March 16, 2008, 17:29
shufitzLords in Iolanthe
I've quoted
elsewhere, from Gilbert & Sullivan's
Iolanthe, some dialogue by a lord whose name the libretto abbreviates as
Lord Mount.Just now I noticed from the
dramatis personæ that his full title is the
Earl of Mountararat. And that of course is a pun on the biblical
Mount Ararat, on which Noah's Ark landed after the waters of the Flood receded.¹
But Mountararat is one of
two lords of the chorus who have individual speaking/singing parts, each substantial, and if his name is a pun, the name of the other probably is too. Symmetry, you know!
The other lord is Earl
Tolloller. What's the pun there? Can anyone help me?
¹ Perhaps that ties in with the Lords' song admitting that their high breeding gives them no advantage in pleading matters of the heart:
Blue blood! blue blood!
Of what avail art thou
To serve us now?
Though dating from the Flood,
Blue blood! Ah, blue blood!
March 17, 2008, 05:28
haberdasherfrom a
"Glossary for Iolanthe,":
Taradiddle, Tol-lol-lay - Taradiddle is a fib, Tol-lol may mean languid or so-so (as in the name of the character Lord Tolloller), but may be just nonsense syllables here Which could be accurate, or pure speculation.