F. C. Burnand
The son of a prosperous family, he was educated at Eton and Cambridge and was expected to follow a conventional career in the law or in the church, but he concluded that his vocation was the theatre.
From his schooldays he had written comic plays, and from 1860 until the end of the 19th century, he produced a series of more than 200 Victorian burlesques, farces, pantomimes and other stage works.
The piece became a popular favourite and was later frequently used by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company as a curtain raiser; it remains regularly performed today.
Known generally for his genial wit and good humour, Burnand was nevertheless intensely envious of his contemporary W. S. Gilbert but was unable to emulate his rival's success as a comic opera librettist.
In other forms of theatre Burnand was outstandingly successful, with his works receiving London runs of up to 550 performances and extensive tours in the British provinces and the US.
[2] Burnand was educated at Eton, where, aged fifteen, he wrote a farce, Guy Fawkes Day, played at Cookesley's house, and subsequently at the Theatre Royal, Worthing.
His family had expected that he would study for the bar, but the Burnands held the right to appoint the incumbent of a Church of England parish that became vacant, and it was agreed that he should train for the priesthood.
He parted company with Byron when the magazine rejected his proposed 1863 literary burlesque of a Reynolds serial, entitled Mokeanna, or the White Witness.
[11] His most memorable early success was another musical burlesque, Ixion, or the Man at the Wheel (1863), starring Lydia Thompson in the title role, which found audiences on both sides of the Atlantic.
[15] The reviewer for Fun was W. S. Gilbert, who wrote Mr Sullivan's music is, in many places, of too high a class for the grotesquely absurd plot to which it is wedded.
[14][22] It was at that time illegal in England for a man to marry his dead wife's sister,[n 2] although such marriages made outside British jurisdiction were recognised as valid; accordingly the wedding ceremony was performed in continental Europe.
[13] His stage pieces of the 1870s included Poll and Partner Joe (1871),[13] Penelope Anne (1871; a sequel to Cox and Box),[13] The Miller and His Man (1873; "a Christmas drawing room extravaganza" with songs by Sullivan),[23] Artful Cards (1877),[13] Proof (1878),[13] Dora and Diplunacy (1878, a burlesque of Clement Scott's Diplomacy, an adaptation of Sardou's Dora),[13] The Forty Thieves (1878; a charity collaboration among four playwrights, including Byron and Gilbert),[13] Our Club (1878)[13] and another frequently revived hit, Betsy (1879).
False rhymes and awkward rhythms occur frequently in his verse, and his favourite devices included puns, topical references and slang.
"[19] Burnand also translated or adapted for the London stage several French operettas by Offenbach, Edmond Audran, Charles Lecocq and Robert Planquette.
[6][19] At the same time as his busy theatrical career, he was a member of the staff of Punch under Lemon and his successors, Shirley Brooks and Tom Taylor, writing a regular stream of genial articles.
A. Milne considered it "one of the most popular series which has ever appeared in Punch"; alongside it, he rated as Burnand's best comic contributions his burlesques of other writers, such as "The New History of Sandford and Merton" (1872) and "Strapmore" by "Weeder" (1878).
[8] In Milne's view the magazine's reputation increased considerably under Burnand: It grew less intolerant of opinions with which it disagreed; it became more catholic in its appeal; it began to discard its air of a Family Joke and aspired to be the National Institution which it has since been proclaimed.
[1]A later biographer, Jane Stedman, writes, "His predecessor, Tom Taylor, had allowed the paper to become heavy, but Burnand's rackety leadership brightened it."
[29] For the Gaiety Theatre, Burnand wrote a burlesque of The Tempest entitled Ariel in October 1883, with music by Meyer Lutz, starring Nellie Farren and Arthur Williams.
[30] The Observer was less censorious, finding the piece moderately amusing, and correctly predicting that it would run successfully until it had to make way for the annual Gaiety pantomime at Christmas.
[36][37] Burnand's 1897 comic opera, His Majesty, with music by Alexander Mackenzie, failed despite the contributions of the lyricist Adrian Ross and a Savoy Theatre cast including Ilka Pálmay, George Grossmith and Walter Passmore.
The Times commented, "Mr Burnand's experience as a librettist of comic opera, and Sir Alexander Mackenzie's inexperience in this class of composition might lead the public to expect a brilliant book weighed down by music of too serious and ambitious a type.
[6] Stedman rates as a high point of his editorship the publication of The Diary of a Nobody by the brothers George and Weedon Grossmith, which was soon turned into book form and has never been out of print.
[11] He had a very large circle of friends and colleagues who included William Makepeace Thackeray, Mark Lemon and most writers, dramatists and actors of the day.
