Tweedledum and Tweedledee the most celebrated and most frequently quoted (and sometimes misquoted) epigrams", satirising the disagreements between George Frideric Handel and Giovanni Bononcini, written by John Byrom (1692–1763): Although Byrom is clearly the author of the epigram, the last two lines have also been attributed to Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope. While the familiar form of the rhyme was not printed until around 1805, when it appeared in "Original Ditties for the Nursery", it is possible that Byrom was drawing on an existing rhyme. The characters are perhaps best known from Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking-Glass and what Alice Found There" (1871).
Giovanni Bononcini of his sojourns to Italy, he married Margherita Balletti. She came from a family of actors and "commedia dell'arte" players and was the sister-in-law of Luigi Riccoboni. From 1720 to 1732 he was in London, where for a time his popularity rivaled George Frideric Handel's, who had arrived in London in 1712. The Whig party favored Handel, while the Tories favored Bononcini. Their competition inspired the epigram by John Byrom that made the phrase "Tweedledum and Tweedledee" famous. Handel steadily gained the ascendancy, and Bononcini became a pensioner of the Duchess of Marlborough, who had led his admirers. Bononcini left