This edition of nineteenth-century theatrical burlesques inspired by Homer, meticulously annotated and contextualised, is a welcome addition to the growing number of texts on the impact of the Classics on Victorian culture and more broadly to the availability of edited versions of nineteenth-century British plays. In its focus on Homeric sources, this volume usefully complements L. Monrós-Gaspar's edition of Victorian Classical Burlesques (2015) based on adaptations of Greek tragedy.
The four burlesques included in this anthology are Thomas Dibdin's Melodrama Mad!; or, the Siege of Troy (1819) and J.R. Planché and Charles Dance's Telemachus; or, the Island of Calypso (1834), both pre-Victorian; Robert B. Brough's Iliad; or the Siege of Troy (1858); and F.C. Burnand's Ulysses; or the Ironclad Warrior and the Little Tug of War (1865). The first of these was performed at the Surrey Theatre, south of the Thames; the second at the fashionable Olympic Theatre while under the management of Madame Vestris; the last two at respectable West End theatres, the Lyceum and the St James's respectively. The plays are preceded by an introduction providing background on the Victorian fascination with classical art and literature as well as on the theatrical genre of burlesque.
While in general agreement with the arguments put forward in the introduction, there are several areas that might have benefited from more detailed attention. The first is assumptions made around audiences for these events. While the Surrey Theatre certainly attracted a diverse clientele, it is debateable as to what extent a play like Melodrama Mad! was promulgating a knowledge of the Classics among popular, working-class audiences. While the Iliad was obviously the basis for Dibdin's play, he himself refers to it as a ‘comic spectacle’, and it was probably the mixture of spectacle and music that made it especially popular. The other three burlesques played largely to fashionable, educated West End audiences: their popular appeal arguably lay more in the dramatic form they used rather than in their attraction to socially diverse audiences. I would therefore query the statement that classical burlesques ‘at diverse venues, attracted spectators across age, gender and class divides’ (p. 6), despite the increasing orthodoxy of this perspective in Victorian classical studies. Secondly, while reference is made to the parodying of contemporary styles of acting in tragedy and melodrama, this is an area that might be explored further, especially with regard to Melodrama Mad!. Many of the male roles in these burlesques were played by women, and more might have been made of the ways in which travestie representations of male deities and Greek and Trojan warriors impact on the reception of the texts in performance and on perceptions of gender normative behaviour in the nineteenth century. Overall, although more reference to performance, spectacle and to some of the key actors appearing in burlesque might have been helpful, the introduction is generally illuminating in its informative discussion of the interplay between Greek culture and Victorian society. It also benefits from some excellent illustrations and clearly sets out the editorial principles on which the volume is based.
Of the plays anthologised Dibdin's Melodrama Mad! continues the metatheatrical practice used by the author in his 1808 burlesque Bonifacio and Bridgetina of an introductory scene that includes the assumed author of the piece. An earlier commentator on burlesque, V.C. Clinton-Baddeley, considered the play ‘a mysterious piece with no apparent bearing on the subject of melodrama’ (The Burlesque Tradition in The English Theatre after1660 [1952], p. 90), but B.D. provides enough background detail to demonstrate the significance and formative influence of this piece within the context of classical epic burlesque. Planché and Dance's elegant take on the Trojan Wars in Telemachus provided the central role of Calypso, drawing on an episode from the Odyssey, to display Eliza Vestris's many talents. Brough's Iliad; or The Siege of Troy includes Homer as a specific character in the form of a war correspondent based on Sir William Howard Russell, who had reported on the Crimean War for The Times just a few years prior to the burlesque's production. In this version Patroclus (played by Jimmy Rogers, who was later to create the role of Widow Twankay [sic] in Aladdin) becomes a pathetically abject comic character, while Achilles, Hector, Paris and Troilus are turned into travestie roles. Burnand's Ulysses contains topical references to the American Civil War and situates Ulysses as a plantation owner waited upon by black slaves. Inevitably, this particular burlesque draws on blackface minstrelsy (a frequent feature throughout the genre) as a source of entertainment. B.D.’s commentary and footnotes effectively contextualise these topical references.
The centrality of Shakespeare to classical burlesque is apparent in all four plays, especially in their continual parodying of Macbeth, although there are also allusions to Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar and Hamlet. In some cases, this provides an opportunity to parody the performances of contemporary actors, although more generally it attests to the ‘knowingness’ of the audience in relation to Shakespearean drama and performance. This ‘knowingness’ also extends to the audience's presumed familiarity with Homer's epic poems, given the diverse ways in which these four burlesques playfully structure and take liberties with their source material. All the plays contain the anachronisms, doggerel punning, topical references and benign conclusions typical of the genre, along with frequent use of popular songs and tunes as well as the occasional borrowings from contemporary opera that intersperse the dialogue.
This attractively presented anthology provides an invaluable and scholarly insight into Victorian theatrical burlesque and its mediation of Homer's epic poetry within nineteenth-century theatre and more generally within the milieu of nineteenth-century culture.
