When I was a girl I spent all day
In learning what Epicurus and Plato say
I studied Aristotle ‘neath the Haitian pines
And Schoepenhauer later on in Thetford Mines
And I grew so accomplished at philosophy
That now they all salute me as the Queen’s GG

In school I was so eager to philosophise
That soon I found I had grown so wise
As to study Spanish rather, for it less disturbs
A mind that sees the beauty of regular verbs
I studied all the verbs so patiently
That now they all salute me as the Queen’s GG

With Spanish, French, and Ital-i-an,
I naturally married a Romantic man,
As Romantic a man as few surpass
And soon we had adopted a charming lass
So charming a lass indeed was she
That now they all salute me as the Queen’s GG

G & S would be proud. How about something to honour the GG?

I read all the writs so carefully
now I am the one who is the Queen’s GG

No doubt you can improve on this :)

http://davidakin.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2009/2/22/4101452.html

When I was young ( er ) a lot of the towns in the area where I lived had their own G&S societies and would have at least one performance annually.

Not at all, Jack. Your digressions are always fun to read. I haven’t seen Topsy Turvy, but I’ll have to check it out. I completely agree with your point about popular but untrendy craftsmen such as Conan Doyle, Stevenson, Tolkien and Le Carré. In the end, the popular verdict prevails.

Thanks for the tip about An Englishman Aborad, kc, I will look for it tomorrow at my local video store (which should have it). I should read more Graham Greene! Right now I’m reading A Perfect Spy by Le Carré, which I’m really liking so far though it’s got more deep background so far than what I’m used to from Le Carré.

Actually IMO W. S. Gilbert is greatly underestimated in the history of English poetry. Did you ever see Topsy-Turvy, the Mike Leigh film about Gilbert & Sullivan? It didn’t dwell much on how he composed, which is what would especially fascinate someone like me, but it did portray him as a very complex person — and certainly as sensitive as, say, Keats about his art. He was probably the best satirist of Victorian society we had (e.g. the “He is an Englishman” song kc mentioned, which ridicules the idea that one can be proud of one’s nationality as one might be proud of a personal accomplishment). I wish there were more movies about poets, or historical films generally: where is the Amadeus about Goethe?

Alas, these days the Critics don’t rank Satire very high as a genre, the rationale being that what is not solemn cannot be serious; moreover, there is a real hostility to popularity among academics, so that verse like Gilbert’s, which remains popular 130 years after it was composed, is viewed with suspicion for that very reason. Ditto Tolkien, in my view the single most creative writer in English in the 20th C: the critics just can’t get over the fact that people like reading his books, as they don’t like reading, oh, Finnegans Wake. The good thing is that that will inevitably change in a few hundred years, when Conan Doyle and Stevenson and Tolkien and John Le Carré will still be being read and enjoyed and the faddish will have vanished.

Sorry, I seem to have gone on an unprovoked literary rant! Nothing duller . . .

Can you dance and sing too? Rick Mercer could use your talent for a segment, weekly.

I. Kid. You. Not.

As they say on Weekend Update, “Really?!”

Caucus
That he is a Tory true!

Harper
For I might have been a Dipper,
A Green, or Jack the Ripper,
Or worn the Grit tattoo!

Caucus
Or worn the Grit tattoo!

Harper
But in spite of the attractions
Of embracing other factions,
I remain a Tory true!
I remain a Tory true!

Caucus
But in spite of the attractions
Of embracing other factions,
He remains a Tory true!
He remains a Tory true!