Hailed at the time as "a remarkable advance" in musical burlesques, Blue Beard or the Hazard of the Dye was a resounding successes playing to packed houses through its run. Critics noted that F. C. Burnand's dialogue had "considerable literary merit" and "real fun." Burnand's version of the character Blue Beard is a dashing young fellow who keeps his blue tuft of hair by means of dyeing it and was originally written as a trouser role for the Gaiety star Nellie Farren.
Prolific Victorian playwright, Sir Francis Cowley Burnand wrote over 200 plays including the libretto for Arthur Sullivan's Cox and Box. From 1880 to 1906 he edited the highly influential magazine Punch. Burnand brought to the English stage the first translations and adaptations of Offenbach's operettas. By the 1890s he was supplying librettos to some of the most renowned composers of the era.