Galatea, or Pygmalion Reversed Hollingshead called himself a "licensed dealer in legs, short skirts, French adaptations, Shakespeare, taste and musical glasses." In 1886, Hollingshead ceded the management of the theatre to George Edwardes, whom he had hired in 1885. Nellie Farren, as the theatre's "principal boy", and Fred Leslie starred at the Gaiety for over 20 years. In the early 1890s, as burlesque went out of fashion, Edwardes changed the focus of the theatre from musical burlesque to the new genre of Edwardian musical comedy. "Galatea or Pygmalion Re-Versed" is a parody of W.S. Gilbert's blank verse romantic play "Pygmalion and Galatea". "The Morning
Dulcamara, or the Little Duck and the Great Quack story it has to tell, and giving fair opportunities for the display of varied comic acting. Mr. Gilbert's burlesque ... possesses all these merits, and is remarkable for the wit and brilliance of its dialogue." "Dulcamara"'s success showed that Gilbert could write entertainingly in the burlesque form and quickly led to commissions to write four additional opera burlesques (the most successful of which was "Robert the Devil" in 1868) and a half dozen pantomimes and farces. These early burlesques, full of "ingenious but excruciating" puns (traditional in burlesques of the period), show signs of the satire that would later be