Ruy Blas and the Blasé Roué

Ruy Blas and the Blasé Roué is a burlesque written by A. C. Torr (pen name of Fred Leslie) and Herbert F. Clark with music by Meyer Lutz.

Other examples include The Bohemian G-yurl and the Unapproachable Pole (1877), Blue Beard (1882), Ariel (1883, by F. C. Burnand), Galatea, or Pygmalion Reversed (1883), Little Jack Sheppard (1885), Monte Cristo Jr. (1886), Miss Esmeralda (1887), Frankenstein, or The Vampire's Victim (1887), Mazeppa, Faust up to Date (1888), Carmen up to Data (1890), Cinder Ellen up too Late (1891) and Don Juan (1892, with lyrics by Adrian Ross).

Hollingshead called himself a "licensed dealer in legs, short skirts, French adaptations, Shakespeare, taste and musical glasses.

Edwardes expanded the burlesque format from one act to full-length pieces with original music by Lutz, instead of scores compiled from popular tunes, as was the usual course before that.

[9] In addition to impersonating the four actors, Leslie and his colleagues were wearing petticoats, imitating the female stars who danced to the same tune in the earlier work.

Don Salluste, a corrupt court official, has private reasons to wish to humiliate the Queen, and he persuades Ruy and Caesar to disguise themselves as women and apply for posts in the royal household.

The critics generally viewed the libretto as a departure from the old traditions of burlesque, because its resemblance to the original work was tangential, and because Hugo's Ruy Blas was not well enough known in England to be a fruitful subject for parody.

In The Theatre, Clement Scott wrote, "As to the play on which the burlesque is supposed to be founded, save in the first act, where it is fairly closely followed, we hear but little of it.