_Psyche._ Ma'am, that's vulgar, and won't do.
_Grubbe_ (_calmly and complacently_). Ikey!
Come--the finale; I'll commence the air (_sings two very high notes_--_all shake their heads_).
_Mars._ Oh no! we cannot sing in such a high key.
_Cupid_ (_joyfully to Psyche, catching the rhyme at once_). That's it. (_takes her hand--to audience_). Pray smile on Cupid.
Among other "classical" burlesques may be mentioned Mr. Burnand's "Arion," seen at the Strand in 1871, with Mr. Edward Terry, Mr. Harry Paulton, and Miss Augusta Thomson; and H. B. Farnie's "Vesta," produced at the St. James's in the same year, with Mr. John Wood and Mr. Lionel Brough. Mr. Burnand's "Sappho" (1866), and "Olympic Games" (1867), also call for mention. John Brougham's "Life in the Clouds" belongs to 1840; Tom Taylor's "Diogenes and his Lantern" to 1849; the Brothers Brough's "Sphinx" to the same year; William Brough's "Hercules and Omphale" to 1864; and Mr. Reece's "Agamemnon and Cassandra, or The Prophet and Loss of Troy," to 1868.
As Planché was, in effect, the Father of Classical Burlesque, so was he also, even more irrefragably, the Father of the Burlesque of Faërie--of the fairy tales of the nursery, and especially of those derived from French sources. Memorable, indeed, was the production of Planché's "Riquet with the Tuft[18]"; this piece was the precursor of something like twenty others from the same pen, all written on the same principle and in the same vein. Planché had been to Paris, and had there seen Potier playing in "Riquet à la Houppe." He came home and straightway wrote his own version of the story, partly in verse, partly in prose, having in Charles Mathews a Riquet not equal indeed to Potier, but with obvious merits of his own. Vestris was the Princess Emeralda, and James Bland Green Horn the Great--Rebecca Isaacs, then only a little girl, being the Mother Bunch. The result was complete success, carrying with it great encouragement to the dramatist to persevere in the new path on which he had entered.
These fairy pieces of Planché's were not burlesques quite in the sense in which his classical pieces were, but they belong, nevertheless, to the burlesque _genre_. Each treats lightly and humorously a story already in existence; each includes parodies of popular lyrics, as well as songs written to the airs of popular ditties; and the burlesque spirit animates the whole. Every now and then, the writer, rising superior to parody, produces a lyric which has a definite accent of its own. Here, for example, in "Riquet with the Tuft," is a song accorded to the grotesque and misshapen hero. It has genuine wit as well as genial philosophy:--