Bombastes Furioso, subtitled A Burlesque Tragic Opera, was written in 1810 by William Barnes Rhodes

William Barnes Rhodes

William Barnes Rhodes was an English author, best known for his burlesque opera, Bombastes Furioso.Rhodes was born in Leeds on Christmas Day 1772, the second son of Richard Rhodes and his wife, Mercy. He worked as a writer in an attorney's office, before gaining a position as a clerk in the Bank...

 (sometimes credited as Thomas Barnes Rhodes). The first authorized printed edition was published in 1822. It is a drama with comic songs, that satirizes the bombastic style of other tragedies that were in fashion at the time.
It was very popular throughout the 19th century — its popularity was sufficient for two quotations to appear in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, often simply called Bartlett's, is an American reference work that is the longest-lived and most widely distributed collection of quotations...

, and for Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...

to refer to it in his poem Melancholetta.

Characters

• Artaxaminous - King of Utopia
• Fusbos - Minister of State
• Bombastes - general of Artaxaminous
• Distaffina - troth-plight of General Bombastes

Plot

King Artaxaminous wishes to divorce his wife Griskinissa, and marry Distaffina. Distaffina, however, is betrothed to General Bombastes. Artaxaminous promises Distaffina "half a crown" if she will forsake the general for him. Distaffina is unable to resist, and abandons Bombastes. When the general learns of this, he goes mad, hangs his boots on the branch of a tree, and challenges anyone who would remove them. Artaxaminous cuts the boots down, and the general kills him. Fusbos, coming upon this, kills Bombastes. At the end of the drama, the dead men jump up and promise "to die again to-morrow", if the audience desires it.