Burlesque

Burlesque (through Fr. from Ital. burla, 'a jest'), denoting a style of speaking, acting, writing, drawing, is a low and rude grade of the comic. The legitimate comic brings together contrasts with a final view to harmonising and reconciling them; the burlesque distorts and caricatures, and brings the incongruities into stronger relief. The farce is the burlesque of comedy. Deformities and monstrosities that excite disgust do not belong to the burlesque. The lofty and the abject, the great and the little are conjoined, with the sole view of exciting a laugh. Nor does the true burlesque turn real greatness and nobility into laughter, but only sham greatness—false pathos, and all hollow pretension and affectation. There is pure burlesque in Aristophanes, but the modern burlesque in sustained form may be said to have originated among the Italians, more particularly with the poet Berni. The genuinely national buffone of the Italians personates the burlesque. Carlo Gozzi, in his tragi-comedies, is perhaps the greatest in this vein. Some of the more remarkable burlesques in English literature are Chaucer's Rime of Sir Thopas, a burlesque of the long-winded and interminable stories of the middle ages; Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle, on the imitations of the tales of chivalry; and the Duke of Buckingham's play, The Rehearsal, intended to ridicule the heroic language in contemporary plays. There are no happier examples in English than some of The Rejected Addresses. Butler's Hudibras has much of the burlesque in it, but is a book that stands quite by itself. Similarly, Don Quixote contains burlesque elements enough, while it is one of the greatest and wisest books in the world. Parody or Travesty is a species of burlesque. See Burlesque Plays and Poems in Morley's 'Universal Library' (1887), and W. D. Adams's Book of Burlesques (1891).