AustLit

Although most likely adapted from William Brough's Frog He Would a Wooing Go, it is also possible that the original source may have been an anonymous pantomime which premiered in Brighton (UK) in 1874 under the title Froggy Would a Wooing Go; Or, Harlequin Lily White Duck, the Pretty Princess, and the Fairies of the Dancing Water.

Writing of this production the Age theatre critic records: 'The perplexities that beset a theatrical management [which] has to provide entertainment for a fastidious public are brought prominently forward in the opening scene, and Mr Harwood is represented as endeavouring to draw some inspiration from the sea on the sands at Sorrento. The brain-cudgelling is overcome by a frog, which obligingly appears on the scene, and suggests the idea that frog known to fame who would a wooing go. The notion is handed over to Mr Walch whose fertile imagination concocts a perfect story of a frog in love, assisted in his love by a demon named Al-Kohol. The machinations of the froggie end in his taking to his native waters and being swallowed up by an enormous white duck, the mechanism and portraiture of which are not faultlessly true to natural history. The duck appears in fact to be as tardy in swallowing Froggie as the audience sometimes were in taking the puns and jokes interspersed throughout the piece. However, the earnest love of Prince Agib... after innumerable crosses is rewarded by his securing the hand of Zu Zu, a fair princess, and they are eventually raised to the seventh heaven of the transformation scene by the good Peri Namoune... who watches over Zu Zu and her lover, and finally secures them the enjoyment of a happy wedlock in spite of covetous rivals, in spite of Al-Kohol, [and] in spite of Froggee and all his amphibious troop. Mr Walch has attempted to acclimatise the pantomime as far as possible, but the effort to transplant such a species of entertainment has proved in his hands, and will probably remain, an unaccomplished task. An author might as well attempt to make ghost stories and haunted houses racy of the soil, as to attempt to produce a really Australian pantomime. Excepting the mention of some native places and the introduction of some local hits, the production is purely exotic, oriental, and foreign as a piece could well be' (28 December 1875, p.3).