Lion comique

Lion comique was a popular style of entertainment in Victorian music halls, a parody of upper class toffs or "swells". The songs the performers of the genre sang were "hymns of praise to the virtues of idleness, womanising and drinking",[1] perhaps the most well-known of which is George Leybourne's Champagne Charlie. The lion comique deliberately distorted social reality for amusement and escapism.[2]

References

Notes
  1. ^ Kift & Kift 1996, p. 49
  2. ^ Vicinus 1975, p. 262
Bibliography
  • Kift, Dagmar; Kift, Roy (1996), The Victorian Music Hall: Culture, Class and Conflict, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-52147-472-6 
  • Vicinus, Martha (1975), Industrial Muse: Study of Nineteenth Century British Working-class Literature, Croom Helm social history series (1 ed.), Croom Helm, ISBN 978-0-85664-131-2