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.
