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W.S. Gilbert vs. Shakespeare’s Hamlet
“If you promise me faithfully not to mention this to a single person, not even to your dearest friend,” W.S. Gilbert confessed to his actor friend George Grossmith, “I don’t think Shakespeare rollicking.” Wait, what? Shakespeare, not a laugh-a-minute dramatist? What about all those zany jesters like Touchstone and Feste? Dogsberry, not funny? Just because Victorians, who were centuries away from to the Tudors, found some of Shakespeare’s in-jokes incomprehensible doesn’t mean that audiences shouldn’t laugh at the right places, if they pretend to be cultured individuals. However, Gilbert being Gilbert, what do you think he did? He wrote a parody of Hamlet, of course! Gilbert’s play was called Rosencrantz and…
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“I’ve Got A Little List!”
One of the most famous (and most often-parodied) songs from The Mikado is Koko’s “I’ve Got a Little List.” Koko, a cheap tailor about to be executed for the crime of flirting, finds himself suddenly elevated to the rank of Lord High Executioner by the townspeople of Titipu. They figure he’d be the last person to execute anyone, since he would have to cut his own head off first! But then the Mikado himself writes to say that if they don’t have an execution by the end of the month, the whole town will be downgraded to a village. So, since Koko has to execute someone, he comes up with…