American vaudeville emerged in the late 19th century as a form of variety entertainment featuring short acts such as comedy, music, and acrobatics. It grew out of earlier forms of entertainment for the working and middle classes such as music halls and burlesque. Burlesque originated in the 1840s as a way for working class performers to mock the upper classes through parody and ridicule of operas, plays, and social conventions. It relied on humor and appealing to audiences' desires for laughter and sensuality.

1. American Vaudeville, more so than any
other mass entertainment grew out of vaudeville - Comes
while saloons, music-halls and Burlesque from a French composer
calling his songs
"chanson du Vau de
. vire"—"song of the valley
of Vire shortened to "vau
Burlesque The word de ville."
burlesque comes from
the Latin word
burrameaning nonsense
and the Italian word
burlameaning mockery
Stage entertainment offering a variety of short acts
such as slapstick turns, song-and-dance routines,
In the 19th Century the
name burlesque was
and juggling performances.
applied to a wide range of
comic plays, including non-
musicals, during the 1840s A literary or dramatic work that ridicules a subjecteither by presenting a solemn subject in an undignified style or
these works entertained
the lower and middle an inconsequential subject in a dignified style
classes in Great Britain and
the united states by By the 1860s, British burlesque relied on the display of shapely, underdressed women to keep audiences interested.
making fun of the operas,
plays and social habits of In the Victorian age, when proper women went to great lengths to hide their physical form beneath bustles,
the upper class.
hoops and frills, the idea of young ladies appearing onstage in tights was a powerful challenge.

2. Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of Burlesque is a very old and very
variety entertainment in the United popular form of entertainment,
States and Canada from the early 1880s which began in the 1840s all the
until the early 1930s. By the 1880’s half of way through to the 1960’s. It was
the population was now concentrated in used by the working class
towns and cities, who wanted affordable performers as a way to mock the
entertainment on a regular basis. Most upper classes, their traditions,
variety shows were too harsh for women social habits, culture and fashion
or children to attend, and many other and many of the performances
were spoofs of operas,
shows were already declining in popularity.
Shakespeare and other classic
As phonographs, film, radio and television
literature and plays. The
did not exist yet, this was a great way to
performances relied on mockery
keep the audience entertained. Vaudeville
and played to the audience's
entertainment consisted of 10 to 15 desire for laughter and lust. Due
individual acts, featuring magicians, to the 'naughty' nature of the
acrobats, comedians, trained animals, performances, burlesque usually
singers, dancers and more. The great targeted working class men, but as
financial depression of the 1930s and the word spread it drew a wider
growth of radio and television caused the audience including a large scale of
rapid decline of vaudeville and to its women.
virtual disappearance after World War II.