Burlesque

Burlesque (Italian burla, “mockery”), form of mock-seriousness characterized by ridiculous exaggeration. As satire, it appears in two forms: the mock epic in which a trivial subject is treated grandly, as in “The Nun's Priest's Tale” of The Canterbury Tales, and the travesty, in which a serious subject is regarded frivolously, as in Don Quixote. Burlesque is often confused with two other forms of satire, farce, and parody. Parody is a mocking imitation of a particular work or of the style of a particular author; farce is a dramatic piece written only to excite laughter.

One of the earliest uses of burlesque in literature was in the ancient Greek mock epic poem “The Battle of the Frogs and the Mice”. Burlesque in drama first appeared in the plays of the Greek dramatists Aristophanes and Euripides and the Roman playwright Plautus. In England burlesque developed around the beginning of the Renaissance; the foremost author was Geoffrey Chaucer. The works of Chaucer, the Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, and the French writer Alain Le Sage ridiculed the medieval romance. Two French comic playwrights, Paul Scarron and Molière, and the English playwright John Gay all excelled in dramatic burlesque. The English poet Samuel Butler achieved a similar excellence in his mock epic poem Hudibras. Of modern writings, the Nonsense Novels (1911) of the Canadian author Stephen Leacock is one of the best examples of light burlesque. A rich vein of travesty runs through most of the operettas of Sir William Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan.

In the United States the word burlesque is applied to a form of variety show popular between World Wars I and II. American burlesque began in the late 1860s as a combination of the minstrel show and vaudeville when it was introduced in 1868 by a company of English chorus girls. It consisted usually of three parts: firstly, a series of songs and coarsely humorous sketches; second, an assortment of variety acts; and thirdly, chorus songs and satirical sketches. The finale usually consisted of a performance by an exotic dancer, or a boxing or wrestling match. By the first quarter of the 20th century emphasis was already being placed upon broad, ribald comedy and scantily clad women. The striptease became a feature of American burlesque in the 1930s and brought many strippers fame, most notably Gypsy Rose Lee. As films and radio became increasingly popular and audiences became more sophisticated, interest in burlesque declined; also, the shows were often victims of censorship and “clean-up” policies. The major importance of burlesque was as a training ground for comics; these included such performers as Fanny Brice, Bobby Clark, Bert Lahr, Red Skelton, and Phil Silvers.