Opera Plots I - MDC Faculty Home Pages

Meanwhile the Princess Zara arrives from England, bringing with her six typical Englishmen,
whom she calls " The Flowers of Progress," being representatives of the principal causes that have
tended to make England the enlightened power she is; and with these she hopes to remodel Utopia
on British lines, to the great delight of her father, who is tired of being a bullied autocrat. Her new
friends at once set to work. Captain Fitzbattleaxe (of the Life Guards)-who is in love with Zara,
who returns his affection - is to remodel the Army; Captain Corcoran, R.N., is to renovate the
Navy; Sir Bailey Barre, Q.C., M.P., will attend to Law matters; Lord Dramaleigh will show them
what a Lord Chamberlain ought to do; Mr Blushington, a County Councillor, will do wonders in
Sanitary and Health Reforms; whilst Mr Goldbury, a financier and company promoter,
immediately takes the Government and Exchequer in hand, and transforms the Country into a
Limited Company. Strange transformations at once take place, greatly to the wrath and dismay of
the two Wise Men, who, finding their antiquated laws utterly disregarded and their cherished
authority over the puppet King vanished, make a great outcry. Everything has become so perfect
in Utopia that the country is "swamped by dull prosperity." The Army and Navy are so efficient
that war is impossible; the sanitary and health reforms have worked so well that the doctors are
dying of starvation; the remodelled laws have extinguished crime, and the lawyers are also
starving; and something is therefore still needed to make things quite right. The Princess Zara-who
has been holding Court Drawing-rooms in the approved English fashion-solves the difficulty by
declaring that she had forgotten the principal factor in the new scheme, which is Government by
Party. This being established, things are righted; and Utopia, from being a Monarchy (Limited),
becomes a Limited Monarchy. The King, freed from his tyrannical Wise Men, is free to tell Lady
Sophy the truth about the libels on himself which he had been compelled to write, and is made
happy by her now considering him sufficiently respectable as a husband for an English governess;
the two young Princesses respectively wed Lord Dramaleigh and Mr Goldbury; and Princess Zara,
who has brought the whole reform about, is very gladly united to her dashing English sweetheart,
Captain Fitzbattleaxe.
166. THE YEOMEN OF THE GUARD; OR, "THE
MERRYMAN AND HIS MAID."
Comic Opera in Two Acts By Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan
Libretto By Sir W. S. Gilbert
First Produced London, October, 1888
Chief Characters Elsie Maynard, Phoebe, Dame Carruthers, Colonel Fairfax, Jack Point, Wilfred,
Leonard, Lieutenant of the Tower, Sergeant Meryll
THE action takes place within the precincts of the Tower of London, in old English times. Colonel
Fairfax has been sentenced to death through the malice of a kinsman. He has accused him of
sorcery in order to inherit his estates, which can only be claimed by him, however, should Fairfax
die unmarried. To disappoint his accuser, therefore, Fairfax asks the Lieutenant to grant him, as a
last favour before his execution takes place, permission to be married; and the Lieutenant
consents, if a maiden can be found in time to go through such a ceremony with him. Sergeant
Meryll, whose life Fairfax has saved in battle, endeavours now to save his in return; and he
arranges for the prisoner to mingle amongst the Yeomen of the Guard in the place of his own son,