AustLit

Written in verse and containing songs and dances, this localised burlesque was adapted from William and Robert Brough's extravaganza The Enchanted Isle, or, Raising the Wind on the Most Approved Principles (1848), itself a burlesque of Shakespeare's The Tempest.

One of the features of the production was George Fawcett's impersonation of 'a well-known medical practitioner' (Age 25 Apr. 1859, n. pag.). A critic writing for Bell's Life in Victoria records, 'Mr Fawcett... gives the jokes entrusted to him with solemn gravity. He has refined, in some degree, upon the design of the authors, and identifies himself very funnily with a person in our local pill interest. The hits levelled at the individual in question are racy, although they occasionally approach the broad in their reference to the aperient qualities of the vegetable specific which is profusely commended by its inventor to the Victorian stomach.' Concerning the other local hits, the critic goes on to write, 'Many of them are cleverly strung together and judiciously interpolated' (30 April 1859, p.2).

A similarly titled pantomime written by Thomas Pavey (and subtitled Harlequin the Mysterious Prince and the Magician Father) is not believed to be related to Rowe's burlesque. The Pavey production was staged in Melbourne in December of the same year as Rowe's burlesque.