Total Drama Island, by Gilbert and Sullivan

This is it. This is what I became a registered user to promote. Because of the way this compilation is structured, I will have to post the verse sections before I can start posting episode chapters. In the meantime, here's a sneak preview for anyone who missed it.

Rated PG-13 for high concept that may be over the heads of younger readers.

Introduction
What if Gilbert and Sullivan had written Total Drama Island?

The verses presented here are drawn from the Gilbert & Sullivan series of operettas, sometimes with an introductory recitative that itself may be in either rhymed or blank verse, and describe in some way TDI characters or incidents. Excluding such things as repetitions by the chorus and blank verse in the spoken dialogue, over 70% of all the verse content from the 14 Gilbert & Sullivan plays fits characters or incidents from Total Drama Island, a (purportedly) children’s television show written over a century later. Truly, as the adage has it, “There is nothing new under the sun.”

Full Version vs. Wiki Version
The wiki version of this compilation and the PDF-based full version differ in several ways. These differences stem mainly from the wiki’s technical characteristics, with the wiki’s administrative policies playing a lesser role.

The differences are:


 * The full version is intended for a general-interest website, and so assumes no prior knowledge of TDI. (Indeed, the whole purpose of combining TDI with G&S is to introduce to one people who are familiar with the other.) Accordingly, the full version has a substantial “Introduction to ‘’Total Drama Island’’” section, with general commentary on the show and descriptions and head shots of the characters. In the wiki version, the character descriptions and images appear on the character pages, and the general commentary on the show is omitted. The full version also has brief character development notes at the end of each episode’s plot summary, and the wiki version retains these because some have verse references attached to them.


 * In the wiki version, hyperlinked character names link to the character pages. In the full version, they link to the character articles on the main TD wiki.


 * In the wiki version, character theme songs appear on the character pages. In the full version, the theme songs are collected in an Appendix.


 * The full version uses a great deal of specialized formatting that the wiki either doesn’t support or supports halfheartedly, so some differences in the formatting of verses will be evident.


 * The full version is heavily illustrated with roughly 700 screenshots (some of which appear more than once) from the TDI episodes. The wiki cannot support that level of illustration, because it would make the page load too slowly and might slow down the search function as well. (Search functionality is crucial to this compilation, as explained later.)
 * Clicking a hyperlink opens a new window (or tab) in the full version, but navigates away from the page in the wiki version. The full version (when it becomes available) is therefore recommended for readers who will be making extensive use of the hyperlinks.

When the full version becomes available for download, this section will link to it. Downloads will be deemed to be released under the same licensing protocols that govern wiki postings. The PDF file for the full version is massive, ~50 MB.

Introduction to Gilbert & Sullivan
W.S. (William Schwenck) Gilbert (1836-1911) and Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) collaborated on 14 operettas—if written today, they would be called musicals—from 1871 through 1896. All but the first were produced by Richard D’Oyly Carte and his Company, in which Gilbert and Sullivan eventually became business partners. These three were major players in transforming Victorian theater from bawdy adult entertainment to respectable family fare.

The “main sequence”, the 11 plays that remain popular to this day, begins with Trial By Jury (1875) and ends with The Gondoliers (1889). The Mikado is Gilbert & Sullivan’s greatest hit (although Iolanthe is the compiler’s favorite), with H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates Of Penzance, and The Mikado often called “The Big Three”, and those three plus The Gondoliers sometimes described as “The Big Four”.

Of the three outside the main sequence, none were hits in their first run, although only The Grand Duke was considered a failure. Today, none of the three are performed with any frequency.

Thespis can no longer be performed in its original form, because most of the music has been lost. (Many new scores have been written for Thespis, using either Sullivan music from other sources or original music in Sullivan’s style, but none of these replacement scores have gained wide acceptance.) Only two songs from Thespis are known to survive: one because it was published as a standalone ballad; and the other because it was recycled, with a few minor changes in the words, in The Pirates Of Penzance. Some ballet music from Thespis also survives.

Utopia, Limited is rarely performed because it is too elaborate for most theater companies; it has a large cast of principals, with most of the cast and chorus requiring two costumes. The Grand Duke is even more rarely performed because, fairly or not, it has been widely regarded (by Gilbert himself, among others) as being of inferior quality.

As was common at the time, most of the operettas (the name meaning “little opera”) have secondary titles. These are usually more descriptive than the often-cryptic primary titles, and so gave the audiences of Gilbert’s day a better idea of what to expect. For example, the primary title H.M.S. Pinafore (a warship named after a little girl’s garment) told audiences only that they should expect something funny. The secondary title, The Lass That Loved A Sailor, told them to expect romance.

Trial By Jury and The Sorcerer do not have secondary titles because the primary titles are descriptive enough. Conversely, Castle Adamant, the secondary title for Princess Ida, is just as cryptic as the primary.

Most of the operettas are, at their core, love stories or otherwise concerned with romantic attachments. Reflecting the fact that people typically married at younger ages in Gilbert’s time than they do today, most of Gilbert’s romantic leads are quite young by today’s standards, with most of the heroes in their early to mid-20s and most of the heroines in their late teens. (Elsie Maynard, heroine of The Yeomen of the Guard, is only 16 years old—the same age as the TDI contestants—yet is married by the end of the play.) As Frederick, the romantic hero of The Pirates of Penzance, notes, “A man of 21 usually looks for a wife of 17.”

A distinctively Gilbertian aspect of these love stories is the consistent attitude that most people can easily change romantic partners. This made happy ending easier to contrive. Thus, a heroine who becomes estranged from the hero tends to immediately turn to someone else, usually the hero’s main rival; and when the hero and heroine are subsequently reconciled, the rival immediately (and, apparently, sincerely) pledges undying love to whichever unattached lady is closest at hand.

If Gilbert and Sullivan had written Total Drama Island, the most obvious difference is that the national references would probably have been British instead of Canadian. One thing that would probably not have been different is for the stories to be any more logical or plausible. As the famous Gilbert & Sullivan actor Martyn Green noted in his annotation, A Treasury Of Gilbert & Sullivan, “It is pointless to logically analyze Gilbert’s plots, because not one of them will stand up to logical analysis.” When Gilbert needed something to happen, such as having the chorus emphasize the soloist’s points or getting a female chorus aboard a warship, he was not inclined to let little things like implausibility stop him. In any case, plausibility is less important to comedy than to drama, especially when the comedy is as absurdity-driven as Gilbert’s.

Most of the operettas have two acts. The exceptions are Trial By Jury, which is a one-act curtain raiser; and Princess Ida, which has three acts. All but The Yeomen of the Guard are comedies. Six of the first seven (excepting only Thespis) are set in Gilbert’s own time, but five of the last seven are period pieces—not that Gilbert was much concerned with continuity of setting, witness the anachronisms from his own time that tend to litter his period pieces.

Thespis, or The Gods Grown Old (premiered 1871): The Olympian gods are upset with the decline of their influence in the mortal world. Indeed, the best thing their worshippers now sacrifice to them is “preserved Australian beef”. When a theatre troupe climbs Mount Olympus on a day out, Jupiter appoints the troupe director (Thespis) and his companions to assume the Olympians’ offices for a year, whilst the latter go into the mortal world, incognito, to learn how they might revive their waning prestige. Mercury, who has recently been doing all the other gods’ work for them because he is younger and more energetic than they, remains on Olympus to advise the “deputy deities”. Naturally, Thespis and his troupe make a mess of things, so the gods are none too pleased when they return.

Conceived as a holiday entertainment, Thespis ran for 63 performances—the shortest opening run of any of the Gilbert & Sullivan operettas, although it was reasonably successful for its purpose. In lieu of a more detailed plot summary, click the link provided for the libretto text. Excluding repetitions, 72% of the play’s total verse content appears in this compilation.

Trial by Jury (1875): The only play in the series with no spoken dialogue. Angelina, the plaintiff, is suing Edwin, the defendant, for breach of promise of marriage. The suit is dismissed when the smitten judge decides to marry the beautiful plaintiff himself.

Click the link provided for a more detailed plot summary. Trial by Jury had an opening run of 131 performances, but was quickly revived for additional performances. Excluding repetitions, 56% of the play’s total verse content appears in this compilation.

The Sorcerer (1877): Alexis and Aline, two young aristocrats with decidedly egalitarian views, have just been betrothed to each other. (Their parents, Sir Marmaduke and Lady Sangazure, have a lost love of their own.) Determined that the entire village should share their joy—love for its own sake, without regard for artificial barriers such as wealth, rank or age—Alexis commissions a professional Family Sorcerer, one John Wellington Wells, to spike the banquet tea with a love potion. (The potion, according to Mr. Wells, is “compounded according to the strictest principles”, and so will not affect those villagers who are already married.)

The potion leads to many odd pairing, just as Alexis intended. He is undone, however, when, under the potion’s influence, Aline herself falls in love with someone else.

The only way to reverse the love potion’s effects is for either Mr. Wells (who created the potion) or Alexis (who hired Mr. Wells) to die. Because Alexis is the romantic hero and an aristocrat besides, whereas Mr. Wells is neither, the sorcerer is naturally the one who dies.

Click the link provided for a more detailed plot summary. The Sorcerer had an opening run of 175 performances, which was enough to persuade Gilbert and Sullivan to collaborate again, although the play did not truly become a hit until it was revived (along with Trial by Jury) seven years later. Excluding repetitions and blank verse in the spoken dialogue, 70% of the play’s total verse content appears in this compilation.

H.M.S. Pinafore, or The Lass That Loved a Sailor (1878): Ralph (pronounced Raife) Rackstraw, a crewman on the good ship Pinafore, is pining for Josephine, the daughter of his commanding officer, Captain Corcoran. In a class-conscious society, this poses serious problems, especially with a high-ranking government official, one Sir Joseph Porter, seeking Josephine’s hand in marriage.

Josephine also loves Ralph; but because his social station is much lower than hers, she cannot bring herself to admit her feelings until she sees Ralph about to commit suicide. The couple makes plans to elope, but the Captain gets wind of the plot. Ralph is arrested, but a local peddler, a woman known as “Little Buttercup”, comes to his defense. She has been hinting at a dark secret throughout the story, and now reveals it: she accidentally switched Ralph and the Captain in infancy, so both men have been living in social stations they don’t belong in. (As with a similar incident in The Gondoliers, nobody dreams of asking for proof.)

Even before this revelation, Josephine’s social station was considerably below Sir Joseph’s. Because she, like her father, is now lower-class, the new class differential is simply too great, and Josephine is no longer acceptable to Sir Joseph. Ralph can now marry Josephine, and her widower father can now marry Little Buttercup, whom he has long been fond of and who is now in the same social class as he. With the typically Gilbertian “any spouse is better than no spouse” attitude, Sir Joseph settles for one of his many cousins.

Corcoran, somehow restored to a captaincy, reappears briefly in Utopia, Limited.

Click the links provided for a more detailed plot summary; a tongue-in-cheek Short Attention Span summary; or a children's book adaptation of the Pinafore story, written by Gilbert himself. H.M.S. Pinafore was Gilbert & Sullivan’s first blockbuster hit, with an opening run of 571 performances. Excluding repetitions, 74% of the play’s total verse content appears in this compilation.

The Pirates of Penzance, or The Slave of Duty (1880): The only play in the series to have its official premiere in the United States, Pirates played in New York for some three months before its formal London premiere. The primary title contains a joke, in that Penzance was a resort town in Gilbert’s day.

Frederick, who was erroneously apprenticed to a pirate (instead of a ship’s pilot, as he was supposed to be), has reached the age of 21 and has therefore completed his apprenticeship. He decides to leave the pirates and go into law enforcement. Complications arise when it is discovered that Fredrick’s apprenticeship is scheduled to end on his 21st birthday—not when he reaches the age of 21—and that he was born on February 29.

The pirates have trouble making money at their piracy because they are too tenderhearted. For example, they make a point of never molesting orphans; but this scruple has become common knowledge, so everyone they capture claims to be an orphan. When the pirates capture the daughters of Major General Stanley, with the intent of marrying them on the spot (this is respectable Victorian theater, so the manly pirates’ first thought is to get married), the Major General claims to be an orphan and the pirates immediately relent.

When the pirates later learn of the deception, they plan a bloody vengeance. When they have General Stanley at their mercy, though, their tenderheartedness is once again their undoing. When the police squad they have just defeated demand their surrender in the name of Queen Victoria, the pirates comply without a second thought because they love their Queen. When it is revealed that the pirates are not commoners, but are noblemen who have gone wrong, they escape prosecution and get to marry General Stanley’s daughters after all.

Click the links provided for a more detailed plot summary or the Short Attention Span summary. Upon formally opening in London, Pirates ran for 363 performances. Excluding repetitions, 71% of the play’s total verse content appears in this compilation.

Patience, or Bunthorne’s Bride (1881): Satirizes the Aesthetic poets, of which Oscar Wilde is the best known today (although Wilde was a secondary figure when Patience was written). Of all the Gilbert & Sullivan plays, therefore, the subject matter of Patience seems the most remote to modern audiences. Aestheticism, the central tenet of which was Art for its own sake, was a fad of Gilbert’s day and did not have lasting impact.

Reginald Bunthorne, the local poet Aesthete (who, contrary to popular belief, was not patterned after Wilde) can have any woman in town he wants, except for the one he does want: Patience, the village milkmaid, who understands neither poetry nor love. When a rival poet, one Archibald Grosvenor (called “Archibald the All-Right”, because he is infallible) appears, Patience naturally falls in love with him, but still doesn’t understand love any better than she did before.

Because her only knowledge of love comes from seeing the symptoms of unrequited love and from the flowery, idealized statements of women suffering from unrequited love, Patience has fundamental misconceptions as to what love is all about, and of how being in love is supposed to feel. Believing that love must be utterly selfless and that being in love is supposed to feel unpleasant, she rejects Grosvenor because she believes loving such a perfect man is too selfish to qualify as love. She declares her love for Bunthorne because she thinks she is supposed to, although she actually finds him repellant.

Bunthorne eventually persuades his rival Grosvenor to renounce aestheticism and become completely ordinary—something Grosvenor, tired of being madly loved on sight by every woman he encounters, was looking for an excuse to do anyway. This victory, however, has an effect that Bunthorne did not count on. The village women follow Grosvenor’s lead in renouncing aestheticism, because “The All-Right cannot be all wrong.” With Grosvenor now utterly unremarkable, Patience decides it is no longer selfish to love him. The other women return to the soldiers they had forsaken for Bunthorne, and the joke of the secondary title becomes apparent: having cultivated an artificial personality for the sake of “a morbid love of admiration”, Bunthorne has been left out in the cold, with no bride at all and deprived of the female admirers he so coveted.

Gilbert originally intended to satirize the clergy instead of the aesthetic poets, but was deterred by the controversy over Dr. Daly, vicar of Ploverleigh in The Sorcerer. Although Dr. Daly was a respectable and sympathetic character with no real eccentricities, there were too many people who objected to the idea of religious officials being depicted in comic opera in any capacity. The line “your style is much to sanctified—your cut is too canonical” (i.e. “your style is too saintly—your clothing is too parsonish”) from the Act II duet, “So go to him and say to him”, is a vestige of Gilbert’s original intent.

Click the links provided for a more detailed plot summary or the Short Attention Span summary. Patience had an opening run of 578 performances, exceeding even that of H.M.S. Pinafore, although Patience would not have the lasting impact of the earlier play. Excluding repetitions, 73% of Patience’s total verse content appears in this compilation.

Iolanthe, or The Peer and the Peri (1882): Iolanthe is a fairy, banished from her clan for marrying a mortal. This is normally a capital crime in Fairyland, but she got her sentence commuted by faking her death in the mortal world—albeit not before she conceived a half-mortal son, Strephon, now 24 years old. Strephon wants to marry his love, Phyllis; but because she is a ward of the court and has not reached the age of consent (which was 21 at the time), they cannot marry without the Lord Chancellor’s approval, which he is unwilling to give. To make matters worse, the ageless fairies all look like teenaged girls; so, when Phyllis sees Strephon talking to his mother, Strephon’s rivals easily convince Phyllis that he is cheating on her.

Only Iolanthe knows—and cannot reveal, under pain of death—that Strephon is the Lord Chancellor’s son. When the Lord Chancellor decides to marry Phyllis himself, it appears that Iolanthe’s only option is to sacrifice herself for her son. She is saved when, at the point of execution, all her sisters reveal that they have also taken mortal husbands, all from the House of Lords. The Fairy Queen laments, “You have all incurred death—but I can’t slaughter the whole company,” so her only recourse is to change the law. Because the revised law states that fairies must marry mortals, the Fairy Queen takes on a handsome soldier, and makes all the new husbands immortal. (Apparently, having been born mortal is enough to satisfy the new Fairy Law.)

Click the links provided for a more detailed plot summary or the Short Attention Span summary. Iolanthe had an opening run of 398 performances. Excluding repetitions, 74% of the play’s total verse content appears in this compilation.

Princess Ida, or Castle Adamant (1884): Based on The Princess, an earlier Gilbert play satirizing Tennyson’s poem of the same name, which deals with the subject of higher education for women and equality of the sexes. Gilbert, being a man of his era, was dismissive of these notions. Of all the operettas, therefore, it is Princess Ida whose satire feels the most out of step with modern sensibilities. Gilbert used the same character names as Tennyson had, with the same plot basics, so the now-cryptic primary title was descriptive enough for audiences that were familiar with Tennyson’s poem.

The only operetta in the series with its spoken dialogue written in blank verse instead of prose, Princess Ida was also the first period piece of Gilbert & Sullivan’s “main sequence”. The setting date is not stated, but the story has a generally medieval flavor. There are, however, numerous anachronisms from Gilbert’s own time.

Ida, daughter of King Gama, was betrothed in infancy to Prince Hilarion, son of King Hildebrand, but has broken that betrothal to found a women’s college at Castle Adamant, one of her father’s properties. This means war between Gama and Hildebrand, unless Ida can be persuaded to relent.

Hilarion and his companions, Cyril and Florian, infiltrate the school and disguise themselves as students. When Ida finds them out, she pronounces sentences of death upon them—despite the fact that Hilarion has just saved her life—but is interrupted when Hildebrand’s forces attack the castle.

A central tenet of Ida’s teachings is that women should have nothing to do with men. When her plans come to ruin, she grudgingly accepts Hilarion but insists that Posterity would have thanked her had she succeeded in attaining her vision. She is disarmed, though, when Hildebrand asks the obvious question: if she had succeeded in persuading all women to abjure men, how would that Posterity have been provided?

Click the links provided for a more detailed plot summary or the Short Attention Span summary. Princess Ida had an opening run of 246 performances, which was disappointing in comparison to some of the earlier plays. Excluding repetitions and the blank verse of the spoken dialogue, 92% of the play’s total verse content appears in this compilation.

The Mikado, or The Town of Titipu (1885): Gilbert chose a Japanese veneer for this operetta, one of the most popular light operas ever written, because England was in the midst of a popular craze for all things Japanese. (Bunthorne refers to this in Patience.) Gilbert made little effort at authenticity because, beneath the Japanese trappings, he was (as always) actually satirizing Great Britain. Queen Victoria, herself no great fan of the operettas, pointed this out to the Japanese government when the latter objected to the way the title character is portrayed.

Nanki-Poo, an itinerant minstrel—actually the Mikado’s son, traveling incognito—comes to town looking for his old flame Yum-Yum, believing that her betrothed (whom she did not love) is now out of the way. He learns that said betrothed is not only still in the picture, but is now quite powerful. Further complications arise when Nanki-Poo’s own betrothed, Katisha (whom he likewise does not love, and who is neither young nor pretty) tracks him down. The situation becomes still more complicated when town officials learn that they have come to the Mikado’s unwelcome attention for unrelated reasons.

Click the links provided for a more detailed plot summary; the Short Attention Span summary; or a children's book adaptation of the Mikado story, written by Gilbert himself. The Mikado was Gilbert and Sullivan’s greatest hit, with an opening run of 672 performances, and remains their most popular collaboration to this day. Excluding repetitions, 74% of the play’s total verse content appears in this compilation.

Ruddigore, or The Witch’s Curse (1887): A period piece, set during the reign of Napoleon, and satirizing the melodrama form—complete with witches and curses, bad baronets (the villain of these melodramas invariably being a baronet), ghosts, madwomen and crimes. These melodramas were known for moral absolutism, so Gilbert’s topsy-turvy treatment of the medium produced a story where good becomes bad, bad becomes good, and heroes take the easy way out.

When an ancestor of the Murgatroyd house burned a certain witch at the stake, she cursed him and his family with her dying breaths. Under the terms of the curse, the ruling baronet of Ruddigore will die if he does not commit at least one serious crime every day. Ruthven (pronounced Rivven), the eldest nephew of the late Roderic Murgatroyd, escaped this curse by faking his death before his childless uncle died, so the office and the attendant curse fell to his younger brother, Despard. Ruthven, living under the name of Robin Oakapple, is eventually exposed and must become Baronet after all. Despard, relieved of the curse, reforms on the spot, intending to lead a blameless life henceforth.

The curse is finally broken when Ruthven realizes that refusing to commit his daily crime amounts to suicide—but that attempting suicide is itself a serious crime (and would remain so in Britain until the 1960s).

As it pertains to this compilation, Ruddigore is remarkable in that it has three major characters who have more than passing similarity to TDI characters: Robin (Ezekiel); Despard (Duncan); and Mad Margaret (Izzy).

Click the links provided for a more detailed plot summary or the Short Attention Span summary. Ruddigore (originally Ruddygore, a rude term meaning “red blood”) had an opening run of 288 performances, which was considered a disappointment after the runaway success of its immediate predecessor, The Mikado. Excluding repetitions, 87% of Ruddigore’s total verse content appears in this compilation.

The Yeomen of the Guard, or The Merryman and His Maid (1888): The only tragedy in the series, this period piece is set in England’s Tudor period, probably c. 1540 AD.

For legal reasons, a condemned prisoner, one Col. Fairfax, wishes to marry before he is executed, and offers a large payment to any girl who is willing to oblige him. There is no expectation that the marriage will be consummated, but that is apparently not a requirement—indeed, the ceremony is to be conducted under such conditions that bride and groom won’t even see each other.

Jack Point (the merryman) and his betrothed, Elsie (the maid) desperately need money to obtain medical attention for Elsie’s mother, so they agree that Elsie may accommodate Fairfax. Naturally, Fairfax escapes from the Tower of London and disappears, leaving Elsie’s status in limbo.

Fairfax has, in fact, escaped with the aid of the Guard’s Sergeant Meryll (who owes Fairfax his life from a long-ago battle) and Meryll’s daughter, Phoebe (who loves Fairfax). The Merylls disguise Fairfax and pass him off as Phoebe’s brother, Leonard, who is scheduled to join the Guard.

The disguised Fairfax, having learned that Elsie is his mysterious bride, approaches her and woos her so skillfully that she falls in love with him. When Fairfax is later pardoned, and so can reveal himself, all is lost for Jack. Heartbroken, and (according to some depictions) in chronically poor health in any case, Jack meets the usual fate of heartbroken clowns—he dies. (According to Gilbert, at any rate. The actual stage directions are ambiguous.)

As it pertains to this compilation, the setting and story of Yeomen make it a rich source of verses for events surrounding the elimination ceremony, which is, after all, a metaphor for death.

Click the links provided for a more detailed plot summary or the Short Attention Span summary. Yeomen had an opening run of 423 performances. Excluding repetitions, 77% of the play’s total verse content appears in this compilation.

The Gondoliers, or The King of Barataria (1889): The last of the Gilbert & Sullivan “main sequence”, and arguably the most dance-heavy operetta in the series, this period piece is set in the year 1750 A.D. The large cast is the result of Gilbert, upset with the salary demands of one of the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company’s stars, declaring that he would write an opera with no main characters.

Brothers Marco and Guiseppe, and their new brides Tessa and Gianetta, are shocked to discover that the men are not actually brothers, as they had believed, and that one (but nobody is really sure which) is the only son of the late King of Barataria. It is arranged that the “brothers” will rule jointly until it can be determined which of them is the actual king. Being ardent Republicans (i.e. anti-monarchist), they run an extraordinarily egalitarian court. Complications arise when the co-monarchs learn that the king was party to an arranged marriage in infancy, meaning that either Tessa’s or Gianetta’s marriage is not valid.

The maiden who stands to become the Queen of Barataria is no happier about the arranged marriage, as she has fallen in love with Luiz, one of her father’s employees.

In a typically Gilbertian twist, it is eventually revealed that neither brother is heir to the Baratarian throne, after all, and that Luiz actually has that distinction. (As with a similar incident in H.M.S. Pinafore, nobody dreams of asking for proof. An old woman’s word is enough.) So, “on one point rather sore, but on the whole, delighted”, the brothers must relinquish the reins of government, but can resume their carefree lives in Venice with their chosen wives.

Click the links provided for a more detailed plot summary or the Short Attention Span summary. Hailed by critics of Gilbert’s day as “the second Mikado”, The Gondoliers was—and remains, to this day—the most popular of Gilbert & Sullivan’s late operettas, with an opening run of 554 performances. Excluding repetitions, 76% of the play’s total verse content appears in this compilation.

Utopia, Limited, or The Flowers of Progress (1893): The most lavish production in the series, this play satirizes virtually all things British, but especially the concept of limited liability (i.e. incorporation of businesses), which Gilbert considered dishonest.

Princess Zara, eldest daughter of King Paramount of Utopia, returns home after completing her studies at a prestigious English university. She brings with her several advisors, collectively known as “The Flowers Of Progress”, whose job is to bring the blessings of British-style civilization to the Anglophilic Utopians.

The Flowers propose sweeping reforms, which King Paramount (who tends to govern by poll, in any case) sees as a way to get out from under the thumb of Utopia’s two Wise Men, Scaphio and Phantis. The duty of these two is to have the King put to death if he behaves irresponsibly or immorally, but they have abused this power to the point that the King has effectively become their slave.

The Flowers’ reforms produce various unpleasant side effects because they work too well. For example, there is no longer any sickness, so the doctors are starving; and there is no crime nor litigation, so the lawyers are starving. The balance is restored when Zara realizes that she and the Flowers had omitted a single critical reform: government by party, which insures that “no political measure can endure.”

The story of Utopia, Limited includes a subplot that appears to be loosely based on the story of Anna Leonowens, whose memoirs are the basis for the story of the 1944 book, Anna and the Kind of Siam and the related 1951 musical, The King and I.

Click the links provided for a more detailed plot summary or the Short Attention Span summary. Utopia, Limited ran for 245 performances—decent enough in absolute terms, but a disappointment in comparison to what Gilbert and Sullivan were accustomed to, especially in light of the relatively high production costs. Excluding repetitions, 67% of the play’s total verse content appears in this compilation.

The Grand Duke, or The Statutory Duel (1896): A period piece set, like The Gondoliers, in the year 1750 A.D. because the story required a setting predating the 19th Century unification of Germany. Some elements of the story, which is the most convoluted in the series, feel like a remake of Thespis.

Ernest Dummkopf (the name meaning, essentially, “idiot”) and his theater troupe are plotting to overthrow Grand Duke Rudolph and seize control of his impoverished, hole-in-the-wall realm of Pfennig Halbpfennig (“Penny Halfpenny”). When a ridiculous blunder by Ludwig, the troupe’s comedian, alerts the government to the plot, all seems lost for the conspirators. Ludwig salvages the situation by overthrowing Rudolph in a bloodless “Statutory Duel”, tricking the sickly and miserable despot into agreeing to a predetermined outcome.

In the Statutory Duel, the duelists each draw a card from a deck, with the highest card winning. The loser “dies” for all legal purposes, but is physically unharmed, and the winner steps into the loser’s shoes, assuming his position and obligations. Rudolph produces a King and Ludwig an Ace, so Rudolph “dies” and Ludwig becomes the new Grand Duke.

As the new Grand Duke, Ludwig models his court on ancient Athens, mainly so the troupe can use its Troilus and Cressida costumes as their courtly attire. The balance is eventually restored when it is discovered that, in a Statutory Duel, the Ace counts as the lowest card, not the highest. Because the Statutory Duel Act is expiring—Ludwig’s attempt to extend it was not valid because he didn’t win his duel with Rudolph—the “dead” people “come back to life”. An unrelated improvement in Rudolph’s fortunes leaves him in a forgiving mood, and the conspirators know better than to have another go at deposing him, so all ends happily.

Click the links provided for a more detailed plot summary or the Short Attention Span summary. The Grand Duke was considered a failure, perhaps not entirely of its own making, running for only 123 performances. Excluding repetitions, 57% of the play’s total verse content appears in this compilation.

Notes on Verse Selection
As might be expected, most of the references are metaphorical to some degree, but some references are remarkably literal. Conversely, some verses fit more for their mood than for their description of events.

The most common and important metaphor in the selection of verses is that characters in respectable Victorian theatre talk about getting married in much the same sense as teens and young adults today talk about hooking up—a parallel enhanced by the “any spouse is better than no spouse” attitude that tends to prevail among Gilbert’s characters. Furthermore, most of Gilbert’s romantic heroines are teenagers, reflecting the fact that people generally married younger in Gilbert’s time than they typically do today. This compilation, for the most part, treats Victorian (stage) marriage vs. modern hookup as a simple substitution.

It is somewhat rare for an entire song to fit a single TDI character or incident. It is far more common for one portion of a song to fit one TDI character (or group of characters) or incident, while another portion of the same song fits another. The most obvious example is “A Wandering Minstrel, I” from The Mikado, where each verse represents a different type of song from the minstrel’s repertoire. There are many instances of a three-verse song having each verse applied to a different character.

In some cases, the characters noted would be singing these verses; in others, someone else would be singing to them or about them. For the most part, it is reasonably clear which is which. Some verses refer to the character’s personality or background, but most refer to specific incidents from one episode or another. The latter are so noted, and this compilation includes a guide to these incidents.

In some cases, a verse’s mood is directly opposite the mood of the Total Drama Island incident to which it is assigned. Thus, a verse originally sung in earnest might be sung ironically or sarcastically for the TDI incident. These cases are so noted. An example of this comes from Iolanthe, where a verse sung in earnest for the return of the beloved Iolanthe could be sung in bitter irony for the return of TDI’s universally reviled Eva. Gilbert was a great lover—and a great purveyor—of antithetical humor (i.e., “topsy-turvydom”), so these reversals would probably have appealed to him.

Because most of the Gilbert & Sullivan plays are, at their core, love stories or otherwise concerned with romantic attachments, many of the verses in this compilation pertain to couples (or, in the case of Cody, to rejected suitors) with a good deal of thematic repetition. For example, a single TDI incident—Trent’s perceived betrayal of Gwen—has relevant verses in several plays. For the same reason, the Total Drama Island episodes most heavily referenced in this compilation tend to be those featuring pivotal events in romantic relationships.

Due to the types of characters that tend to appear in these plays, the verses pertaining to some TDI characters may tend to focus on peripheral aspects. Chef Hatchet’s verses, for instance, typically refer to his military background rather than to his cooking or his jack-of-all-trades support role. Likewise, the verses for characters such as Tyler and Bridgette focus mainly on their love lives.

For similar reasons, this compilation may cast some TDI characters in a somewhat different light than the TV show did. Most notably, Cody’s verses, with their emphasis on unrequited love, tend to depict a much more tragic figure than the one Total Drama Island portrays.

Several of the Gilbert & Sullivan operettas—especially Ruddigore—have characters with meaningful similarities to a Total Drama Island character. For example, a third of Justin’s verses come from Patience because a character in that play has a similar effect on women.

Conversely, two plays feature characters that amount to avatars for different aspects of Gilbert himself. These avatars are the thoroughly disagreeable King Gama in Princess Ida, through whom Gilbert acknowledges his reputation for unlikeability; and the more sympathetic Jack Point in The Yeomen of the Guard, through whom Gilbert boasts of his comic prowess and demonstrates his talent for self-pity.

Technical Notes
To provide some access to Sullivan’s music without running afoul of copyright issues—the music and lyrics are in the public domain, but most of the actual performances are not—this compilation links extensively to the “Web Operas” in the Gilbert & Sullivan Archive. These Web Operas provide downloadable MIDI (synthesizer) files for substantially all of the Gilbert & Sullivan music that survives and, for nine of the operettas, MIDI karaoke files as well. The lyrics on the Web Opera pages include all repetitions, the better to allow readers so inclined to sing along. The sequencing of MIDI karaoke files appears to be a project in progress as of this writing, with karaoke files provided for most of the earlier operettas but not for most of the later ones.

Additional links to the Archive provide supplemental information both for the operettas themselves and on various other topics related to Gilbert and/or Sullivan.

Links to various websites, most notably Wikipedia and the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, provide supplemental information on a variety of ancillary topics.

Underlined words and phrases that are not part of hyperlinks are defined in the Glossary. In most cases, these are either archaic or chiefly British. Additional terms are defined through links to online dictionaries, as previously noted. The Glossary, as opposed to online dictionaries, generally serves for terms that either do not appear in those dictionaries, use a secondary definition, or merit additional commentary. The Gilbert & Sullivan Archive also has Glossary pages for most of the operettas, under their respective home pages.

For verses that refer to specific incidents in the TDI episodes, the incident references follow the format xx.yy, where xx is the TDI episode number, and yy is a sequence number. Thus, the notation 08.39 refers to the 39th incident reference in episode #8 (“Up the Creek”). This nomenclature is designed to allow readers to quickly move back and forth between the Guide reference and the verse, using the web browser’s Edit/Find command. Verses fitting multiple incidents, and incidents with multiple verse references, are somewhat common.

In cases where a verse would fit a TDI character except for having been written about a character of the opposite sex, the original gender-specific words are retained, with explanatory notes only where needed to avoid confusion. (The relationship between Gwen and Cody has several examples of these gender role reversals, with Cody taking the role of the pining maiden.)

The original proper names, where they occur, are likewise retained. Most of these names appear in the synopses of the Gilbert & Sullivan plays provided in the “Introduction to Gilbert & Sullivan” section above.

When only a portion of a song (e.g. one verse in a three-verse song) fits a TDI character or incident, only the relevant verse(s) appear in this compilation. Conversely, when only a portion of a verse is relevant, the entire verse appears in most cases. Exceptions are noted when the extract disrupts the rhyme scheme or is not the first part of the verse. Verses that are split in Sullivan’s musical arrangements tend to be split in this compilation as well, and this compilation generally does not identify verses split in this way. Interjections by the chorus, unless they are integral to the verse, are omitted in most cases.

A portion of a word appearing in italics indicates a mispronunciation for the sake of rhyme or meter. An entire word italicized means the word is emphasized or comes from a language other than English. (Gilbert had no qualms about turning to foreign languages, or to substandard English, when he needed a rhyme.)

In a few cases, the original stage directions are included when they help to inform the verse. These directions are italicized and enclosed in brackets [thusly].

A tab or multi-tab indent indicates a change in singer (in the play, not necessarily in the TDI reference). The main purpose of these indents is to help give the reader a feel for the music, although there are a few cases—most notably Heather, Lindsay & Beth’s “I am a maiden” trio from Princess Ida and Katie & Sadie’s “Replying, We Sing” verse from The Gondoliers—where they also help to inform the verse.

Verses
The verses in the following sections appear in the same order that they appear in the Gilbert & Sullivan series, which preserves some sense of Gilbert’s stories. The Guide to Incidents is structured to place these verses in accordance with the TDI story arc.

Verses from Thespis
For a brief plot summary, see the “Introduction to Gilbert & Sullivan” section above. In lieu of a more detailed plot summary, click the link provided for the libretto text.

[ Gwen/Trent – incident 03.21]

Throughout the night

The constellations

Have given light

From various stations.

When midnight gloom

Falls on all nations,

We will resume

Our occupations.

[ Beth/Lindsay – incident 21.28]

Our light, it’s true,

Is not worth mention;

What can we do

To gain attention,

When, night and noon,

With vulgar glaring,

A great big moon

Is always flaring?

[ Chef Hatchet – nature and incident 24.05]

Oh, I’m the celestial drudge,

From morning to night I must stop at it,

On errands all day I must trudge,

And I stick to my work till I drop at it!

In summer I get up at one

(As a good-natured donkey I’m ranked for it),

Then I go and I light up the Sun,

And Phoebus Apollo gets thanked for it!

Well, well, it’s the way of the world,

And will be through all its futurity;

Though noodles are baroned and earled,

There’s nothing for clever obscurity!

I’m the slave of the Gods, neck and heels,

And I’m bound to obey, though I rate at ‘em;

And I not only order their meals,

But I cook ‘em, and serve ‘em, and wait at ‘em.

Then I make all their nectar—I do—

(Which a terrible liquor to rack us is)

And whenever I mix them a brew,

Why, all the thanksgivings are Bacchus’s!

Well, well, it’s the way of the world, etc.

Then reading and writing I teach,

And spelling books many I’ve edited!

And for bringing those arts within reach,

That donkey Minerva gets credited.

Then I scrape at the stars with a knife,

And plate-powder the moon (on the days for it),

And I hear all the world and his wife

Awarding Diana the praise for it!

Well, well, it’s the way of the world, etc.

[Castaways – incident 23.41]

Oh, incident unprecedented!

I hardly can believe it’s true!


 * Why, bless the boy, he’s quite demented!


 * Why, what’s the matter, sir, with you?


 * Speak quickly, or you’ll get a warming !

Why, mortals up the mount are swarming,

Our temple on Olympus storming,

In hundreds—aye, in thousands, too!

[Castaways – incident 23.43]


 * Goodness gracious,


 * How audacious;


 * Earth is spacious,


 * Why come here?


 * Our impeding


 * Their proceeding


 * Were good breeding,


 * That is clear.

[ Owen/Duncan – incident 24.18]

What fools to give themselves so much exertion!


 * A government survey, I’ll make assertion!


 * Perhaps the Alpine club at their diversion!


 * They seem to be more like a “ Cook’s Excursion ”.

[ Chris – incident 23.01]

If, mighty Jove, you value your existence,

Send them a thunderbolt with your regards!


 * My thunderbolts, though valid at a distance,


 * Are not effective at a hundred yards.

[ Cody/Gwen – incidents 05.14, 08.03]

Here far away from all the world,

Dissension and derision,

With Nature’s wonders all unfurled

To our delighted vision

With no one here

(At least in sight)

To interfere

With our delight,

And two fond lovers sever,

Oh, do not free

Thine hand from mine,

I swear to thee

My love is thine,

Forever and forever!


 * On mountaintop the air is keen,


 * And most exhilarating,


 * And we say things we do not mean


 * In moments less elating.


 * So please to wait,


 * For thoughts that crop


 * En téte-a-téte,


 * On mountain top,


 * May not exactly tally


 * With those that you


 * May entertain,


 * Returning to


 * The sober plain


 * Of yon relaxing valley.

[ D.J. /Gwen – incident 11.07] (recycled in The Pirates of Penzance)

[Duncan/Owen – incident 24.17]

Climbing over rocky mountain,

Skipping rivulet and fountain,

Passing where the willows quiver

By the ever-rolling river,

Swollen with the summer rain;

Threading long and leafy mazes

Dotted with unnumbered daisies;

Scaling rough and rugged passes,

Climb the hardy lads and lasses

Till the mountaintop they gain!

[Boot camp party – incident 12.25]

[Wrap party – incident 27.04] (from “Climbing over rocky mountain”, recycled in The Pirates of Penzance, MIDI file 1:19 – 2:09)


 * Fill the cup and tread the measure,


 * Make the most of fleeting leisure;


 * Hail it as a true ally,


 * Though it perish by and by!


 * Every moment brings a treasure


 * Of its own especial pleasure,


 * Though the moments quickly die,


 * Greet them gaily as they fly!

[ Geoff – nature and incident 10.02]

[Lindsay/Heather – incident 17.02]

I once knew a chap who discharged a function

On the North South East West Diddlesex junction,

He was conspicuous exceeding,

For his affable ways and his easy breeding.

Although a Chairman of Directors,

He was hand in glove with the ticket inspectors,

He tipped the guards with brand new fivers,

And sang little songs to the engine drivers.

Each Christmas Day he gave each stoker

A silver shovel and a golden poker,

He’d buttonhole flowers for the ticket sorters,

And rich Bath buns for the outside porters.

He’d mount the clerks on his first-class hunters

And he built little villas for the roadside shunters,

And if any were fond of pigeon shooting,

He’d ask them down to his place at Tooting.

[Incident 17.02 continued]

[Bass boys/Harold – incident 10.14]

In course of time there spread a rumor

That he did all this from a sense of humor,

So instead of signaling and stoking,

They gave themselves up to a course of joking.

Whenever they knew that he was riding,

They shunted his train on lonely siding,

Or stopped all night in the middle of a tunnel,

On the plea that the boiler was a-coming through the funnel.

[Incident 17.02 continued]

[Geoff – incident 21.18]

If he wished to go to Perth or Stirling,

His train through several counties whirling,

Would set him down in a fit of larking,

At four a.m. in the wilds of Barking.

This pleased his whim and seemed to strike it,

But the general Public did not like it;

The receipts fell, after a few repeatings,

And he got it hot at the annual meetings.

[Incident 17.02 continued]

[Heather/Lindsay – incident 18.10]

He followed out his whim with vigor,

The shares went down to a nominal figure,

These are the sad results proceeding

From his affable ways and his easy breeding!

The line, with its rails and guards and peelers ,

Was sold for a song to marine store dealers.

The shareholders are all in the work’us ,

And he sells pipe-lights in the Regent Circus.

‘Twas told to me with much compunction,

By one who had discharged with unction

A Chairman of Directors’ function,

At the North South East West Diddlesex junction.

[Chris/Chef Hatchet – incident 24.06]

So that’s arranged – you take my place, my boy,

While we make trial of a new existence.

At length I shall be able to enjoy

The pleasures I have envied from a distance.


 * Compelled upon Olympus here to stop,


 * While other gods go down to play the hero,


 * Don’t be surprised if on this mountaintop


 * You find your Mercury down at zero!

[Gwen – incident 05.21] (sarcastically in TDI)


 * I, as the modest moon with crescent bow,


 * Have always shown a light to nightly scandal,


 * I must say I should like to go below,


 * And find out if the game is worth the candle!

[Geoff/Bass – incident 10.03]

While mighty Jove goes down below

With all the other deities,

I fill his place and wear his “ clo ,”

The very part for me it is.

To mother earth to make a track,

They all are spurred and booted, too,

And you will fill, till they come back,

The parts you best are suited to.

[Chef Hatchet – incident 24.03]


 * Here’s a pretty tale for future Iliads and Odysseys,


 * Mortals are about to personate the gods and goddesses.


 * Now to set the world in order, we will work in unity.


 * Jupiter’s perplexity is Thespis’ opportunity.

[ Justin – incident 27.55]


 * Phoebus am I, with golden ray,


 * The god of day, the god of day,


 * When shadowy night has held her sway,


 * I make the goddess fly.


 * ‘Tis mine the task to wake the world,


 * In slumber curled, in slumber curled,


 * By me her charms are all unfurled.


 * The god of day am I!

[Gwen – nature and incident 11.10]


 * I am the moon, the lamp of night.


 * I show a light—I show a light.


 * With radiant sheen I put to flight


 * The shadows of the day.


 * By my fair rays, as you’re aware,


 * Gay lovers swear—gay lovers swear,


 * While graybeards sleep away their care.


 * The lamp of night am I!

[ Izzy – incident 27.79]


 * Mighty old Mars, the God of War,


 * I’m destined for—I’m destined for—


 * A terribly famous conqueror,


 * With sword upon his thigh.


 * When armies meet with eager shout,


 * And warlike rout, and warlike rout,


 * You’ll find me there without a doubt.


 * The God of War am I!


 * The God of War, the God of War,


 * Great Timidon is destined for!


 * The rarest fun and rarest fare


 * That ever fell to mortal share!

[Chris – incident 01.03]


 * When, as the fruit of warlike deeds,


 * The soldier bleeds, the soldier bleeds,


 * Calliope crowns heroic deeds


 * With immortality.


 * From mere oblivion I reclaim


 * The soldier’s name, the soldier’s name,


 * And write it on the roll of fame,


 * The muse of fame am I!

[Boys team – incident 14.16]

We will go

Down below,

Revels rare

We will share.

With a gay

Holiday,

All unknown,

And alone.

[Gwen – incident 20.16]

[Geoff – incident 21.08]

[Heather – incident 23.26]

Of all symposia,

The best by half

Upon Olympus, here, await us,

We eat Ambrosia,

And nectar quaff,

It cheers but don’t inebriate us.

[Incident 23.26 continued]

We know the fallacies

Of human food,

So please to pass the Olympian rosy,

We built up palaces

Where ruins stood,

And find them much more snug and cozy.

[Geoff – incident 02.07]

Olympus is now in a terrible muddle,

The deputy deities all are at fault;

They splutter and splash like a pig in a puddle,

And dickens a on of ‘em’s earning his salt,

For Thespis as Jove is a terrible blunder,

Too nervous and timid—too easy and weak—

Whenever he’s called on to lighten or thunder,

The thought of it keeps him awake for a week!

[Heather – incident 20.09]

Then mighty Mars hasn’t the pluck of a parrot,

When left in the dark he will quiver and quail;

And Vulcan has arms that would snap like a carrot

Before he could drive in a tenpenny nail!

Then Venus’s freckles are very repelling,

And Venus should not have a squint in her eyes;

The learned Minerva is weak in her spelling,

And scatters her h’s all over the skies.

[Killer Bass – incidents 02.06, 04.12]

In short, you will see from the facts that I’m showing,

The state of the case is exceedingly sad;

If Thespis’ people go on as they’re going,

Olympus will certainly go to the bad!

From Jupiter downwards, there isn’t a dab in it,

All of ‘em quibble and shuffle and shirk;

A premier in Downing Street, forming a Cabinet,

Couldn’t find people less fit for their work!

[Gwen/Trent – incident 08.47] (this is the song that survives as a standalone ballad)



Sat on Cousin Robin’s knee,

Thought in form and face and limb,

Nobody could rival him.

He was brave and she was fair.

Truth, they made a pretty pair.

Happy little maiden, she—

Happy maid of Arcadee!

[Gwen/Trent – incident 16.31] (verse 2 from “”)

Moments fled, as moments will,

Happily enough, until

After, say, a month or two,

Robin did as Robins do.

Weary of his lover’s play,

Jilted her and went away.

Wretched little maiden, she—

Wretched maid of Arcadee!

[Gwen – incident 25.08]

Oh rage and fury! Oh shame and sorrow!

We’ll be resuming our ranks tomorrow,

Since from Olympus we have departed,

We’ve been distracted and brokenhearted.

Oh wicked Thespis! Oh villain scurvy;

Through him Olympus is topsy-turvy!

Compelled to silence to grin and bear it!

He’s caused our sorrow and he shall share it.

Where is the monster? Avenge his blunders,

He has awakened Olympian thunders.

[Heather – incident 01.08]

[Duncan – incident 10.12]

We can’t stand this,

We can’t stand this,

It’s much too strong,

We can’t stand this.

It would be wrong,

Extremely wrong,

If we stood this,

If we stand this,

If we stand this,

We can’t stand this.

[Gwen/losers – incident 26.08]


 * Jupiter, Mars and Apollo,


 * Have quitted the dwellings of men;


 * The other gods quickly will follow,


 * And what will become of us then?


 * Oh, pardon us, Jove and Apollo,


 * Pardon us, Jupiter, Mars,


 * Oh, see us in misery wallow,


 * Cursing our terrible stars.

[Heather – incident 25.35]


 * Let us remain, we beg of you pleadingly!


 * Life on Olympus suits us exceedingly.


 * Let us remain, we pray in humility!


 * If we have shown some little ability.

[Chris/Courtney – incident 12.48]

[ EPKWACAAH/Gwen – incident 19.31]

Enough, your reign is ended;

Upon this sacred hill

Let him be apprehended,

And learn our awful will.

[Losers – incident 22.02]

[Duncan/Heather – incident 23.24]

Away to earth, contemptible comedians,

And hear our curse, before we set you free;

You shall all be eminent tragedians,

Whom no one ever goes to see!

[Heather – incident 25.38]


 * Now, here you see the arrant folly


 * Of doing your best to make things jolly


 * I’ve ruled the world like a chap in his senses—


 * Observe the terrible consequences.


 * Great Jupiter, whom nothing pleases,


 * Splutters and swears, and kicks up breezes,


 * And sends us home in a mood avengin’,


 * In double quick time, like a railroad engine.


 * And this he does without compunction,


 * Because I have discharged with unction


 * A highly complicated function,


 * Complying with his own injunction.

Verses from Trial by Jury
See the “Introduction to Gilbert & Sullivan” section above for a brief plot summary. Click the link provided for a more detailed plot summary.

[ Courtney/Sadie – incident 11.26]

[Courtney – incident 22.16]

[Elimination ceremony – nature]

Hark, the hour of ten is sounding:

Hearts with anxious fears are bounding,

Hall of Justice crowds surrounding,

Breathing hope and fear—

For today in this arena,

Summoned by a stern subpoena,

Edwin, sued by Angelina,

Shortly will appear.

[ Chris – nature and incident 22.38]

Now, Jurymen, hear my advice—

All kinds of vulgar prejudice

I pray you set aside:

With stern judicial frame of mind

From bias free of every kind

This trial must be tried.

Oh, listen to the plaintiff’s case:

Observe the features of her face—

The broken-hearted bride.

Condole with her distress of mind:

From bias free of every kind

This trial must be tried!

And when, amid the plaintiff’s shrieks,

The ruffianly defendant speaks

Upon the other side;

What he may say, you needn’t mind—

From bias free of every kind

This trial must be tried!

[ Trent – incident 22.22] (from “Is this the Court of the Exchequer?”, MIDI file 2:12 – 2:24)

Hear me, hear me if you please,

These are very strange proceedings—

For permit me to remark

On the merits of my pleadings,

You’re at present in the dark.

[ Cody – incident 22.31]

When first my old, old love I knew,

My bosom welled with joy;

My riches at her feet I threw—

I was a lovesick boy!

No terms seemed too extravagant

Upon her to employ—

I used to mope, and sigh, and pant,

Just like a lovesick boy!

[ Izzy/Owen – incident 27.86] (verse 2 from “When first my old, old love I knew”, mutual in TDI)

But joy incessant palls the sense,

And love unchanged will cloy,

And she became a bore intense

Unto her lovesick boy!

With fitful glimmer burnt my flame,

And I grew cold and coy;

At last, one morning, I became

Another’s lovesick boy.

[Izzy/Trent – incident 22.24] (MIDI file 1:47 – 2:15)

Oh, I was like that when a lad!

A shocking young scamp of a rover;

I behaved like a regular cad,

But that sort of thing is all over.

I’m now a respectable chap,

And shine with a virtue resplendent

And, therefore, I haven’t a scrap

Of sympathy with the defendant!

[ Heather/Chris – incident 03.02] (MIDI file 0:21 – 0:49)

[http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/trial/webopera/tbj03.html All hail great Judge! ]

To your bright rays

We never grudge

Ecstatic praise.

All hail!

[Heather – incidents 21.10, 24.40] (from “Swear thou the jury”, MIDI file 0:13 – 0:37)

[Elimination vote - nature]

Oh, will you swear by yonder skies,

Whatever question may arise,

‘Twixt rich and poor, ‘twixt low and high,

That you will well and truly try.

[Elimination vote] (from “Swear thou the jury”, MIDI file 0:38 – 1:06)


 * To all of this we make reply


 * By the dull slate of yonder sky:


 * That we will well and truly try.

[Courtney – incident 22.13] (MIDI file 0:30 – 1:53)

[ LeShawna – incident 22.41]

Comes the broken flower—

Comes the cheated maid—

Though the tempest lower ,

Rain and cloud will fade.

Take, oh take these posies:

Though thy beauty rare

Shame the blushing roses,

They are passing fair!

Wear the flowers till they fade;

Happy be thy life, oh maid!

[ Gwen – incident 16.72] (MIDI file 1:54 – 3:09)


 * Oe’r the season vernal,


 * Time may cast a shade;


 * Sunshine, if eternal,


 * Makes the roses fade!


 * Time may do his duty;


 * Let the thief alone—


 * Winter hath a beauty


 * That is all his own.


 * Fairest days are sun and shade:


 * I am no unhappy maid!

[ Justin – nature and incident 01.14]

Oh, never, never, never, since I joined the human race,

Saw I so exquisitely fair a face.

How say you, is she not designed for capture?


 * We’ve but one word, my lord, and that is “rapture”.

[LeShawna – incident 16.58]

[Izzy/Owen – incidents 19.11, 20.02]

[Izzy/Trent – incident 22.25]

With a sense of deep emotion,

I approach this painful case;

For I never had a notion

That a man could be so base,

Or deceive a girl confiding,

Vows, etcetera, deriding.

See my interesting client,

Victim of a heartless wile!

See the traitor all defiant

Wear a supercilious smile!

Sweetly smiled my client on him,

Coyly wooed and gently won him.

Swiftly fled each honeyed hour

Spent with this unmanly male!

Camberwell became a bower,

Peckham an Arcadian Vale,

Breathing concentrated otto—

An existence ala Watteau.

Picture, then, my client naming,

And insisting on the day:

Picture him excuses framing—

Going from her far away;

Doubly criminal to do so,

For the maid had bought her  trousseau !

[Sadie – incident 01.17]

[ D.J. – incident 19.34]

[Heather – incident 25.18]

That she is reeling

Is plain to see!


 * If faint you’re feeling,


 * Recline on me!


 * I shall recover


 * If left alone.


 * Oh, perjured lover,


 * Atone! Atone!

[ Eva – incident 15.21] (from “That she is reeling”, MIDI file 0:44 – 0:56)

Monster, dread our fury!

There’s the judge and we’re the jury!

Monster, monster dread our fury!

[Izzy – nature and incident 27.07]

Oh, gentlemen, listen, I pray,

Though I own that my heart has been ranging,

Of nature the laws I obey,

For nature is constantly changing.

The moon in her phases is found,

The time and the wind and the weather,

The months in succession come round,

And you don’t find two Mondays together.

[Cody – incident 22.36] (from “Oh, gentlemen, listen, I pray”, MIDI file 0:48 – 1:09)

[Owen – nature and incident 27.87]

You cannot eat breakfast all day,

Nor is it the act of a sinner,

When breakfast is taken away,

To turn his attention to dinner;

And it’s not in the range of belief,

To look upon him as a glutton,

Who, when he is tired of beef,

Determines to tackle the mutton.

[ Bridgette – incident 14.08]

[Sadie – incident 22.28]

[Castaways – incident 23.13]

A nice dilemma we have here

That calls for all our wit:

And at this stage, it don’t appear

That we can settle it.

[Gwen/Trent – incident 16.44]

[Courtney – incident 22.17]

I love him—I love him—with fervor unceasing

I worship and madly adore;

My blind adoration is always increasing,

My loss I shall ever deplore.

Oh, see what a blessing, what love and caressing

I’ve lost, and remember it, pray,

When you I’m addressing, are busy assessing

The damages Edwin must pay!

[ Duncan (from “I love him—I love him”, MIDI file 0:35 – 1:05)

I smoke like a furnace—I’m always in liquor,

A ruffian—a bully—a sot;

I’m sure I should thrash her, perhaps I should kick her,

I am such a very bad lot!

I’m not prepossessing, as you may be guessing,

She couldn’t endure me a day;

Recall my professing, when you are assessing

The damages Edwin must pay!

[Cody/Gwen/Trent – incident 08.34]

[Owen/Izzy – incident 26.43]

Oh, joy unbounded,

With wealth surrounded,

The knell is sounded

Of grief and woe.


 * With love devoted


 * On you he’s doated


 * To castle moated


 * Away they go.


 * I wonder whether


 * They’ll live together


 * In marriage tether


 * In manner true?


 * It seems to me, sir,


 * Of such as she, sir,


 * A judge is he, sir,


 * And a good judge, too.

Verses from The Sorcerer
For a brief plot summary, see the “Introduction to Gilbert & Sullivan” section above. Click the link provided for a more detailed plot summary.

[ Owen  and his supporters – incident 26.38]

Ring forth, ye bells,

With clarion sound—

Forget your knells,

For joys abound.

Forget your notes

Of mournful lay,

And from your throats

Pour joy today!

[ Geoff  – incident 08.13] (MIDI file 2:06 – 3:15, gender roles reversed in TDI)

When he is here,

I sigh with pleasure,

When he is gone,

I sigh with grief.

My hopeless fear

No soul can measure—

His love alone

Can give my aching heart relief!

When he is cold,

I weep for sorrow—

When he is kind,

I weep for joy.

My grief untold

Knows no tomorrow—

My woe can find

No hope, no solace, no alloy!

[ Cody  – nature and incident 22.32] (verse 2 (MIDI file 3:16 – 4:28) from “When he is here”, gender roles reversed in TDI)

When I rejoice,

He shows no pleasure.

When I am sad,

It grieves him not.

His solemn voice

Has tones I treasure—

My heart they glad,

They solace my unhappy lot!

When I despond,

My woe they chasten—

When I take heart,

My hope they cheer;

With folly fond

To him I hasten—

From him apart,

My life is very sad and drear.

[ Trent  – incident 22.20] (with opening recitative )

The air is charged with amatory numbers—

Soft madrigals, and dreamy lovers’ lays.

Peace, peace, old heart! Why waken from its slumbers

The aching memory of the old, old days?

Time was when Love and I were well acquainted.

Time was when we walked ever hand in hand.

A saintly youth, with worldly thoughts untainted,

None better loved than I in all the land!

Time was, when maidens of the noblest station,

Forsaking even military men,

Would gaze upon me, rapt in adoration—

Ah me, I was a fair young curate then!

[ Heather  – incident 11.02] (verse 2 from “Time was when Love and I were well acquainted”, MIDI file 2:05 – 3:29, ironically in TDI)

Had I a headache? sighed the maids assembled;

Had I a cold? welled forth the silent tear;

Did I look pale? half the parish trembled;

And when I coughed, all thought the end was near!

I had no care—no jealous doubts hung o’er me—

For I was loved beyond all other men.

Fled gilded dukes and belted earls before me—

Ah me, I was a pale young curate then!

[Cody/ Gwen – incident 08.37] [spoken through music]

May Fortune bless you! May the middle distance

Of your young life be pleasant as the foreground—

The joyous foreground! And, when you have reached it,

May that which is the far-off horizon

(But which will then become the middle distance),

In fruitful promise be exceeded only

By that which will have opened, in the meantime,

Into a new and glorious horizon!

[ Lindsay  – incident 05.12]

[ Bridgette  – incident 27.17]

With heart and with voice

Let us welcome this mating:

To the youth of her choice,

With a heart palpitating,

Comes the lovely Aline!

May their love never cloy!

May their bliss be unbounded!

With a halo of joy

May their lives be surrounded!

Heaven bless our Aline!

[Bridgette – incident 17.36] (MIDI file 0:19 – 2:29)

Oh, happy young heart!

Comes thy young lord a-wooing

With joy in his eyes,

And pride in his breast—

Make much of thy prize,

For he is the best

That ever came a-suing.

Yet—yet we must part,

Young heart!

Yet—yet we must part!

Oh, merry young heart,

Bright are the days of thy wooing!

But happier far

The days untried—

No sorrow can mar,

When Love has tied

The knot there’s no undoing.

Then, never to part,

Young heart!

Then, never to part!

[ Chef Hatchet /Gwen – incident 12.43] ( recitative )

My child, I join in these congratulations:

Heed not the tear that dims this aged eye!

Old memories crowd upon me. Though I sorrow,

‘Tis for myself, Aline, and not for thee!

[Geoff – nature and incident 27.31] (MIDI file 0:47 – 1:35)

[ Tyler  - nature]

With heart and with voice

Let us welcome this mating;

To the maid of his choice,

With a heart palpitating,

Comes Alexis the brave!

[Trent/Gwen – incident 05.29]

[Trent]


 * [with stately courtesy]

[http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/sorcerer/web_opera/sorc09.html Welcome joy, adieu to sadness! ]

As Aurora gilds the day,

So those eyes, twin orbs of gladness,

Chase the clouds of care away.

Irresistable incentive

Bids me humbly kiss your hand;

I’m your servant most attentive—

Most attentive to command!


 * [aside, with frantic vehemence]

Wild with adoration!

Mad with fascination!

To indulge my lamentation

No occasion do I miss!

Goaded to distraction

By maddening inaction,

I find some satisfaction

In apostrophe like this:

“Sangazure immortal,

“Sangazure diving,

“Welcome to my portal,

“Angel, oh be mine!


 * [aloud, with stately courtesy]

Irresistable incentive

Bids me humbly kiss your hand;

I’m your servant most attentive—

Most attentive to command!


 * [Gwen]
 * [with much ceremony]
 * Sir, I thank you most politely


 * For your graceful courtesy;


 * Compliment more true and knightly


 * Never yet was paid to me!


 * Chivalry is an ingredient


 * Sadly lacking in our land—


 * Sir, I am your most obedient,


 * Most obedient to command!


 * [aside, with great vehemence]


 * Wild with adoration!


 * Mad with fascination!


 * To indulge my lamentation


 * No occasion do I miss!


 * Goaded to distraction


 * By maddening inaction,


 * I find some satisfaction


 * In apostrophe like this:


 * “Marmaduke immortal,


 * “Marmaduke diving,


 * “Take me to thy portal,


 * “Loved one, oh be mine!


 * [aloud, with much ceremony]


 * Chivalry is an ingredient


 * Sadly lacking in our land—


 * Sir, I am your most obedient,


 * Most obedient to command!

[Heather/ Harold – incident 27.72] (platonically)

All is prepared for sealing and for signing,

The contract has been drafted as agreed;

Approach the table, oh, ye lovers pining,

With hand and seal come execute the deed!


 * See they sign without a quiver, it—


 * Then to seal proceed.


 * They deliver it—they deliver it


 * As their Act and Deed!

[Heather/Bridgette/Geoff – incident 27.34] (from “All is prepared”, MIDI file 1:29 – 2:17)

With heart and with voice

Let us welcome this mating;

Leave them here to rejoice,

With true love palpitating,

Alexis the brave

And the lovely Aline!

[ LeShawna  – incident 13.18]

Love feeds on many kinds of food, I know,

Some love for rank, and some for duty:

Some give their hearts away for empty show,

And others love for youth or beauty.

To love for money, all the world is prone:

Some love themselves, and live all lonely:

Give me the love that loves for love alone—

I love that love—I love it only!

[Geoff/Bridgette – incident 27.16] (verse 2 from “Love feeds on many kinds of food”)

What man for any other joy can thirst,

Whose loving wife adores him duly?

Want, misery, and care may do their worst,

If loving woman loves you truly.

A lover’s thoughts are ever with his own—

None truly loved is ever lonely:

Give me the love that loves for love alone—

I love that love—I love it only.

[Harold – incident 12.56]

My name is John Wellington Wells,

I’m a dealer in magic and spells,

With blessings and curses

And ever-filled purses

In prophecies, witches and knells.

If you want a proud foe to “make tracks”—

If you’d melt a rich uncle in wax—

You’ve but to look in

On our resident Djinn ,

Number seventy Simmery Axe!

[ Katie/Sadie – incident 27.51] (from “My name is John Wellington Wells”, MIDI file 0:43 – 1:04)

For he can prophesy

With a wink of his eye,

Peep with security

Into futurity,

Sum up you history,

Clear up a mystery,

Humor proclivity

For a nativity—for a nativity;

With mirrors so magical,

Tetrapods tragical,

Bogies spectacular,

Answers oracular,

Facts astronomical,

Solemn or comical,

And, if you want it, he

Makes a reduction on taking a quantity!

[Harold – incident 27.44] (from “My name is John Wellington Wells”, MIDI file 1:04 – 1:20)

If anyone anything lacks,

He’ll find it all ready in stacks,

If he’ll only look in

On our resident Djinn,

Number seventy, Simmery Axe !

[Gwen – incident 27.11] (from “My name is John Wellington Wells”, MIDI file 1:20 – 1:36)

He can raise you hosts

Of ghosts,

And that without reflectors;

And creepy things

With wings,

And gaunt and grisly specters.

He can fill you crowds

Of shrouds,

And horrify you vastly,

He can rack your brains

With chains,

And gibberings grim and ghastly!

[The many guises of Chef Hatchet] (from “My name is John Wellington Wells”, MIDI file 1:37 – 1:57)

Then, if you plan it, he

Changes organity

With an urbanity

Full of Satanity,

Vexes humanity

With an inanity

Fatal to vanity—

Driving your foes to the verge of insanity!

Barring tautology,

In demonology,

‘Lecto-biology,

Mystic nosology,

Spirit philology,

High-class astrology,

Such is his knowledge, he

Isn’t the man to require an apology!

[Harold – incident 12.57] (“The Sorcerer’s Incantation”)

Sprites of earth and air—

Fiends of flame and fire—

Demon souls,

Come here in shoals,

This dreadful deed inspire!

Appear! Appear! Appear!


 * Good master, we are here!

[ Izzy  – incident 20.20] (from The Sorcerer’s Incantation, MIDI file 0:46 – 1:11)

Noisome hags of night—

Imps of deadly shade—

Pallid ghosts,

Arise in hosts,

And give me all your aid.

Appear! Appear! Appear!


 * Good master, we are here!

[Izzy/Owen – incident 19.09] (from The Sorcerer’s Incantation, MIDI file 1:12 – 1:20)

[campers/Sasquatchinakwa – incident 24.27]

[Trent/LeShawna – incident 27.14]

Hark, they assemble,

These fiends of the night!


 * Oh, Alexis, I tremble,


 * Seek safety in flight!

[Incident 19.09 continued]

[Bridgette/Geoff – incident 27.28] (from The Sorcerer’s Incantation, MIDI file 1:21 – 1:55)


 * Let us fly to a far-off land,


 * Where peace and plenty dwell—


 * Where the sigh of the silver strand


 * Is echoed in every shell


 * To the joy that land will give,


 * On the wings of Love we’ll fly;


 * In innocence there to live—


 * In innocence there to die!

[Owen/Izzy – incident 19.12] (from The Sorcerer’s Incantation, MIDI file 1:55 – 2:16)


 * Too late—too late


 * It may not be!


 * That happy fate


 * Is not for thee!

[Heather/ D.J. – incident 19.15] (from The Sorcerer’s Incantation, MIDI file 2:17 – 2:44)

[Gwen – incident 27.13]

Now, shriveled hags, with poison bags,

Discharge your loathsome loads!

Spit flame and fire, unholy choir!

Belch forth your venom, toads!

Ye demons fell, with yelp and yell,

Shed curses far afield—

Ye fiends of night, your filthy blight

In noisome plenty yield!

[ Chris /Chef Hatchet – incident 23.17] (Finale Act I)

[ Noah  – incident 27.23]

[Owen – nature]

Now to the banquet we press;

Now for the eggs, the ham;

Now for the mustard and cress,

Now for the strawberry jam!

Now for the tea of our host,

Now for the rollicking bun

Now for the muffin and toast,

Now for the gay Sally Lunn !

[Chris/campers – incident 03.06] ( recitative – from Finale Act I, MIDI file 1:36 – 2:05)

[Chef Hatchet/Owen – incident 25.02]


 * Be happy all—the feast is spread before ye;


 * Fear nothing, but enjoy yourselves, I pray!


 * Eat, aye, and drink—be merry, I implore ye,


 * For once let thoughtless Folly rule the day.

[Boot camp trainees – incident 12.26] (from Finale Act I, MIDI file 2:06 – 2:46 & 3:08 – 3:45)

[Geoff – incident 21.09]

[semifinalists – incident 25.01]


 * Eat, drink, and be gay,


 * Banish all worry and sorrow,


 * Laugh gaily today,


 * Weep, if you’re sorry, tomorrow!


 * Come, pass the cup ‘round—


 * I will go bail for the liquor;


 * It’s strong, I’ll be bound,


 * For it was brewed by the vicar!


 * Pain, trouble, and care,


 * Misery, heartache, and worry,


 * Quick, out of your lair!


 * Get you all gone in a hurry!


 * Toil, sorrow, and plot,


 * Fly away quicker and quicker—


 * Three spoons to the pot—


 * That is the brew of your vicar!

[lovebirds] (from Finale Act I, MIDI file 3:46 – 5:31)

Oh love, true love—unworldly, abiding!

Source of all pleasure—true fountain of joy—

Oh love, true love—divinely confiding,

Exquisite treasure that knows no alloy—

O love, true love, rich harvest of gladness,

Peace-bearing tillage—great garner of bliss—

Oh love, true love, look down on our sadness—

Dwell in this village—oh, hear us in this!

[Tyler – incident 03.19] (from Finale Act I, MIDI file 5:32 – 7:26)

[Owen – incident 23.46]

Oh, marvelous illusion!

Oh, terrible surprise!

What is this strange confusion

That veils my aching eyes?

I must regain my senses,

Restoring Reason’s law,

Or fearful inferences

Society will draw!

[ Courtney / Duncan  – incident 06.11] (Opening Act II)

‘Tis twelve, I think,

And at this mystic hour

The magic drink

Should manifest its power.

Oh, slumbering forms,

How little have ye guessed

The fire that warms

Each apathetic breast!

[campers – incident 24.08] (from Opening Act II, MIDI file 1:44 – 2:07, ironically in TDI)

I did not think it meet to see

A dame of lengthy pedigree,

A Baronet and K.C.B.,

A Doctor of Divinity,

And that respectable Q.C.,

All fast asleep al-fresco-ly,

And so I had them taken home

And put to bed respectably!

[Courtney/Duncan – incident 11.23] (from Opening Act II, MIDI file 2:08 – 2:37)

I trust my conduct meets your approbation.


 * Sir, you have acted with discrimination,


 * And shown more delicate appreciation


 * Than we expect in persons of your station.

[Bridgette/Geoff and Courtney/Duncan – incident 06.12] (from Opening Act II, MIDI file 2:38 – 3:20)

But stay—they waken, one by one—

The spell has worked—the deed is done!

I would suggest that we retire

While Love, the Housemaid, lights her kitchen fire!

[Courtney/Duncan – incident 06.13] (from Opening Act II, MIDI file 3:21 – 3:57)

[Gwen/Heather – incident 23.05]

Why, where be oi, and what be oi a doin’

A sleepin’ out, just when the dews du rise?


 * Why, that’s the very way your health to ruin,


 * And don’t seem quite respectable likewise!

[lovebirds] (from Opening Act II, MIDI file 3:57 – 6:35)

[Boys]


 * [Girls]

Eh, that’s you!

Only think of that, now!


 * What may you be at, now?


 * Tell me, du!

Eh, what a nose,

And eh, what eyes, miss!

Lips like a rose,

And cheeks likewise, miss!


 * Oi tell you true,


 * Which I’ve never done, sir,


 * Oi loike you


 * As I never loiked none, sir!


 * Eh, but oi du loike you!

If you’ll marry me, I’ll dig for you and rake for you!


 * If you’ll marry me, I’ll scrub for you and bake for you!

If you’ll marry me, all others I’ll forsake for you!


 * All this I will du, if you’ll marry me!


 * If you’ll marry me, I’ll cook for you and brew for you!

If you’ll marry me, I’ve guinea s not a few for you!


 * If you’ll marry me, I’ll take for you and du for you!


 * All this will I du, if you’ll marry me!


 * Eh, but I du loike you!

[Gwen/Trent – incident 16.45] (verse 2 from “Thou hast the power”)

[Izzy/Owen – incident 19.10]

Thine is the power and thine alone,

To place me on so proud a throne

That kings might envy me!

A priceless throne of love untold,

More rare than orient pearl and gold.

But no! Thou wouldst be free!

Such love is like the ray

That dies within the day:

If such thy love, oh, shame!

Call it by other name—

It is not love!

[LeShawna – incident 16.76]

Oh, I have wrought much evil with my spells!

An ill I can’t undo!

This is too bad of you, J.W. Wells—

What wrong have they done you?

And see—another lovelorn lady comes—

Alas, poor stricken dame!

A gentle pensiveness her life benumbs—

And mine, alone, the blame!

[ Justin /Katie/Sadie – incident 27.41] (from “I have wrought much evil with my spells”, MIDI file 1:30 – 2:44)

[Justin]


 * [Katie/Sadie]

Hate me! I drop my H’s—have through life!


 * Love me! I’ll drop them too!

Hate me! I always eat peas with a knife!


 * Love me! I’ll eat like you!

Hate me! I spend the day a Rosherville!


 * Love me! That joy I’ll share!

Hate me! I often roll down One Tree Hill!


 * Love me! I’ll meet you there!


 * Love me! My prejudices I will drop!

Hate me! That’s not enough!


 * Love me! I’ll come and help you in the shop!

Hate me! The life is rough!


 * Love me! My grammar I will all forswear!

Hate me! Abjure my lot!


 * Love me! I’ll stick sunflowers in my hair!

Hate me! They’ll suit you not!

[LeShawna – incident 16.77] (from “I have wrought much evil with my spells”, MIDI file 3:58 – 4:36)

Oh, agony, rage, despair!

Oh, where will this end—oh where?

I should very much like to know!

It will certainly be my fault

If she goes to her family vault,

To bury her life-long woe!

[Duncan/Courtney – incident 27.26] (gender roles reversed in TDI)

[Lindsay/Justin – incident 27.82] (gender roles as in original)

[http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/sorcerer/web_opera/sorc20.html Alexis! Doubt me not ], my loved one! See,

Thine uttered will is sovereign law to me!

All fear—all thought of ill I cast away!

It is my darling’s will, and I obey!

[Courtney – incident 12.13] (from “Alexis! Doubt me not”, MIDI file 0:34 – 1:23)

The fearful deed is done,

My love is near!

I go to meet my own

In trembling fear!

If o’er us aught of ill

Should cast a shade,

It was my darling’s will,

And I obeyed!

[Cody – incident 08.16]

Oh, my voice is sad and low

And with timid step I go—

For with load of love o’erladen,

I enquire of every maiden,

“Will you wed me, little lady?

Will you share my cottage shady?”

Little lady answers “No!

Thank you for your kindly proffer—

Good your heart, and full your coffer;

Yet I must decline your offer—

I’m engaged to So-and-so!”

[Izzy/Owen – incident 07.08] (MIDI file 2:18 – 3:00)

[various lovebirds – nature]

Oh, joyous boon! Oh, mad delight;

Oh, sun and moon! Oh, day and night!

Rejoice, rejoice with me!

Proclaim our joy, ye birds above—

Yet brooklets, murmur forth our love,

In choral ecstasy:

Ye birds, and brooks, and fruitful trees,

With choral joy delight the breeze—

Rejoice, rejoice with me!

[Trent/Gwen – incident 16.81] (from ensemble: “Oh, joyous boon”, MIDI file 3:47 – 4:15)

My dear young friend, consoled be—

In this I’m not an agent free—

Some most extraordinary spell

O’er us has cast its magic fell—

The consequence I need not tell.

[Gwen – incident 16.46] (from ensemble: “Oh, joyous boon”, MIDI file 4:16 – 4:30)


 * False one, begone—I spurn thee,


 * To thy new lover turn thee!


 * Thy perfidy all men shall know!

[LeShawna – incident 16.59] (from ensemble: “Oh, joyous boon”, MIDI file 4:31 – 4:43)


 * Come one, come all!


 * Obey my call!


 * Come hither, run!


 * Come, everyone!

[Trent/Gwen – incident 16.47] (from ensemble: “Oh, joyous boon”, MIDI file 4:44 – 5:17)


 * Oh, what is the matter,


 * And what is the clatter?


 * He’s glowering at her,


 * And threatens a blow!


 * Oh, why does he batter


 * The girl he did flatter?


 * And why does the latter


 * Recoil from him so?

[Gwen – incident 16.33] (MIDI file 5:18 – 5:51, gender roles reversed in TDI)


 * Prepare for sad surprises—


 * My love Aline despises!


 * No thought of sorrow shames her—


 * Another lover claims her!


 * Be his, false girl, for better or for worse—


 * But, ere you leave me, may a lover’s curse—

[ Ezekiel – incident 02.17] (Finale)

Or I or he

Must die!

Which shall it be?

Reply!


 * Die thou!


 * Thou art the cause of all offending!


 * Die thou!


 * Yield to our decree unbending!


 * Die thou!

[Eva – incident 03.23] (from Finale, MIDI file 0:38 – 1:14)

[various eliminated campers]

So be it! My fate is sealed.

To public execration thus I yield!

Be happy all—leave me to my despair—

I go—it matters not to whom—or where!

Verses from H.M.S. Pinafore
Gilbert & Sullivan's first blockbuster hit. For a brief plot summary, see the "Introduction to Gilbert & Sullivan" section above. Click the links provided for a more detailed plot summary; a tongue-in-cheek Short Attention Span summary; or a children's book adaptation of the Pinafore story, written by Gilbert himself.

[ Duncan / Owen  – incident 18.09]

We sail the ocean blue,

And our saucy ship’s a beauty;

We’re sober men and true,

And attentive to our duty.

When the balls whistle free

O’er the bright blue sea,

We stand to our guns all day;

When at anchor we ride

On the Portsmouth tide,

We have plenty of time for play.

[ Geoff  – incident 19.14] (with opening recitative )

Hail, men-o’-war’s men—safeguards of your nation,

Here is an end, at last, of all privation;

You’ve got your pay—spare all you can afford

To welcome Little Buttercup on board.

For I’m called Little Buttercup—

Dear Little Buttercup,

Though I could never tell why,

But still I’m called Buttercup—

Poor little Buttercup,

Sweet Little Buttercup I!

I’ve snuff and tobaccy,

And excellent jacky

I’ve scissors and watches and knives;

I’ve ribbons and laces

To set off the faces

Of pretty young sweethearts and wives.

[Incident 19.14 continued]

[Screaming Gophers – incident 07.03] (verse 3 from “I’m called Little Buttercup”, MIDI file 1:10 – 1:27)

[ Chris  – incident 20.10]

I’ve treacle and toffee,

I’ve tea and I’ve coffee,

Soft tommy and succulent chops;

I’ve chickens and conies,

And pretty polonies,

And excellent peppermint drops.

[Incident 19.14 continued]

Then buy of your Buttercup—

Dear Little Buttercup;

Sailors should never by shy;

So, buy of your Buttercup—

Poor Little Buttercup;

Come, of your Buttercup buy!

[ Katie/Sadie  – incidents 01.24, 06.16] (platonically, MIDI file 0:25 – 1:30)

[ D.J.  – incident 11.13] (platonically)

[ Gwen / Trent  16.37] (romantically)

The nightingale

Sighed for the moon’s bright ray,

And told his tale

In his own melodious way!

He sang, “Ah, well-a-day!”

The lowly vale

For the mountains vainly sighed,

To his humble wail

The echoing hills replied.

He sang, “Ah, well-a-day!”

[ Cody  – incident 22.35] (from scena #3, MIDI file 1:31 – 2:00)

I know the value of a kindly chorus,

But choruses yield little consolation

When we have pain and sorrow, too, before us!

I love—and love, alas, above my station!


 * He loves, and loves a lass above his station!


 * Yes, yes, the lass is much above his station!

[Gwen/Cody – incident 05.02] (from scena #3, MIDI file 2:01 – 2:46)

A maiden fair to see,

The pearl of minstrelsy,

A bud of blushing beauty;

For whom proud nobles sigh,

And with each other vie

To do her menial’s duty.

A suitor, lowly born,

With hopeless passion torn,

And poor beyond denying,

Has dared for her to pine

At whose exalted shrine

A world of wealth is sighing.

[ Heather / Beth / Lindsay  – incident 04.01] (recitative)

[Chris/campers – incident 14.01] (ironically in TDI)

My gallant crew, good morning.


 * Sir, good morning!

I hope you’re all quite well.


 * Quite well; and you, sir?

I am in reasonable health,

And happy to meet you all once more.


 * You do us proud, sir!

[Incident 04.01 continued]

I am the Captain of the Pinafore.


 * And a right good captain, too!

You’re very, very good,

And be it understood,

I command a right good crew.

Though related to a peer,

I can hand, reef and steer,

And ship a selvagee;

I am never known to quail

At the fury of a gale,

And I’m never, never sick at sea.

[Chris/campers] (verse 2 (MIDI file 1:27 – 2:17) from “I am the Captain of the Pinafore” – ironically in TDI)

I do my best to satisfy you all.


 * And with you we’re quite content.

You’re exceedingly polite,

And I think it only right

To return the compliment.

Bad language or abuse,

I never, never use

Whatever the emergency;

Though “Bother it” I may

Occasionally say,

I never use a big, big D.

[ LeShawna /Gwen – incident 16.50] (recitative)

Sir, you are sad! The silent eloquence

Of yonder tear that trembles on your eyelash

Proclaims a sorrow far more deep than common;

Confide in me—fear not—I am a mother!


 * Sorry her lot who loves too well,


 * Heavy the heart that hopes but vainly,


 * Sad are the sighs that own the spell,


 * Uttered by eyes that speak too plainly;


 * Heavy the sorrow that bows the head


 * When love is alive and hope is dead!


 * Sad is the hour when sets the sun—


 * Dark is the night to earth’s poor daughters,


 * When to the ark the wearied one


 * Flies from the empty waste of waters!


 * Heavy the sorrow that bows the head


 * When love is alive and hope is dead!

[ Eva  – incident 15.04] (barcarolle)

[Owen – incident 23.08]

Over the bright blue sea

Comes Sir Joseph Porter, K.C.B.,

Wherever he may go

Bang-bang the loud nine-pounder s go!

Shout o’er the bright blue sea

For Sir Joseph Porter K.C.B.

[ Harold  – incident 07.05] (partial verse (MIDI file 1:03 – 1:13) from “Sir Joseph’s barge is seen”)

We’re smart and sober men,

And quite devoid of fe-ar;

In all the Royal N.

None are so smart as we are.

[Gwen/Heather/Duncan – incident 23.06] (from “Sir Joseph’s barge is seen”, MIDI file 1:13 – 1:40)

Gaily tripping,

Lightly skipping,

Flock the maidens to the shipping.


 * Flags and guns and pennants dipping!


 * All the ladies love the shipping!

[Duncan – incident 23.12] (from “Sir Joseph’s barge is seen”, MIDI file 1:40 – 1:58)

Sailors sprightly

Always rightly

Welcome ladies most politely.


 * Ladies who can smile so brightly,


 * Sailors welcome most politely.

[D.J. – incident 08.44] (Entrance of Sir Joseph, MIDI file 0:16 – 0:35)

I am the monarch of the sea,

The ruler of the Queen’s navy,

Whose praise Great Britain loudly chants.


 * And we are his sisters and his cousins and his aunts!

[D.J. – incident 08.02] (from Entrance of Sir Joseph, MIDI file 0:35 – 0:52)

When at anchor here I ride,

My bosom swells with pride,

And I snap my fingers at a foeman’s taunts;


 * And so do his sisters and his cousins and his aunts!

[Incident 08.02 continued] (from Entrance of Sir Joseph, MIDI file 0:52 – 1:16)

[Duncan/Gwen/Heather – incident 23.07]

But when the breezes blow,

I generally go below,

And seek the seclusion that a cabin grants;


 * And so do his sisters and his cousins and his aunts!


 * His sisters and his cousins,


 * Whom he reckons up by dozens,


 * And his aunts!

[ Courtney  – incident 27.20]

When I was a lad, I served a term

As office boy to an Attorney’s firm.

I cleaned the windows and I swept the floor,

And I polished up the handle of the big front door.

I polished up that handle so carefully

That now I am the ruler of the Queen’s Navy!

As office boy I made such a mark

That they gave me the post of a junior clerk.

I served the writs with a smile so bland,

And I copied all the letters in a big round hand—

I copied all the letters in a hand so free,

That now I am the ruler of the Queen’s Navee!

In serving writs I made such a name

That an articled clerk I soon became;

I wore clean collars and a brand-new suit

For the pass examination at the Institute,

And that pass examination did so well for me,

That now I am the ruler of the Queen’s Navee!

Of legal knowledge I acquired such a grip

That they took me into the partnership.

And that junior partnership, I ween,

Was the only ship that I ever had seen.

But that kind of ship so suited me,

That now I am the ruler of the Queen’s Navee!

I grew so rich that I was sent

By a pocket borough into Parliament.

I always voted at my party’s call,

And I never thought of thinking for myself at all.

I thought so little, they rewarded me

By making me the ruler of the Queen’s Navee!

Now, landsmen all, whoever you may be,

If you want to rise to the top of the tree,

If your soul isn’t fettered to an office stool,

Be careful to be guided by this golden rule—

Stick close to your desks and never go to sea,

And you all may be rulers of the Queen’s Navy!

[Eva – nature and incident 03.04]

[Duncan – nature]

A British tar is a soaring soul,

As free as a mountain bird,

His energetic fist should be ready to resist

A dictatorial word.

His nose should pant and his lip should curl

His cheeks should flame and his brow should furl,

His bosom should heave and his heart should glow,

And his fist be ever ready for a knockdown blow.

His eyes should flash with an inborn fire,

His brow with scorn be wrung;

He never should bow down to a domineering frown,

Or the tang of a tyrant tongue.

His foot should stamp and his throat should growl,

His hair should twirl and his face should scowl,

His eyes should flash and his breast protrude,

And this should be his customary attitude—[belligerent pose]

[Gwen/Cody – incident 08.04]

[ Izzy /Owen – incident 27.08]

Refrain, audacious tar,

Your suit from pressing.

Remember what you are,

And whom addressing!

[Courtney/Duncan – incidents 12.30, 26.22] (from “Refrain, audacious tar” MIDI file 0:28 – 0:57)

I’d laugh my rank to scorn

In union holy,

Were he more highly born

Or I more lowly!

[Cody/Gwen – incident 08.18] (from “Refrain, audacious tar” MIDI file 0:57 – 1:54)


 * Proud lady, have your way,


 * Unfeeling beauty!


 * You speak, and I obey,


 * It is my duty!


 * I am the lowliest tar


 * That sails the water,


 * And you, proud maiden, are


 * My captain’s daughter!


 * My heart with anguish torn


 * Bows down before her,


 * She laughs my love to scorn,


 * Yet I adore her!

[Trent – incident 26.31] (recitative – Finale Act I)

Can I survive this overbearing

Or live a life of mad despairing,

My proffered love despised, rejected?

No, no, it’s not to be expected!

[Trent/Owen – incident 26.53] (from Finale Act I, MIDI file 0:19 – 0:39)

Messmates ahoy!

Come here! Come here!


 * Aye, aye, my boy,


 * What cheer, what cheer?


 * Now tell us, pray,


 * Without delay,


 * What does she say?


 * What cheer? What cheer?

[Cody/Trent – incident 08.26] (from Finale Act I, MIDI file 0:40 – 0:55)

The maiden treats my suit with scorn,

Rejects my humble gift;

She says I am ignobly born,

And cuts my hopes adrift.

[Cody – incident 08.07] (from Finale Act I, MIDI file 1:07 – 1:55)


 * Shall we submit? Are we but slaves?


 * Love comes alike to high and low—


 * Britannia’s sailors rule the waves,


 * And shall they stoop to insult? No, no!


 * You must submit, you are but slaves;


 * A lady she! Oho! Oho!


 * You lowly toilers of the waves,


 * She spurns you all! I told you so!

[Trent – incident 16.86] (from Finale Act I, MIDI file 1:55 – 2:42)

My friends, my leave of life I’m taking,

For oh, my heart, my heart is breaking.

When I am gone, oh, prithee tell

The maid that, as I died, I loved her well!

[Cody – incident 08.10] (from Finale Act I, MIDI file 2:42 – 2:55)

[Trent – incident 26.35]

Be warned, my messmates all

Who love in rank above you—

For Josephine I fall!

[Lindsay/ Tyler – incident 01.32] (from Finale Act I, MIDI file 3:15 – 3:30)

[Geoff/ Bridgette – incident 22.03]


 * Oh joy, oh rapture unforeseen


 * For now the sky is all serene;


 * The god of day—the orb of love—


 * Has hung his ensign high above;


 * The sky is all ablaze.

[Incident 01.32 continued]

[Izzy/Owen – incident 19.07] (from Finale Act I, MIDI file 3:30 – 3:47)

[Geoff/Bridgette – incident 22.09]


 * With wooing words and loving song,


 * We’ll chase the lagging hours along,


 * And if we find the maiden coy,


 * We’ll murmur forth decorous joy


 * In dreamy roundelays!

[Harold/Duncan – incident 12.37] (partial verse from Finale Act I, MIDI file 3:47 – 4:01)

[Heather/Trent – incident 16.18]


 * He thinks he’s won his Josephine,


 * But though the sky is now serene,


 * A frowning thunderbolt above


 * May end their ill-assorted love


 * Which now is all ablaze.

[Chris/ Chef Hatchet – incident 19.02] (from Finale Act I, MIDI file 4:43 – 4:52)

This very night,

With bated breath

And muffled oar—

Without a light,

As still as death,

We’ll steal ashore.

[Bridgette/Eva/ Ezekiel – incident 02.12] (from Finale Act I, MIDI file 6:22 – 6:27)


 * Back, vermin, back,


 * Nor mock us!


 * Back, vermin, back,


 * You shock us!

[Heather – incident 09.16]

Fair moon, to thee I sing,

Bright regent of the heavens,

Say, why is everything

Either at sixes or at sevens?

I have lived hitherto

Free from the breath of slander,

Beloved by all my crew—

A really popular commander.

But now my kindly crew rebel,

My daughter to a tar is partial,

Sir Joseph storms, and sad to tell,

He threatens a court martial!

Fair moon, to thee I sing,

Bright regent of the heavens,

Say, why is everything

Either at sixes or at sevens?

[Chris – nature and incident 03.07]

[Tyler - nature]

Things are seldom what they seem,

Skim milk masquerades as cream;

Highlows pass as patent leathers;

Jackdaws strut in peacock’s feathers.

Black sheep dwell in every fold;

All that glitters is not gold;

Storks turn out to be but logs;

Bulls are but inflated frogs.

Drops the wind and stops the mill;

Turbot is ambitious brill ;

Gild the farthing if you will,

Yet it is a farthing still.

[Lindsay – incident 18.17] (from “Things are seldom what they seem”, MIDI file 0:58 – 1:10)


 * Though to catch your drift I’m striving,


 * It is shady—it is shady;


 * I don’t see at what you’re driving,


 * Mystic lady—mystic lady.

[Elimination ceremony – incident 02.14] (from “Things are seldom what they seem”, MIDI file 1:11 – 1:24)


 * Stern conviction’s o’er me stealing,


 * That the mystic lady’s dealing


 * In oracular revealing.

[Lindsay/Beth] (from “Things are seldom what they seem”, MIDI file 1:25 – 1:43)


 * Though I’m anything but clever,


 * I could talk like that forever:


 * Once a cat was killed by care;


 * Only brave deserve the fair.

[Heather] (from “Things are seldom what they seem”, MIDI file 1:44 – 2:20)


 * Wink is often good as nod;


 * Spoils the child that spares the rod;


 * Thirsty lambs run foxy dangers;


 * Dogs are found in many mangers.


 * Paw of cat the chestnut snatches;


 * Worn-out garments show new patches;


 * Only count the chick that hatches;


 * Men are grown-up catchy-catchies.

[Chris – incident 18.16] (from “Things are seldom what they seem”, MIDI file 2:20 – 2:33)

[Owen – incident 27.43]

Though to catch my drift he’s striving,

I’ll dissemble—I’ll dissemble;

When he sees at what I’m driving,

Let him tremble—let him tremble!

[Ezekiel – incident 02.15] (from “Things are seldom what they seem”, MIDI file 2:33 – 2:46)

[Beth – incident 10.11]

[Elimination ceremony – nature]


 * Though a mystic tone you borrow,


 * I shall learn the truth with sorrow,


 * Here today and gone tomorrow;

Yes, I know—


 * That is so!

[Courtney – incident 12.17] ( recitative )

[Bridgette – incident 14.09]

The hours creep on apace,

My guilty heart is quaking!

Oh, that I might retrace

The step that I am taking!

Its folly it were easy to be showing,

What I am giving up and whither going.

On the one hand, papa’s luxurious home,

Hung with ancestral armor and old brasses,

Carved oak and tapestry from distant Rome,

Rare “blue and white” Venetian finger glasses,

Rich oriental rugs, luxurious sofa pillows,

And everything that isn’t old, from Gillow’s.

And on the other, a dark and dingy room,

In some back street with stuffy children crying,

Where organs yell, and clacking housewives fume,

And clothes are hanging out all day a-drying.

With one cracked looking-glass to see your face in,

And dinner served up in a pudding basin!

[Bridgette/Geoff – incidents 08.52, 13.04] (from scena #15, MIDI file 1:35 – 4:39)

A simple sailor, lowly born,

Unlettered and unknown,

Who toils for bread from early morn

Till half the night has flown!

No golden rank can he impart—

No wealth of house or land—

No fortune save his trusty heart

And honest brown right hand!

And yet he is so wondrous fair

That love for one so passing rare,

So peerless in his manly beauty,

Were little else than solemn duty!

Oh, god of love, and god of reason, say,

Which of you twain shall my poor heart obey!

[Courtney/Duncan – incident 12.31] (gender roles partially reversed in TDI)

Never mind the why and wherefore,

Love can level ranks, and therefore,

Though his lordship’s station’s mighty,

Though stupendous be his brain,

Though your tastes are mean and flighty

And your fortune poor and plain,


 * Let the air with joy be laden,


 * Rend with songs the air above,


 * For the union of a maiden


 * With the man who owns her love!


 * Never mind the why and wherefore,


 * Love can level ranks, and therefore,


 * Though your nautical relation


 * In my set could scarcely pass—


 * Though you occupy a station


 * In the lower middle class—


 * Let the air with joy be laden, etc.


 * Never mind the why and wherefore,


 * Love can level ranks, and therefore


 * I admit the jurisdiction;


 * Ably have you played your part;


 * You have carried firm conviction


 * To my hesitating heart.


 * Let the air with joy be laden, etc.

[Lindsay/Gwen – incident 16.21] (gender roles reversed in TDI)

Kind Captain, I’ve important information,

Sing hey, the kind commander that you are,

About a certain intimate relation,

Sing hey, the merry maiden and the tar.


 * Good fellow, in conundrums you are speaking,


 * Sing hey, the mystic sailor that you are;


 * The answer to them vainly I am seeking;


 * Sing hey, the merry maiden and the tar.

[Gwen – incident 16.32] (verse 3 from “Kind Captain, I’ve important information” – gender roles reversed in TDI)

Kind Captain, your young lady is a-sighing,

Sing hey, the simple captain that you are,

This very night with Rackstraw to be flying;

Sing hey, the merry maiden and the tar.

[Gwen – incident 16.48] (verse 4 from “Kind Captain, I’ve important information” – gender roles reversed in TDI)


 * Good fellow, you have given timely warning,


 * Sing hey, the thoughtful sailor that you are,


 * I’ll talk to Master Rackstraw in the morning:


 * Sing hey, that cat-o’-nine-tails and the tar.

[Izzy/Owen – incident 19.05]

Carefully on tiptoe stealing,

Breathing gently as we may,

Every step with caution feeling,

We will softly steal away.

[Heather/Lindsay – incident 04.10] (from “Carefully on tiptoe stealing”, MIDI file 1:32 – 1:54)

Pretty daughter of mine,

I insist upon knowing

Where you may be going

With these sons of the brine.

For my excellent crew,

Though foes they could thump any,

Are scarcely fit company,

My daughter, for you.


 * Now, hark at that, do!


 * Though foes we could thump any,


 * We are scarcely fit company


 * For a lady like you!

[Tyler/Heather – incident 04.15] (from “Carefully on tiptoe stealing”, MIDI file 1:55 – 2:08)


 * Proud officer, that haughty lip uncurl!


 * Vain man, suppress that supercilious sneer,


 * For I have dared to love your matchless girl,


 * A fact well known to all my messmates here!

[Ezekiel – incident 22.08] (from “Carefully on tiptoe stealing”, MIDI file 2:11 – 2:41)


 * I, humble, poor, and lowly born,


 * The meanest in the port division—


 * The butt of epauletted scorn,


 * The mark of quarterdeck derision—


 * Have dared to raise my wormy eyes


 * Above the dust to which you’d mould me,


 * In manhood’s glorious pride to rise,


 * I am an Englishman—behold me!

[Lindsay - incident 18.22] (from “Carefully on tiptoe stealing”, MIDI file 4:29 – 4:40)

[Owen- incident 21.29]


 * Did you hear him—did you hear him?


 * Oh, the monster overbearing!


 * Don’t go near him—don’t go near him—


 * He is swearing—he is swearing!

[Heather – incidents 18.25, 21.11] (from “Carefully on tiptoe stealing”, MIDI file 4:41 – 4:57)


 * My pain and my distress,


 * I find it is not easy to express.


 * My amazement—my surprise—


 * You may learn from the expression of my eyes!

[Courtney – incident 12.53]

[Trent – incident 16.84]

[Bridgette – incident 17.37]

Farewell, my own,

Light of my life, farewell!

For crime unknown

I go to a dungeon cell.

[Geoff – incident 18.05] (verse 2 from “Farewell, my own”)


 * I will atone.


 * In the meantime, farewell!


 * And all alone


 * Rejoice in your dungeon cell!

[Chef Hatchet/Duncan – incident 12.08] (verse 3 from “Farewell, my own”, MIDI file 0:30 – 0:44)

[LeShawna/Heather – incident 26.37]


 * A bone, a bone


 * I’ll pick with this sailor fell ;


 * Let him be shown


 * At once to his dungeon cell.

[Heather – incident 18.27]

My pain and my distress

Again it is not easy to express.

My amazement, my surprise

Again you may discover from my eyes.

[LeShawna – incident 16.73] (from “My pain and my distress”, MIDI file 0:20 – 0:37)

[Owen – incident 23.03]


 * Hold! Ere upon your loss


 * You lay much stress,


 * A long-concealed crime


 * I would confess!

[Gwen/Geoff – incident 21.23] (from “A many years ago”, MIDI file 1:35 – 1:47)


 * Oh, bitter is my cup!


 * However could I do it?


 * I mixed those children up,


 * And not a creature knew it!

[Gwen – incident 26.54] (from Finale, MIDI file 0:30 – 1:03, gender roles reversed in TDI)

For he’s the Captain of the Pinafore.


 * And a right good captain too!

And though before my fall

I was Captain of you all,

I’m a member of the crew.

I shall marry with a wife,

In my humble rank in life!

And you, my own, are she—

I must wander to and fro,

But wherever I may go,

I shall never be untrue to thee!

[Gwen/Trent – incident 08.48] (from Finale, MIDI file 1:24 – 1:58)


 * For he loves little Buttercup, dear little Buttercup,


 * Though I could never tell why;


 * But still he loves Buttercup, dear little Buttercup,


 * Sweet little Buttercup, aye!

[Owen/Izzy – incident 26.44] (from Finale, MIDI file 1:58 – 2:19)


 * I’m the monarch of the sea,


 * And when I’ve married thee


 * I’ll be true to the devotion that my love implants


 * Then goodbye to your sisters and your cousins and your aunts,


 * Especially your cousins,


 * Whom you reckon up by dozens,


 * And your aunts!

Verses from The Pirates of Penzance
For a brief plot summary, see the “Introduction to Gilbert & Sullivan” section above. Click the links provided for a more detailed plot summary or the Short Attention Span summary.

[Boot camp trainees – incident 12.27]

[Chris/campers – incident 16.62]

Pour, oh, pour the pirate sherry;

Fill, oh, fill the pirate glass;

And, to make us more than merry,

Let the pirate bumper pass.

[ Courtney  – incident 12.33] (verse 2 from Opening, MIDI file 0:50 – 1:05)


 * For today our pirate ‘prentice


 * Rises from indenture freed;


 * Strong his arm and keen his scent is,


 * He’s a pirate now, indeed!

Here’s good luck to Fredrick’s ventures!

Fredrick’s out of his indentures.

[ Lindsay  – incident 01.27] (verse 2 from “When Fredrick was a little lad”, MIDI file 0:46 – 1:36)

I was a stupid nurserymaid, on breakers always steering,

And I did not catch the word aright, through being hard of hearing;

Mistaking my instructions, which within my brain did gyrate,

I took and bound this promising boy apprentice to a pirate.

A sad mistake it was to make and doom him to a vile lot.

I bound him to a pirate—you—instead of to a pilot.

[ Gwen  – incident 02.21] (verse 3 from “When Fredrick was a little lad”, MIDI file 1:31 – 2:22)

I soon found out, beyond all doubt, the scope of this disaster,

But I hadn’t the face to return to my place and break it to my master.

A nurserymaid is not afraid of what you people call work,

So I made up my mind to go as a kind of piratical maid-of-all-work.

And that is how you find me now, a member of your shy lot,

Which you wouldn’t have found, had he been bound apprentice to a pilot.

[ Chris  – incident 16.07]

[ Duncan  – nature]

Oh, better far to live and die

Under the brave black flag I fly,

Than play a sanctimonious part

With a pirate head and a pirate heart.

Away to the cheating world go you,

Where pirates all are well to do;

But I’ll be true to the song I sing,

And live and die a Pirate King.

For I am a Pirate King.

And it is, it is a glorious thing

To be a Pirate King.

[Chris – incident 16.05] (verse 2 from “Oh, better far to live and die”, MIDI file 1:10 – 2:19)

[Duncan - nature]

When I sally forth to seek my prey

I help myself in a royal way:

I sink a few more ships, it’s true,

Than a well-bred monarch ought to do;

But many a king on a first-class throne,

If he wants to call his crown his own,

Must manage somehow to get through

More dirty work than ever I do,

Though I am a Pirate King,

And it is, it is a glorious thing

To be a Pirate King!

[Gwen/ Trent – incident 26.28] (from “Oh, false one”, MIDI file 0:40 – 1:18, gender roles reversed in TDI)

Faithless woman, to deceive me,

I who trusted so!


 * Master, master, do not leave me!


 * Here me, ere you go!

[Harold – incident 10.15] ( recitative, from “Oh, false one”, MIDI file 2:48 – 3:09)

What shall I do? Before these gentle maidens

I dare not show in this alarming costume!

No, no, I must remain in close concealment

Until I can appear in decent clothing!

[Gwen/ Heather – incident 24.14] (begins the song recycled from Thespis)

Climbing over rocky mountain,

Skipping rivulet and fountain,

Passing where the willows quiver

By the ever-rolling river,

Swollen with the summer rain;

Threading long and leafy mazes

Dotted with unnumbered daisies;

Scaling rough and rugged passes,

Climb the hardy little lasses

Till the bright seashore they gain!

[ Bridgette / Geoff  – incident 11.11] (from “Climbing over rocky mountain”, recycled from Thespis, MIDI file 1:19 – 2:09)


 * Let us gaily tread the measure,


 * Make the most of fleeting leisure;


 * Hail it as a true ally,


 * Though it perish by and by.


 * Every moment brings a treasure


 * Of its own especial pleasure,


 * Though the moments quickly die,


 * Greet them gaily as they fly.

[Heather – incident 23.16] (from “Climbing over rocky mountain”, recycled from Thespis, MIDI file 2:09 – 2:54)


 * Far away from toil and care,


 * Reveling in fresh sea air,


 * Here we live and reign alone


 * In a world that’s all our own.


 * Here in this, our rocky den,


 * Far away from mortal men,


 * We’ll be queens and make decrees—


 * They may honor them who please.

[ Chef Hatchet /Owen/Izzy – incident 19.08] ( recitative, from “Stop, ladies, pray”)

I had intended

Not to intrude myself upon your notice

In this effective but alarming costume;

But under these peculiar circumstances,

It is my bounden duty to inform you

That your proceeding will not be unwitnessed!

[ Cody /Bridgette – incident 07.09] (recitiative, from “Stop, ladies, pray”, MIDI file 0:36 – 1:04)

Ladies, do not shun me!

This evening I renounce my wild profession;

And, to that end, oh, pure and peerless maidens!

Oh, blushing buds of ever-blooming beauty!

I, sore at heart, implore your kind assistance.

[Bridgette/Geoff – incident 17.35] (MIDI file 1:19 – 2:30, gender roles reversed in TDI)

[Duncan/Courtney – nature and incident 21.26] (gender roles as in original)

Oh, is there not one maiden breast

Which does not feel the moral beauty

Of making worldly interest

Subordinate to sense of duty?

Who would not give up willingly

All matrimonial ambition ,

To rescue such a one as I

From his unfortunate position?

[ Beth  ] (from” Oh, is there not one maiden breast”, MIDI file 2:30 – 3:48)

Oh, is there not one maiden here

Whose homely face and bad complexion

Have caused all hopes to disappear

Of ever winning man’s affection?

To such a one, if such there be,

I swear by Heaven’s arch above you,

If you will cast your eyes on me—

However plain you be—I’ll love you!

[Courtney/Geoff – incident 12.11] (from” Oh, is there not one maiden breast”, MIDI file 4:09 – 4:43)


 * Oh, sisters deaf to pity’s name,


 * For shame!


 * It’s true that he has gone astray,


 * But pray


 * Is that a reason good and true


 * Why you


 * Should all be deaf to pity’s name!


 * The question is, had he not been


 * A thing of beauty,


 * Would she be swayed by quite as keen


 * A sense of duty?

[Courtney/Duncan – incident 12.32]

[Gwen/Trent – incident 26.47]

Poor wandering one!

Though thou hast surely strayed,

Take heart of grace,

Thy steps retrace,

Poor wandering one!

Poor wandering one!

If such poor love as mine

Can help thee find

True peace of mind—

Why, take it, it is thine!

[Heather – incident 27.35]

What ought we to do,

Gentle sisters, say?

Propriety, we know,

Says we ought to stay;

While sympathy exclaims,

“Free them from your tether—

Play at other games—

Leave them here together.”

[Geoff – incident 21.12] (chattering chorus, MIDI file 0:40 – 1:03)

[Beth/Lindsay – incidents 27.36, 27.81)]

[ Katie/Sadie  – incident 27.40]


 * How beautifully blue the sky,


 * The glass is rising very high,


 * Continue fine I hope it may,


 * And yet it rained but yesterday.


 * Tomorrow it may pour again


 * (I hear the country wants some rain),


 * Yet people say, I know not why,


 * That we shall have a warm July.

[Gwen – incident 16.11] (from “What ought we to do”, MIDI file 1:03 – 1:34)


 * Did ever maiden wake


 * From dream of homely duty,


 * To find her daylight break


 * With such exceeding, beauty?


 * Did ever maiden close


 * Her eyes on waking sadness,


 * To dream of such exceeding gladness?

[Duncan – incident 11.22] (from “What ought we to do”, MIDI file 1:56 – 2:08)


 * Did ever pirate roll


 * His soul in guilty dreaming,


 * And wake to find that soul


 * With peace and virtue beaming?

[Duncan – incident 12.36] (from “What ought we to do”, MIDI file 2:18 – 2:43)


 * Did ever pirate loathed


 * Forsake his hideous mission,


 * To find himself betrothed


 * To lady of position?

[Gwen/Heather – incident 24.21] ( recitative )

Stay, we must not lose our senses;

Men who stick at no offenses

Will anon be here.

Piracy their dreadful trade is,

Pray you, get you hence young ladies,

While the coast is clear.

[Cody – nature and incident 04.07]

I am the very model of a modern Major General,

I’ve information vegetable, animal or mineral,

I know the kings of England and I quote the fights historical,

From Marathon to Waterloo in order categorical;

I’m very well acquainted to with matters mathematical,

I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,

About binomial theorem I am teeming with a lot of news—

With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.

I’m very good at integral and differential calculus,

I know the scientific names of beings animalculous ;

In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,

I am the very model of a modern Major General.

[ Harold  – nature and incidents 05.31, 27.45] (verse 2 from “I am the very model of a modern Major General”), MIDI file 1:02 – 1:51)

I know our mythic history, King Arthur’s and Sir Caradoc’s,

I answer hard acrostics, I’ve a pretty taste for paradox,

I quote in elegiacs all the crimes of Heliogabalus,

In conics I can floor peculiarities parabolous.

I can tell undoubted Raphaels from Gerard Dows and Zoffanies,

I know the croaking chorus from The Frogs of Aristophanies,

Then I can hum a fugue of which I’ve heard the music’s din afore,

And whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense Pinafore.

Then I can write a washing bill in Babylonic cuneiform,

And tell you every detail of Caractacus’ uniform;

In short, in matters, vegetable, animal, and mineral,

I am the very model of a modern Major General.

[Chef Hatchet] (verse 3 from “I am the very model of a modern Major General”), MIDI file 1:51 – 2:54)

In fact, when I know what is meant by “mamelon” and “ravelin,”

When I can tell at sight a Mauser rifle from a javelin,

When such affairs as sorties and surprises I’m more wary at,

And when I know precisely what is meant by “commissariat,”

When I have learnt what progress has been made in modern gunnery,

When I know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery:

In short, when I’ve a smattering of elemental strategy,

You’ll say a better Major General has never sat a gee —

For my military knowledge, though I’m plucky and adventury,

Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century;

But still, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,

I am the very model of a modern Major General.

[Duncan/Chef Hatchet – incident 24.11] (Finale Act I)

[Heather/Duncan – incident 24.28]

Oh, men of dark and dismal fate,

Forgo your cruel employ,

Have pity on my lonely state,

I am an orphan boy!

[Duncan/girls – incident 24.32] (from Finale Act I, MIDI file 1:29 – 2:05)


 * See, at our feet they kneel;


 * Our hearts we cannot steel


 * Against the sad, sad tale of the lonely orphan boy!

[Heather – incidents 16.66, 24.29] (from Finale Act I, MIDI file 2:06 – 2:24)

I’m telling a terrible story,

But it doesn’t diminish my glory,

For they would have taken my daughters

Over the billowy waters;

If I hadn’t, in elegant diction,

Indulged in an innocent fiction,

Which is not in the same category

As a regular terrible story.

[Heather – incident 16.25] ( ensemble with verse below; from Finale Act I, MIDI file 2:24 – 2:53)

[Gwen – incident 24.31]


 * He’s telling a terrible story,


 * Which will tend to diminish his glory,


 * Though they would have taken his daughters


 * Over the billowy waters.


 * It’s easy, in elegant diction,


 * To call it an innocent fiction,


 * But it falls in the same category


 * As a regular terrible story.

[Trent/Cody – incident 08.27] ( ensemble with verse above; from Finale Act I, MIDI file 2:24 – 2:53)


 * If he’s telling a terrible story,


 * He shall die a death that is gory,


 * With one of the cruelest slaughters


 * That ever were known in these waters;


 * And we’ll finish his moral affliction


 * With a very complete malediction,


 * As a compliment valedictory


 * If he’s telling a terrible story.

[Duncan – incidents 11.24, 21.14] (from Finale Act I, MIDI file 2:54 – 3:31)

Although our dark career

Sometimes involves the crime of stealing,

We rather think that we’re

Not altogether void of feeling.

Although we live by strife,

We’re always sorry to begin it,

For what, we ask, is life

Without a touch of Poetry in it?

[Harold/ LeShawna – incident 13.11] (hymn – from Finale Act I, MIDI file 3:32 – 4:11)


 * Hail, Poetry, thou heaven-born maid!


 * Thou gildest even the pirate’s trade;


 * Hail, flowing fount of sentiment!


 * All hail, all hail, Divine Emollient!

[Owen/Izzy – incidents 19.13, 20.04] (from Finale Act I, MIDI file 5:29 – 6:11)

[Owen]


 * [Izzy]

Oh, master, hear one word, I do implore you!

Remember Ruth, your Ruth, who kneels before you!


 * Away, you did deceive me!

Oh, do not leave me!


 * Away, you grieve me!


 * I wish you’d leave me!

[Chef Hatchet – incident 12.44] (ironically in TDI)

Oh, dry the glistening tear

That dews that martial cheek;

Thy loving children hear,

In them thy comfort seek.

With sympathetic care

Their arms around thee creep,

For oh, they cannot bear

To see their father weep!

[Heather – incident 05.34] (from Opening Act II, MIDI file 1:30 – 2:15)


 * Dear father, why leave your bed


 * At this untimely hour,


 * When happy daylight is dead,


 * And darksome dangers lower ?


 * See heaven has lit her lamp,


 * The midnight hour is past,


 * The chilly night air is damp,


 * And the dews are falling fast!


 * Dear father, why leave your bed


 * When happy daylight is dead?

[ Balloonist cameraman  – incident 27.67] (MIDI file 0:20 – 1:36)

When the foeman bares his steel,

We uncomfortable feel,

And we find the wisest thing

Is to slap our chests and sing

For when threatened with emeutes,

And your heart is in your boots,

There is nothing brings it round

Like the trumpet’s martial sound.

[Boot Camp trainees – incident 12.03] (from “When the foeman bares his steel”, MIDI file 1:37 – 2:44)


 * Go ye heroes, go to glory,


 * Though ye die in combat gory,


 * Ye shall live in song and story.


 * Go to immortality!


 * Go to death, and go to slaughter;


 * Die, and every Cornish daughter


 * With her tears, your graves shall water.


 * Go ye heroes, go and die!

Though to us it’s evident,

These intentions are well meant,

Such expressions don’t appear

Calculated men to cheer,

Who are going to meet their fate

In a highly nervous state.

Still, to us it’s evident

These attentions are well meant.

[Incident 12.03 continued]

[Chef/campers – incident 24.10] (from “When the foeman bares his steel”, MIDI file 2:45 – 3:16)


 * Go and do your best endeavor,


 * And before all links we sever,


 * We will say farewell forever.


 * Go to glory and the grave!


 * For your foes are fierce and ruthless,


 * False, unmerciful, and truthless,


 * Young and tender, old and toothless,


 * All in vain their mercy crave.

[Incident 12.03 continued]

[Incident 24.10 continued]

[Gwen – incident 07.07] (from “When the foeman bares his steel”, MIDI file 3:16 – 3:42)

We observe too great a stress

On the risks that on us press,

And of reference a lack

To our chance of coming back.

Still, perhaps it would be wise

Not to carp or criticize,

For it’s very evident

These attentions are well meant.

[Chris/Lindsay – incident 18.15] (chant – from “When you had left our Pirate fold”, MIDI file 2:45 – 4:46)

For some ridiculous reason, to which, however, I’ve no desire to be disloyal,

Some person in authority, I don’t know who, very likely the Astronomer Royal,

Has decided that, although for such a beastly month as February, twenty-eight days as a rule are plenty,

One year in every four his days shall be reckoned as nine-and-twenty.

Through some singular coincidence—I shouldn’t be surprised if it were owing to the agency of an ill-natured fairy—

You are the victim of this clumsy arrangement, having been born in leap-year, on the twenty-ninth of February.

And so, by simple arithmetical process, you’ll easily discover

That though you’ve lived twenty-one years, yet, if we go by birthdays, you’re only five and a little bit over!


 * How quaint the ways of Paradox!


 * At common sense she gaily mocks!


 * Though counting in the usual way,


 * Years twenty-one I’ve been alive,


 * Yet, reckoning by my natal day,


 * I am a little boy of five!

[LeShawna – incident 16.55]

[ Eva  – incident 27.61]

[http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/pirates/web_op/pirates20.html Away, away! My heart’s on fire ];

I burn this base deception to repay!

This very night, my vengeance dire

Shall glut itself in gore. Away, away!

[Geoff – incident 17.33] (from “Away, away! My heart’s on fire”, MIDI file 0:13 – 0:25)


 * Away, away! Ere I expire—


 * I find my duty hard to do today!


 * My heart is filled with anguish dire,


 * It strikes me to the core! Away, away!

[LeShawna – incident 16.56] (from “Away, away! My heart’s on fire”, MIDI file 0:25 – 1:32, gender roles reversed in TDI)

[Gwen – incident 17.10] (gender roles reversed in TDI)

[Courtney/Harold – incident 22.14]


 * With falsehood foul


 * He tricked us of our brides.


 * Let vengeance howl;


 * The Pirate so decides.


 * Our nature stern


 * He softened with his lies,


 * And, in return,


 * Tonight the traitor dies.


 * Tonight he dies!


 * Yes, or early tomorrow.


 * His girls likewise?


 * They will welter in sorrow.


 * The one soft spot


 * In our natures we cherish,


 * And all those who plot


 * To abuse it shall perish!

[Duncan/Courtney – incident 12.51] (MIDI file 1:13 – 2:00, gender roles reversed in TDI)

Stay, Frederic, stay!

They have no legal claim,

No shadow of a shame

Will fall upon thy name.

Stay, Frederic, stay!


 * Nay, Mabel, nay!


 * Tonight I quit these walls,


 * The thought my soul appalls,


 * But when stern duty calls,


 * I must obey.

[Duncan/Courtney – incident 12.54] (from “Stay, Frederic, stay”, MIDI file 2:01 – 3:50)

[Bridgette/Geoff – incident 14.03]

[Gwen/Trent – incident 16.87]

Ah, leave me not to pine,

Alone and desolate;

No fate seemed fair as mine,

No happiness so great!

And nature, day by day,

Has sung, in accents clear,

This joyous roundelay,

“He loves thee—he is here.”


 * Ah, must I leave thee here


 * In endless night to dream,


 * Where joy is dark and drear,


 * And sorrow all supreme!


 * Where nature, day by day,


 * Will sing, in altered tone,


 * This weary roundelay,


 * “He loves thee—he is gone.”

[Gwen/Trent – incident 16.79] (from “Stay, Frederic, stay”, MIDI file 4:20 – 5:11)


 * Oh, here is love, and here is truth,


 * And here is food for joyous laughter.


 * She will be faithful to her sooth


 * Till we are wed, and even after.

[Heather – incident 17.28]


 * No, I’ll be brave! Oh, family descent,


 * How great thy charms, thy sway how excellent!


 * Come, one and all, undaunted men in blue,


 * A crisis, now, affairs are coming to!

[Beth/Harold – incident 07.04] (from “No, I’ll be brave”, MIDI file 0:21 – 1:16)

[ D.J. /Trent – incident 13.06]

Though in body and in mind,

We are timidly inclined,

And anything but blind

To the danger that’s behind,

Yet, when the danger’s near,

We manage to appear

As insensible to fear

As anybody here.

[Duncan]

When a felon’s not engaged in his employment,

Or maturing his felonious little plans,

His capacity for innocent enjoyment

Is just as great as any honest man’s.

Our feelings we with difficulty smother

When constabulary duty’s to be done.

Ah, take one consideration with another,

A policeman’s lot is not a happy one.

When the enterprising burglar’s not a-burgling,

When the cutthroat isn’t occupied in crime,

He loves to hear the little brook a-gurgling

And listen to the merry village chime.

When the coster’s finished jumping on his mother,

He loves to lie a-basking in the sun—

Ah, take one consideration with another,

A policeman’s lot is not a happy one.

[LeShawna – incident 16.95]

A rollicking band of pirates we,

Who, tired of tossing on the sea,

Are trying their hand at a burglaree

With weapons grim and gory.

We are not coming for plate or gold—

A story General Stanley told—

We seek a penalty fifty-fold,

For General Stanley’s story.

[Beth – incident 09.05]

[Duncan/Courtney – incident 12.21] (MIDI file 0:47 – 1:13)

[Heather – incident 16.09]


 * [very loud]

With cat-like tread,

Upon our prey we steal,

In silence dread

Our cautious way we feel.

No sound at all,

We never speak a word,

A fly’s footfall

Would be distinctly heard.

[Incident 16.09 continued] (MIDI file 1:13 – 3:29)

So stealthily the pirate creeps,

While all the household soundly sleeps.

Come, friends who plow the sea;

Truce to navigation

Take another station

Let’s vary piracee

With a little burglaree.


 * Here’s your crowbar, and your centerbit,


 * Your life preserver —you may want to hit;


 * Your silent matches, your dark lantern sieze—


 * Take your file and your skeletonic keys.

[Leshawna – incident 19.19] (recitative, from Finale Act II, MIDI file 0:52 – 1:09)

No, all is still

In dale, on hill;

My mind is set at ease—

So still the scene,

It must have been

The sighing of the breeze.

[ Justin  – nature and incident 27.58] (MIDI file 1:10 – 3:56)

Sighing softly to the river

Comes the loving breeze,

Setting nature all a-quiver,

Rustling through the trees.

And the brook, in rippling measure,

Laughs for very love

While the poplars, in their pleasure

Wave their arms above.


 * Yes, the trees, for very love,


 * Wave their leafy arms above.


 * River, river, little river,


 * May thy loving prosper ever.


 * Heaven speed thee, poplar tree,


 * May thy wooing happy be!

Yet, the breeze is but a rover;

When he wings away,

Brook and poplar mourn a lover,

Sighing, well-a-day!

Ah, the doing and undoing

That the rogue could tell!

When the breeze is out a-wooing,

Who can woo so well?


 * Shocking tales the rogue could tell—


 * Nobody can woo so well.


 * Pretty brook, thy dream is over,


 * For thy love is but a rover!


 * Sad the lot of poplar trees,


 * Courted by a fickle breeze!

[Owen – incident 03.22] (from Finale Act II, MIDI file 3:57 – 4:27)

Now what is this, and what is that, and why does father leave his rest

At such a time of night as this, so very incompletely dressed?

Dear father is, and always was, the most methodical of men.

It’s his invariable rule to go to bed at half past ten.

What strange occurrence can it be that calls dear father from his rest

At such a time of night as this, so very incompletely dressed?

[LeShawna/Trent – incident 16.64] (from Finale Act II, MIDI file 5:09 – 5:26)

[Chef/Izzy – incident 17.19]

[Gwen/Owen/Heather – incident 25.32]


 * With base deceit


 * You practiced on our feelings!


 * Revenge is sweet,


 * And flavors all our dealings!


 * With courage rare


 * And resolution manly,


 * For death prepare,


 * Unhappy General Stanley!

[Gwen/ EPKWACAAH – incident 19.32] (from Finale Act II, MIDI file 5:26 – 6:01)

Is he to die, unshriven — unannealed ?

Will no one in his cause a weapon wield?


 * Yes, we are here, though hitherto concealed!


 * So to Constabulary, pirates, yield!

[Owen – incident 04.20] (from Finale Act II, MIDI file 6:02 – 6:26)


 * You triumph now,


 * For well we trow,


 * Our mortal careers cut short;


 * No pirate band


 * Will take its stand


 * In the Central Criminal Court!

[Chris/Duncan/Courtney – incident 12.47] (from Finale Act II, MIDI file 7:51 – 8:23)

Away with them, and place them at the bar!


 * One moment! Let me tell you who they are.


 * They are no members of the common throng;


 * They are all noblemen who have gone wrong!

[Heather – incident 23.31] (from Finale Act II, MIDI file 8:44 – 9:00)

I pray you pardon me, Ex-Pirate King;

Peers will be peers, And youth will have its fling.

Resume your ranks And legislative duties,

And take my daughters, All of whom are beauties.

Verses from Patience
For a brief plot summary, see the “Introduction to Gilbert & Sullivan” section above. Click the links provided for a more detailed plot summary or the Short Attention Span summary.

[ Justin  – nature and incidents 01.15, 26.26]

Twenty lovesick maidens we,

Lovesick all against our will.

Twenty year hence, we shall be

Twenty lovesick maidens still.

Twenty lovesick maidens we,

And we die for love of thee.

[ Cody  – incident 22.33] (from Opening, MIDI file 1:34 – 2:19)


 * Love feeds on hope, they say, or love will die—


 * Yet my love lives, although no hope have I!


 * Alas, poor heart, go hide thyself away—


 * To weeping concords tune thy roundelay!

[ Izzy / Eva  – incident 27.59] (from Opening, MIDI file 2:20 – 2:42)

All our love is all for one,

Yet that love he heedeth not.

He is coy and cares for none,

Sad and sorry is our lot!

[ Gwen / Trent  – incidents 16.38] (from Opening, MIDI file 2:42 – 3:33)


 * Go, breaking heart,


 * Go, dream of love requited;


 * Go, foolish heart,


 * Go, dream of lovers plighted;


 * Go, madcap heart,


 * Go, dream of never waking;


 * And in thy dream


 * Forget that thou art breaking!

[ Heather  – incident 16.35] ( recitative )

Still brooding on their mad infatuation!

I thank thee, Love, thou comest not to me!

Far happier I, free from thy ministration,

Than dukes or duchesses who love can be!

[Heather – incident 16.92] (MIDI file 1:01 – 2:11, sarcastically in TDI)

I cannot tell what this love may be

That cometh to all, but not to me.

It cannot be kind as they’d imply,

Or why do these ladies sigh?

It cannot be joy and rapture deep,

Or why do these gentle ladies weep?

It cannot be blissful as ‘tis said,

Or why are their eyes so wondrous red?

Though everywhere true love I see

A-coming to all, but not to me

I cannot tell what this love may be!

For I am blithe and I am gay,

While they sit sighing night and day;

Think of the gulf ‘twixt them and me,

“Fa la la la”—and “Miserie!”

[Cody – incident 08.19] (from “I cannot tell what this love may be”, MIDI file 2:11 – 2:39)

If love is a thorn, they show no wit

Who foolishly hug and foster it.

If love is a weed, how simple they

Who gather it, day by day!

If love is a nettle that makes you smart,

Then why do you wear it next your heart?

And if it be none of these, say I,

Ah, why do you sit and sob and sigh?

[ Beth / Lindsay  – nature and incident 03.10]

The soldiers of our Queen

Are linked in friendly tether;

Upon the battle scene

We fight the foe together.

There every mother’s son

Prepared to fight and fall is;

The enemy of one

The enemy of all is!

[ Chef Hatchet, Renaissance man of Wawanakwa] (MIDI file 0:55 – 3:23)

If you want a receipt for that popular mystery,

Known to the world as a Heavy Dragoon,

Take all the remarkable people in history,

Rattle them off to a popular tune.

The pluck of Lord Nelson on board of the Victory—

Genius of Bismarck devising a plan—

The humor of Fielding (which sounds contradictory)—

Coolness of Paget about to trepan —

The science of Jullien, the eminent musico—

Wit of Macaulay, who wrote of Queen Anne—

The pathos of Paddy, as rendered by Boucicault—

Style of the Bishop of Sodor and Man—

The dash of a D’Orsay, divested of quackery—

Narrative powers of Dickens and Thackery—

Victor Emmanuel—peak-haunting Peveril—

Thomas Aquinas, and Doctor Sacheverell—

Tupper and Tennyson—Daniel Defoe—

Anthony Trollope and Mr. Guizot!

Take of these elements all that is fusible,

Melt them all down in a pipkin or crucible,

Set them to simmer and take off the scum,

And a Heavy Dragoon is the residuum!

If you want a receipt for this soldier-like paragon,

Get at the wealth of the Czar (if you can)—

The family pride of a Spaniard from Aragon—

Force of Mephisto pronouncing a ban—

A smack of Lord Waterford, reckless and rollicky—

Swagger of Roderick, heading his clan—

The keen penetration of Paddington Pollaky—

Grace of an Odalisque on a divan—

The genius strategic of Caesar or Hannibal—

Skill of Sir Garnet in thrashing a cannibal—

Flavor of Hamlet—the Stranger, a touch of him—

Little of Manfred (but not very much of him)—

Beadle of Burlington—Richardson’s show—

Mr. Micawber and Madame Tussaud!

Take of these elements all that is fusible,

Melt them all down in a pipkin or crucible,

Set them to simmer and take off the scum,

And a Heavy Dragoon is the residuum!

[ Katie/Sadie  – incident 27.39]

In a doleful train

Two and two we walk all day—

For we love in vain!

None so sorrowful as they

Who can only sigh and say,

Woe is me, alackaday!

[Chef Hatchet – incident 12.40] (partial verse from “In a doleful train”, MIDI file 0:55 – 1:35)


 * Instead of slyly peering at us,


 * Casting looks endearing at us,


 * Blushing at us, flushing at us, flirting with a fan;


 * They’re actually sneering at us, fleering at us, jeering at us!


 * Pretty sort of treatment for a military man!

[Katie/Sadie/Justin – incident 27.27] (from “In a doleful train”, MIDI file 1:35 – 2:24)

Mystic poet, hear our prayer,

Twenty lovesick maidens we—

Young and wealthy, dark and fair—

All of county family.

And we die for love of thee—

Twenty lovesick maidens we!

[Gwen/Trent – incidents 05.22, 16.01] (from “In a doleful train”, MIDI file 2:25 – 2:44, gender roles reversed in TDI)


 * Though my book I seem to scan


 * In a rapt ecstatic way


 * Like a literary man


 * Who despises female clay ,


 * I hear plainly all they say,


 * Twenty lovesick maidens they!

[Cody/Gwen – incident 05.16] (from “In a doleful train”, MIDI file 2:44 – 3:28, gender roles reversed in TDI)

Though so excellently wise,

For a moment mortal be,

Deign to raise thy purple eyes

From thy heart-drawn poesy.

Twenty lovesick maidens see—

Each is kneeling on her knee!

[Gwen/Trent – incidents 05.23, 16.02] (from “In a doleful train”, MIDI file 3:29 – 3:47, gender roles reversed in TDI)


 * Though, as I remarked before,


 * Anyone convinced would be


 * That some transcendental lore


 * Is monopolizing me,


 * Round the corner I can see


 * Each is kneeling on her knee!

[Heather – incident 26.10] [recited]

[ Owen  – nature]

What time the poet hath hymned

The writhing maid, lithe-limbed,

Quivering on amaranthine asphodel,

How can he paint her woes,

Knowing, as he well knows,

That all can be set right with calomel?

When from the poet’s plinth

The amorous colocynth

Yearns for the aloe, faint with rapturous thrills.

How can he hymn their throes

Knowing, as well he knows,

That they are only uncompounded pills?

Is it, and can it be,

Nature hath this decree,

Nothing poetic in the world shall dwell?

Or that in all her works,

Something poetic lurks,

Even in colocynth and calomel?

I cannot tell.

[Chef Hatchet – nature and incident 12.01]

[Izzy – incident 27.78]

When I first put this uniform on,

I said, as I looked in the glass,

“It’s one to a million

That any civilian

My figure and form will surpass.

Gold lace has a charm for the fair,

And I’ve plenty of that, and to spare,

While a lover’s professions,

When uttered in Hessians,

Are eloquent everywhere!”

A fact I counted upon,

When I first put this uniform on!

I said, when I first put it on,

“It is plain to the veriest dunce

That every beauty

Will feel it her duty

To yield to its glamour at once.

They will see that I’m freely gold-laced

In a uniform handsome and chaste”—

But the peripatetics

Of long-haired aesthetics

Are very much more to their taste—

Which I never counted upon,

When I first put this uniform on!

[Heather – incident 27.69] ( recitative )

[ Duncan  or Gwen – nature]

Am I alone,

And unobserved? I am!

Then let me own

I’m an aesthetic sham!

This air severe

Is but a mere

Veneer!

This cynic smile

Is but a wile

Of guile!

This costume chaste

Is but good taste

Misplaced!

[Incident 27.69 continued] ( recitative – from “Am I alone”, MIDI file 0:57 – 1:38)

Let me confess!

A languid love of lilies does not blight me!

Lank limbs and haggard cheeks do not delight me!

I do not care for dirty greens

By any means.

I do not long for all one sees

That’s Japanese.

I am not fond of uttering platitudes

In stained-glass attitudes.

In short, my mediaevalism’s affectation,

Born of a morbid love of admiration!

[ Harold  – incident 27.70] (MIDI file 1:39 – 2:37)

If you’re anxious for to shine

In the high aesthetic line

As a man of culture rare,

You must get up all the germs

Of the transcendental terms,

And plant them everywhere.

You must lie upon the daisies

And discourse in novel phrases

Of your complicated state of mind,

The meaning doesn’t matter

If it’s only idle chatter

Of a transcendental kind.

And everyone will say,

As you walk your mystic way,

“If this young man expresses himself in terms too deep for me,

Why, what a very singularly deep young man this deep young man must be!”

[Gwen – incident 26.11] (verse 2 from “If you’re anxious for to shine”, MIDI file 2:32 – 3:26)

Be eloquent in praise

Of the very dull old days

Which have long since passed away,

And convince ‘em, if you can,

That the reign of good Queen Anne

Was Culture’s palmiest day.

Of course you will pooh-pooh

Whatever’s fresh and new,

And declare it’s crude and mean,

For Art stopped short

In the cultivated court

Of the Empress Josephine.

And everyone will say

As you walk your mystic way,

“If that is not good enough for him which is good enough for me,

Why, what a very cultivated kind of youth this kind of youth must be!”

[Owen/ Mr. Coconut – incident 23.48] (verse 3 from “If you’re anxious for to shine”, MIDI file 3:22 – 4:19)

Then a sentimental passion

Of a vegetable fashion

Must excite your languid spleen,

An attachment a la Plato

For a bashful young potato

Or a not-too-French French bean!

Though the Philistines may jostle,

You will rank as an apostle

In the high aesthetic band,

If you walk down Piccadilly

With a poppy or a lily

In your mediaeval hand.

And everyone will say,

As you walk your flowery way,

“If he’s content with a vegetable love which would certainly not suit me,

Why, what a most particularly pure young man this pure young man must be!”

[Katie or Sadie]

Long years ago—fourteen, maybe—

When but a tiny babe of four,

Another baby played with me,

My elder by a year or more;

A little child of beauty rare,

With marvelous eyes and wondrous hair,

Who, in my child-eyes, seemed to me

All that a little child should be!

[Sadie – incident 07.01] (no longer performed – verse 2 from “Long years ago”)

Time fled, and one unhappy day—

The first that I had ever known—

They took my little friend away,

And left me weeping all alone!

Ah, how I sobbed, and how I cried,

Then I fell ill and nearly died,

And even now I weep apace

When I recall that baby face!

[Cody/Gwen – incident 01.25]

[Cody]

Prithee, pretty maiden— prithee, tell me true,

(Hey, but I’m doleful, willow willow waly !)

Have you e’er a lover a-dangling after you?

Hey willow waly O!

I would fain discover

If you have a lover?

Hey willow waly O!


 * [Gwen]


 * Gentle sir, my heart is frolicsome and free—


 * (Hey, but he’s doleful, willow willow waly!)


 * Nobody I care for comes a-courting me—


 * Hey willow waly O!


 * Nobody I care for


 * Comes a-courting—therefore


 * Hey willow waly O!

Prithee, pretty maiden, will you marry me?

(Hey, but I’m hopeful, willow willow waly!)

I may say, at once, I’m a man of propertee—

Hey willow waly O!

Money, I despise it;

Many people prize it,

Hey willow waly O!


 * Gentle sir, although to marry I design—


 * (Hey, but he’s hopeful, willow willow waly!)


 * As yet I do not know you, and so I must decline.


 * Hey willow waly O!


 * To other maidens go you—


 * As yet I do not know you,


 * Hey willow waly O!

[ Chris  – incident 26.62] (from Finale Act I, MIDI file 2:09 – 2:49)

Now tell us, we pray you,

Why thus they array you—

Oh, poet, how say you—

What is it you’ve done?


 * Of rite sacrificial


 * By sentence judicial,


 * This seems the initial,


 * Then why don’t you run?

[Cody/Gwen – incidents 05.17, 08.08] (from Finale Act I, MIDI file 4:34 – 5:15)

Your maiden hearts, ah, do not steel

To pity’s eloquent appeal,

Such conduct British soldiers feel.

To foeman’s steel we rarely see

A British soldier bend the knee,

Yet, one and all, they kneel to ye—

[Chef Hatchet – incident 12.45] (from Finale Act I, MIDI file 5:16 – 6:00)

Our soldiers very seldom cry,

And yet—I need not tell you why—

A teardrop dews each martial eye!

[Cody – incidents 08.38, 22.37] (from Finale Act I, MIDI file 6:44 – 7:11)

We’ve been thrown over, we’re aware,

But we don’t care—but we don’t care!

There’s fish in the sea, no doubt of it,

As good as ever came out of it,

And some day we shall get our share,

So we don’t care—so we don’t care!

[Gwen – incident 26.48] (from Finale Act I, MIDI file 8:57 – 9:25)

[ Bridgette / Geoff  – incident 27.75]

If there be pardon in your breast

For this poor penitent,

Who, with remorseful thought oppressed,

Sincerely doth repent;

If you, with one so lowly, still

Desire to be allied,

Then you may take me, if you will,

For I will be your bride!

[Izzy/Owen – incident 20.03] (from Finale Act I, MIDI file 9:25 – 9:42)

[Gwen/Trent – incident 26.13]


 * Oh, shameless one!


 * Oh, bold-faced thing!


 * Away you run,


 * Go take your wing,


 * You shameless one!


 * You bold-faced thing!

[Trent – incidents 16.13, 26.49] (from Finale Act I, MIDI file 9:42 – 10:11)


 * How strong is love! For many and many a week


 * She’s loved me fondly and feared to speak


 * But Nature, for restraints too mighty far,


 * Has burst the bonds of Art—and here we are!

[ LeShawna /Harold – incident 13.14] (from Finale Act I, MIDI file 10:24 – 11:38)

True love must single-hearted be—

From every selfish fancy free—

No idle thought of gain or joy

A maiden’s fancy should employ

True love must be without alloy.

Imposture to contempt must lead—

Blind vanity’s dissension’s seed—

It follows, then, a maiden who

Devotes herself to loving you

Is prompted by no selfish view.

[Gwen/Trent – incident 26.50] (from Finale Act I, MIDI file 12:08 – 13:46)

I hear the soft note of the echoing voice

Of an old, old love, long dead—

It whispers my sorrowing heart “rejoice”—

For the last sad tear is shed—

The pain that is all but a pleasure will change

For the pleasure that’s all but pain,

And never, oh never, this heart will range

From that old, old love again!

[Justin – incident 01.13] (from Finale Act I, MIDI file 14:08 – 14:42)

[Trent – incident 26.18]

But who is this, whose god-like grace

Proclaims he comes of noble race?

And who is this, whose manly face

Bears sorrow’s interesting trace?

[Katie/Sadie/Justin – incident 27.38] ( ensemble – from Finale Act I, MIDI file 15:32 – 16:44)

[Katie/Sadie]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [Justin]

Oh, list while we a love confess. . . . . . . . . . . . Again my cursed comeliness

That words imperfectly express. . . . . . . . . . . . Spreads hopeless anguish and distress!

Those shell-like ears, ah, do not close. . . . . . . Thine ears, oh Fortune, do not close

To blighted love’s distracting woes! . . . . . . . . . To my intolerable woes!

[Beth or Sadie] (verse 2 from “Silvered is the raven hair”, MIDI file 2:15 – 3:34)

Fading is the taper waist,

Shapeless grows the shapely limb,

And although severely laced,

Spreading is the figure trim!

Stouter than I used to be,

Still more corpulent grow I—

There will be too much of me

In the coming by and by!

[Justin – incidents 01.18, 26.25]

Turn, oh, turn in this direction,

Shed, oh, shed a gentle smile,

With a glance of sad perfection

Our poor fainting hearts beguile!

On such eyes as maidens cherish

Let thy fond adorers gaze,

Or incontinently perish

In their all-consuming rays!

[ Courtney  – nature and incident 01.19] [recited]

Gentle Jane was good as gold,

She always did as she was told;

She never spoke when her mouth was full,

Or caught bluebottles their legs to pull,

Or spilt plum jam on her nice new frock,

Or put white mice in the eight-day clock,

Or vivisected her last new doll,

Or fostered a passion for alcohol.

And when she grew up she was given in marriage

To a first-class earl who keeps his carriage!

[Duncan – nature and incident 12.04] [recited]

Teasing Tom was a very bad boy,

A great big squirt was his favorite toy;

He put live shrimps in his father’s boots,

And sewed up the sleeves of his Sunday suits;

He punched his poor little sisters’ heads,

And cayenne-peppered their four-post beds,

He plastered their hair with cobbler’s wax,

And dropped hot halfpennies down their backs.

The consequence was that he was lost totally,

And married a girl in the  corps de bally !

[Cody – incident 08.11]

A magnet hung in a hardware shop,

And all around was a loving crop

Of scissors and needles, nails and knives,

Offering love for all their lives;

But for iron the magnet felt no whim,

Though he charmed iron, it charmed not him;

From needles and nails and knives he’d turn,

For he’d set his love on a silver Churn!


 * A Silver Churn?

A Silver Churn!

His most aesthetic,

Very magnetic

Fancy took this turn—

“If I can wheedle

A knife or a needle,

Why not a Silver Churn?”

And Iron and Steel expressed surprise,

The needles opened their well-drilled eyes,

The penknives felt “shut up”, no doubt,

The scissors declared themselves “cut out”,

The kettles they boiled with rage, ‘tis said,

While every nail went off its head,

And hither and thither began to roam,

Till a hammer came up—and drove them home.


 * It drove them home?

It drove them home!

While this magnetic,

Peripatetic

Lover he lived to learn,

By no endeavor

Can magnet ever

Attract a Silver Churn!

[Cody – incident 05.19]

In a doleful train,

One and one I walk all day;

For I love in vain—

None so sorrowful as they

Who can only sigh and say,

Woe is me, alackaday!

[Cody – incident 22.34] (gender roles reversed in TDI)

Love is a plaintive song,

Sung by a suffering maid,

Telling a tale of wrong,

Telling of hope betrayed;

Tuned to each changing note,

Sorry when he is sad,

Blind to his every mote ,

Happy when he is glad!

Love that no wrong can cure,

Love that is always new,

That is the love that’s pure,

That is the love that’s true!

Rendering good for ill,

Smiling at every frown,

Yielding your own self-will,

Laughing your teardrops down;

Never a selfish whim,

Trouble, or pain to stir;

Everything for him,

Nothing at all for her!

Love that will aye endure,

Though the rewards be few,

That is the love that’s pure,

That is the love that’s true!

[Gwen/Geoff – incident 21.03]

So go to him and say to him, with compliment ironical—

“Your style is much to sanctified—your cut is too canonical.”

“I was the beau ideal of the morbid young aesthetical

To doubt my inspiration was regarded as heretical

Until you cut me out with your placidity emetical.”

[Duncan/Courtney – incident 12.15] (from “So go to him and say to him”, MIDI file 1:06 – 2:20, gender references reversed in TDI)

[Eva – incident 15.22]


 * I’ll tell him that unless he will consent to be more jocular—


 * To cut his curly hair, and stick an eyeglass in his ocular—


 * To stuff his conversation full of quibble and of quiddity—


 * To dine on chops and roly-poly pudding with avidity—


 * He’d better clear away with all convenient rapidity!

[Cody – incident 05.01]

It’s clear that mediaeval art alone retains its zest,

To charm and please its devotees we’ve done our little best.

We’re not quite sure if all we do has the Early English ring;

But, as far as we can judge, it’s something like this sort of thing:

You hold youself like this [attitude],

You hold yourself like that [attitude],

By hook and crook you try to look both angular and flat [attitude].

We venture to expect

That what we recollect,

Though but a part of true High Art, will have its due effect.

If this is not exactly right, we hope you won’t upbraid;

You can’t get high Aesthetic tastes, like trousers, ready made.

True views on Mediaevalism Time alone will bring,

But, as far as we can judge, it’s something like this sort of thing.

You hold youself like this [attitude],

You hold yourself like that [attitude],

By hook and crook you try to look both angular and flat [attitude].

To cultivate the trim

Rigidity of limb,

You ought to get a Marionette, and form your style on him [attitude].

[Cody – incident 08.21] (from “If Saphir I choose to marry”, MIDI file 0:18 – 1:02)

In that case unprecedented,

Single I shall live and die—

I shall have to be contented

With their heartfelt sympathy.

[Justin – nature and incident 27.57]

When I go out of door,

Of damosels a score

(All sighing and burning,

And clinging and yearning)

Will follow me as before.

I shall, with cultured taste,

Distinguish gems from paste,

And “High diddle diddle”

Will rank as an idyll,

If I pronounce it chaste!

[Harold – nature and incident 13.15] (from “When I go out of door”, MIDI file 0:17 – 0:25)


 * A most intense young man,


 * A soulful-eyed young man,


 * An ultra-poetical,


 * Super-aesthetical,


 * Out-of-the-way young man!

[Courtney – incident 12.22] (from “When I go out of door”, MIDI file 0:25 – 0:46)

[Gwen – incident 21.19]


 * Conceive me, if you can,


 * An everyday young man:


 * A commonplace type,


 * With a stick and a pipe,


 * And a half-bred black-and-tan ;


 * Who thinks suburban hops


 * More fun than Monday “Pops”,


 * Who’s fond of his dinner,


 * And doesn’t get thinner


 * On bottled beer and chops.


 * A commonplace young man,


 * A matter-of-fact young man,


 * A steady and stolid-y,


 * Jolly Bank holiday


 * Everyday young man!

[Harold – nature and incident 03.05] (from “When I go out of door”, MIDI file 1:01 – 1:08)

[Heather – incident 25.19]

A pallid and thin young man,

A haggard and lank young man,

A greenery-yallery ,

Grosvenor Gallery,

Foot-in-the-grave young man!

[Owen/Mr. Coconut – incident 23.21] (from Finale Act II, MIDI file 0:18 – 0:44)

In that case unprecedented,

Single I must live and die—

I will have to be contented

With a tulip or lily!

Glossary
Note: The Gilbert & Sullivan Archive has Glossary pages for most of the operettas under their respective home pages.

Ablutioner: a person who bathes regularly. To call someone an “imperfect ablutioner” is essentially to call him “unwashed”—a common dismissive term for people who one believes to be socially or culturally inferior to oneself.

All is blue: the entire sky is blue, i.e. full daylight.

All the remarkable people: All the people (mostly real, but a few fictitious) in the song, “If You Want a Receipt” were well known in Gilbert’s time, although many are all but forgotten now. This fate might have befallen Gilbert and Sullivan themselves, had they not been asked to collaborate on Trial By Jury.

Amaryllis: along with Chloe and Phyllis, stock names for heroines of pastoral romances.

Animalculous: the adjective form of “animalcule”, the original word for “microorganism”.

Asphodel: originally, a flower that supposedly grew in the Elysian Fields, the ancient Greek equivalent of Heaven. Later, a literary synonym for a daffodil.

Asinorum pons: the first of Euclid’s theorems that can be difficult to understand. The term can therefore serve as a metaphor for concepts such as “separating the men from the boys”. Properly rendered “pons asinorum” (“bridge of asses”), Gilbert reverses the words to better fit the verse’s meter, and because he needed a rhyme for “paragons”.

Attitudes: poses; postures.

Auricular: pertaining to the ear. Gilbert uses it as a synonym for an ear.

Banjo serenader: originally, “nigger serenader”. The word “nigger” (which, like “negro” comes from negra, the Spanish word for “black”) was innocent in Gilbert’s time, but later came to be regarded as a racial slur, so theater companies began substituting other terms around 1947. In this case, the second of three in the Gilbert & Sullivan series, “banjo serenader” is the usual substitute. The other two cases are a second instance in The Mikado, which appears in this compilation, and one in Princess Ida, which does not. In those cases, as well, other words or lines are now substituted.

Bann: wedding announcement.

Bart: the abbreviation for baronet, the lowest of hereditary British titles.

Bath bun: a pastry named for its place of origin, the town of Bath.

Bathing machine: a mobile booth where women could preserve decorum when changing into their bathing suits.

Beau ideal: (French) literally, “ideal beauty”; more generically, a perfect model. Thus, General Stanley (from The Pirates of Penzance) could have been called “the beau ideal of a modern Major General.” (It would even have fit the meter.)

Beaux: (French) plural of beau, a male suitor or boyfriend.

Black-and-tan: a Manchester terrier, which has a black-and-tan coat. A “half-bred black-and-tan” is a Manchester terrier mix.

Boltered: covered with blood.

Bowdlerize: cut out those parts of a literary work that might offend prudes. The U.S. version of Total Drama Island, where words such as “crap” or “sucks” are routinely replaced with milder terms, is an example of a bowdlerized work. The process is named after Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825), who published an expurgated version of Shakespeare’s plays.

Brasset: a piece of armor covering the arm.

Brave: (archaic) can mean “noble” or “well”, in addition to the better-known meaning of “courageous”. The archaic usage is particularly common in The Yeomen of the Guard, but also appears in several other Gilbert & Sullivan plays.

Brill: a flatfish related to the turbot, but smaller and not as tasty.

Buffer: the shock absorber at the end of a railroad car.

Captain Shaw: head of the London Fire Brigade at the time Iolanthe was written.

Chez moi: (French) “my house”.

Chit: an impertinent woman, similar to a minx.

Classics: the great works of ancient Greek and Roman writers.

Clerk: pronounced “clark” in the British fashion.

Clo: (substandard English) clothing.

Cook’s Excursion: the reference in Thespis is to the world’s first travel agency.

Corps de Bally: the “corps de ballet”. In other words, “Teasing Tom” married a ballet dancer. In a class-conscious society, this would have been bad because dancing was a lower-class occupation.

Cot: short for “cottage”.

County family: Landed gentry.

Dab: (chiefly British) a person skilled at the task under discussion.

De trop: (French) superfluous; useless or worse.

D.D.: Doctor of Divinity, i.e. a highly educated clergyman.

Despises female clay: implies indifference to worldly matters, not homosexuality.

Deuce: a euphemism for “devil”

Diskiver: (substandard English) discover.

Dithyramb: a hymn—in practice, more like a drunken party—in honor of Dionysus, the God of Wine.

Djinn: plural of djinni, or “genie”.

Doing: (chiefly British) cheating. Gilbert also uses the better known (and more innocent) meaning in various places.

Dolce far niente: (Italian) literally, “sweet doing nothing”. Colloquially, “pleasant idleness” or “blissful sloth”.

Downing Street: the British Prime Minister lives at 10 Downing Street, which is equivalent to the U.S. White House.

Drum: a noisy party.

Duck: in the context of the song, a mild term of endearment, similar to “darling”.

Écarté: a card game. The TDI reference is to Izzy and Owen’s fondness for canasta, which is also a card game.

Ensemble: Situations where two groups of singers sing different words at the same time, to the same or different melodies, are common in Sullivan’s musical arrangements.

Equipoise: balance.

Far niente: short for “dolce far niente” (q.v.).

Fell: cruel or savage.

Fences: the sort of parry-and-riposte action seen in the sport of fencing. “Verbal fences” therefore refers to conversational repartee.

Festina lente: (Latin) literally, “make haste slowly”. More colloquially, “look before you leap”.

Fitless finger-stalls: poorly fitting gloves.

Follows the hounds: the stanza containing this term is full of fox-hunting terminology. The animal-loving Bridgette wouldn’t be caught dead hunting foxes, of course, but riding horses is another matter. Following the hounds wherever they go requires considerable riding skill, and this is what makes English-style fox hunting a sport.

Fortalice: a small fort. The Tower of London compound isn’t exactly small, but Gilbert needed a rhyme for “hiss”.

Froggee: from “Frog”, a derogatory term the British have for the French.

Garner: a storehouse.

Garter/Thistle/Bath: orders of knighthood.

Gay: There are several songs in the Gilbert & Sullivan operas where the modern connotation of the word “gay” could elicit laughs Gilbert did not intend. The original meaning of “gay” has no good synonyms, which is why some people refuse to use it in the modern sense.

Girton: a prestigious women’s college attached to Cambridge. Radcliffe is the closest American equivalent.

Go bail for: guarantee, as in “post bail”. To “go bail for the liquor” therefore means to guarantee the quality of the beverage.

Going free: the song describing the encounter between the H.M.S. Tom-Tit and the French frigate is full of nautical terms. Gilbert was well-versed in nautical jargon, and loved to flaunt his knowledge of it. The sailor singing the song would have the audience believe that the Captain of the Tom-Tit spared the French crew out of chivalry or pity. His actual words, however, indicate that the Tom-Tit crew thought the French ship to be unarmed, and fled when their prey displayed both large cannon and skilled gunners.

Great double-barrel: big shot. The Duke of Plaza-Toro is the Victorian equivalent of a celebrity endorser.

Greenery-yallery: greenish yellow, i.e. jaundiced.

Guinea: a unit of British currency, equal to 1.05 pounds (i.e. 1 pound plus 1 shilling). It still exists in theory, but has not been coined since 1813.

Guy: an effigy of Guy Fawkes (1570-1606), who tried to blow up Parliament in 1605. His ill-fated escapade is mockingly remembered in a minor British holiday, which features (among other things) grotesque attire.

Gyves: leg irons; shackles.

Heigho (also Heigh-ho): a traditional spelling for a sigh. “Heigho-let” is thus Gilbert’s word for a little sigh.

Hind: a female red deer.

Hoi polloi: (Greek) the people. The phrase, “the hoi polloi” is redundant (“the the people”).

Hops: dance parties.

Hunter: a horse used for hunting.

Imported from France: During the Tudor period, which is the setting for The Yeomen of the Guard, French jokes were unlikely to be received well in certain circles because France was England’s traditional enemy.

Indite: dictate.

Indiwiddle: individual. Distorted to rhyme with “idyll”.

Jim-jams: (slang) delerium tremens. The reference is metaphorical, because neither Grand Duke Rudolph nor Heather drinks much alcohol.

Lady novelist: Because lady novelists had ceased to be anomalies not long after Gilbert’s time, many substitutions have been suggested over the years, but none have been been accepted as definitive. Martyn Green, the famous Gilbert & Sullivan actor, who sang the “Little list” song a great many times during his tenure with the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, preferred “girl who’s not been kissed”.

Lay: exorcize, as in “lay back into the grave”.

Life preserver: a nonlethal weapon, now called a “blackjack”.

Lime: to apply “birdlime”, a sticky substance smeared on twigs to catch birds.

Lower: threaten. Rhymes with “hour”.

Maravedi: a low-value Spanish coin.

Mark: an obsolete English unit of currency, equal to 2/3 pound (13 shillings + 4 pence).

Marry come up: (archaic) a plea to the Virgin Mary for assistance in an interpersonal struggle.

Matrimonial ambition: Thoughts or dreams of climbing the social ladder by marrying into a higher social class than one currently occupies.

Maxim gun: a type of early machine gun, based on the same principle as modern machine guns.

Mickle: a great many. The word is therefore either ironic or poorly chosen in both of the songs where Gilbert uses it. If the latter, his error was apparently a common one (rather like the modern error of using “decimate” when the speaker means “devastate”).

Moll: a gangster’s girlfriend.

Mop: grimace.

Mould: a crumbly type of soil that makes the gravedigger’s job relatively easy.

Mote: literally, a speck of dust. Gilbert uses the more colloquial definition of a personality flaw, in reference to a verse from the Sermon on the Mount.

Mounseer: a distortion of “monsieur”, the French equivalent of “mister”. Gilbert uses it to represent Frenchmen in general (cf. “parley-voo”).

Mow: grimace. Thus, “a mop and a mow” is redundant (“a grimace and a grimace”).

M.P.: Member of Parliament.

Muckle: run off at the mouth

Nine-pounder: a cannon that fires a nine-pound ball.

Nordenfelt: a type of early machine gun, based on a similar principle to the Gatling gun.

Nosology: the study of diseases. J.W. Wells and his associates conduct this study by mystic rather than scientific methods, because they are sorcerers, not physicians.

Old Bailey: London’s Central Criminal Court.

Painted with vigor: originally “blacked like a nigger”. See “banjo serenader” for further commentary on the usage of “nigger”. Having one’s skin artificially darkened would have been a fearsome punishment in Victorian England because pale skin was the mark of an aristocrat, whereas dark (e.g. tanned) skin was the mark of a peasant.

Paling: picket fence.

Parley-voo: from “Parlez-vous francais?” (“Do you speak French?”). Gilbert uses this to represent Frenchmen in general (cf. “mounseer”).

Parliamentary trains: the “local” (i.e. stopping at every station) trains that railroad companies are required by law to provide for use by the lower classes.

Patter: rapid speech. A “patter song” is therefore a song where the words themselves are less important than rapid delivery. Gilbert and Sullivan are credited with perfecting this form, which is a distinctive element of their style.

Paynim: an archaic form of “pagan”. Used during the Crusades to describe the Saracens.

Peeler: (slang) policeman, after the reformer Robert Peel (1788-1850). “Bobby”, also slang for a policeman, has the same origin.

Penny reading: a public reading or similar entertainment, with an admission price of one penny.

Periphrastic: beating around the bush.

Pipe my eye: weep.

Pipe-lights: matches.

Plantaganet: the family name of the kings that ruled England from 1154-1485. The last known Plantaganet, a nephew of Richard III, was executed in 1499.

Plate powder: an abrasive used to polish silver plate.

Poltroon: like a coward, but more so.

Premier: Prime Minister. Gilbert used “Premier” (the French title) in the song from Thespis because it fits the meter and “Prime Minister” doesn’t.

Prithee: short for “I pray thee”. The modern equivalent is “please”, short for “if you please”.

Punt: operate a boat with a pole, usually on a river. Also, a type of boat that is typically operated in this way.

Quarter-day: a quarterly rent collection day. The phrase, “as sure as a quarter-day” is equivalent to, “as sure as death and taxes”.

Quiddity: puns, wordplay, and suchlike.

Rake: a sexually licentious person; a womanizer.

Rate: short for “berate”.

Recitative: a passage of dialogue that is sung instead of spoken. Recitative differs from song in that it is typically sung with little melody, and may not have much rhythm, either. In grand opera, virtually all dialogue is delivered in this style. In light opera, such as the Gilbert & Sullivan plays, recitative (which may or may not be rhymed and metered) is usually used to introduce a song.

Retractation: “retraction” is more common, but “retractation” is also in the dictionary, and Gilbert needed the extra syllables for the meter, not to mention a rhyme for “explanation”.

Rill: a small brook.

Risky: an Anglicized form of the French word, “risqué”.

Rosal: “rosy” is more common, but “rosal” is also in the dictionary, and Gilbert needed a rhyme for “proposal”.

Sacred: The heralds mentioned in Princess Ida are “sacred” in the sense that they have diplomatic immunity.

Sally Lunn: a type of teacake, named after an 18thcentury English baker.

Sat a gee: rode a horse. In the case of General Stanley, the implication is that it may be a hobby horse.

Sausage roll: similar to a small pig in a blanket, except that the meat is completely enclosed. In The Grand Duke, eating a sausage roll is the conspiracy’s secret sign.

Shalloo humps/Shalloo hoops: “Shoulder arms”.

Sillery: a type of champagne.

Simmery Axe: St. Mary Avenue.

Sooth: (archaic) word of honor.

Squeamer: probably intended to be the noun form of “squeamish”. It is not in the dictionary.

Squint: the reference is to the deputy Venus being cross-eyed.

Stone: a British unit of weight equal to 14 lb. “Eleven stone two” is therefore 156 lb (11x14+2), or about 70 kg. The English girl of the song is therefore big and athletic.

Strike: the reference is to striking (lowering) the flag, i.e. surrendering.

Sunbeams from cucumbers: the reference is to an incident from Jonathan Swift’s masterwork, Gulliver’s Travels, specifically, one of the wildly impractical scientific advances Gulliver encountered during his visit to the flying island of Laputa. In the latter part of the song, “Gently, gently”, Hilarion and his friends mock Ida’s university by listing things—all impossible or traditionally thought to be impossible—that the women enrolled there supposedly expect to learn.

Super: short for “supernumerary player”, i.e. an extra or a bit player.

Susceptible: easily smitten by a pretty face.

Tack: change direction sharply, usually used in connection with sailing.

Tar: (slang) a British sailor.

Taradiddle: a euphemism for a lie, usually used by or in connection with children. “Fib” is the closest American equivalent.

Tantantara: onomatopoeia for the sound of a trumpet call. Variations of this appear in several Gilbert & Sullivan operettas.

Teetotum: a type of spinning top. Jews call it a dreidel.

Tetter: a condition that causes itching. Gilbert uses the term to suggest the sort of discomfort that comes from an unscratchable itch.

Thirty-two: short for “32-pounder”, a cannon large enough to fire a 32-pound ball.

Throttle: throat or windpipe.

Toilet club: barbershop.

Tollolish: tolerable.

Took his tub: learned to bathe regularly.

Trepan: pierce the skull for medical purposes, or to ensnare. Gilbert uses the former meaning in “If you want a receipt” from Patience, and the latter in “Gently, gently” from Princess Ida.

Trolling: heartily singing.

Trousseau: (French) a new bride’s personal effects such as her wedding dress, jewelry, etc. Literally, “bundle”.

Tuck Shoppe: Essentially an on-site convenience store, mentioned but never seen, and similar to the PX of a military base. The overnight camping trip challenge (episode #6, “The Sucky Outdoors”) featured an all-expense-paid trip to the Tuck Shoppe as the winning team’s reward. The Tuck Shoppe is also presumably the source of the chips and other junk food that various campers are seen munching on from time to time.

Turtle: short for “turtledove”.

Two-and-six: two shillings and sixpence = ½ crown = 1/8 pound.

Twopence-halfpenny: pronounced “tuppence haypenny” in the British fashion.

Unannealed: (properly “unaneled”) not having received the Sacrament of extreme unction (popularly known as “last rites”). A person who dies unaneled and unshriven (q.v.) is at risk of going to Hell. This is the reference in The Pirates of Penzance. The reference in Princess Ida (which is spelled properly) is an unrelated concept, and refers to a blacksmithing process.

Undoing: (chiefly British) seducing, or bringing to ruin. Gilbert uses the former meaning in The Pirates of Penzance, and the latter in The Yeomen of the Guard. In still other places, he uses the more obvious meaning of “the opposite of ‘doing’”.

Unshriven: having one’s sins unconfessed, and therefore unabsolved. A person who dies unshriven and unaneled (q.v.) is at risk of going to Hell.

Viviparian: an invented noun form of “viviparous”, referring to a creature that bears live young, as opposed to laying eggs. All humans (and nearly all other mammals) are therefore viviparians, but Gilbert needed a rhyme for “barbarians”.

Wards in Chancery: wards of the Court of Chancery—usually orphans.

Warming: a warming of one’s seat, i.e. a spanking.

Watteau: Jean Antoine Watteau (1684-1721), a French painter of rustic scenes.

Welkin: sky (technically, cloud cover).

What cheer: a modern equivalent would be, “How did it go?”

Whit: the smallest imaginable portion of something.

Willow willow waly: w or l sounds, and vowel sounds, tend to figure prominently in the refrains of melancholy songs. The words themselves, in the case of the song from Patience, are meaningless.

Work’us: (substandard) workhouse, a.k.a. poorhouse.

Writhing maid: The tone of this satirical poem suggests that the maid writhes in some sort of spiritual agony, but the actual words imply that she is constipated. Calomel is, among other things, a laxative; and colocynth and aloe are plants from which laxatives are produced. Gilbert is showing how a poet can get away with anything by using words the reader doesn’t understand.