The Owl and the Pussycat

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For the film starring Barbra Streisand and George Segal, see The Owl and the Pussycat (film).

Edward Lear's illustration of the Owl and the Pussycat

"The Owl and the Pussycat" is a famous nonsense poem by Edward Lear, first published in 1871. Its most notable historical feature is the coinage of the term runcible spoon. It features four anthropomorphised animals (the owl, the pussycat, the 'piggy-wig' and a turkey) and revolves around the love between the title characters, who are married by the turkey in the third and final stanza.

The pair is ill-matched; in real life, the cat would likely try to eat the owl, or a large owl might attack a cat. It's difficult to see how the marriage could be consummated after "They danced by the light of the moon," and, in any case, such a union could never produce the offspring mentioned in the sequel. Edward Lear himself was unsuccessful in love. He loved a woman but could not bring himself to propose.

Portions of an unfinished sequel, "The Children of the Owl and the Pussycat," were first published posthumously in 1938.[1]

The title characters famously go to sea in "a beautiful pea-green boat". The phrase "pea-green" occurs several times in Lear's writings including his surviving diaries.

[edit] Adaptations

The story has been set to music and animated many times, including by Igor Stravinsky and by Laurie Anderson.

A version was composed by Elton Hayes in 1948 and was recorded in 1953 by Parlophone. It became a regular item on Children's Favourites.
It was the central focus for a 1968 children's musical play about Lear's nonsense poems, entitled "The Owl and the Pussycat went to see". The play was written by Sheila Ruskin and David Wood.
The title was borrowed for an unrelated stage play and subsequent 1970 movie starring Barbra Streisand and George Segal.
Igor Stravinsky set it to music in 1966. A recording of the work was made under the supervision of the composer and is available on Sony's 'Stravinsky Edition'.
In 1971, a cartoon based on the poem was made by Weston Woods.
In the 1968 Disney animated feature Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day, later a part of 1977's The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, the character Owl mentions a relative of his who supposedly "went to sea in a pea-green boat" with a Pussycat.
Laurie Anderson composed and recorded a version titled Beautiful Pea Green Boat that appeared on her 1994 album Bright Red.
Eric Idle, a former member of Monty Python's Flying Circus, wrote a children's book entitled The Quite Remarkable Adventures of the Owl and the Pussycat which was based on the poem. It is an extended story about when the Owl and the Pussycat were attacked by a band of ruthless rats who were out to steal pies. It was illustrated by Wesla Weller and was first published in 1996 with an audio version which included some songs by Idle himself.
In 2001, Stewart Lee performed Pea Green Boat, a stand-up show which revolved around the deconstruction of the Edward Lear poem The Owl and the Pussycat and a tale of his own broken toilet. It ran for a week at the end of 2001 at the Battersea Arts Centre as a workshop performance, for a week in its finished form at The Traverse in Edinburgh (during the Edinburgh Fringe festival) in the summer of 2002, and for three weekends in Jan/Feb 2003 again at the Battersea Arts Centre. Amongst other topics, Lee speculates as to whether the love between the Owl and the Pussycat was a metaphor for Lear's love of another man.