Slonimsky, Nicholas, "Burlesque show", Baker's Dictionary of Music, Schirmer Reference, New York, 1997, accessed 16 February 2010 (subscription required)
Humez, Nick. "Burlesque".St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, ed. Sara Pendergast and Tom Pendergast, Gale Virtual Reference Library, accessed 16 February 2011 (subscription required)
Moss, Harold Gene. "Popular Music and the Ballad Opera", Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Autumn, 1973), pp. 365–82, University of California Press, accessed 2 February 2011 (subscription required)
Wells, Stanley. "Shakespearian Burlesques", Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Winter, 1965), pp. 49–61, Folger Shakespeare Library in association with George Washington University, accessed 2 February 2011 (subscription required)
Gänzl, Kurt. "Edwardes, George Joseph (1855–1915)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 3 February 2011 (subscription required)
oxfordmusiconline.com
Charlton, David and M. Elizabeth C. Bartlet, "Grétry, André-Ernest-Modeste: Works,"Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, accessed 24 February 2011 (subscription required)
According to the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "the various genre terms were always applied freely", and by the 1860s their use had become "arbitrary and capricious": see "Burlesque,"Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, accessed 3 February 2011 (subscription required). In an 1896 article on Burlesque in The Theatre, the three terms are used interchangeably: see Adams, W. Davenport. "Burlesque: Old v. New", The Theatre, 1 March 1896, pp. 144–45
Schwandt, Erich et al. "Burlesque", Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, accessed 3 February 2011 (subscription required)
oxfordreference.com
In theatrical use, a burla was "a comic interlude or practical joke introduced, usually extempore, into a performance by the servant masks of the commedia dell'arte ... developed at will into a small independent 'turn', the characters returning at its conclusion to the main theme of the plot". See Hartnoll, Phyllis and Peter Found. "Burla", The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre, Oxford University Press, 1996. Oxford Reference Online, accessed 16 February 2011 (subscription required)
Baldick, Chris. "Burlesque", The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press, accessed 16 February 2011 (subscription required)
Hartnoll, Phyllis and Peter Found. "Burlesque, American", The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre, Oxford University Press, 1996. Oxford Reference Online, accessed 16 February 2011 (subscription required)