As Satan in the proverb builds invariably a chapel hard by the house of prayer, so does the demon of burlesque as surely erect his hovel next door to the palace of the legitimate tragedian. He spoils by his absurd architecture every neighborhood he enters; he even cuts off the views from the Castle of Elsinore, and disfigures the approaches to the royal tombs of the ancient Danish kings. John Poole's celebrated travesty of _Hamlet_, one of the earliest of its kind, was first published in London in 1811. George Holland, afterwards so popular upon the American stage for many years, presented Poole's play on the occasion of his first benefit in this country, March 22, 1828, appearing himself as the First Grave-digger and as Ophelia. This was about the beginning of what, for want of a better term, may be styled "legitimate burlesque" in the United States. It inspired our managers to import, and our native authors to write, travesties upon everything in the standard drama which was serious and ought to have been respected; and it led to burlesques of _Antony and Cleopatra_, _Douglas_, _Macbeth_, _Othello_, _Romeo and Juliet_, _Manfred_, _The Tempest_, _Valentine and Orson_, _Richard the Third_, _The Hunchback_, and many more; and between the years 1839, when William Mitchell opened the Olympic, and 1859, when William E. Burton made his last bow to the New York public, was laid out and built between Chambers Street and the site of Brougham's Lyceum, on Broadway, corner of Broome Street, that metropolis of burlesque upon the ruins of which the dramatic antiquary, whose name is Palmy Days, now loves to sit and ponder. The titles of its half-forgotten streets and buildings, collected at random from its old directories, then known as the bills of the play, will recall pleasant memories and excite gentle wonder. There were, among others, _A Lad in a Wonderful Lamp_, _The Bohea Man's Girl_, _Fried Shots_ [_Freischuetz_], _Her Nanny_, _Lucy Did Sham Her Moor_, and _Lucy Did Lamm Her Moor_, _Man Fred_, _Cinder Nelly_, _Wench Spy_, _Spook Wood_, _Buy It Dear_, _'Tis Made of Cashmere_ [_Bayadere; or, The Maid of Cashmere_], _The Cat's in the Larder, or, The Maid with the Parasol_ [_La Gazza Ladra; or, The Maiden of Paillaisseau_], _The Humpback_, _Mrs. Normer_, and _Richard Number Three_. [Illustration: MARK SMITH AS MRS. NORMER.]