Tweedledum and Tweedledee Tweedledum and Tweedledee Tweedledum and Tweedledee are fictional characters in an English nursery rhyme and in Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There". Their names may have originally come from an epigram written by poet John Byrom. The nursery rhyme has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19800. The names have since become synonymous in western popular culture slang for any two people who look and act in identical ways, generally in a derogatory context. Common versions of the nursery rhyme include: The words "Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee" make their first appearance in print in "one of
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