Cox and Box

[David Barnert]

I just saw a streamed performance of the 19th century one-act comic operetta, “Cox and Box,” lyrics by F.C. Burnand and music by Arthur Sullivan, from before he started working with W.S. Gilbert. It was produced by the New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players, whom I have been following since the early 1980s. I know all the Gilbert & Sullivan operettas backwards and forwards, having played cello in G&S pit orchestras once or twice each year throughout high school and college (both in the 1970s), but I had never seen or heard “Cox and Box,” although I had read about it.

 

So imagine my surprise when Mr. Box pulls out a concertina (the word is actually in the libretto) and starts playing (well, not really playing). I grabbed a screen shot.

 

 

Edited December 28, 2020 by David Barnert

[Anglo-Irishman]

Yes, and the gentleman behind the concertina "player" is not actually playing the mandolin, either. He can't be - hasn't even got a plectrum!

😉

Cheers,

John

[David Barnert]

Although it’s clearly a mandolin (and missing a couple of strings), the libretto refers to a guitar.

[John Wild]

Wikipedia gives this definition:

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."

 

A further google enquiry produced this information:

The term comes from the comic play 'Box and Cox - A Romance of Real Life in One Act', by John Maddison Morton. This was first produced at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, London, in November 1847. Box and Cox were two lodgers who shared their rooms - one occupying them by day and the other by night.

[David Barnert]

1 hour ago, John Wild said:

The term comes from the comic play 'Box and Cox - A Romance of Real Life in One Act', by John Maddison Morton

 

This is the play on which the operetta is based. Mr. Cox and Mr. Box, each unaware of the other’s existence, both rent the same room from an unscrupulous landlord. Cox works by day in a hat making shop, Box works by night at a newspaper. Turns out (spoiler alert!!) a) they were at different times both engaged to the same woman, who ultimately marries a Mr. Knox, and b) they are long-lost brothers.

 

Interestingly, there is a statistical operation called the Box Cox transformation. It's used to transform a non-normal distribution of a variable to a normal. The authors of the 1964 paper were 2 Englishmen named Box and Cox.

 

Perhaps even more interesting: another concertina/statistics connection is the Kruskal Wallis test which permits an analysis of variance of non-parametric data.  Jody's father is the Kruskal.

 

I learned both of these tidbits in the last few days from participants in the Squeeze-In mailing list, in response to my post similar to my original post of this thread.

Edited December 30, 2020 by David Barnert