Few of the rosy romantics who read Austin Dobson, collect bisque statuets of Pierrot & Columbine and attend lectures on the 17th Century harlequinade like to remember that there exists in the U. S. today a vivid healthy parallel of the true commedia dell' arte. Like the commedia, the Burlesque Show is extemporaneous, its libretto an assembly of long-remembered "bits" that have never been formally written down. Like the commedia, Burlesque has developed a cast of traditional characters with formalized costumes. The tramp, the Jew, the policeman, the soubrette and the straight man are as persistently unvarying as Harlequin, Pierrot, Columbine...
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