page_title: Box and Cox (farce)
section_title: Original production
hierarchical_section_title: Box and Cox (farce) / Original production
caption_attribution_description: English: Caricature of John Baldwin Buckstone, printed in the Victorian newspaper Figaro in London 3 December, 1838.
context_page_description: 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."
context_section_description: Box and Cox was first performed at the Lyceum Theatre, London, on 1 November 1847. The cast was:
  James Cox – John Pritt Harley
  John Box – John Baldwin Buckstone
  Mrs Bouncer – Mrs (Frances) Macnamara.
  Reviewing the first performance, The Standard said, "The piece is neatly and smartly written, but it is not difficult to guess that it owes its salvation solely to the felicitous whimsicalities of the two actors upon whom it chiefly devolves. The grotesque gentility of Harley, the hatter, is drolly matched by the cockney vulgarity of Buckstone, the printer, and both have ample room for the exhibition of their own peculiar conceits of method – those never-failing helps to mirth. Box and Cox, in short, are a pair of pleasant varlets, and promise to be long in the good graces of the public." The theatrical newspaper The Era said, "A more 'laughable farce' has not been produced for many a day."
  The audience was enthusiastic, and Box and Cox became the first success of the Lyceum under the new management of Lucia Elizabeth Vestris and Charles Matthews. Matthews assumed the role of Cox later in the run.
caption: J. B. Buckstone, the first Box
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