classical" burlesques than any man living or dead. A university man, like Talfourd, he has displayed complete mastery of mythologic themes, submitting them to ingenious perversion, and adorning them with a wealth of pun and parody of which it is impossible, in these brief limits, to give more than a few samples. He has shown special interest in the legends connected with the siege of Troy,[14] producing three burlesques more or less connected with that event. First, in 1860, came "Dido," at the St. James's, with Charles Young as the heroine; next, in 1866, "Paris, or Vive Lemprière," at the Strand;[15] next, in 1867, "The Latest Edition of Helen, or Taken from the Greek," at Liverpool.[16] Helen of Troy, I may note, en parenthèse, had been the heroine of two other travesties: one by Vincent Amcotts—"Fair Helen" (Oxford, 1862); the other by Mr. Robert Reece—"Our Helen" (Gaiety, 1884).