The Gilbert and Sullivan Lyrics Quiz

This one is famous. The song itself is "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General" from "The Pirates of Penzance." Fun fact: In the pilot episode of Aaron Sorkin's short-lived "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," the cast of a struggling "SNL"-type show adapt this to a musical number they call "We'll Be the Very Model of a Modern Major Network Show."

If you picked "mortified," you weren't far off. This verse from "The Mikado" ends with "And mortified, and mortified." But "set aside" comes first.

This one comes from "A Wand'ring Minstrel I" in "The Mikado." The singer promises to have songs for every mood and occasion.

This is the sergeant's response to the pirates' approach in "A Rollicking Band of Pirates We," from "The Pirates of Penzance." Not very brave, Sergeant!

This line is the title of the song from "H.M.S. Pinafore." It's redundant, too, as "wherefore" simply means "why." Remember Juliet's famous line, "Wherefore art thou Romeo?" meaning "Why do you have to be Romeo (my enemy)."

"Buttercup" is the nickname of Mrs. Cripps in "H.M.S. Pinafore." She's a dockside vendor who sells small conveniences and treats to the sailors.

Ruth sings this line in "When Frederic Was a Little Lad" from "The Pirates of Penzance." This couplet gets at the comic misunderstanding underlying the whole play: Ruth, his slightly deaf nursemaid, accidentally apprenticed Frederic to a "pirate," not a ship's "pilot." We have many questions, chief among them being, how did Ruth manage to find a pirate to apprentice the boy to? Do pirates hang out at career fairs like HR reps?

This is Sir Joseph's line, in "I Am the Monarch of the Seas" in "H.M.S. Pinafore." He is the "ruler of the British Navee," despite getting his position due to breeding, not service. So his line points out that when things get rough, he goes below decks.

This is Josephine, the "gallant captain's daughter," singing in "H.M.S. Pinafore." The captain also has a version of this line in "Never Mind the Why and Wherefore."

This line is from "We Sail the Ocean Blue" in "H.M.S. Pinafore." We certainly hope these Navy men were "sober" in the sense of abstaining from alcohol on duty - though what we know about sailors in the 19th century suggests that if they were, it was dramatic license on the part of Gilbert and Sullivan.

This makes more sense if you know that in British English, "clerk" is pronounced "clark," so the ending words rhyme. Though "splash" would make some sense, as this line is from "H.M.S. Pinafore."

This is Josephine's line from "Sorry Her Lot Who Loves Too Well," in "H.M.S. Pinafore." Though you might expect a verb to follow "hopes but _____", instead it's an adverb, an old-fashioned construction that works well here.

"Pour, O Pour the Pirate Sherry" is the first song of "The Pirates of Penzance." This light opera was extremely successful, and was remade in the '80s as a movie, "The Pirate Movie," with Kristy McNichol.

"Aught" means "nothing" or "zero." You might have know this one from people sometimes calling the 2000s "the 20-aughts." Here, Ralph Rackstraw is describing himself.

We admit to not being exactly sure what a washing-bill is ... a bill for laundry service? At any rate, this and most other lyrics in "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General" mocks the English obsession with higher education, especially the aspects that require people to learn things they'll never use. (Babylonian cuneiform might be an exaggeration.)

This is a line from "Twenty Love-Sick Maidens We." It's part of the light opera "Patience."

Unsurprising, this is from "The Pirates of Penzance." Though Frederic is the lead, the role of the Pirate King seems a lot more fun - he's the one who's singing in "O, Far Better to Live and Die."

This line is, in fact, the title of the song, "Three Little Maids From School" in "The Mikado." The singers are Yum-Yum, Peep-Bo and Pitti-Sing, raising the question of whether W.S. Gilbert had ever heard a Japanese woman's name in his life.

In this recitative (dialogue-like song) from "Patience," Bunthorne is confessing that his "air" of being an aesthete and poet is just a sham. Or, as he puts it here, a "veneer."

"The Mikado" was set in the fictitious town of Titipu in Japan. It's there that Ko-Ko is singing about in "I Am So Proud."

This is the second line of "List and Learn." The song opens "The Gondoliers," one of Gilbert and Sullivan's less-famous works.

When Ruth makes a mistake, she doesn't go halfway! Not only did she apprentice Frederic to a pirate, she did so until his 21st birthday, not his 21st year. So poor Fred, born on Leap Day, is committed until age 84.

This is the Captain's line in "Sir, You Are Sad" from "H.M.S. Pinafore." It's a duet with Buttercup, whom he helpfully mentions by name, above.

Nine-pounders, we're guessing, are rifles? (Too light to be cannons!) At any rate, Sir Joseph's female relatives sing this in "H.M.S. Pinafore."

This line from "A British Tar" in "H.M.S. Pinafore" is an example of internal rhyme. That is, "resist" rhymes with an earlier word in the same line, "fist," instead of "word," which ends the following line.

This line is from "Iolanthe," one of G&S's lesser-known musicals. It was about fairies and the British legal system - two things that you don't usually think of together.

This line from "The Mikado" will especially tickle "Buffy" fans, who will remember that in his mortal days, Spike wrote awful poetry about the unattainable Cecily, and especially egregious was his use of the phrase "her beauty effulgent."

This is lovelorn Ralph Rackstraw's complaint in "A Maiden Fair to See." He's describing his beloved, unattainable Josephine in "H.M.S. Pinafore."

This is one of Patience's lines in "Prithee, Pretty Maiden" in "Patience." She's about to be proposed to by a man she barely knows, and whom she'll wisely turn down.

In "Princess Ida," the king is singing a song of praise to himself (which inadvertently reveals his flaws). Sidenote: In the 1880s, SPAM had yet to be invented, though we'd love to see the light opera Gilbert and Sullivan would have written about it!

"Above one's station" is a term meaning above one's social class or demographic group. Ralph sings this line, woefully, in "The Nightingale" in "H.M.S. Pinafore." Bonus points to G&S for having Buttercup change "alas" to "a lass" in the next line: "He loves a lass above his station."

A "languid love of lilies" would be typical for an aesthetic poet type. But that's is exactly what Bunthorne is admitting (though just to the audience) to *not* be, in the patter song "Am I Alone and Unobserved?"

"Cuirass" is an old-fashioned term for a piece of armor. In this line from "Princess Ida," it's specifically a helmet.

This is the king's son Arac, lamenting the way his armor fits in "Princess Ida." Yes, he's really going to remove it before an important battle. No one said G&S characters were smart!

This is a lyric from "When I Went to the Bar as a Very Young Man" in "Iolanthe." This the lawyerly kind of bar, not the drinking kind. Did we mention that there's a lot about English law in this musical supposedly all about fairies?