Box and Cox By John Maddison Morton

Introduction

John Maddison Morton was an English playwright, specialized in one-act farces. Box and Cox were his most famous farce. He also wrote comic dramas, pantomimes and other theatre plays. Box and Cox is a one-act farce. It is based on a French one-act vaudeville, Frisette, produced in Paris in 1846.

Box and Cox was first produced on 1 November 1847 at the Lyceum Theatre, London, billed as a “romance of real life.” The term “Box and Cox” has entered the English language: the Oxford English Dictionary describes it as “allusively applied to an arrangement in which two people take turns in sustaining a part, holding a role, or the like.”

OUTLINE OF THE FARCE

Mrs Bouncer, a London lodging-house keeper, is leaving an apartment to a double tenant – to Box, a printer on a daily newspaper, and to Cox, a hatter, the former occupying a room during the day, the latter in the night. They usually meet up on the lodging-house stairs when one comes in from work while the other goes out, but neither has any idea that Mrs Bouncer leaves her room to the other. Cox, suspicious of Mrs Bouncer’s use of his flat during the day, complains to her that his coal continues to disappear and there is “a steady increase in evaporation between my candles, wood, sugar and Lucifer.” He also complains that his room is full of tobacco smoke. Mrs Bouncer gives a number of excuses, including that Box, who, she says, occupies the attic, is a persistent smoker, and that his smoke has to come down the chimney. Cox leaves for his work at the hat shop, and on the stairs passes Box, who returns from the night shift to the newspaper printer.

Box has brought home with him a chicken leg that he prepares to cook at once. He lights the fire, is indignant that his matches were used and his candles burned low; for, being at home only during the day, he suspects Mrs Bouncer of these depredations. Leaving his chicken leg to cook, he goes to bed for a short nap. Cox returns, having been given the day off by his employer. He bought a mutton chop and, going to cook it on the gridiron, found the fire already lit and the chicken leg on the gridiron. He removes it, puts his chop in its place, and hurries to the adjacent room for a plate.

The slamming of the door awakens Box, who, remembering his chicken, leaps out of the bed and finds the chop where he left the chicken leg. He angrily seizes the chop, flings it out of the window, and leaves the room to pick up a plate. Cox returns, and instead of his chop, he discovers the rasher that follows the chop out of the window. Box and Cox meet, each imagining the other to be an intruder, each pulling the rent receipt from his pocket last week, and each clamouring loudly for relief from the landlady. Mrs Bouncer has to explain the mystery, and she throws herself at the kindness of Box and Cox.

Summary

J.M.Mortin’s one-act play “Box and Cox” belongs to the dramatic genre “Farce”. A farce is a form of low comedy designed to provoke laughter through highly exaggerated caricatures of people in improbable or silly situations. Traits of farce include (1) physical bustle such as slapstick, (2) broad verbal humour such as puns. Many literary critics (especially in the Victorian period) have tended to view farce as inferior to “high comedy” that involves brilliant dialogue. The main purpose behind a farcical play is to evoke hilarious laughter from the audience. The language used in a farce is not only faulty but also verges on being bizarre unparliamentarily and abusive. Dialogues used are mostly multipronged ones likely to be interpreted differently by different readers and onlookers.