Jefferson, one may venture to assert, would not have been surprised if he had learned that an American university professor of dramatic literature, whenever he came to discuss the lyrical-burlesques of Aristophanes, was in the habit of sending his whole class to Weber and Fields that his students might see for themselves the nearest modern analog to the robust fantasies of the great Greek humorist. Aristophanes was a many-sided genius; as a lyric poet of ethereal elevation he must be set by the side of Shelley; as a keen satirist of contemporary fads and foibles he must be compared with Rabelais; and as a fun-maker pure and simple, as a comic playwright, willing and able to evoke unexpected laughter by ludicrous antics, he reveals an undeniable likeness to the adroit devisers of the hodgepodge of humorous episodes represented with contagious humor by Weber and Fields. And the heterogeneous pieces which used to be produced by the two performers who devote themselves to the dislocation of the English language were outgrowths of the variety-show, from which, indeed, the two performers themselves were graduates. It is this aspect of the variety-show, its supplying of opportunities for artistic development to ambitious performers, and its own spontaneous generation of dramatic forms capable of being lifted into literature--it is this aspect of the variety-show which would be emphasized by any competent writer undertaking to narrate its long and involved history. That no one has yet written a history of the variety-show is as surprising as that no one has yet written a history of negro-minstrelsy. The materials for such a book are accessible and abundant, since there are already richly documented accounts of the fairs of Paris and of London, in which the variety-show flourished centuries ago. There are accounts of the English concert-halls as they now exist and of the French _café-concerts_. The historian will also be aided by the various treatises on the ballet, and on the circus, and on the puppet-show, with all of which forms of entertainment the variety-show has always had intimate relations.