[1] In musical comedy this is often done to subjects and personalities of national interest.  The Ziegfeld perennial Follies invariably have bits that are played by impersonators of the national figure of the moment.  Sometimes in musical revues great dramatic successes are travestied, and the invariable shouts of laughter their presentation provokes are an illuminating exemplification of the truth that between tragedy and comedy there is but a step.

Second, there are the acts that are constructed from bits of comedy business and depend for their success not on dialogue, but on action.  Merely a thread of plot holds them together and on it is strung the elemental humor of the comedy bits, which as often as not may be slap-stick.  The purpose being only to amuse for the moment, all kinds of entertainment forms may be introduced.  One of the most successful examples of the burlesque tab, [2] James Madison’s “My Old Kentucky Home” (See Appendix), serves as the basic example in my treatment of this vaudeville form.

[2] Tab is short for tabloid.  There may be tabloid musical comedies—­running forty minutes or more—­as well as burlesque tabs.

3.  Short Plays

Short plays, as the name implies, are merely plays that are short.  They partake of the nature of the long play and are simply short because the philosophic speeches are few and the number of scenes that have been inserted are not many.  The short play may have sub-plots; it may have incidents that do not affect the main design; its characters may be many and some may be introduced simply to achieve life-like effect; and it usually comes to a leisurely end after the lapse of from twenty minutes to even an hour or more.

Again like the full-evening play, the one-act play that is merely short paints its characters in greater detail than is possible in the playlet, where the strokes are made full and broad.  Furthermore, while in the playlet economy of time and attention are prime requisites, in the short play they are not; to take some of the incidents away from the short play might not ruin it, but to take even one incident away from a playlet would make it incomplete.

For many years, however, the following tabloid forms of the legitimate drama were vaudeville’s answer to the craving of its audiences for drama.

(a) Condensed Versions, “Big” Scenes and Single Acts of Long Plays.  For example—­an example which proves three points in a single instance:  the need for drama in vaudeville, vaudeville’s anxiety for names, and its willingness to pay great sums for what it wants—­Joseph Jefferson was offered by F. F. Proctor, in 1905, the then unheard-of salary of $5,000 a week for twelve consecutive weeks to play “Bob Acres” in a condensed version of “The Rivals.”  Mr. Jefferson was to receive this honorarium for himself alone, Mr. Proctor agreeing to furnish the condensed play, the scenery and costumes, and pay the salaries of the supporting cast.  The offer was not accepted, but it stood as the record until Martin Beck paid Sarah Bernhardt the sum of $7,500 a week for herself and supporting players during her famous 1913 tour of the Orpheum Circuit.  In recent years nearly every legitimate artist of national and international reputation has appeared in vaudeville in some sort of dramatic vehicle that had a memory in the legitimate.