The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan

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Zara: If it had any literary merit I could understand it.

King: Oh, it has literary merit. Oh, distinctly, it has
literary
merit.

Zara: My dear father, it's mere ungrammatical twaddle.

King: Oh, it's not ungrammatical. I can't allow that.
Unpleas-
antly personal, perhaps, but written with an
epigrammatical
point that is very rare nowadays--very rare indeed.

Zara: (looking at cartoon) Why do they represent you with such
a
big nose?

King: (looking at cartoon) Eh? Yes, it is a big one! Why,
the
fact is that, in the cartoons of a comic paper, the size
of
your nose always varies inversely as the square of your
popularity. It's the rule.

Zara: Then you must be at a tremendous discount just now! I
see a
notice of a new piece called "King Tuppence," in which an
English tenor has the audacity to personate you on a
public
stage. I can only say that I am surprised that any
English
tenor should lend himself to such degrading
personalities.

King: Oh, he's not really English. As it happens he's a
Utopian,
but he calls himself English.

Zara: Calls himself English?

King: Yes. Bless you, they wouldn't listen to any tenor who
didn't call himself English.

Zara: And you permit this insolent buffoon to caricature you in
a
pointless burlesque! My dear father--if you were a free
agent, you would never permit these outrages.

King: (almost in tears) Zara--I--I admit I am not altogether
a
free agent. I--I am controlled. I try to make the best
of
it, but sometimes I find it very difficult--very
difficult
indeed. Nominally a Despot, I am, between ourselves, the
helpless tool of two unscrupulous Wise Men, who insist on
my
falling in with all their wishes and threaten to denounce
me
for immediate explosion if I remonstrate! (Breaks down
completely)

Zara: My poor father! Now listen to me. With a view to
remodel-
ling the political and social institutions of Utopia, I
have
brought with me six Representatives of the principal
causes
that have tended to make England the powerful, happy, and
blameless country which the consensus of European
civiliza-
tion has declared it to be. Place yourself unreservedly
in
the hands of these gentlemen, and they will reorganize
your
country on a footing that will enable you to defy your
persecutors. They are all now washing their hands after
their journey. Shall I introduce them?

King: My dear Zara, how can I thank you? I will consent to
any-
thing that will release me from the abominable tyranny of
these two men. (Calling) What ho! Without there!
(Enter
Calynx) Summon my Court without an instant's delay!
(Exit
Calynx)

FINALE
Enter every one, except the Flowers of Progress.

CHORUS
Although your Royal summons to appear
From courtesy was singularly free,
Obedient to that summons we are here--
What would your Majesty?

RECITATIVE -- King

My worthy people, my beloved daughter
Most thoughtfully has brought with her from England
The types of all the causes that have made
That great and glorious country what it is.

Chorus: Oh, joy unbounded!

Sca., Tar., Phan (aside). Why, what does this mean?

RECITATIVE -- Zara

Attend to me, Utopian populace,
Ye South Pacific island viviparians;
All, in the abstract, types of courtly grace,
Yet, when compared with Britain's glorious race,
But little better than half clothed Barbarians!

CHORUS

Yes! Contrasted when
With Englishmen,
Are little better than half-clothed barbarians!

Enter all the Flowers of Progress, led by Fitzbattleaxe.

SOLOS -- Zara and the Flowers of Progress.

(Presenting Captain Fitzbattleaxe)

When Britain sounds the trump of war
(And Europe trembles),
The army of the conqueror
In serried ranks assemble;
'Tis then this warrior's eyes and sabre gleam
For our protection--
He represents a military scheme
In all its proud perfection!

Chorus: Yes--yes
He represents a military scheme
In all its proud perfection.
Ulahlica! Ulahlica! Ulahlica!

SOLO -- Zara.

(Presenting Sir Bailey Barre, Q.C., M.P.)

A complicated gentleman allow to present,
Of all the arts and faculties the terse embodiment,
He's a great arithmetician who can demonstrate with ease
That two and two are three or five or anything you please;
An eminent Logician who can make it clear to you
That black is white--when looked at from the proper point
of
view;
A marvelous Philologist who'll undertake to show
That "yes" is but another and a neater form of "no."

Sir Bailey: Yes--yes--yes--
"Yes" is but another and a neater form of "no."
All preconceived ideas on any subject I can scout,
And demonstrate beyond all possibility of doubt,
That whether you're an honest man or whether you're a thief
Depends on whose solicitor has given me my brief.

Chorus: Yes--yes--yes
That whether your'e an honest man, etc.
Ulahlica! Ulahlica! Ulahlica!

Zara: (Presenting Lord Dramaleigh and County Councillor)
What these may be, Utopians all,
Perhaps you'll hardly guess--
They're types of England's physical
And moral cleanliness.
This is a Lord High Chamberlain,
Of purity the gauge--
He'll cleanse our court from moral stain
And purify our Stage.

Lord D.: Yes--yes--yes
Court reputations I revise,
And presentations scrutinize,
New plays I read with jealous eyes,
And purify the Stage.

Chorus: Court reputations, etc.

Zara: This County Councillor acclaim,
Great Britain's latest toy--
On anything you like to name
His talents he'll employ--

All streets and squares he'll purify
Within your city walls,
And keep meanwhile a modest eye
On wicked music halls.

C.C.: Yes--yes--yes
In towns I make improvements great,
Which go to swell the County Rate--
I dwelling-houses sanitate,
And purify the Halls!

Chorus: In towns he makes improvements great, etc.
Ulahlica! Ulahlica! Ulahlica!

SOLO -- Zara:

(Presenting Mr. Goldbury)

A Company Promoter this with special education,
Which teaches what Contango means and also Backwardation--
To speculators he supplies a grand financial leaven,
Time was when two were company--but now it must be seven.

Mr. Gold.: Yes--yes--yes
Stupendous loans to foreign thrones
I've largely advocated;
In ginger-pops and peppermint-drops
I've freely speculated;
Then mines of gold, of wealth untold,
Successfully I've floated
And sudden falls in apple-stalls
Occasionally quoted.
And soon or late I always call
For Stock Exchange quotation--
No schemes too great and none too small
For Companification!

Chorus: Yes! Yes! Yes! No schemes too great, etc.
Ulahlica! Ulahlica! Ulahlica!

Zara: (Presenting Capt. Sir Edward Corcoran, R.N.)

And lastly I present
Great Britain's proudest boast,
Who from the blows
Of foreign foes
Protects her sea-girt coast--
And if you ask him in respectful tone,
He'll show you how you may protect your own!

SOLO -- Captain Corcoran

I'm Captain Corcoran, K.C.B.,
I'll teach you how we rule the sea,
And terrify the simple Gauls;
And how the Saxon and the Celt
Their Europe-shaking blows have dealt
With Maxim gun and Nordenfelt
(Or will when the occasion calls).
If sailor-like you'd play your cards,
Unbend your sails and lower your yards,
Unstep your masts--you'll never want 'em more.
Though we're no longer hearts of oak,
Yet we can steer and we can stoke,
And thanks to coal, and thanks to coke,
We never run a ship ashore!

All: What never?

Capt.: No, never!

All: What never?

Capt: Hardly ever!

All: Hardly ever run a ship ashore!
Then give three cheers, and three cheers more,
For the tar who never runs his ship ashore;
Then give three cheers, and three cheers more,
For he never runs his ship ashore!

CHORUS

All hail, ye types of England's power--
Ye heaven-enlightened band!
We bless the day and bless the hour
That brought you to our land.

QUARTET

Ye wanderers from a mighty State,
Oh, teach us how to legislate--
Your lightest word will carry weight,
In our attentive ears.
Oh, teach the natives of this land
(Who are not quick to understand)
How to work off their social and
Political arrears!

Capt. Fitz.: Increase your army!
Lord D.: Purify your court!
Capt. Corc: Get up your steam and cut your canvas short!
Sir B.: To speak on both sides teach your sluggish brains!
Mr. B.: Widen your thoroughfares, and flush your drains!
Mr. Gold.: Utopia's much too big for one small head--
I'll float it as a Company Limited!

King: A Company Limited? What may that be?
The term, I rather think, is new to me.

Chorus: A company limited? etc.

Sca, Phant, and Tara (Aside)
What does he mean? What does he mean?
Give us a kind of clue!
What does he mean? What does he mean?
What is he going to do?

SONG -- Mr. Goldbury

Some seven men form an Association
(If possible, all Peers and Baronets),
The start off with a public declaration
To what extent they mean to pay their debts.
That's called their Capital; if they are wary
They will not quote it at a sum immense.
The figure's immaterial--it may vary
From eighteen million down to eighteenpence.
I should put it rather low;
The good sense of doing so
Will be evident at once to any debtor.
When it's left to you to say
What amount you mean to pay,
Why, the lower you can put it at, the better.

Chorus: When it's left to you to say, etc.

They then proceed to trade with all who'll trust 'em
Quite irrespective of their capital
(It's shady, but it's sanctified by custom);
Bank, Railway, Loan, or Panama Canal.
You can't embark on trading too tremendous--
It's strictly fair, and based on common sense--
If you succeed, your profits are stupendous--
And if you fail, pop goes your eighteenpence.

Make the money-spinner spin!
For you only stand to win,
And you'll never with dishonesty be twitted.
For nobody can know,
To a million or so,
To what extent your capital's committed!

Chorus: No, nobody can know, etc.

If you come to grief, and creditors are craving
(For nothing that is planned by mortal head
Is certain in this Vale of Sorrow--saving
That one's Liability is Limited),--
Do you suppose that signifies perdition?
If so, you're but a monetary dunce--
You merely file a Winding-Up Petition,
And start another Company at once!
Though a Rothschild you may be
In your own capacity,
As a Company you've come to utter sorrow--
But the Liquidators say,
"Never mind--you needn't pay,"
So you start another company to-morrow!

Chorus: But the liquidators say, etc.

King: Well, at first sight it strikes us as dishonest,
But if its's good enough for virtuous England--
The first commercial country in the world--
It's good enough for us.

Sca., Phan., Tar. (aside to the King)
You'd best take care--
Please recollect we have not been consulted.

King: And do I understand that Great Britain
Upon this Joint Stock principle is governed?

Mr. G.: We haven't come to that, exactly--but
We're tending rapidly in that direction.
The date's not distant.

King: (enthusiastically) We will be before you!
We'll go down in posterity renowned
As the First Sovereign in Christendom
Who registered his Crown and Country under
The Joint Stock Company's Act of Sixty-Two.

All: Ulahlica!

SOLO -- King

Henceforward, of a verity,
With Fame ourselves we link--
We'll go down to Posterity
Of sovereigns all the pink!

Sca., Phan., Tar.: (aside to King)
If you've the mad temerity
Our wishes thus to blink,
You'll go down to Posterity,
Much earlier than you think!

Tar.: (correcting them)

He'll go up to Posterity,
If I inflict the blow!

Sca., Phan.: (angrily)

He'll go down to Posterity--
We think we ought to know!

Tar.: (explaining) He'll go up to Posterity,
Blown up with dynamite!

Sca., Phan.: (apologetically)

He'll go up to Posterity,
Of course he will, you're right!

ENSEMBLE

King, Lady Sophy, Nek., Sca., Phan, and Tar Fitz. and
Zara (aside)
Kal., Calynx and Chorus (aside)

Henceforward of a verity, If he has the temerity Who love
with all sincerity;
With fame ourselves we Our wishes thus to blink Their
lives may safely link.
link--
And go down to Posterity, He'll go up to Posterity And as for
our posterity
Of sovereigns all pink! Much earlier than they We don't
care what they think!
think!

CHORUS

Let's seal this mercantile pact--
The step we ne'er shall rue--
It gives whatever we lacked--
The statement's strictly true.
All hail, astonishing Fact!
All hail, Invention new--
The Joint Stock Company's Act--
The Act of Sixty-Two!

END OF ACT I

ACT II

Scene -- Throne Room in the Palace. Night. Fitzbattleaxe
discovered,
singing to Zara.

RECITATIVE -- Fitzbattleaxe.

Oh, Zara, my beloved one, bear with me!
Ah, do not laugh at my attempted C!
Repent not, mocking maid, thy girlhood's choice--
The fervour of my love affects my voice!

SONG -- Fitzbattleaxe.

A tenor, all singers above
(This doesn't admit of a question),
Should keep himself quiet,
Attend to his diet
And carefully nurse his digestion;
But when he is madly in love
It's certain to tell on his singing--
You can't do the proper chromatics
With proper emphatics
When anguish your bosom is wringing!
When distracted with worries in plenty,
And his pulse is a hundred and twenty,
And his fluttering bosom the slave of mistrust is,
A tenor can't do himself justice,
Now observe--(sings a high note),
You see, I can't do myself justice!
I could sing if my fervour were mock,
It's easy enough if you're acting--
But when one's emotion
Is born of devotion
You mustn't be over-exacting.
One ought to be firm as a rock
To venture a shake in vibrato,
When fervour's expected
Keep cool and collected
Or never attempt agitato.
But, of course, when his tongue is of leather,
And his lips appear pasted together,
And his sensitive palate as dry as a crust is,
A tenor can't do himself justice.
Now observe--(sings a high note),
It's no use--I can't do myself justice!

Zara: Why, Arthur, what does it matter? When the higher
qualities
of the heart are all that can be desired, the higher
notes
of the voice are matters of comparative insignificance.
Who
thinks slightingly of the cocoanut because it is husky?
Be-
sides (demurely), you are not singing for an engagement
(putting her hand in his), you have that already!

Fitz.: How good and wise you are! How unerringly your practiced
brain winnows the wheat from the chaff--the material from
the merely incidental!

Zara: My Girton training, Arthur. At Girton all is wheat, and
idle chaff is never heard within its walls! But tell me,
is
not all working marvelously well? Have not our Flowers
of
Progress more than justified their name?

Fitz.: We have indeed done our best. Captain Corcoran and I
have,
in concert, thoroughly remodeled the sister-services--and
upon so sound a basis that the South Pacific trembles at
the
name of Utopia!

Zara: How clever of you!

Fitz.: Clever? Not a bit. It's easy as possible when the
Admiral-
ty and Horse Guards are not there to interfere. And so
with
the others. Freed from the trammels imposed upon them by
idle Acts of Parliament, all have given their natural
tal-
ents full play and introduced reforms which, even in Eng-
land, were never dreamt of!

Zara: But perhaps the most beneficent changes of all has been
ef-
fected by Mr. Goldbury, who, discarding the exploded
theory
that some strange magic lies hidden in the number Seven,
has
applied the Limited Liability principle to individuals,
and
every man, woman, and child is now a Company Limited with
liability restricted to the amount of his declared
Capital!
There is not a christened baby in Utopia who has not
already
issued his little Prospectus!

Fitz.: Marvelous is the power of a Civilization which can trans-
mute, by a word, a Limited Income into an Income Limited.

Zara: Reform has not stopped here--it has been applied even to
the
costume of our people. Discarding their own barbaric
dress,
the natives of our land have unanimously adopted the
taste-
ful fashions of England in all their rich entirety.
Scaphio
and Phantis have undertaken a contract to supply the
whole
of Utopia with clothing designed upon the most approved
English models--and the first Drawing-Room under the new
state of things is to be held here this evening.

Fitz.: But Drawing-Rooms are always held in the afternoon.

Zara: Ah, we've improved upon that. We all look so much better
by
candlelight! And when I tell you, dearest, that my Court
train has just arrived, you will understand that I am
long-
ing to go and try it on.

Fitz.: Then we must part?

Zara: Necessarily, for a time.

Fitz.: Just as I wanted to tell you, with all the passionate
enthu-
siasm of my nature, how deeply, how devotedly I love you!

Zara: Hush! Are these the accents of a heart that really
feels?
True love does not indulge in declamation--its voice is
sweet, and soft, and low. The west wind whispers when he
woos the poplars!

DUET -- Zara and Fitzbattleaxe.

Zara: Words of love too loudly spoken
Ring their own untimely knell;
Noisy vows are rudely broken,
Soft the song of Philomel.
Whisper sweetly, whisper slowly,
Hour by hour and day by day;
Sweet and low as accents holy
Are the notes of lover's lay.

Both: Sweet and low, etc.

Fitz: Let the conqueror, flushed with glory,
Bid his noisy clarions bray;
Lovers tell their artless story
In a whispered virelay.
False is he whose vows alluring
Make the listening echoes ring;
Sweet and low when all-enduring
Are the songs that lovers sing!

Both: Sweet and low, etc.

(Exit Zara. Enter King dressed as Field-Marshal.)

King: To a Monarch who has been accustomed to the uncontrolled
use
of his limbs, the costume of a British Field-Marshal is,
perhaps, at first, a little cramping. Are you sure that
this is all right? It's not a practical joke, is it? No
one has a keener sense of humor than I have, but the
First
Statutory Cabinet Council of Utopia Limited must be
conduct-
ed with dignity and impressiveness. Now, where are the
other five who signed the Articles of Association?

Fitz.: Sir, they are here.

(Enter Lord Dramaleigh, Captain Corcoran, Sir Bailey Barre, Mr.
Blushington, and
Mr. Goldbury from different entrances.)

King: Oh! (Addressing them) Gentlemen, our daughter holds her
first Drawing-Room in half an hour, and we shall have
time
to make our half-yearly report in the interval. I am
neces-
sarily unfamiliar with the forms of an English Cabinet
Council--perhaps the Lord Chamberlain will kindly put us
in
the way of doing the thing properly, and with due regard
to
the solemnity of the occasion.

Lord D.: Certainly--nothing simpler. Kindly bring your chairs
forward--His Majesty will, of course, preside.

(They range their chairs across stage like Christy Minstrels. King
sits center, Lord Dramaleigh on his left, Mr. Goldbury on his
right,
Captain Corcoran left of Lord Dramaleigh, Captain
Fitzbattleaxe right of
Mr. Goldbury, Mr. Blushington extreme right, Sir Bailey Barre
extreme
left.)

King: Like this?

Lord D.: Like this.

King: We take your word for it that this is all right. You are
not making fun of us? This is in accordance with the
prac-
tice at the Court of St. James's?

Lord D.: Well, it is in accordance with the practice at the Court
of
St. James's Hall.

King: Oh! it seems odd, but never mind.

SONG -- King.

Society has quite forsaken all her wicked courses.
Which empties our police courts, and abolishes divorces.

Chorus: Divorce is nearly obsolete in England.

King: No tolerance we show to undeserving rank and splendour;
For the higher his position is, the greater the offender.

Chorus: That's maxim that is prevalent in England.