A Book of Burlesque: Sketches of English Stage Travestie and Parody. Adams William Davenport

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СКАЧАТЬ the newspapers as "the most villainous – licentious – abominable – infernal – Not that I ever read them – no. I make it a rule never to look into a newspaper."

      In one respect Sheridan's work is quite unlike the Duke of Buckingham's. It contains no direct travestie or parody of any kind. The burlesque is "at large" throughout. The satire embodied in the dialogue between Puff and his friends reflects upon all old-fashioned playwriting of the "tragic" sort. Puff opens the second scene of his "Spanish Armada" with a clock striking four, which, besides recording the time, not only "begets an awful attention in the audience," but "saves a description of the rising sun, and a great deal about gilding the eastern hemisphere." He makes his characters tell one another what they know already, because, although they know it, the audience do not. He hears the stage cannon go off three times instead of once, and complains, "Give these fellows a good thing, and they never know when to have done with it." "Where they do agree on the stage," he says, in another hackneyed passage, "their unanimity is wonderful." In the rehearsed tragedy itself the travestie is general, not particular. Here Sheridan satirises a different class of tragedy from that which Buckingham dealt with. As the prologue (not by Sheridan, however) says: —

      In those gay days of wickedness and wit,

      When Villiers criticised what Dryden writ,

      The tragic queen, to please a tasteless crowd,

      Had learn'd to bellow, rant, and roar so loud,

      That frighten'd Nature, her best friend before,

      The blustering beldam's company forswore.

      The later "tragedy" took another tone: —

      The frantic hero's wild delirium past,

      Now insipidity succeeds bombast;

      So slow Melpomene's cold numbers creep,

      Here dulness seems her drowsy court to keep.

      Dulness, then, is what Sheridan is chiefly girding at, but he has a keen eye also for the unconscious banalities of the genre he is dealing with. How truly comic, for instance, is the prayer to Mars offered up by Leicester and his companions! —

      Behold thy votaries submissive beg

      That thou wilt deign to grant them all they ask;

      Assist them to accomplish all their ends,

      And sanctify whatever means they use

      To gain them.

      How delicious, too, in their absolute nonsense, are the lines given to the distraught Tilburina! —

      The wind whistles – the moon rises – see,

      They have killed my squirrel in his cage;

      Is this a grasshopper? – Ha! no; it is my

      Whiskerandos – you shall not keep him —

      I know you have him in your pocket —

      An oyster may be cross'd in love! – who says

      A whale's a bird? – Ha! did you call, my love? —

      He's here! he's there! – He's everywhere!

      Ah me! he's nowhere!

      For the rest, the text of the tragedy, as printed, is very dissimilar from the text as played. In representation, most of the fun is got out of intentional perversion of certain words or phrases. Thus, "martial symmetry" becomes "martial cemetery";

      The famed Armada, by the Pope baptised,

      becomes

      The famed Armada, by the Pope capsised;

      "friendship's closing line" is turned into "friendship's clothes-line"; "My gentle Nora" into "My gentle Snorer"; "Cupid's baby woes" into "Cupid's baby clothes"; "matchless excellence" into "matchless impudence," and so on. This is sorry stuff; and those who desire to appreciate Sheridan's travestie of the tragedy of his day must read "The Critic" in its published shape.

      The next notable attempt at the burlesque of conventional tragedy was a return to the methods of "Chrononhotonthologos." In "Bombastes Furioso" (first played in 18163) all satirical machinery was discarded; all that the author – William Barnes Rhodes – sought to do was to travestie his originals in a brief and telling story. "Bombastes" is not now so often performed as it used to be; but not so very long ago it was turned into a comic opera, under the title of "Artaxominous the Great," and its humours are fairly well known to the public. Some of these the world will not willingly let die. One still thinks with amusement of the "army" of Bombastes, consisting of "one Drummer, one Fifer, and two Soldiers, all very materially differing in size"; of the General's exhortation to his troops —

      Begone, brave army, and don't kick up a row;

      and of the boastful challenge of the General, so promptly accepted by Artaxominous —

      Who dares this pair of boots displace

      Must meet Bombastes face to face.

      And the piece bears re-perusal wonderfully well. Its literary merit is assuredly not less than that of "Chrononhotonthologos": it is perhaps even greater. The opening colloquy between the King and Fusbos is genuinely diverting, embodying as it does one of those mock similes so dear to the satirists of old-fashioned tragedy. The King admits to Fusbos that he is "but middling – that is, so so!" It is not, however, either the mulligrubs or the blue-devils that disturb him: —

      King. Last night, when undisturb'd by state affairs,

      Moist'ning our clay, and puffing off our cares,

      Oft the replenish'd goblet did we drain,

      And drank and smok'd, and smok'd and drank again!

      Such was the case, our very actions such,

      Until at length we got a drop too much.

      Fusbos. So when some donkey on the Blackheath road,

      Falls, overpower'd, beneath his sandy load,

      The driver's curse unheeded swells the air,

      Since none can carry more than they can bear.

      By-and-by the King confides to Fusbos that his heart is not wholly faithful to Queen Griskinissa – that he is also hopelessly in love with Distaffina, the acknowledged sweetheart of Bombastes. Under the circumstances he asks for Fusbos' advice: —

      Shall I my Griskinissa's charms forego,

      Compel her to give up the regal chair,

      And place the rosy Distaffina there?

      In such a case, what course can I pursue?

      I love my queen, and Distaffina too.

      Fusbos. And would a king his general supplant?

      I can't advise, upon my soul I can't.

      King. So when two feasts, whereat there's nought to pay,

      Fall unpropitious on the self-same day,

      The anxious Cit each invitation views,

      And ponders which to take and which refuse:

      From this or that to keep away is loth,

      And sighs to think he cannot dine at both.

      These, however, are not the best known of the mock similes in "Bombastes." For those we have to look to the scene in which the King, observing his General's abovementioned challenge, reviles Bombastes and knocks down his boots. Then we have the familiar lines: —

      Bomb. СКАЧАТЬ