Discussion Post: The Mazarin Stone
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sherlock60This week, the canon story we’re looking at is The Mazarin Stone and the chosen topic is Humour.
A few facts:
😀 Most surviving Victorian 'facetiae' [that is, jokes] such as appeared in magazines, newspapers and joke books, are rather staid affairs, relying on mild breaches of social convention, stereotypes which no longer have any resonance, or terrible puns. Nonetheless, some are genuinely funny, some evocative of the era, and others fall into the category of 'so bad it's good' ...
Here's a selection of my favourites -- as you will soon gather, I do have a high tolerance for puns… [What follows is a selection of the selection.]
"See here, wait, I've found a button in my salad." "That's all right, sir, it's part of the dressing."
Marriage is an institution intended to keep women out of mischief and get them into trouble.
If William Penn's aunts kept a pastry shop, what would be the prices of their pies? The pie-rates of Penn's Aunts.
Why should the number 288 never be mentioned in company? Because it is two gross.
Doesn't it make you dizzy to waltz? Yes, but one must get used to it, you know. It's the way of the whirled.
Pawnbrokers prefer customers without any redeeming qualities.
Moving in unfashionable circles: wearing a crinoline.
Why is the devil riding a mouse like one and the same thing? Because it is synonymous.
This, however is my all-time favourite Victorian joke:
What is the difference between a tube and a foolish Dutchman? One is a hollow cylinder and the other a silly Hollander. [Lee Jackson, being interviewed on History Today]
😀 The discovery of a Victorian comedian's private joke book is providing a rare insight into the gags being told to audiences 150 years ago. The book containing the handwritten record of jokes used by a circus clown, Tom Lawrence, is a direct link to the comedy performed under the big top in circuses touring English towns in the 1850s.
These Victorian stand-ups, dressed in the "grotesque and gorgeous" outfits of a clown, delivered jokes about useless husbands and bad-tempered wives, violent policemen, railway crashes and the hardships faced by the poor.
The book was uncovered by Dr Anne Featherstone, a lecturer in performance history at the University of Manchester, who recognised it as a rare surviving example of a working comedian's catalogue of material.
The notebook holds about 200 jokes, monologues and routines - with one version heavily thumbed and another "good" copy, presumably as a back-up.
"His working copy was probably kept at the side of the ring - he might have looked up and seen an audience full of soldiers and sailors and checked what jokes would be appropriate," says Dr Featherstone.
What made the Victorians laugh? They seemed to like clever word-play and punning, says Dr Featherstone. For example: "Bad husbands are like bad coals - they smoke, they go out, and they don't keep the pot boiling..."
"Women were always the butt of jokes in the 19th Century and policemen too, as they represented authority, and they were shown as lazy, eating pies in the kitchen," says Dr Featherstone...
"It's mostly gentle humour - but some of the misogynistic stuff is quite vicious. There's one where he says 'Have you seen my girlfriend's bonnet, I gave her that? Have you seen her jacket, I gave her that. Have you seen her eyes? Yes, they were both black. And the clown says - yes, I gave her those'."
The rough tactics of the police were under attack in this rhyme:
"This town is paraded with policemen in blue, They carry a mighty big staff and make use of it too. They batter your sconce in for pleasure, In the station house poke you for fun, They take all your money and treasure - And fine you five bob when they've done..!"
The joke book records that some of the gags were from earlier comedians - and some of the monologues could be much older, passed on within an oral tradition. [Sean Coughlan]
😀 Ann Featherstone… said: "These are hardly belly laughs to the modern ear but the audiences appreciated and understood the jokes. The Victorian circus was all about fools and horses, so being a clown was very hard work. Lawrence would run along beside a horse, looking up at the lady rider. He would be chatting her up with a string of jokes. He would be saying things like, 'She's so beautiful, so far above me'. The audience would understand the double meaning and would applaud. As well as filling in between acts, he had to be ready in case there was a break in the performance. As far as I'm concerned he was the first stand-up comedian… They might have been the fool, but they had to be professional… People like Thomas Lawrence had to be good horsemen and good entertainers. What we know about their joke delivery is that it was done at high speed, at high pitch and frantically. I suppose the nearest modern equivalent would be Lee Evans."
[Thomas Lawrence] compiled his list of jokes in 1871, and probably used it to refresh his memory before he went into the ring and to reduce the risk of "drying up" during a performance.
A lot of the jokes of the time relied on humorous verse, and Lawrence was not afraid to get political. In one he criticises the Army for flogging soldiers who misbehaved, saying: "C stands for cat o'nine tails with which they often flay. D stands for disgust that with flogging we don't do away." [Nick Britten]
😀 The typical music hall comedian was a man or woman, usually dressed in character to suit the subject of the song, or sometimes attired in absurd and eccentric style. Until well into the twentieth century, the acts were essentially vocal, with songs telling a story, accompanied by a minimum of patter. They included a variety of genres, including:
Lion comiques: essentially, men dressed as "toffs", who sang songs about drinking champagne, going to the races, going to the ball, womanising and gambling, and living the life of an aristocrat.
Male and female impersonators, perhaps more in the style of a pantomime dame than a modern drag queen. Nevertheless, these included some more sophisticated performers such as Vesta Tilley, whose male impersonations communicated real social commentary. [Wikipedia]
😀 The late Victorian and Edwardian periods were the heyday of British music hall entertainment. ...among the most popular acts were the comic songs.
George Robey was one of the biggest stars of the music hall. He was known as the Prime Minister of Mirth and had a career on the stage that lasted six decades...
In the music hall he wore a black frock coat, squashed bowler hat, and gave himself a red nose, as he stepped onto the stage to sing The Simple Pimple. Written in 1891 by E.W. Rogers, the song became one of Robey’s signature pieces. It told the story of Maria Brown, and the sheet music for it proclaimed it was “Sung with the greatest possible success by George Robey.” The opening verse describes the poor woman’s misfortune:
“I courted once a pretty girl dressed in the smartest clothes
She’d only one defect which was a pimple on her nose
I thought I was her first love, but my pals said, ‘Well, what cheek,
Old man, that girl of yours went out with three of us last week.’ ”
Harmless stuff by today’s standards, but a century or so ago it had them, as the saying goes, “rolling in the aisles.”
Marie Lloyd was known as the Queen of the Music Hall and enjoyed a career that lasted four decades, with top billing for most of those years. Her songs were full of saucy double meanings as in What Did She Know About the Railways? that contains the line “She’d never had her ticket punched before.” Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink...
Born in 1865, [Harry] Champion was a Cockney comedian, singer, and composer. He was immensely popular in the music halls and many of the tunes he sang have come down to us today: Boiled Beef and Carrots, and Any Old Iron are examples. Part of Champion’s shtick was that he delivered his songs at a fast tempo.
When the Gorgonzola Cheese Went Wrong… tells the story of a birthday celebration that was a bit of a disaster. The cheese had been bought at a bargain price and placed
“… safely in a drawer
A month went by or perhaps a little more.”
At the birthday party the cheese was brought out of hiding and that’s when we get to the chorus:
“Oh, that Gorgonzola cheese
It wasn’t over healthy I suppose
For the old tomcat fell a corpse upon the mat
When the ‘Niff’ got up its nose
Talk about the flavour of the ‘crackling on the pork’
Nothing could have been so strong
As the beautiful effluvia that filled our house
When the Gorgonzola cheese went wrong.”
One of the celebrants left, came back with a gun, and shot the cheese. This only made the pong worse. [Rupert Taylor]
😀 George Wild Galvin (20 December 1860 – 31 October 1904), better known by the stage name Dan Leno, was a leading English music hall comedian and musical theatre actor during the late Victorian era. He was best known, aside from his music hall act, for his dame roles in the annual pantomimes that were popular at London's Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, from 1888 to 1904...
Leno continued to appear in musical comedies and his own music hall routines until 1902, although he suffered increasingly from alcoholism. This, together with his long association with dame and low comedy roles, prevented him from being taken seriously as a dramatic actor, and he was turned down for Shakespearean roles. Leno began to behave in an erratic and furious manner by 1902, and he suffered a mental breakdown in early 1903. He was committed to a mental asylum, but was discharged later that year. After one more show, his health declined, and he died aged 43. [Wikipedia]
😀 When Dan Leno performed as the Pantomime Dame in the 1880s he transformed a previously minor role into the main part and shaped pantomime into the Christmas show we know today… George Conquest, manager of the Surrey Theatre in Lambeth, South London was so impressed by Leno’s [music hall] performances that he was quickly engaged to play Dame Durden in the 1886-7 pantomime Jack and the Beanstalk. Leno’s Dame stole the show and he subsequently appeared in every spectacular pantomime at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane until the end of the 1904 season. [Helen Peden]
😀 Gus Elen was the best known of the [music hall] 'coster' comedians, who performed songs and sketches about being a Cockney. Elen dressed in the coster uniform of striped jersey with a peaked cap turned towards one ear and a short clay pipe in the side of his mouth...
His first big success was in 1891, when he performed cockney songs at the Middlesex Music Hall, with a song called 'Never introduce your Donah to a pal' ('donah' meaning girlfriend). The movements for each of his songs were carefully rehearsed so that the performances themselves were clean and precise. Each gesture was powerfully distinct and could be seen from the back of the largest theatre.
His songs were bitter and realistic and rooted in the poverty and life of the East Enders who were his audience… His most famous song was ‘If it Wasn’t for the Houses in Between’ about the cramped housing conditions of the East End. Other songs included ‘It’s a Great Big Shame’ which was about a tiny girl dominating her beefy husband: ‘Naggin at a feller wot is six foot three, And ’er only four foot two’. Another song told of a couple who could never marry because as soon as one came out of jail, the other went in: ‘When I came out I found that Liza was in prison still. For when ordering of ’er wedding cake she’d simply pinched the till’.
Unlike most performers, Elen kept meticulous records of his songs with notes about the gestures and emotions, props required and stage settings. He also wrote comments about how his gags were received. [Victoria and Albert Museum]
😀 Having read the humorous British and American newspaper articles in my great-great grandfather’s [George Burgess (1829-1905)] Victorian scrapbook, as far as I can ascertain, humour at that time on both sides of the Atlantic was very similar. Generally it was rather simple, very basic, and invariably obvious, and by today’s standards often quite corny; albeit, some of the humour published at the time is timeless...
Some of my favourite shorts, published in Victorian newspapers and saved by George Burgess who stuck them in his scrapbook included:-
1. Indignant Husband
"INDIGNANT HUSBAND: "Now, I think this is going too far. You promised me that you would countermand your order for that dress."
Meek and lovely wife: "I wrote to the firm that very day."
"But here is the dress and the bill for it; enough to bankrupt me almost. How do you explain that?"
"I gave you the letter to post, and I suppose that you forgot it, as usual."
2. French Doctor
A FRENCH doctor being asked by a man one day to go to a distance to see his sick child, replied that it was too far to walk, and that he had no carriage.
"Oh," said the man. "that doesn't matter, I am a livery stable keeper and will drive you."
Sometime afterwards the doctor's bill was asked for. It was five francs.
The livery stable keeper then presented his bill for hire of the carriage. It was six francs.
3. Lost
LOST, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes, No reward is offered, for they are lost forever. [Arthur Russ]
😀 The story goes that British general Sir Charles Napier sent the one-word dispatch “Peccavi” to his superiors after conquering the Indian province of Sind in 1843—expressly against their orders. “Peccavi,” you see, is Latin for “I have sinned.” However, Napier did not make this near-perfect pun at all—it was coined by the teenaged Catherine Winkworth in an 1844 submission to a humor magazine that mistakenly printed her bit of wit as fact. [Geico2014, on Mental Floss]
😀 Punch… was a British weekly magazine of humour and satire established in 1841 by Henry Mayhew and engraver Ebenezer Landells. Historically, it was most influential in the 1840s and 1850s, when it helped to coin the term "cartoon" in its modern sense as a humorous illustration… Punch was founded on 17 July 1841 by Henry Mayhew and engraver Ebenezer Landells, on an initial investment of £25… Reflecting their satiric and humorous intent, the two editors took for their name and masthead the anarchic glove puppet, Mr. Punch, of Punch and Judy; the name also referred to a joke made early on about one of the magazine's first editors, Lemon, that "punch is nothing without lemon"...
The term "cartoon" to refer to comic drawings was first used in Punch in 1843, when the Houses of Parliament were to be decorated with murals, and "cartoons" for the mural were displayed for the public; the term "cartoon" then meant a finished preliminary sketch on a large piece of cardboard, or cartone in Italian. Punch humorously appropriated the term to refer to its political cartoons, and the popularity of the Punch cartoons led to the term's widespread use...
Artists who published in Punch during the 1840s and 50s included John Leech, Richard Doyle [ACD’s uncle], John Tenniel and Charles Keene…
In the 1860s and 1870s, conservative Punch faced competition from upstart liberal journal Fun, but after about 1874, Fun's fortunes faded...
After months of financial difficulty and lack of market success, Punch became a staple for British drawing rooms because of its sophisticated humour and absence of offensive material, especially when viewed against the satirical press of the time… Historian Richard Altick writes that "To judge from the number of references to it in the private letters and memoirs of the 1840s...Punch had become a household word within a year or two of its founding, beginning in the middle class and soon reaching the pinnacle of society, royalty itself".
Increasing in readership and popularity throughout the remainder of the 1840s and 1850s, Punch was the success story of a threepenny weekly paper that had become one of the most talked-about and enjoyed periodicals… Punch gave several phrases to the English language, including The Crystal Palace, and the "Curate's egg" (first seen in an 1895 cartoon). Several British humour classics were first serialised in Punch, such as the Diary of a Nobody and 1066 and All That. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the artistic roster included Harry Furniss, Linley Sambourne, Francis Carruthers Gould, and Phil May. [Wikipedia]
😀 Fun was a Victorian weekly magazine, first published on 21 September 1861. The magazine was founded by the actor and playwright H. J. Byron in competition with Punch magazine.
Like Punch, the journal published satiric verse and parodies, as well as political and literary criticism, sports and travel information. These were often illustrated or accompanied by topical cartoons (often of a political nature). The Punch mascot, Mr. Punch and his dog Toby were lampooned by Fun's jester, Mr. Fun, and his cat. The magazine was aimed at a well-educated readership interested in politics, literature, and theatre.
Fun was sold for a penny and was sometimes characterised as a 'poor man's Punch'. Thackeray called it "Funch". Fun silenced its critics by publishing lively fare, whereas Punch was criticised as dull and tired. One area in which Fun clearly bested its rival was in its close connection to popular theatre...
Notable contributors included playwrights Tom Robertson, [Tom] Hood, Clement Scott, F. C. Burnand (who defected to Punch in 1862), satirist Ambrose Bierce, G. R. Sims and especially W. S. Gilbert, whose Bab Ballads were almost all published in its pages, among other articles, poems, illustrations and drama criticism over a ten-year period. Cartoonists included Arthur Boyd Houghton, Matt Morgan and James Francis Sullivan (1852–1936)... Even though Fun was seen as liberal in comparison with the increasingly conservative Punch, it could cast satirical scorn or praise on either side of the political spectrum. For instance, Disraeli, whose unorthodox character and ethnic lineage made him a popular focus of attack, was praised in the magazine, including for his Reform Bill of 1867...
Fun ceased publication in 1901, when it was absorbed into Sketchy Bits. [Wikipedia]
😀 The DNB [the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography] notes that the monthly Bradshaw was notoriously hard to read because of its small format and print: "This presented a challenge to Victorian opticians to produce spectacles which were serviceable for reading Bradshaw--an essential companion for railway travellers. You did not simply 'look up' train times: you 'studied' Bradshaw. But the word 'Bradshaw' became synonymous with incomprehensibility: the guide was pilloried in Punch and Vanity Fair and was the subject of music-hall jokes. [Quoted by Kristan Tetens]
😀 Victorian burlesque... is a genre of theatrical entertainment that was popular in Victorian England and in the New York theatre of the mid 19th century. It is a form of parody in which a well-known opera or piece of classical theatre or ballet is adapted into a broad comic play, usually a musical play, usually risqué in style, mocking the theatrical and musical conventions and styles of the original work, and often quoting or pastiching text or music from the original work…
...burlesques featured musical scores drawing on a wide range of music, from popular contemporary songs to operatic arias, although later burlesques, from the 1880s, sometimes featured original scores. Dance played an important part, and great attention was paid to the staging, costumes and other spectacular elements of stagecraft, as many of the pieces were staged as extravaganzas. Many of the male roles were played by actresses as breeches roles, purposely to show off their physical charms, and some of the older female roles were taken by male actors...
...burlesque was aimed at a… highly literate audience… Some of the most frequent subjects for burlesque were the plays of Shakespeare and grand opera… By the 1880s, almost every truly popular opera had become the subject of a burlesque…
The Shakespeare scholar Stanley Wells notes that although parodies of Shakespeare had appeared even in Shakespeare's lifetime, the heyday of Shakespearean burlesque was the Victorian era. Wells observes that the typical Victorian Shakespeare burlesque "takes a Shakespeare play as its point of departure and creates from it a mainly comic entertainment, often in ways that bear no relation to the original play." Wells gives, as an example of the puns in the texts, the following: Macbeth and Banquo make their first entrance under an umbrella. The witches greet them with "Hail! hail! hail!": Macbeth asks Banquo, "What mean these salutations, noble thane?" and is told "These showers of 'Hail' anticipate your 'reign'". [Wikipedia]
😀 Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and the composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900) and to the works they jointly created. The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado are among the best known...
Gilbert, who wrote the words, created fanciful "topsy-turvy" worlds for these operas where each absurdity is taken to its logical conclusion—fairies rub elbows with British lords, flirting is a capital offence, gondoliers ascend to the monarchy, and pirates emerge as noblemen who have gone astray. Sullivan, six years Gilbert's junior, composed the music, contributing memorable melodies that could convey both humour and pathos...
In 1861, to supplement his income, ...Gilbert began writing illustrated stories, poems and articles.., many of which would later be mined as inspiration for his plays and operas, particularly Gilbert's series of illustrated poems, the Bab Ballads. In the Bab Ballads and his early plays, Gilbert developed a unique "topsy-turvy" style in which humour was derived by setting up a ridiculous premise and working out its logical consequences, however absurd. Director and playwright Mike Leigh described the "Gilbertian" style as follows:
With great fluidity and freedom, [Gilbert] continually challenges our natural expectations. First, within the framework of the story, he makes bizarre things happen, and turns the world on its head. Thus the Learned Judge marries the Plaintiff, the soldiers metamorphose into aesthetes, and so on, and nearly every opera is resolved by a deft moving of the goalposts... His genius is to fuse opposites with an imperceptible sleight of hand, to blend the surreal with the real, and the caricature with the natural. In other words, to tell a perfectly outrageous story in a completely deadpan way. [Wikipedia]
😀 I've directed two Victorian comedies in the past few years – Brandon Thomas’s Charley’s Aunt (1892) and Dion Boucicault’s London Assurance (1841). ...the experience of directing these plays forced me to consider what the Victorians found funny, and how it resembles and differs from what audiences want today.
1. Character Types: There are certain character types which are naturally butts in Victorian comedies, and some of these fulfill a similar role in modern comedy. Lawyers spring naturally to mind (Spettigue in Charley’s Aunt, Meddle in London Assurance). In both plays they are stereotyped as immoral, money-grabbing and manipulative (all stereotypes found in modern humour also). Jokes which rely on assuming all lawyers are social climbers and men who are sexually repulsive to women however (found in both plays), don’t sit quite so well in the current climate where the Law is an aspirational career, rather than bourgeois, and women have formed more than half the entrants to the profession each year since 1993…
2. Money: Although the plots of both plays are romantic, it is money – not sex (the stalwart of modern comedy) - which is central to them...
3. Gender play: The sight of a man in a dress is still funny – maybe even more so, unused as we are to layers of petticoats and veils. So is seeing Grace Harkaway get one over on her suitor Charles – not because we think women are stupid, but because we are tuned into what is expected generically of the comedic heroine. I think it was the same then.
4. Servants: Modern audiences love servant characters. So do adaptors and TV writers (think Downton Abbey). Working class characters are seen as more like us – they say risqué things, and are often shown as more sexually active, while liking them is more democratic, not tinged with guilt...
5. Comic timing: Both plays need editing to be enjoyable in performance. Not because the language is obscure – it’s not. But because modern audiences are impatient. They’re nervous until the first laugh. And they’re not used to waiting for a comic situation to be set up. Nineteenth-century audiences must have been better at sitting through Act One expectantly. As it is, I ended up trying to get through the first scenes quickly and introducing more physical humour. [Secret Victorianist]
😀 Charley's Aunt is a farce in three acts written by Brandon Thomas. It broke all historic records for plays of any kind, with an original London run of 1,466 performances.
The play was first performed at the Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds in February 1892. It was produced by former D'Oyly Carte Opera Company actor W. S. Penley, a friend of Thomas, who appeared in the principal role of Lord Fancourt Babberley, an undergraduate whose friends Jack and Charley persuade him to impersonate the latter's aunt. The piece was a success, and it then opened in London at the Royalty Theatre on 21 December 1892 and quickly transferred to the larger Globe Theatre on 30 January 1893 to complete its record-breaking run.
The play was a success on Broadway in 1893, where it had another long run. It also toured internationally and has been revived continually and adapted for films and musicals. [Wikipedia]
😀 [Oscar] Wilde… finally found a way to critique society on its own terms. Lady Windermere's Fan was first performed on 20 February 1892 at St James's Theatre, packed with the cream of society. On the surface a witty comedy, there is subtle subversion underneath: "it concludes with collusive concealment rather than collective disclosure". The audience, like Lady Windermere, are forced to soften harsh social codes in favour of a more nuanced view. The play was enormously popular, touring the country for months, but largely trashed by conservative critics. It was followed by A Woman of No Importance in 1893, another Victorian comedy, revolving around the spectre of illegitimate births, mistaken identities and late revelations. Wilde was commissioned to write two more plays and An Ideal Husband, written in 1894, followed in January 1895…
The Importance of Being Earnest: Wilde's final play again returns to the theme of switched identities: the play's two protagonists engage in "bunburying" (the maintenance of alternative personas in the town and country) which allows them to escape Victorian social mores. Earnest is even lighter in tone than Wilde's earlier comedies. While their characters often rise to serious themes in moments of crisis, Earnest lacks the by-now stock Wildean characters: there is no "woman with a past", the principals are neither villainous nor cunning, simply idle cultivés, and the idealistic young women are not that innocent. Mostly set in drawing rooms and almost completely lacking in action or violence, Earnest lacks the self-conscious decadence found in The Picture of Dorian Gray and Salome.
The play, now considered Wilde's masterpiece, was rapidly written in Wilde's artistic maturity in late 1894... Earnest's immediate reception as Wilde's best work to date finally crystallised his fame into a solid artistic reputation. The Importance of Being Earnest remains his most popular play. [Wikipedia]
😀 Jerome Klapka Jerome (2 May 1859 – 14 June 1927) was an English writer and humourist, best known for the comic travelogue Three Men in a Boat (1887)...
On 21 June 1888, Jerome married Georgina Elizabeth Henrietta Stanley Marris ("Ettie"), nine days after she divorced her first husband… The honeymoon took place on the Thames "in a little boat," a fact that was to have a significant influence on his next and most important work, Three Men in a Boat.
Jerome sat down to write Three Men in a Boat as soon as the couple returned from their honeymoon. In the novel, his wife was replaced by his longtime friends George Wingrave (George) and Carl Hentschel (Harris). This allowed him to create comic (and non-sentimental) situations which were nonetheless intertwined with the history of the Thames region. The book, published in 1889, became an instant success and is still in print. Its popularity was such that the number of registered Thames boats went up fifty percent in the year following its publication, and it contributed significantly to the Thames becoming a tourist attraction. In its first twenty years alone, the book sold over a million copies worldwide. It has been adapted to films, TV and radio shows, stage plays, and even a musical. Its writing style influenced many humorists and satirists in England and elsewhere. [Wikipedia]
Some useful resources:
Victorian Jokes: The best in 19th-century humour By Lee Jackson, on History Today.
Possibly the greatest jokes ever told. Possibly. On Victorian London.
Victorian Humour On Twitter. Victorian jokes extracted from the British Library's digital archives. Curated by @DigiVictorian.
Bob Nicholson On Twitter.
Victorian Humour On Tumblr. Victorian jokes extracted from the British Library's digital archives. A collaborative project between Dr Bob Nicholson & BL Labs.
Victorian Humour joke database An experimental database of Victorian jokes, clipped from the British Library's digital collections.
Fifteen and a Half Hilarious Victorian Jokes That Would Even Make Her Majesty Laugh On The Astonishing Adventures of Lord Likely.
15 of History’s Greatest Puns Some of them Victorian. By Geico2014, on Mental Floss.
CreamofJokes: 11 jokes that were funny in the 1800s Weekly ‘Irish Times’ competition gave cash reward for funniest, often darkest, joke On The Irish Times website.
Victorian comic's gag book found By Sean Coughlan, on the BBC website.
Victorian jokes reveal history of humour - but we are not amused By Nick Britten, on the Telegraph website.
Music hall: Music hall comedy On Wikipedia.
British Music Hall Comedy Songs By Rupert Taylor, on Spinditty.
A Casquet of Vocal Gems From The Golden Days of Music Hall A database of lyrics for music hall songs.
Music Hall Character Acts On the Victoria and Albert Museum website.
Dan Leno On Wikipedia.
Dan Leno: the original Pantomime Dame By Helen Peden, on the British Library website.
Dan Leno (George Wild Galvin) By Barry Anthony, on Who’s Who of Victorian Cinema.
Dan Leno - Mrs. Kelly (1901) On YouTube, 2 minutes, 56 seconds. Posted by VintageBritishComedy. One of a few of his recorded sketches on YouTube.
Gus Elen On the Victoria and Albert Museum website.
19th Century British and American Humour By Arthur Russ, on HubPages.
Victorian Newspaper Articles: Humour A Scrapbook of Victorian Newspapers compiled by George Burgess (1829-1905), on A Victorian Scrapbook.
Punch (magazine) On Wikipedia.
About PUNCH Magazine Cartoon Archive On Punch.
Victorian Era Cartoons On Punch.
Punch, or the London Charivari (1841-1992) — A British Institution By Philip V. Allingham, on the Victorian Web.
Fun (magazine) On Wikipedia.
Victorian Periodicals Mentioned in the Victorian Web An index of articles. Contains links to articles on Punch and Fun.
Victorian burlesque On Wikipedia.
Gilbert and Sullivan On Wikipedia.
The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive Paul Howarth, Curator; Jim Farron (1936-2004), Curator 1993-2004.
Theatre in the Victorian era: Comedy in Victorian England On Wikipedia.
Laughing with the Victorians: Staging 19th Century Comedy On The Secret Victorianist.
Oscar Wilde On Wikipedia.
The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People by Oscar Wilde Part of Project Gutenberg. Book can be read online or there are several ways of downloading it.
Charley’s Aunt On Wikipedia.
Charley’s Aunt The text of the play by Brandon Thomas, 1892, on Project Gutenberg Australia.
Jerome K. Jerome On Wikipedia.
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome Part of Project Gutenberg. Book can be read online or there are several ways of downloading it.
The Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith Part of Project Gutenberg. Book can be read online or there are several ways of downloading it.
Charles Dickens On Wikipedia.
Introduction — Dickens and Laughter By James R. Kincaid, on the Victorian Web.
The Egoist (novel) On Wikipedia.
The Egoist: A Comedy in Narrative by George Meredith Part of Project Gutenberg. Book can be read online or there are several ways of downloading it.
An Essay on Comedy and the Uses of the Comic Spirit by George Meredith Part of Project Gutenberg. Book can be read online or there are several ways of downloading it.
Profound Hilarity: Humorous and Sarcastic Insights in Victorian Literature Uploaded by Johanna Rullo Gurny, on Academia.edu
Staying On Track By Kristan Tetens, on The Victorian Peeper. Brief mention of the humorous reactions to Bradshaw's Monthly Railway Guide.
Funny bones: macabre humour in the ‘Dance of Death’ sheds light on Victorian mortality By ap507, on University of Leicester website.
These 15 Goofy Photos Prove That The Victorians Also Had A Sense Of Humor Gathered by Bridget Fitzgerald, on All Day.
History of English Humour, Vol. 1 By Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange, 1878. Part of The Project Gutenberg - read online or many ways to download.
History of English Humour, Vol. 2 By Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange, 1878. Part of The Project Gutenberg - read online or many ways to download.
Please feel free to discuss this topic in the comments.
Please also feel free to comment about the canon story itself or any related aspects outside this week’s theme. For example, any reactions, thoughts, theories, fic recs, favourite adaptations of the canon story… Or any other contribution you wish to make. And if you have any suggestions for fic prompts springing from this week's story, please feel free to share those in the comments as well.
A few facts:
😀 Most surviving Victorian 'facetiae' [that is, jokes] such as appeared in magazines, newspapers and joke books, are rather staid affairs, relying on mild breaches of social convention, stereotypes which no longer have any resonance, or terrible puns. Nonetheless, some are genuinely funny, some evocative of the era, and others fall into the category of 'so bad it's good' ...
Here's a selection of my favourites -- as you will soon gather, I do have a high tolerance for puns… [What follows is a selection of the selection.]
"See here, wait, I've found a button in my salad." "That's all right, sir, it's part of the dressing."
Marriage is an institution intended to keep women out of mischief and get them into trouble.
If William Penn's aunts kept a pastry shop, what would be the prices of their pies? The pie-rates of Penn's Aunts.
Why should the number 288 never be mentioned in company? Because it is two gross.
Doesn't it make you dizzy to waltz? Yes, but one must get used to it, you know. It's the way of the whirled.
Pawnbrokers prefer customers without any redeeming qualities.
Moving in unfashionable circles: wearing a crinoline.
Why is the devil riding a mouse like one and the same thing? Because it is synonymous.
This, however is my all-time favourite Victorian joke:
What is the difference between a tube and a foolish Dutchman? One is a hollow cylinder and the other a silly Hollander. [Lee Jackson, being interviewed on History Today]
😀 The discovery of a Victorian comedian's private joke book is providing a rare insight into the gags being told to audiences 150 years ago. The book containing the handwritten record of jokes used by a circus clown, Tom Lawrence, is a direct link to the comedy performed under the big top in circuses touring English towns in the 1850s.
These Victorian stand-ups, dressed in the "grotesque and gorgeous" outfits of a clown, delivered jokes about useless husbands and bad-tempered wives, violent policemen, railway crashes and the hardships faced by the poor.
The book was uncovered by Dr Anne Featherstone, a lecturer in performance history at the University of Manchester, who recognised it as a rare surviving example of a working comedian's catalogue of material.
The notebook holds about 200 jokes, monologues and routines - with one version heavily thumbed and another "good" copy, presumably as a back-up.
"His working copy was probably kept at the side of the ring - he might have looked up and seen an audience full of soldiers and sailors and checked what jokes would be appropriate," says Dr Featherstone.
What made the Victorians laugh? They seemed to like clever word-play and punning, says Dr Featherstone. For example: "Bad husbands are like bad coals - they smoke, they go out, and they don't keep the pot boiling..."
"Women were always the butt of jokes in the 19th Century and policemen too, as they represented authority, and they were shown as lazy, eating pies in the kitchen," says Dr Featherstone...
"It's mostly gentle humour - but some of the misogynistic stuff is quite vicious. There's one where he says 'Have you seen my girlfriend's bonnet, I gave her that? Have you seen her jacket, I gave her that. Have you seen her eyes? Yes, they were both black. And the clown says - yes, I gave her those'."
The rough tactics of the police were under attack in this rhyme:
"This town is paraded with policemen in blue, They carry a mighty big staff and make use of it too. They batter your sconce in for pleasure, In the station house poke you for fun, They take all your money and treasure - And fine you five bob when they've done..!"
The joke book records that some of the gags were from earlier comedians - and some of the monologues could be much older, passed on within an oral tradition. [Sean Coughlan]
😀 Ann Featherstone… said: "These are hardly belly laughs to the modern ear but the audiences appreciated and understood the jokes. The Victorian circus was all about fools and horses, so being a clown was very hard work. Lawrence would run along beside a horse, looking up at the lady rider. He would be chatting her up with a string of jokes. He would be saying things like, 'She's so beautiful, so far above me'. The audience would understand the double meaning and would applaud. As well as filling in between acts, he had to be ready in case there was a break in the performance. As far as I'm concerned he was the first stand-up comedian… They might have been the fool, but they had to be professional… People like Thomas Lawrence had to be good horsemen and good entertainers. What we know about their joke delivery is that it was done at high speed, at high pitch and frantically. I suppose the nearest modern equivalent would be Lee Evans."
[Thomas Lawrence] compiled his list of jokes in 1871, and probably used it to refresh his memory before he went into the ring and to reduce the risk of "drying up" during a performance.
A lot of the jokes of the time relied on humorous verse, and Lawrence was not afraid to get political. In one he criticises the Army for flogging soldiers who misbehaved, saying: "C stands for cat o'nine tails with which they often flay. D stands for disgust that with flogging we don't do away." [Nick Britten]
😀 The typical music hall comedian was a man or woman, usually dressed in character to suit the subject of the song, or sometimes attired in absurd and eccentric style. Until well into the twentieth century, the acts were essentially vocal, with songs telling a story, accompanied by a minimum of patter. They included a variety of genres, including:
Lion comiques: essentially, men dressed as "toffs", who sang songs about drinking champagne, going to the races, going to the ball, womanising and gambling, and living the life of an aristocrat.
Male and female impersonators, perhaps more in the style of a pantomime dame than a modern drag queen. Nevertheless, these included some more sophisticated performers such as Vesta Tilley, whose male impersonations communicated real social commentary. [Wikipedia]
😀 The late Victorian and Edwardian periods were the heyday of British music hall entertainment. ...among the most popular acts were the comic songs.
George Robey was one of the biggest stars of the music hall. He was known as the Prime Minister of Mirth and had a career on the stage that lasted six decades...
In the music hall he wore a black frock coat, squashed bowler hat, and gave himself a red nose, as he stepped onto the stage to sing The Simple Pimple. Written in 1891 by E.W. Rogers, the song became one of Robey’s signature pieces. It told the story of Maria Brown, and the sheet music for it proclaimed it was “Sung with the greatest possible success by George Robey.” The opening verse describes the poor woman’s misfortune:
“I courted once a pretty girl dressed in the smartest clothes
She’d only one defect which was a pimple on her nose
I thought I was her first love, but my pals said, ‘Well, what cheek,
Old man, that girl of yours went out with three of us last week.’ ”
Harmless stuff by today’s standards, but a century or so ago it had them, as the saying goes, “rolling in the aisles.”
Marie Lloyd was known as the Queen of the Music Hall and enjoyed a career that lasted four decades, with top billing for most of those years. Her songs were full of saucy double meanings as in What Did She Know About the Railways? that contains the line “She’d never had her ticket punched before.” Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink...
Born in 1865, [Harry] Champion was a Cockney comedian, singer, and composer. He was immensely popular in the music halls and many of the tunes he sang have come down to us today: Boiled Beef and Carrots, and Any Old Iron are examples. Part of Champion’s shtick was that he delivered his songs at a fast tempo.
When the Gorgonzola Cheese Went Wrong… tells the story of a birthday celebration that was a bit of a disaster. The cheese had been bought at a bargain price and placed
“… safely in a drawer
A month went by or perhaps a little more.”
At the birthday party the cheese was brought out of hiding and that’s when we get to the chorus:
“Oh, that Gorgonzola cheese
It wasn’t over healthy I suppose
For the old tomcat fell a corpse upon the mat
When the ‘Niff’ got up its nose
Talk about the flavour of the ‘crackling on the pork’
Nothing could have been so strong
As the beautiful effluvia that filled our house
When the Gorgonzola cheese went wrong.”
One of the celebrants left, came back with a gun, and shot the cheese. This only made the pong worse. [Rupert Taylor]
😀 George Wild Galvin (20 December 1860 – 31 October 1904), better known by the stage name Dan Leno, was a leading English music hall comedian and musical theatre actor during the late Victorian era. He was best known, aside from his music hall act, for his dame roles in the annual pantomimes that were popular at London's Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, from 1888 to 1904...
Leno continued to appear in musical comedies and his own music hall routines until 1902, although he suffered increasingly from alcoholism. This, together with his long association with dame and low comedy roles, prevented him from being taken seriously as a dramatic actor, and he was turned down for Shakespearean roles. Leno began to behave in an erratic and furious manner by 1902, and he suffered a mental breakdown in early 1903. He was committed to a mental asylum, but was discharged later that year. After one more show, his health declined, and he died aged 43. [Wikipedia]
😀 When Dan Leno performed as the Pantomime Dame in the 1880s he transformed a previously minor role into the main part and shaped pantomime into the Christmas show we know today… George Conquest, manager of the Surrey Theatre in Lambeth, South London was so impressed by Leno’s [music hall] performances that he was quickly engaged to play Dame Durden in the 1886-7 pantomime Jack and the Beanstalk. Leno’s Dame stole the show and he subsequently appeared in every spectacular pantomime at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane until the end of the 1904 season. [Helen Peden]
😀 Gus Elen was the best known of the [music hall] 'coster' comedians, who performed songs and sketches about being a Cockney. Elen dressed in the coster uniform of striped jersey with a peaked cap turned towards one ear and a short clay pipe in the side of his mouth...
His first big success was in 1891, when he performed cockney songs at the Middlesex Music Hall, with a song called 'Never introduce your Donah to a pal' ('donah' meaning girlfriend). The movements for each of his songs were carefully rehearsed so that the performances themselves were clean and precise. Each gesture was powerfully distinct and could be seen from the back of the largest theatre.
His songs were bitter and realistic and rooted in the poverty and life of the East Enders who were his audience… His most famous song was ‘If it Wasn’t for the Houses in Between’ about the cramped housing conditions of the East End. Other songs included ‘It’s a Great Big Shame’ which was about a tiny girl dominating her beefy husband: ‘Naggin at a feller wot is six foot three, And ’er only four foot two’. Another song told of a couple who could never marry because as soon as one came out of jail, the other went in: ‘When I came out I found that Liza was in prison still. For when ordering of ’er wedding cake she’d simply pinched the till’.
Unlike most performers, Elen kept meticulous records of his songs with notes about the gestures and emotions, props required and stage settings. He also wrote comments about how his gags were received. [Victoria and Albert Museum]
😀 Having read the humorous British and American newspaper articles in my great-great grandfather’s [George Burgess (1829-1905)] Victorian scrapbook, as far as I can ascertain, humour at that time on both sides of the Atlantic was very similar. Generally it was rather simple, very basic, and invariably obvious, and by today’s standards often quite corny; albeit, some of the humour published at the time is timeless...
Some of my favourite shorts, published in Victorian newspapers and saved by George Burgess who stuck them in his scrapbook included:-
1. Indignant Husband
"INDIGNANT HUSBAND: "Now, I think this is going too far. You promised me that you would countermand your order for that dress."
Meek and lovely wife: "I wrote to the firm that very day."
"But here is the dress and the bill for it; enough to bankrupt me almost. How do you explain that?"
"I gave you the letter to post, and I suppose that you forgot it, as usual."
2. French Doctor
A FRENCH doctor being asked by a man one day to go to a distance to see his sick child, replied that it was too far to walk, and that he had no carriage.
"Oh," said the man. "that doesn't matter, I am a livery stable keeper and will drive you."
Sometime afterwards the doctor's bill was asked for. It was five francs.
The livery stable keeper then presented his bill for hire of the carriage. It was six francs.
3. Lost
LOST, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes, No reward is offered, for they are lost forever. [Arthur Russ]
😀 The story goes that British general Sir Charles Napier sent the one-word dispatch “Peccavi” to his superiors after conquering the Indian province of Sind in 1843—expressly against their orders. “Peccavi,” you see, is Latin for “I have sinned.” However, Napier did not make this near-perfect pun at all—it was coined by the teenaged Catherine Winkworth in an 1844 submission to a humor magazine that mistakenly printed her bit of wit as fact. [Geico2014, on Mental Floss]
😀 Punch… was a British weekly magazine of humour and satire established in 1841 by Henry Mayhew and engraver Ebenezer Landells. Historically, it was most influential in the 1840s and 1850s, when it helped to coin the term "cartoon" in its modern sense as a humorous illustration… Punch was founded on 17 July 1841 by Henry Mayhew and engraver Ebenezer Landells, on an initial investment of £25… Reflecting their satiric and humorous intent, the two editors took for their name and masthead the anarchic glove puppet, Mr. Punch, of Punch and Judy; the name also referred to a joke made early on about one of the magazine's first editors, Lemon, that "punch is nothing without lemon"...
The term "cartoon" to refer to comic drawings was first used in Punch in 1843, when the Houses of Parliament were to be decorated with murals, and "cartoons" for the mural were displayed for the public; the term "cartoon" then meant a finished preliminary sketch on a large piece of cardboard, or cartone in Italian. Punch humorously appropriated the term to refer to its political cartoons, and the popularity of the Punch cartoons led to the term's widespread use...
Artists who published in Punch during the 1840s and 50s included John Leech, Richard Doyle [ACD’s uncle], John Tenniel and Charles Keene…
In the 1860s and 1870s, conservative Punch faced competition from upstart liberal journal Fun, but after about 1874, Fun's fortunes faded...
After months of financial difficulty and lack of market success, Punch became a staple for British drawing rooms because of its sophisticated humour and absence of offensive material, especially when viewed against the satirical press of the time… Historian Richard Altick writes that "To judge from the number of references to it in the private letters and memoirs of the 1840s...Punch had become a household word within a year or two of its founding, beginning in the middle class and soon reaching the pinnacle of society, royalty itself".
Increasing in readership and popularity throughout the remainder of the 1840s and 1850s, Punch was the success story of a threepenny weekly paper that had become one of the most talked-about and enjoyed periodicals… Punch gave several phrases to the English language, including The Crystal Palace, and the "Curate's egg" (first seen in an 1895 cartoon). Several British humour classics were first serialised in Punch, such as the Diary of a Nobody and 1066 and All That. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the artistic roster included Harry Furniss, Linley Sambourne, Francis Carruthers Gould, and Phil May. [Wikipedia]
😀 Fun was a Victorian weekly magazine, first published on 21 September 1861. The magazine was founded by the actor and playwright H. J. Byron in competition with Punch magazine.
Like Punch, the journal published satiric verse and parodies, as well as political and literary criticism, sports and travel information. These were often illustrated or accompanied by topical cartoons (often of a political nature). The Punch mascot, Mr. Punch and his dog Toby were lampooned by Fun's jester, Mr. Fun, and his cat. The magazine was aimed at a well-educated readership interested in politics, literature, and theatre.
Fun was sold for a penny and was sometimes characterised as a 'poor man's Punch'. Thackeray called it "Funch". Fun silenced its critics by publishing lively fare, whereas Punch was criticised as dull and tired. One area in which Fun clearly bested its rival was in its close connection to popular theatre...
Notable contributors included playwrights Tom Robertson, [Tom] Hood, Clement Scott, F. C. Burnand (who defected to Punch in 1862), satirist Ambrose Bierce, G. R. Sims and especially W. S. Gilbert, whose Bab Ballads were almost all published in its pages, among other articles, poems, illustrations and drama criticism over a ten-year period. Cartoonists included Arthur Boyd Houghton, Matt Morgan and James Francis Sullivan (1852–1936)... Even though Fun was seen as liberal in comparison with the increasingly conservative Punch, it could cast satirical scorn or praise on either side of the political spectrum. For instance, Disraeli, whose unorthodox character and ethnic lineage made him a popular focus of attack, was praised in the magazine, including for his Reform Bill of 1867...
Fun ceased publication in 1901, when it was absorbed into Sketchy Bits. [Wikipedia]
😀 The DNB [the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography] notes that the monthly Bradshaw was notoriously hard to read because of its small format and print: "This presented a challenge to Victorian opticians to produce spectacles which were serviceable for reading Bradshaw--an essential companion for railway travellers. You did not simply 'look up' train times: you 'studied' Bradshaw. But the word 'Bradshaw' became synonymous with incomprehensibility: the guide was pilloried in Punch and Vanity Fair and was the subject of music-hall jokes. [Quoted by Kristan Tetens]
😀 Victorian burlesque... is a genre of theatrical entertainment that was popular in Victorian England and in the New York theatre of the mid 19th century. It is a form of parody in which a well-known opera or piece of classical theatre or ballet is adapted into a broad comic play, usually a musical play, usually risqué in style, mocking the theatrical and musical conventions and styles of the original work, and often quoting or pastiching text or music from the original work…
...burlesques featured musical scores drawing on a wide range of music, from popular contemporary songs to operatic arias, although later burlesques, from the 1880s, sometimes featured original scores. Dance played an important part, and great attention was paid to the staging, costumes and other spectacular elements of stagecraft, as many of the pieces were staged as extravaganzas. Many of the male roles were played by actresses as breeches roles, purposely to show off their physical charms, and some of the older female roles were taken by male actors...
...burlesque was aimed at a… highly literate audience… Some of the most frequent subjects for burlesque were the plays of Shakespeare and grand opera… By the 1880s, almost every truly popular opera had become the subject of a burlesque…
The Shakespeare scholar Stanley Wells notes that although parodies of Shakespeare had appeared even in Shakespeare's lifetime, the heyday of Shakespearean burlesque was the Victorian era. Wells observes that the typical Victorian Shakespeare burlesque "takes a Shakespeare play as its point of departure and creates from it a mainly comic entertainment, often in ways that bear no relation to the original play." Wells gives, as an example of the puns in the texts, the following: Macbeth and Banquo make their first entrance under an umbrella. The witches greet them with "Hail! hail! hail!": Macbeth asks Banquo, "What mean these salutations, noble thane?" and is told "These showers of 'Hail' anticipate your 'reign'". [Wikipedia]
😀 Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and the composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900) and to the works they jointly created. The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado are among the best known...
Gilbert, who wrote the words, created fanciful "topsy-turvy" worlds for these operas where each absurdity is taken to its logical conclusion—fairies rub elbows with British lords, flirting is a capital offence, gondoliers ascend to the monarchy, and pirates emerge as noblemen who have gone astray. Sullivan, six years Gilbert's junior, composed the music, contributing memorable melodies that could convey both humour and pathos...
In 1861, to supplement his income, ...Gilbert began writing illustrated stories, poems and articles.., many of which would later be mined as inspiration for his plays and operas, particularly Gilbert's series of illustrated poems, the Bab Ballads. In the Bab Ballads and his early plays, Gilbert developed a unique "topsy-turvy" style in which humour was derived by setting up a ridiculous premise and working out its logical consequences, however absurd. Director and playwright Mike Leigh described the "Gilbertian" style as follows:
With great fluidity and freedom, [Gilbert] continually challenges our natural expectations. First, within the framework of the story, he makes bizarre things happen, and turns the world on its head. Thus the Learned Judge marries the Plaintiff, the soldiers metamorphose into aesthetes, and so on, and nearly every opera is resolved by a deft moving of the goalposts... His genius is to fuse opposites with an imperceptible sleight of hand, to blend the surreal with the real, and the caricature with the natural. In other words, to tell a perfectly outrageous story in a completely deadpan way. [Wikipedia]
😀 I've directed two Victorian comedies in the past few years – Brandon Thomas’s Charley’s Aunt (1892) and Dion Boucicault’s London Assurance (1841). ...the experience of directing these plays forced me to consider what the Victorians found funny, and how it resembles and differs from what audiences want today.
1. Character Types: There are certain character types which are naturally butts in Victorian comedies, and some of these fulfill a similar role in modern comedy. Lawyers spring naturally to mind (Spettigue in Charley’s Aunt, Meddle in London Assurance). In both plays they are stereotyped as immoral, money-grabbing and manipulative (all stereotypes found in modern humour also). Jokes which rely on assuming all lawyers are social climbers and men who are sexually repulsive to women however (found in both plays), don’t sit quite so well in the current climate where the Law is an aspirational career, rather than bourgeois, and women have formed more than half the entrants to the profession each year since 1993…
2. Money: Although the plots of both plays are romantic, it is money – not sex (the stalwart of modern comedy) - which is central to them...
3. Gender play: The sight of a man in a dress is still funny – maybe even more so, unused as we are to layers of petticoats and veils. So is seeing Grace Harkaway get one over on her suitor Charles – not because we think women are stupid, but because we are tuned into what is expected generically of the comedic heroine. I think it was the same then.
4. Servants: Modern audiences love servant characters. So do adaptors and TV writers (think Downton Abbey). Working class characters are seen as more like us – they say risqué things, and are often shown as more sexually active, while liking them is more democratic, not tinged with guilt...
5. Comic timing: Both plays need editing to be enjoyable in performance. Not because the language is obscure – it’s not. But because modern audiences are impatient. They’re nervous until the first laugh. And they’re not used to waiting for a comic situation to be set up. Nineteenth-century audiences must have been better at sitting through Act One expectantly. As it is, I ended up trying to get through the first scenes quickly and introducing more physical humour. [Secret Victorianist]
😀 Charley's Aunt is a farce in three acts written by Brandon Thomas. It broke all historic records for plays of any kind, with an original London run of 1,466 performances.
The play was first performed at the Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds in February 1892. It was produced by former D'Oyly Carte Opera Company actor W. S. Penley, a friend of Thomas, who appeared in the principal role of Lord Fancourt Babberley, an undergraduate whose friends Jack and Charley persuade him to impersonate the latter's aunt. The piece was a success, and it then opened in London at the Royalty Theatre on 21 December 1892 and quickly transferred to the larger Globe Theatre on 30 January 1893 to complete its record-breaking run.
The play was a success on Broadway in 1893, where it had another long run. It also toured internationally and has been revived continually and adapted for films and musicals. [Wikipedia]
😀 [Oscar] Wilde… finally found a way to critique society on its own terms. Lady Windermere's Fan was first performed on 20 February 1892 at St James's Theatre, packed with the cream of society. On the surface a witty comedy, there is subtle subversion underneath: "it concludes with collusive concealment rather than collective disclosure". The audience, like Lady Windermere, are forced to soften harsh social codes in favour of a more nuanced view. The play was enormously popular, touring the country for months, but largely trashed by conservative critics. It was followed by A Woman of No Importance in 1893, another Victorian comedy, revolving around the spectre of illegitimate births, mistaken identities and late revelations. Wilde was commissioned to write two more plays and An Ideal Husband, written in 1894, followed in January 1895…
The Importance of Being Earnest: Wilde's final play again returns to the theme of switched identities: the play's two protagonists engage in "bunburying" (the maintenance of alternative personas in the town and country) which allows them to escape Victorian social mores. Earnest is even lighter in tone than Wilde's earlier comedies. While their characters often rise to serious themes in moments of crisis, Earnest lacks the by-now stock Wildean characters: there is no "woman with a past", the principals are neither villainous nor cunning, simply idle cultivés, and the idealistic young women are not that innocent. Mostly set in drawing rooms and almost completely lacking in action or violence, Earnest lacks the self-conscious decadence found in The Picture of Dorian Gray and Salome.
The play, now considered Wilde's masterpiece, was rapidly written in Wilde's artistic maturity in late 1894... Earnest's immediate reception as Wilde's best work to date finally crystallised his fame into a solid artistic reputation. The Importance of Being Earnest remains his most popular play. [Wikipedia]
😀 Jerome Klapka Jerome (2 May 1859 – 14 June 1927) was an English writer and humourist, best known for the comic travelogue Three Men in a Boat (1887)...
On 21 June 1888, Jerome married Georgina Elizabeth Henrietta Stanley Marris ("Ettie"), nine days after she divorced her first husband… The honeymoon took place on the Thames "in a little boat," a fact that was to have a significant influence on his next and most important work, Three Men in a Boat.
Jerome sat down to write Three Men in a Boat as soon as the couple returned from their honeymoon. In the novel, his wife was replaced by his longtime friends George Wingrave (George) and Carl Hentschel (Harris). This allowed him to create comic (and non-sentimental) situations which were nonetheless intertwined with the history of the Thames region. The book, published in 1889, became an instant success and is still in print. Its popularity was such that the number of registered Thames boats went up fifty percent in the year following its publication, and it contributed significantly to the Thames becoming a tourist attraction. In its first twenty years alone, the book sold over a million copies worldwide. It has been adapted to films, TV and radio shows, stage plays, and even a musical. Its writing style influenced many humorists and satirists in England and elsewhere. [Wikipedia]
Some useful resources:
Victorian Jokes: The best in 19th-century humour By Lee Jackson, on History Today.
Possibly the greatest jokes ever told. Possibly. On Victorian London.
Victorian Humour On Twitter. Victorian jokes extracted from the British Library's digital archives. Curated by @DigiVictorian.
Bob Nicholson On Twitter.
Victorian Humour On Tumblr. Victorian jokes extracted from the British Library's digital archives. A collaborative project between Dr Bob Nicholson & BL Labs.
Victorian Humour joke database An experimental database of Victorian jokes, clipped from the British Library's digital collections.
Fifteen and a Half Hilarious Victorian Jokes That Would Even Make Her Majesty Laugh On The Astonishing Adventures of Lord Likely.
15 of History’s Greatest Puns Some of them Victorian. By Geico2014, on Mental Floss.
CreamofJokes: 11 jokes that were funny in the 1800s Weekly ‘Irish Times’ competition gave cash reward for funniest, often darkest, joke On The Irish Times website.
Victorian comic's gag book found By Sean Coughlan, on the BBC website.
Victorian jokes reveal history of humour - but we are not amused By Nick Britten, on the Telegraph website.
Music hall: Music hall comedy On Wikipedia.
British Music Hall Comedy Songs By Rupert Taylor, on Spinditty.
A Casquet of Vocal Gems From The Golden Days of Music Hall A database of lyrics for music hall songs.
Music Hall Character Acts On the Victoria and Albert Museum website.
Dan Leno On Wikipedia.
Dan Leno: the original Pantomime Dame By Helen Peden, on the British Library website.
Dan Leno (George Wild Galvin) By Barry Anthony, on Who’s Who of Victorian Cinema.
Dan Leno - Mrs. Kelly (1901) On YouTube, 2 minutes, 56 seconds. Posted by VintageBritishComedy. One of a few of his recorded sketches on YouTube.
Gus Elen On the Victoria and Albert Museum website.
19th Century British and American Humour By Arthur Russ, on HubPages.
Victorian Newspaper Articles: Humour A Scrapbook of Victorian Newspapers compiled by George Burgess (1829-1905), on A Victorian Scrapbook.
Punch (magazine) On Wikipedia.
About PUNCH Magazine Cartoon Archive On Punch.
Victorian Era Cartoons On Punch.
Punch, or the London Charivari (1841-1992) — A British Institution By Philip V. Allingham, on the Victorian Web.
Fun (magazine) On Wikipedia.
Victorian Periodicals Mentioned in the Victorian Web An index of articles. Contains links to articles on Punch and Fun.
Victorian burlesque On Wikipedia.
Gilbert and Sullivan On Wikipedia.
The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive Paul Howarth, Curator; Jim Farron (1936-2004), Curator 1993-2004.
Theatre in the Victorian era: Comedy in Victorian England On Wikipedia.
Laughing with the Victorians: Staging 19th Century Comedy On The Secret Victorianist.
Oscar Wilde On Wikipedia.
The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People by Oscar Wilde Part of Project Gutenberg. Book can be read online or there are several ways of downloading it.
Charley’s Aunt On Wikipedia.
Charley’s Aunt The text of the play by Brandon Thomas, 1892, on Project Gutenberg Australia.
Jerome K. Jerome On Wikipedia.
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome Part of Project Gutenberg. Book can be read online or there are several ways of downloading it.
The Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith Part of Project Gutenberg. Book can be read online or there are several ways of downloading it.
Charles Dickens On Wikipedia.
Introduction — Dickens and Laughter By James R. Kincaid, on the Victorian Web.
The Egoist (novel) On Wikipedia.
The Egoist: A Comedy in Narrative by George Meredith Part of Project Gutenberg. Book can be read online or there are several ways of downloading it.
An Essay on Comedy and the Uses of the Comic Spirit by George Meredith Part of Project Gutenberg. Book can be read online or there are several ways of downloading it.
Profound Hilarity: Humorous and Sarcastic Insights in Victorian Literature Uploaded by Johanna Rullo Gurny, on Academia.edu
Staying On Track By Kristan Tetens, on The Victorian Peeper. Brief mention of the humorous reactions to Bradshaw's Monthly Railway Guide.
Funny bones: macabre humour in the ‘Dance of Death’ sheds light on Victorian mortality By ap507, on University of Leicester website.
These 15 Goofy Photos Prove That The Victorians Also Had A Sense Of Humor Gathered by Bridget Fitzgerald, on All Day.
History of English Humour, Vol. 1 By Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange, 1878. Part of The Project Gutenberg - read online or many ways to download.
History of English Humour, Vol. 2 By Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange, 1878. Part of The Project Gutenberg - read online or many ways to download.
Please feel free to discuss this topic in the comments.
Please also feel free to comment about the canon story itself or any related aspects outside this week’s theme. For example, any reactions, thoughts, theories, fic recs, favourite adaptations of the canon story… Or any other contribution you wish to make. And if you have any suggestions for fic prompts springing from this week's story, please feel free to share those in the comments as well.
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Date: 2017-06-18 11:04 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2017-07-22 07:11 pm (UTC)and policemen too, as they represented authority, and they were shown as lazy, eating pies in the kitchen... Hee, which since has been updated to doughnuts. (Although that's probably an American variation of the trope, yeah?)
You did not simply 'look up' train times: you 'studied' Bradshaw. But the word 'Bradshaw' became synonymous with incomprehensibility: the guide was pilloried in Punch and Vanity Fair and was the subject of music-hall jokes. NICE TO KNOW IT WASN'T JUST ME WHO STRUGGLED WITH THAT THING. btw, in the 1954 TV series, Watson is an acknowledged wizard with Bradshaw: he can rattle off train times at the drop of a hat. :-)
"bunburying" (the maintenance of alternative personas in the town and country) which allows them to escape Victorian social mores. Huh. I didn't know that was enough of a thing to have a name, although it's the plot of... at least a pastiche or three, and I want to add a canon story to the list, although I'm blanking on that. But looking at discussion of the term, Bunbury was a fictitious person, and not an alternate persona/life?
JEROME K. JEROME! *bounces* A few months back, I had to (had to! compulsory! it could not be allowed to pass!) explain Three Men in a Boat to someone at dinner. (And this despite them being familiar with Connie Willis' work!) Ah, well, they still have those pleasures to look forward to... :-)
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Date: 2017-07-23 06:49 pm (UTC)...and policemen too, as they represented authority, and they were shown as lazy, eating pies in the kitchen... Hee, which since has been updated to doughnuts. (Although that's probably an American variation of the trope, yeah?) I think so... Obviously British people eat doughnuts but policemen and their box of doughnuts feels innately American ^__^
in the 1954 TV series, Watson is an acknowledged wizard with Bradshaw: he can rattle off train times at the drop of a hat. :-) That was most impressive ^__^ And it was a lovely bit of history to know how flaming difficult the Bradshaw was for everyone ^__^
Well, to quote the play:
Algernon. Literary criticism is not your forte, my dear fellow. Don’t try it. You should leave that to people who haven’t been at a University. They do it so well in the daily papers. What you really are is a Bunburyist. I was quite right in saying you were a Bunburyist. You are one of the most advanced Bunburyists I know.
Jack. What on earth do you mean?
Algernon. You have invented a very useful younger brother called Ernest, in order that you may be able to come up to town as often as you like. I have invented an invaluable permanent invalid called Bunbury, in order that I may be able to go down into the country whenever I choose. Bunbury is perfectly invaluable. If it wasn’t for Bunbury’s extraordinary bad health, for instance, I wouldn’t be able to dine with you at Willis’s to-night, for I have been really engaged to Aunt Augusta for more than a week.
I gather The Importance of Being Earnest is where the term originated. ...and I want to add a canon story to the list... Are you thinking of The Man With The Twisted Lip...? Not quite the same thing I suppose.
I remember when I was 13 borrowing Three Men in a Boat from the school library. And sitting in my classroom and reading it, and laughing out loud because it was so funny ^___^
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Date: 2017-08-10 04:05 pm (UTC)Bunburying: Hee, I put the play on hold at the library to investigate my ownself, but you were much faster. :-)
Are you thinking of The Man With The Twisted Lip...? SILVER BLAZE. IT WAS SILVER BLAZE. Jonathon Straker's alternate life as Derbyshire. (Sorry, that's been bugging me for weeks. I even wrote a sixty about his two wives, and I still couldn't quite put my finger on it.)
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Date: 2017-08-10 09:42 pm (UTC)And of course it's Silver Blaze! *facepalms* Never even occurred to me ^^"