Box and Cox (farce)

It spawned two sequels by other authors, and was adapted as a one-act comic opera in 1866 by the dramatist F. C. Burnand and the composer Arthur Sullivan, Cox and Box, which also became popular and continues to be performed regularly.

In the nineteenth century, it was common practice for plays to be adapted from French originals for the London stage, with changes often made to conform to Victorian playgoers' expectations.

[1] The main source of Morton's play was a French one-act vaudeville, Frisette, by Eugène Marin Labiche and Auguste Lefranc, which had been produced at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal, Paris in 1846.

[2] Some commentators have stated that Morton also drew on another vaudeville, La Chambre à Deux Lits (The Double Room), which itself reputedly derived from earlier French, English and Spanish comedies.

[1][n 1] Morton is not known to have pronounced on the matter, but F. C. Burnand, who later adapted Box and Cox as an operetta, discounted the importance of La Chambre à Deux Lits.

Burnand added that the later sections of the plot of Box and Cox, namely the men's connubial entanglements, their efforts to evade them, and the discovery that they are brothers, were not derived from anyone, and were "thoroughly Mortonian".

The cast was: Reviewing the first performance, The Standard said, "The piece is neatly and smartly written, but it is not difficult to guess that it owes its salvation solely to the felicitous whimsicalities of the two actors upon whom it chiefly devolves.

The grotesque gentility of Harley, the hatter, is drolly matched by the cockney vulgarity of Buckstone, the printer, and both have ample room for the exhibition of their own peculiar conceits of method – those never-failing helps to mirth.

[2] Mrs Bouncer, a London lodging-house keeper, is letting an apartment to a double tenantry – to Box, a printer on a daily newspaper, and to Cox, a journeyman hatter, the former occupying the room during the day, the latter during the night.

Cox, suspicious that Mrs Bouncer has been using his flat during the day, complains to her that his coal keeps disappearing and there is "a steady increase of evaporation among my candles, wood, sugar and lucifer matches."

Box and Cox meet, each imagining the other to be an intruder, each pulling from his pocket the last week's receipt for rent, and each clamouring loudly for redress from the landlady.

Mrs Bouncer is forced to explain the mystery, and she throws herself on the kindness of Box and Cox by promising either of them a handsome second floor back room, which she hurries off to prepare.

Box is astonished, as he too had once been engaged to Mrs Wiggins, but, he reveals, he had struck on an ingenious plan to escape her clutches: he had pretended to commit suicide by drowning.

The impasse is broken when a letter arrives from Margate stating that Penelope Anne has drowned in a boating accident, and has left her property to her intended husband.

The piece became a popular favourite; from late 1847 it was widely staged throughout the United Kingdom,[8] and it was frequently performed to raise funds for causes including a new drama college[9] and the proposed Shakespeare Memorial Theatre.

[2] In the twentieth century, it was successfully revived at the London Coliseum in 1924, the cast comprising Donald Calthrop, Hubert Harben and Dora Gregory,[16] and in 1961 Lindsay Anderson directed the work at the Royal Court Theatre.

[18] The play became so well known that the humorous magazine Punch printed a mock examination paper on it for use in drama schools, with such questions as "What was Mrs Bouncer's ostensible employment?

[2] The Morning Post gave this plot summary: "Box and Cox have both retired from business, both having been left enough money to live on, and they have a wife and baby apiece.

Burnand incorporated three musical numbers, writing new words to existing tunes by Bellini, Offenbach and the unknown composer of "Les Pompiers de Nanterre".

[24] In 1885, there had been another musical treatment of the same plot, John and Jeanette, by L. Machele and J. Batchelder, but that version was based directly on Labiche and Lefranc's 1846 vaudeville Frisette, rather than on Box and Cox.