The Concept Of Burlesque Theater

Introduction
The mere concept of Burlesque Theater is a problematic one. This is primarily because the term Burlesque itself cannot be defined singularly for at different times in history, it has been portrayed by the world to define different concepts.
Although the term itself has been derived from the Italian word burla which means “a joke”, it did not enter the English lexicon until the mid-seventeenth century. According to V. C. Clinton-Baddeley, the seventeenth century meaning of burlesque was limited to the defilement and humiliation of classical writers, however, by the eighteenth century the term had expanded to a much more grandiose array of mean subjects.
Much more recent critics have established burlesque as a generic term that encapsulates

This marked the advent of the Victorian Burlesque era when prominent classical ballads and operas were parodied into musical comedy pieces that were often dubbed as racy, ridiculous and risqué. Prominent among these were Shakespearean plays such as Hamlet. Sometimes the original music would be used while other times, the lyrics would be altered to bring about the comic effect.
It became famous in London theatres around the 1830s and lasted till the 1890s. However, unlike the existing notion of Burlesque, the Victorian Burlesque era was very similar to the English pantomime, although it focused more on the high-end literate class unlike the pantomime which was open to all classes and ages. Over the years, the high-end literate class concept dissipated and writers like the Brough Brothers started focusing on pieces meant for the middle and lower middle classes as

These were heightened further because of the Scandal of the Tights. Soon after the Minstrel Shows started and were highly popular around the Southern plantations until the 1890s. American Burlesque adopted the structure of the Minstrel shows and soon evolved into a completely new domain which centered on minimal clothing, suggestive plots, dialogues and dances with sharp humor and short routines. Therefore, it can be derived that the American form of Burlesque was in majority, revolving around exotic performances, nudity and eventually strip