Gilbert and Sullivan/YMMV

"Strephon: A shepherd, I -
 * Acceptable Targets: Many a person would have been upset at Gilbert if he had been the model for King Gama -- but since Gilbert was mocking Gilbert, it was all right.
 * Creators Pet: Alexis Pointdextre the designated hero of the Sorcerer
 * Critical Research Failure: Outside of an actual Japanese song ("Miya sama") and a phrase supposedly from a children's game ("O ni bikkuri shakkuri to!"), the Japan of The Mikado bears no resemblance in the least to the Japan of real life -- but then, it was never meant to.
 * There is one other bit of actual Japanese culture. When Pooh-Bah offers to toast Nanki-Poo "three times three" (at his wedding before he is executed). It just happens, that's a pretty accurate translation of part of the Shinto Wedding ceremony (3 drinks (of sake of course) by the groom, 3 by the bride, 3 by the groom).
 * While all of the above is accurate, it's worth noting that Gilbert went out of his way to find actual Japanese girls to teach his actresses how to walk in a Japanese manner and took pains to make the kimonos as accurate as possible.
 * That's typical of Gilbert's ideas of stagecraft. Everything should look as realistic as possible, in order to make the silliness all the funnier in contrast. He also dressed the sailors in H.M.S. Pinafore with real naval outfits and carefully modelled the set on H.M.S. Victory.
 * The Yeomen of the Guard are not the Beefeaters who guard the Tower of London -- those are the Yeomen Warders.
 * The Yeoman Warders did not exist until 1548, and the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Richard Cholmondeley, mentioned in the lyrics, served from 1513 to 1524.
 * Crowning Music of Awesome: "Hail Poetry" from Pirates. Sort of an inverse BLAM.
 * Really, there's at least one great song in every show. Pirates is particularly strong in this regard.
 * Ear Worm: Many, though perhaps the most notorious is "Come, friends, who plough the sea," the chorus of "With cat-like tread," which has become well known in many variants (e.g., "Hail, hail, the gang's all here").
 * Said tune is actually a musical Shout Out to Verdi's "Anvil Chorus" from Il Trovatore. There's an even more explicit one hidden in "Poor Wand'ring One," which copies a bit in the aria "Sempre Libera" from Verdi's La Traviata note for note.
 * Fair for Its Day: The apparent anti-feminism inPrincess Ida is nothing compared to the genuine Anti-Feminist jokes of its time. The Tennyson poem it's based on is also arguably worse in many respects than Gilbert's parody, since the Framing Story basically claims it's an incompetent attempt by feminists to rewrite history, which ends up showing that a woman's place is with her man. In Gilbert's version, the worst you get is some characters poking fun of women's education -- before they get there, and all of whom think that educated women are fantastic once they meet them, skewering of some of the man-hating aspects of Ida's college, and a scene where book-learning meets reality, and the woman refuses to do surgery which she was taught to do from books alone. Plus, in Gilbert's other work, in Utopia, Limited, the Cambridge-educated Princess Zara never has this poked fun of, and is shown to be vastly more capable than most of the men, so it's not like he makes a habit of anti-Feminism.
 * Memetic Mutation: A notable Older Than Radio example is the "What, never?", "No, never", "What, never?" "Well, hardly ever."-exchange from H.M.S Pinafore. The editor of a certain London newspaper is said to have threatened to sack any man on staff quoting the passage, his rant ending with "I never want to hear that joke again!". Cue everyone...
 * The Mikado in particular is the source of many now-familiar English phrases, such as "a short, sharp shock," "Let the punishment fit the crime," and "grand Poohbah."
 * Moe: Patience and Grosvenor in Patience.
 * Painful Rhyme: A lot (mostly of the So Bad Its Good variety; lampshaded in The Grand Duke ("When exigence of rhyme compels").
 * Somewhat confusingly, if Gilbert wanted a word like "Navy", "Sympathy", or "Arcady" to rhyme with "bee", he always wrote it out as "Navee", "Sympathee", or "Arcadee". So, "I shall live and die" is meant to rhyme with "A heartfelt sympa-thigh", but "Stick close to your desks and never go to sea / And you all may be rulers of the Queen's Navee". It's Victorian! Iolanthe goes one step further:

Chorus: A shepherd, he -

Strephon: -- from Arcady

Chorus: -- from Arcadee"


 * Seinfeld Is Unfunny: It is hard to believe now, but at the time what Gilbert was doing was actually quite new and innovative.
 * Tear Jerker: The ending of Yeomen of the Guard and the second half of "Stay, Frederic, Stay!" from Pirates are particularly heartbreaking.
 * Also The Reveal to the Lord Chancellor in Iolanthe.
 * True Art Is Angsty: Guess which of the operas got the most critical praise for the composer?
 * It was also both his and Gilbert's favourite.
 * It is notable that in The Yeomen of the Guard Gilbert was letting Sullivan take the lead and putting Sullivan's music ahead of Gilbert's lyrics. Just listen to the final chorus of Act One: the singers are incomprehensible to the point where one couldn't tell that they were singing in English, yet the music is awe-inspiring. Yeomen is full of Wangst, but it's also the best music he wrote with Gilbert.
 * It's only incomprehensible if it's sung badly. (The end of act one of Patience, on the other hand...)
 * Well, those are more sung stage directions. The idea is that each group is supposed to act out what they're singing, the conflicting lyrics emphasizing the chaos happening on stage (more so if you don't cut Jack Point and Elsie's lyrics at the end of Yeomen, Act I), while acting gets the point across (and if you think those are bad, have a look at the end of Act I of Gilbert's collaboration with Alfred Cellier, The Mountebanks).
 * True Art Is Incomprehensible: Parodied in Patience with "If You're Anxious for to Shine."
 * Unintentionally Sympathetic: John Wellington Wells, the title character in The Sorcerer, who actually was supposed to be the villain, but unfortunately his evil is only hinted lightly upon in the text so one feels the retribution is a bit overdone.
 * To a lesser extent, Dick Deadeye, who is hated by his shipmates just because he's ugly and a hunchback-- true, he does rat on the two lovers and is not a very nice guy, but many people still feel sorry for him. From Pirates on, Gilbert tended to redeem his villains.
 * Values Dissonance: Princess Ida is an attack on feminism that was considered outdated when it came out.
 * What an Idiot: The unnamed king in the song "There Lived a King" from The Gondoliers
 * Not to mention Arac, Scynthius, and Guron in Princess Ida, specifically during their (in)famous striptease song ("This Helmet I Suppose"), but really, any time any of them opens their mouth. ("On the whole we are/Not intelligent--/No! No! No! Not intelligent.")