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Lords in Iolanthe

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March 16, 2008, 17:29
shufitz
Lords 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:
March 17, 2008, 05:28
haberdasher
from 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.