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''Box and Cox'' is a one act farce by John Maddison Morton. It is based on a French one-act vaudeville, ''Frisette'', which had been produced in Paris in 1846. ''Box and Cox'' was first produced at the Lyceum Theatre, London, on 1 November 1847, billed as a "romance of real life." The play became popular and was revived frequently through the end of the nineteenth century, with occasional productions in the twentieth century. It spawned two sequels by other authors, and was adapted as a one-act comic opera in 1866 by the dramatist F. C. Burnand and the composer Arthur Sullivan, ''Cox and Box'', which also became popular and continues to be performed regularly. Other musical adaptations were made, but have not remained in the repertory. The phrase "Box and Cox" has entered the English language: the Oxford English Dictionary defines it as "applied allusively to an arrangement in which two persons take turns in sustaining a part, occupying a position, or the like." ==Background== In the nineteenth century, it was common practice for plays to be adapted from French originals for the London stage, with changes often made to conform to Victorian playgoers' expectations.〔 The main source of Morton's play was a French one-act vaudeville, ''Frisette'', by Eugène Marin Labiche and Auguste Lefranc, which had been produced at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal, Paris in 1846.〔Adams, p. 195〕 Some commentators have stated that Morton also drew on another vaudeville, ''La Chambre à Deux Lits'' (''The Double Room''), which itself reputedly derived from earlier French, English and Spanish comedies.〔"French and English Plays", ''The Era'', 22 November 1874, p. 14.〕 Morton is not known to have pronounced on the matter, but F. C. Burnand, who later adapted ''Box and Cox'' as an operetta, discounted the importance of ''La Chambre à Deux Lits''. He wrote, "Whether ''La Chambre'' was 'taken from the Spanish', who, I dare say, have got on very well without it, or not, certainly it was not the original source of ''Box and Cox''. This immortal English farce was adapted – a masterpiece of adaptation, be it said – from a ''comédie-vaudeville'' by Labiche and Lefranc entitled ''Frisette''." Burnand added that the later sections of the plot of ''Box and Cox'', namely the men's connubial entanglements, their efforts to evade them, and the discovery that they are brothers, were not derived from anyone, and were "thoroughly Mortonian".〔Burnand, F. C., letter to ''The Times'', 18 October 1889, p. 8〕 In ''Frisette'', an unscrupulous landlady rents the same room to a young woman (Frisette, a lace-maker) by night, and to a young man (Gaudrion, a baker) by day.〔("Agen Théâtre: ''Frisette'', un Labiche qui défrise" ). ''ladepeche.fr'' (2009), accessed 11 August 2010.〕 In ''Box and Cox'', both the lodgers are male. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Box and Cox」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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