Literature / The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast

The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast is a 1973 book by Alan Aldridge (art) and William Plomer (poems), loosely based on the 1802 poem "The Butterfly's Ball, and the Grasshopper's Feast" by William Roscoe. Each poem focuses on a different insect or another small British woodland creature, as they prepare for the great party, which makes up the 11th and 12th poems (the Ball and the Feast, respectively). The art is surprisingly realistic for a portrayal of anthropomorphic insects, with Aldridge having apparently been inspired by reading that the chapter "The Wasp in the Wig" was cut from Through the Looking Glass because John Tenniel claimed it was impossible to draw such a creature.

It was adapted into a Concept Album with an All-Star Cast by Roger Glover in 1974, which had a live performance at the Royal Albert Hall the following year with a different All-Star Cast. The album's version of "Love is All" was given an Animated Music Video, in which most of the characters were modelled on Aldridge's artwork.

Aldridge followed it up with two sequels: The Peacock Party (1979, with poems by Harry Willock and George E. Ryder) and The Lion's Cavalcade (1980, with poems by Willock and Ted Walker), based on the original poem's anonymous sequels "The Peacock's 'At Home'" and "The Lion's Masquerade and the Elephant's Champetre".

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The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast

• Animal Stereotypes: In addition to the ones mentioned below, dormice are sleepy, grasshoppers are happy-go-lucky, moles are blind ... and newts are drunk.
• Bat Out of Hell: The Long-Eared Bat in the poem of the same name is the only insectivore to be portrayed as actually preying on the insect characters.
• Carnivore Confusion: As noted above, the Long-Eared Bat is the only insectivore actually shown to eat insects in the art, but Lizzie Lizard is implied to be eaten by a charming fox, and "The Feast" takes it even further:
  Green stuff satisfies hares and rabbits,
  But some of us insects have cannibal habits.
• Extra Eyes: Miss Aranea Money Spider takes a long time putting on her eye makeup, because she has eight eyes.
• Friendly Neighborhood Spider: Miss Aranea Moneyspider is a bit vain but basically friendly. Even though many of the other characters are insects, she shows no inclination to eat them.
• Insect Gender-Bender: Zig-Zagged Trope. Lizzie Bee is correctly portrayed as a female worker (although the book maintains human gender stereotypes by dressing her as a milkmaid, complete with panniers, presumably of nectar). On the other hand, Harold the Herald is a male gadfly who likes "a morning cup of blood". (The "Nature Notes" at the back of the book correct this.)
• Masquerade Ball: Some, but not all, of the guests attend the ball in masks. These include a fox in a Punchinello costume, a snail who wears a bright smiling mask to hide his shyness, and another fox who is wearing a rabbit mask and sitting with a rabbit in a fox mask.
• Mouse World: It's not always clear, but it seems as if the animal world is meant to be in the edges of ours, Peter Rabbit style. There are two sticking points, one being Sir Maximus Mouse having "a secret flat" in the Cheddar Bank, but even that can be interpreted as an over-selling of living in the wainscotting. Slightly harder to explain is the animal-sized steam train in "The Rodents' Express" and "Punchinello", expecially the suggestion in the former that the Princess of Wales has also travelled on it, implying a World of Funny Animals.
• Pretty Butterflies: Aldridge's artwork frequently returns to the idea that a mildly anthropomorphic butterfly with folded wings looks a lot like a Victorian lady in a Pimped-Out Dress.
• Rail Enthusiast: "The Rodents' Express" portrays Rat and Shrew as far more interested in seeing the eponymous steam engine than either being on time for the Ball or keeping their clothes smart for it.
  "No use scolding them,"
  Squirrel explains,
  "The plain fact is,
  "They're mad about trains."
• Shy Shelled Animal: In the poem "Shelly Snail and Swallowtail", Swallowtail (a butterfly) asks Shelly what he's like beneath the mask he's wearing to the ball. Shelly replies that without the mask, he'd be too shy to socialise at all.
• Swans A-Swimming: The elegant swan ballerina Madame Bella Swanna makes a brief appearance in the background of "Punchinello", and gets her own poem in The Peacock Party.
• Virtuous Bees: Lizzie Bee is portrayed as an industrious and cheerful worker who only takes a single day off (to attend the Ball, of course).

Sequels

• Acrofatic: Madame Pavlovna Majeste Nijinska is a hippopotamus ballerina.
• City of Gold: The poem about the jaguar queen of El Dorado begins "No sun ever shone upon lost El Dorado"... because if it did then the reflections from all the gold would be blinding.
• Doofy Dodo: A dodo appears in the poem "The Dodo's Dream", which portrays it as weird. The illustration shows the dodo bursting through an elephant-shaped teapot (legs through the bottom, head through the spout/trunk) while surrounded by surreal dream imagery.
• Gender-Blender Name: "Cassandra" is a billy goat.
• Eccentric Artist: Oswald Ostrich R.A. is an artist who keeps a bewildering variety of animals in and around his studio, is a Rummage Sale Reject who wears a bowtie and a regular tie, and his eponymous poem ends by calling him "as mad as a hatter".
• Gruesome Goat: King Leonis's astrologer is a goat named Cassandra who states "the horns of the Devil come out of my head/Abraca dabraca dabraca DEAD".
• King of Beasts: Leonis, Lord of the Golden Savannah, Omnipotent Rex.
• Mythology Gag: The Peacock Party opens with Sir Percival criticising "that terrible theme from the Butterfly Ball". In the accompanying illustration, a string quartet of mice have the sheet music to "Love is All", from the album.
• National Animal Stereotypes: Since The Lion's Cavalcade has more "exotic" animals than the first two books:
  • A jaguar is queen of "Lost El Dorado". (This is partly because the joke of the scene is that the City of Gold is exclusively home to golden-coloured animals, but it fits this trope as well — as does the armadillo in her entourage).
  • The acts in the Cavalcade include an elephant fakir and "the pyrotechnic Tiger of Royal Bengal".
• Named After Somebody Famous: Madame Pavlovna Majeste Nijinska shares two of her names with other famous ballerinas; Anna Pavlova and Bronislava Nijinska.
• Proud Peacock: Sir Percival Peacock hosts the Peacock Party purely to show off. The Lion's Cavalcade gives his full name as Sir Percival de Proude Peacock, Bart.
• Pun-Based Creature:
  • Captain Ali Gator's Gorilla Circus consists of Mix-and-Match Critters, apparently to save on space when travelling. These include two Dogfish (one with a fish tale and a dog's head, the other reversed) a Turtle Dove (a dove with a shell), a Sea Lion (a seal with the head of a lion) and a Tiger Moth (a moth with the head and forepaws of a tiger), as well as more esoteric creatures such as a black horse with a stars and moon pattern (a Night Mare) and an empty wooden cabinet with the limbs and head of a bear, described as "a cupboard perpetually Bear".
  • Chameleon's Flora Zoologica is a similar array of plants sprouting animal heads, including Tiger Lily, Dandy Lion, Dog Rose, Crab Apples, Goose Berries, Monkey Flowers, Crocodillia and Horse Chestnuts.

Concept album and video

• Adaptational Villainy: In the book, Sir Maximus Mouse, the cheese tycoon, is simply a workaholic who's too busy to go to the Ball. In the album, he's a borderline-demonic Corrupt Corporate Executive.
• Deranged Animation: Aldridge's art is already a bit trippy, but the video takes it up to eleven, with lots of transformations and animals in creepy masks.
• Reprise Medley: "The Feast" is a piano instrumental that incorporates most of the character songs, presumably as the respective character arrives at the Feast.

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