Burlesque, also known as travesty is a genre of entertainment. It was a form of musical and theatrical parody in which an opera or piece of classical theatre is adapted in a broad, often risqu style.

Burlesque originated around the beginning of the Victorian era, when the social rules of established aristocracy and working-class society clashed. The genre often mocked such established entertainment forms as opera, Shakespearean drama and ballet. The burlesque was a logical descendant of ballad and other forms of comic musical entertainments. The costuming (or lack thereof) increasingly focused on forms of dress considered inappropriate for polite society.

Victorian Burlesque was originally a form of art that mocked by imitation, referring to everything from comic sketches to dance routines and usually lampooning the social attitudes of the upper classes. It was often ridiculous in that it imitated several styles, and combined imitations of authors and artists with absurd descriptions.

In this, the term was often used interchangeably with "pastiche," "parody," and, at the turn of the 18th century, "mock-heroic." Possibly due to historical social tensions between the upper classes and lower classes of society, much of the humor and entertainment focused on lowbrow and ribald subjects.

By the 1880s, the Victorian burlesque had created some rules for defining itself like Minimal costuming, often focusing on the female form, sexually suggestive dialog, dance, plotlines and staging, Quick-witted humor, lacking complexity, Short routines or sketches, with minimal plot cohesion across a show.

Burlesque became the specialty of London's Gaiety Theatre and Royal Strand Theatre from the 1860s to the early 1890s. In the 1860s and 1870s, burlesques were often one-act pieces running less than an hour and using pastiches and parodies of popular songs, opera arias and other music that the audience would readily recognize.

Beginning in the 1880s, composers like Meyer Lutz and Osmond Carr contributed original music, and the shows were extended to a full-length two or three act format. The format of a burlesque included three acts. In act one, the ensemble sang and told jokes, in act two, they presented an olio which was a variety filled middle act with singers, comics, and skits, and in act three they performed a musical with parodies of Shakespeare, Gilbert and Sullivan and other routines from the popular legitimate stage.

A few examples of Victorian era burlesque were Ruy Blas and the Blase Roue which made fun of the play Ruy Blas by Victor Hugo. The title was a pun, and the worse the pun, the more Victorian audiences were amused. Other Gaiety burlesques included Robert the Devil (1868), The Bohemian G-yurl and the Unapproachable Pole (1877), Blue Beard (1882), Galatea, or Pygmalion Reversed (1883), Little Jack Sheppard (1885), Monte Cristo, Jr. (1886), Pretty Esmeralda (1887), Frankenstein, or The Vampire's Victim (1887), Mazeppa, Faust up to date (1888), Carmen up to Data (1890), Cinder Ellen up too Late (1891), and Don Juan (1892) etc.

In the 1930s, a social crackdown on burlesque shows led to their gradual downfall. The shows had slowly changed from ensemble ribald variety performances, to simple performances focusing mostly on the strip tease and this was the period when the nature of burlesque changed.