The Ancient Origins of Burlesque

[Dept of PMM Artists & things]

What do you get when you cross colorful masks and fart jokes with erotic dancing? Some say you get an ancient Greek play, others claim you're watching burlesque.

The French word burlesque is said to have come from the Italian burlesco which was adopted from the Spanish Burla or ‘joke’. Most linguists agree that it literally means to ‘send up.’ Burlesque, which employs theatrical devices from antiquity, has continued to evolve as a theatrical genre and now includes more styles than ever. There are several reasons for this. In a complex world, humans possess an innate need to relate to the world in parody. Secondly, the urge to laugh at the absurdity of life is more fun to do as a community.

According to some experts, burlesque was born in the 14th century, when the British author, Geoffrey Chaucer, published his bawdy collections of stories called The Canterbury Tales. Further research indicates that many aspects of burlesque were present in the comedies of ancient Greece almost a thousand years before. These comedic conventions continued when Roman playwrights adapted aspects of Greek comedy for the stage, creating their own brand of satire, farce and parody several centuries later.

According to Brander Matthews in The Development of the Drama, Aristophanes wrote one of the first lyric burlesques: The Clouds, (423 BC) which targeted intellectual conventions by making a fool of Socrates. In this piece, jokes about passing wind and tomfoolery abound. Another famous work includes The Frogs, which was clearly a ‘send-up’ of Euripides. www.theatrehistory.com/ancient/comedy001.html

Matthews provides further evidence that the roots of burlesque began in ancient Greece when he describes the behavior of country boys during the Festival of the God, Dionysus: ‘... there were companies of young fellows, often disguised grossly as beasts or birds, who broke out into riotous phallic dances, enjoyed equally by those who looked on and by those who took part.’ Since one intent of burlesque is to poke fun of sexual mores, politics, topical events and local persona, it’s no coincidence that Greek dancers ‘…grouped themselves in rival bands, the leaders of which indulged in a give-and-take of banter and repartee, certainly vulgar and personal…’. The role of these group leaders is similar to the conventions of burlesque when the emcee and audience engage in spirited exchanges. (The Development of the Drama, Brander Matthews, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1912. pp 74-106)

Women were an integral part of this festival and fulfilled a very special role. female worshipers of Dionysus called maenads, honored Dionysis through dance to emphasize his '...special relationship with women.' Likewise, burlesque, with its emphasis on female dancers, relies upon the sensuality of the feminine.

The Roman playwright, Plautus, was deeply influenced by Aristophanes and the 'new comedies' of the poet, Menander. Many poets from this era '...drew their fictional characters from cooks, merchants, farmers, and slaves.' www.theatrehistory.com/ancient/comedy001.html, It is no surprise then, that Plautus developed characters from all social classes and 'was sometimes accused of teaching the public indifference and mockery of the Gods'. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plautus Burlesque appeals to the experiences of the common man which illustrates the ways in which the boundaries between burlesque and ancient humor blur.

Early Greek comedy, which occurred during The Festival of Dionysus, featured theatrical masks, innuendo, lyrical performance and dance. This, combined with the costumed antics of verbally sparring young men, erotic dancing and the presence of a group leader, inextricably links ancient forms of comedy to present-day burlesque.

[Dept of PMM Artists & things]

In literary criticism, the term burlesque is employed in genre criticism to describe any imitative work that derives humor from an incongruous contrast between style and subject. In this usage, forms of satire such as parody are types of burlesque (Abrams, 1999). The term came into English usage in the seventeenth century, through French from Italian burla, a trick or joke, burlesca. The word first appears in a title in Francesco Berni's Opere Burlesche, works that had circulated widely in manuscript before they were printed. For a time burlesque verses were known as poesie bernesca in his honour.

In this primary usage, High burlesque refers to a burlesque imitation where a serious style is applied to commonplace or comically inappropriate subject matter — as, for example, in the literary parody and the mock-heroic. Low burlesque applies an irreverent, mocking style to a serious subject; an example is Samuel Butler's Hudibras, which describes the misadventures of a Puritan knight in satiric doggerel verse, using a colloquial idiom. Pure burlesque is simply comedy; the addition of Butler's ethical subtext has made his caricatures into satire.

A burlesque literary performance is intentionally ridiculous in that it imitates several styles and combined imitations of certain authors and artists with absurd descriptions. In this, the term burlesque was often used interchangeably with 'pastiche', 'parody', and the seventeenth and eighteenth century genre of the 'mock-heroic'. Burlesque is an inherently social form, one that depends on the reader's contextual expectations. When a reader approaches burlesque without expectations, and the comedy needs to be explicated in a preface and annotations, the effect is blunted.

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Comic-Realistic Poets of the Thirteenth to Early Fourteenth Century

The burlesque sonnet was born and took its first steps among a fairly numerous series of poets living in Tuscany during the late thirteenth to early fourteenth century. Although varying in individual style, tone, and subject matter, they certainly form a distinctive group or genre when compared to their contemporaries, who were involved in serious, sublime verse. Commonly referred to as "comic-realistic" poets, theirs is not the exalted world of beauty and lofty sentiments, but an ironic one of caricature and raucous laughter. It is material life reduced to the basics where philosophical and moral concerns are swept aside in the search for the immediate gratification of elementary instincts. These poets sing an earthy existence, full of coarse and passionate inclinations, in a highly expressive, colorful, and colloquial—often regional—vernacular. This is in direct and, of course, deliberate contrast to the refined and sweet language used by their serious colleagues engaged in the newly discovered dolce stile .

Their style is often erroneously called "spontaneous," but their work is no more spontaneous than serious poetry since their words are chosen just as carefully to produce the desired effect. In fact, theirs is above all a poetry of comic effect, designed to surprise, shock, and at times provoke laughter. The language they use is often devastatingly concrete. The parts of the body are described graphically, as are the bodily functions normally omitted from polite conversation and poetry. At the same time, their language can also be highly euphemistic, as in the use of sexual metaphors.

The life this verse describes can be wretched. The poets complain of constant misfortune and privations. Petty rivalries and political setbacks blossom into blasphemous invective and satirical portraits done in a trivial and insulting spirit. Other works sing the praises of a free-wheeling life. The exaltation of wine, women, and play is never far from these poets, and their verse can assume the cadences of a rollicking barroom song.

These early burlesque sonnets can be melancholic or gay, ironically cutting or explosively irreverent, lighthearted, or sarcastic. Their emotional and tonal range is wide. What underlies them all, however, is an ever-present spirit of humorous burla . This is the stuff they are made of.

The first Tuscan sonneteers gradually lead to the Italian Renaissance, at which point the burlesque sonnet takes on new shadings of meaning. Nevertheless, the characteristics displayed by these initiators of the genre are ever-present, to a degree, in the burlesque sonnet as it develops through the Italian—and subsequently Spanish—Renaissance and Baroque periods.

The new poetic form of the sonnet was an artistic invention, although popular in source, of a circle of poets at the Sicilian court of Frederick II. Thirty-one sonnets remain which date from 1220 to 1250; these were written by the royal notary and lawyer Giacomo da Lentino, the imperial chancellor Piero delle Vigne, Jacopo Mostacci, and others. Twenty-five of the sonnets are attributed to Giacomo, the leader of the literary group and recognized as the most likely originator of the sonnet. These early poems were divided into hendecasyllabic octave and sestet with a sense pause dividing the two. The corresponding rhyme schemes were ABABABAB and CDECDE (the majority) or CDCDCD. It is generally accepted that Giacomo borrowed the octave from the eight-line Sicilian strambotto, a popular folk song; the sestet was apparently sheer inspiration. In content, the Frederician sonnets derive from the Provençal love tradition of fin'amors ; several are tensons.

Unfortunately, literary critics have historically preferred to avoid dipping their toes into these somewhat murky waters; thus the more risqué poetry remains in large part uncommented. A typical critical reaction to ribald verse is that of Carmelo Previtera, who finds four of Rustico's sonnets (XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, and XXIX) brazenly obscene, saying that "la bruttura delle cose descritte è cosí turpe che non c'è nessuna scusa per l'autore, il quale si compiace di guazzare nella trivialità e nella sconcezza piú indecente [the baseness of the things described is such that there is no excuse for the author, who enjoys wallowing in vulgarity and the most indecent obscenity].

Previtera's final judgment is that perhaps it is precisely in this "poesia lubrica" where Rustico's true voice and character lie. Rustico, the Florentine burlone who talks of all subjects openly and without reserve. But Rustico's "true" voice is found as much in the "obscene" verse as in the purely caricaturesque. His burlesque tone and overriding mocking attitude encompass and contain the obscene elements. These are merely another facet of the burlesque and do not stand alone as a separate category of verse; this is exactly what separates them from so-called erotic literature. The reader is certainly not incited to libidinous thoughts, but at most to a sardonic grin—perhaps in Rustico's time, even to laughter.

Rustico is the first known poet to channel burlesque content into the sonnet medium. He is the precursor of many burlesque sonneteers, but he himself had no formal precursors.

[Dept of PMM Artists & things]

The term burlesque may be traced to folk poetry and theater and apparently derived from the late Latin burra ('trifle’).

The origin of the term 'burlesque' is contentious with most citing the French burlesque, which was, in turn, borrowed from the Italian burlesco, derived from the Spanish burla ('joke') as its root. Its literal meaning is to 'send up'. In Britain 'burlesque' in verse and prose was first popularised in the 14th century by Geoffrey Chaucer's satirical The Canterbury Tales. Later many Irish and British satirical writers came to prominence with political and social burlesques in the 18th and 19th centuries such as William Makepeace Thackeray.

In 16th century Spain, playwright and poet, Miguel de Cervantes, ridiculed medieval romance in his many satirical works. Among Cervantes' works are Exemplary Novels and the Eight Comedies and Eight New Interludes published in 1615.

The first widespread use of the word was as a literary term in 17th century Italy and France, was where it referred to a grotesque imitation of the dignified or pathetic.

Beginning in the early 18th century, the term burlesque was used throughout Europe to describe musical works in which serious and comic elements were juxtaposed or combined to achieve a grotesque effect. Early theatrical burlesque was a form of musical and theatrical parody in which a serious or romantic opera or piece of classical theatre was adapted in a broad, often risqué style that ridiculed stage conventions. In late 19th century England, in particular, such dramatic productions became very popular, especially at particular theaters such as the Olympic and the Gaiety in London. In Britain, burlesque was largely a middle class pursuit, where the jokes relied on the audiences' familiarity with known operas and artistic works. Its predilection for double entendre and casting female stars in the lead male roles (or 'breeches parts') gave burlesque its risqué popular appeal. Gradually burlesque performers started appearing in music halls too, performing musical sketches for the working classes with political and social satire. This form remained popular well in to the 20th century and can still be found today on television sketch shows.To save confusion, the traditional British burlesque style is now known as 'musical burlesque' or 'classical burlesque' (in the case of sendups of the classics) and is still active today with a handful of specialist writer/performers and producers.

In 20th century America the word became associated with a variety show in which striptease is the chief attraction. Although the striptease originated at the Moulin Rouge in 1890s Paris and subsequently became a part of some burlesque across Europe, only in American culture is the term burlesque closely associated with the striptease. These shows were not considered 'theater' and were regarded as 'low' by the vaudevillians, actors and showgirls of neighboring theater land.