Receipt to make a party:--First of all, Procure some rooms, and mind to have 'em small;
Select a good warm night, so draughts may chill 'em; Ask twice as many as it takes to fill 'em; For though the half you ask may not attend, The half that comes is sure to bring a friend; Select a strong pianist, and a gent Who through the cornet gives his feelings vent; Give them some biscuits, and some nice Marsala; Make a refreshment-room of the front parlour; Garnish with waltzes, flirtings, polking, ballads, Tongue, fowl, and sandwiches, limp lobster salads, Smiles, shaking hands, smirks, simpers, and what not; Throw in the greengrocer, and serve up hot.
It is to H. J. Byron that we owe the burlesque of "Robert Macaire," which, with Fanny Josephs and J. Clarke as Macaire and Strop, brightened the boards of the Globe Theatre in 1870. The drama of which Ruy Blas is the central figure has been twice travestied among us--once in 1873 by Mr. Reece ("Ruy Blas Righted," at the Vaudeville), and more recently (in 1889) by Messrs. F. Leslie and H. Clark ("Ruy Blas, or the Blasé Roué," at the Gaiety). "Diplomacy," adapted from "Dora," appealed to Mr. Burnand's sense of the ridiculous, and the result was "Dora and Diplunacy" (Strand, 1878), in which the weak spots of the original were divertingly laid bare. In the same year, Mr. Burnand burlesqued, at the Royalty, his own adaptation, "Proof, or a Celebrated Case," under the title of "Over-Proof, or What was Found in a Celebrated Case." To 1879 belong two clever travesties--"Another Drink," by Messrs. Savile Clarke and Clifton (Lyne), suggested by "Drink," and brought out at the Folly; and "Under-Proof," Mr. Edward Rose's _reductio ad absurdum_ of "Proof." In the latter piece, besides many well-constructed puns, there are many pleasant turns of humour, as when Pierre satirises the conventional stage pronunciation of his name:--
In my native land, as you're aware, My Christian name's pronounced like this--Pi-erre, But here I'm made a nobleman of France, For everybody calls me _Peer_ Lorance.
Of the Anglo-French melodrama of recent years, Mr. Burnand has been the frequent and successful satirist. He capped "Fedora" with "Stage-Dora" (Toole's, 1883), "Theodora" with "The O'Dora" (same theatre, 1885), and "La Tosca" with "Tra la la Tosca" (Royalty, 1890). This last contained some of the happiest of its author's efforts, in the way both of ingenious punning and effective rhyming. Here, for example, is a song put into the mouth of the Baron Scarpia, the "villain" both of the play and of the travestie:--