Oh my Geraldine,
No flow'r was ever seen so toodle um.
(Fondly) You are my lum ti toodle lay,
Pretty, pretty queen
Is rum ti Geraldine and something teen,
(Rapturously) More sweet than tiddle lum in May.
Like the star so bright,
That something's all the night,
My Geraldine!
(With intensity) You're fair as the rum ti lum ti sheen,
Boleyn (without). What, ho!
Surrey (speaks impressively). This is impromptu.
Hark! there is what—ho!
From something-um, you know,
Dear, what I mean.
(With deep feeling) Oh! rum! tum!! tum!!! my Geraldine.
"Anne Boleyn" is particularly prolific in good puns, in the making of which the author showed himself an adept. It would be a pleasure to quote a few of them, but I give instead some lines in which, speaking through the mouth of one of his characters, the writer satirises the methods of the old-fashioned drama:—
Mine were the "palmy days" when, I declare,
A little table and two chairs, sir, were
Thought furniture sufficient for a scene;
When a baize drugget—generally green—
Covered the stage where'er the place was laid,
Serving alike for palace, cot or glade;
When, in a drawing-room, a servant-maid
Would sing a duet with the comic man;
When dramas only for a few nights ran;
When a rhymed tag to every piece was tacked;
When most plays had a dozen scenes an act;
When bucket boots and ringlet wigs were worn,
"Acting's a lost art," sir, since you were born;
Those are the days which I look back upon,
Of broadsword combats with—"Ha, ha! Come on!"
Good Queen Bess was added to Mr. Burnand's gallery in 1870, when his "E-liz-a-beth, or the Don, the Duck, the Drake, and the Invisible Armada," was brought out at the Vaudeville, with Mr. Thorne as the Queen, Mr. David James as Whiskerandos, and George Honey as Drake. The "Maiden Queen" has not been greatly tantalised by the burlesque writers, who, on the other hand, have made very free with a gentleman who much disturbed her successor—Guy Fawkes. Mr. Burnand handled him in 1866 (at the Strand); H. J. Byron followed suit at the Gaiety in 1874; last year we had the "Guy Fawkes, Esq." of Messrs. "A. C. Torr" (Fred Leslie) and H. F. Clark; and I believe that Mr. Wilton Jones, too, has written a travestie on the subject. Charles II. was burlesqued by Mr. Gilbert Arthur a'Beckett in 1872, the locale being the Court Theatre, and the full title of the piece "Charles II., or Something like History." In this, as in Mr. Reece's "Romulus and Remus," there was some parody of the Lyceum "Charles I."—Mr. Righton, as Cromwell, imitating both Mr. Irving and George Belmore, besides indulging in the cancan! W. J. Hill was the King, and Mme. Cornèlie D'Anka the Queen (Catherine of Braganza). Pepys, Rochester, and Lily the Astrologer also figured in the piece. Cromwell was afterwards the leading personage in the "Oliver Grumble" of Mr. George Dance (Novelty, 1886).
About the names of such heroes and heroines as the Lady Godiva, Dick Whittington, Robin Hood, Herne the Hunter, and those distinguished footpads Claude Duval and Dick Turpin, there hangs a good deal that is clearly mythical. Still, some myths have more real vitality than absolute fact; and who does not believe firmly that the Lady Godiva rode round Coventry "clothed on" with nothing but her chastity, and, by taking away a grinding tax, "built herself an everlasting name"? Her adventure has been burlesqued at least twice—once by Francis Talfourd and a collaborator, at another time by Mr. H. Chance Newton. The Talfourd piece was called "Godiva, or Ye Ladye of Coventrie and Ye Exyle Fayrie" and produced at the Strand in 1851. Mr. Newton christened his work "Giddy Godiva." In the earlier burlesque, "ye exyle fayrie" Ignota (Miss Romer) is introduced merely as a dea ex machinâ in the interests of the heroine (Miss Marshall), who, in a passage of Shakespearean reminiscence, discusses the undertaking to which she has been incited by her husband:—
To be, or not to be, at his suggestion,
A pose plastique, is yet a doubtful question!
To bare my arms against a sea of troubles,
And by a pose to end them! Each day doubles
The people's wrongs, the proud Earl's heavy tax;
To help to ease them I would not be lax;
But then to ride—riding, by some low scrub
Perhaps be seen!—Ah, bother—there's the rub!
The fear that still my courage may be less
When I have shuffled off this mortal dress,
Must give me pause.
A prominent character in the piece is Our Own Reporter, "Ye Specyall Commyssionere and Correspondente of ye Busie Bee" (John Reeve), who would fain play the part of Peeping Tom, and who, early in the play, sings a song wittily descriptive of his ordinary avocations:—
Rep. I'm a mercantile man, and my living is got
By selling of articles——