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
The Wicked World by the fairy work of James Planché, are founded upon the idea of self-revelation by characters under the influence of some magic or some supernatural interference. The first was "The Palace of Truth" in 1870, a fantasy adapted from a story by Madame de Genlis. Second was "Pygmalion and Galatea" (1871), a satire of sentimental, romantic attitudes toward myth, and "The Wicked World" was third. These plays, together with "Sweethearts" (1874), "Charity", and "Broken Hearts" (1875), did for Gilbert on the dramatic stage what the German Reed Entertainments had done for him on the musical stage. They established that his