Explore "Melodrama" by Franklin P. Adams on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
If you want a receipt for a melodramatical, / Thrillingly thundery, popular show, / Take an old father, unyielding, emphatical, / Driving his daughter out into the snow; / The love of a hero, courageous and Hacketty; / Hate of a villain in evening clothes; / Comic relief that is Irish and racketty; / Schemes of a villainess muttering oaths; / The bank and the safe and the will and the forgery -- / All of them built on traditional norms -- / Villainess dark and Lucrezia Borgery / Helping the villain until she reforms; / The old mill at midnight, a rapid delivery; / Violin music, all scary and shivery; / Plot that is devilish, awful, nefarious; / Heroine frightened, her plight is precarious; / Bingo! -- the rescue! -- the movement goes snappily -- / Exit the villain and all endeth happily!
Take of these elements any you care about, / Put 'em in Texas, the Bowery, or thereabout; / Put in the powder and leave out the grammar, / And the certain result is a swell melodrammer.