Part two featured various short specialties and olios in which the women did not appear.
American burlesque rapidly adopted the minstrel show's tripartite structure: part one was composed of songs and dances rendered by a female company, interspersed with low comedy from male comedians. Leavitt, who had earlier feminized the minstrel show with his group Madame Rentz's Female Minstrels. The influence of the minstrel show soon followed one of the first American burlesque troupes was the Rentz-Santley Novelty and Burlesque Company, created in 1870 by Michael B. "Leg" shows, such as the musical extravaganza The Black Crook (1866), became popular around the same time. The New York Times consistently expressed its disgust of burlesque, even headlining an article with the plea “Exit British Burlesque”. Thompson's shows were described as a “disgraceful spectacle of padded legs jiggling and wriggling in the insensate follies and indecencies of the hour”. After this untimely closure, backlash against burlesque continued to grow. and sent the Thompson troupe prematurely packing for a national tour”. In the summer of 1869 a wave of ‘anti-burlesque hysteria’ in the New York press frightened away the middle-class audiences. It was the most popular entertainment in New York during the 1868–1869 theatrical season: "The eccentricities of pantomime and burlesque – with their curious combination of comedy, parody, satire, improvisation, song and dance, variety acts, cross-dressing, extravagant stage effects, risqué jokes and saucy costumes – while familiar enough to British audiences, took New York by storm." Unfortunately, “the female audiences for burlesque did not last for long. īurlesque in the United States is believed to have begun in New York with the arrival from England of Lydia Thompson's burlesque troupe, "The British Blondes". British-style burlesques had been successfully presented in New York as early as the 1840s. There were three main influences on American burlesque in its early years: Victorian burlesque, "leg shows" and minstrel shows. A staple of theatrical burlesque was the display of attractive women in travesty roles, dressed in tights to show off their legs, but the plays themselves were seldom more than modestly risqué. A typical example from a burlesque of Macbeth: Macbeth and Banquo enter under an umbrella, and the witches greet them with "Hail! hail! hail!" Macbeth asks Banquo, "What mean these salutations, noble thane?" and is told, "These showers of 'Hail' anticipate your 'reign'".
The dialogue was generally written in rhyming couplets, liberally peppered with bad puns. The comedy often stemmed from the incongruity and absurdity of the classical subjects, with realistic historical dress and settings, being juxtaposed with the modern activities portrayed by the actors. It took the form of musical theatre parody in which a well-known opera, play or ballet was adapted into a broad comic play, usually a musical play, often risqué in style, mocking the theatrical and musical conventions and styles of the original work, and quoting or pastiching text or music from the original work. Victorian burlesque, sometimes known as "travesty" or " extravaganza", was popular in London theatres between the 1830s and the 1890s. Burlesque depended on the reader's (or listener's) knowledge of the subject to make its intended effect, and a high degree of literacy was taken for granted. Burlesque in literature and in theatre through the 19th century was intentionally ridiculous in that it imitated several styles and combined imitations of certain authors and artists with absurd descriptions. The term "burlesque" more generally means a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects.
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