I'll run a race
With any living ped, through wind or rain;
Some like what's handsome—I prefer the plain.
I have this morning run a spanking heat,
Two miles in just ten minutes.
King. Wondrous feat!
Prin. Everything pedal has its charms for me.
I'd have gone miles the great Miss Foote to see.
My tastes are visible e'en at my meals;
My favourite fish, of course, are soles and eels.
Potatoes I consider are A-oners,
Though I've a preference for scarlet-runners.
And when at children's parties I am present,
I think a game at four-feits very pleasant.
"The White Cat," by Planché (1842), has among its personæ Wunsuponatyme, King of Neverminditsnamia; Prince Paragon; and Jingo, a Court fool. In "The Fair One with the Golden Locks" (1843), the King is called Lachrymoso,[25] and the woman of the bedchamber Molly-mopsa. Finally, there is "The Seven Champions of Christendom" (1849), in which Charles Mathews played Charles Wag, Esq., "in attendance on" St. George of England. With this ends the list of Planché's compositions of this kind—a remarkable contribution to the stage literature of wit and humour.
From Planché's "Seven Champions of Christendom" to the "St. George and the Dragon" of Gilbert Abbott a'Beckett (1845) and the "Sir George and a Dragon, or We are Seven" of Mr. Burnand (1856) is a natural and easy transition. In A'Beckett's piece, Kalyba, the sorceress, has stolen St. George when a child, in order that he might fall in love with her, and so rescue her from prophesied destruction. Getting rid of her with a wave of her own wand, he turns up with his fellow Champions at Memphis, where King Ptolemy is in a state of impecuniosity, the Dragon having swallowed up all his resources. The monster demands the King's daughter Sabra, but St. George contrives to trick him out of the legal securities he holds, and eventually destroys him by the power of the steam press. There is a vein of allegory running through the piece, which has, however, its share of jeux de mots. Thus, Kalyba's handmaid says to her:—
Your hair, my lady, 's getting rather dry,
Some of the Russian balsam shall I try?
Kaly. Well, p'raps you may—yet no—upon the whole,
Anything Russian's hurtful to the Pole.
The very thought my nervous system shocks,
O! would that mine were like Chubb's—safety locks!
Should I turn grey, I'd bid the world good-bye.
Maid. If you turn grey, it would be time to dye.
Elsewhere there is some sarcasm at the expense of the newspapers. St. George says to Sabra:—
These evening papers, blow the horn and cry them;
Inviting every one to come and buy them.
This is the way the sort of thing is done—
(Crying) Se-cond edition here! the Memphis Sun,
Wondrous intelligence! for here you have in it
The sudden resignation of the Cabinet.