A most ingenious paradox
Posted by civil truth on February 29th, 2008
In honor of leap day in this bisextile day…
From the Pirates of Penzance or The Slave to Duty
Background: Frederic learns that he had been mistakenly apprenticed to a band of pirates because his nursemaid misheard Frederic’s father when he told her to apprentice him to a sea pilot. As one who has always done his duty, Frederic faithfully stays in his apprenticeship up to the day he reaches age 21, at which point, believing he has fulfilled his contract with the pirates, he leaves the band and joins a nearby army that is charged with capturing these very pirates. He soon ends up face to face with the pirate band, including his nursemaid Ruth (who had joined the pirate band and now carries a torch for him) and the pirate King:
KING: (chant):
For some ridiculous reason, to which, however, I’ve no desire to be disloyal,
Some person in authority, I don’t know who, very likely the Astronomer Royal,
Has decided that, although for such a beastly month as February, twenty-eight days as a rule are plenty,
One year in every four his days shall be reckoned as nine and-twenty.
Through some singular coincidence– I shouldn’t be surprised if it were owing to the agency of an ill-natured fairy–
You are the victim of this clumsy arrangement, having been born in leap-year, on the twenty-ninth of February;
And so, by a simple arithmetical process, you’ll easily discover,
That though you’ve lived twenty-one years, yet, if we go by birthdays, you’re only five and a little bit over!
FREDERIC:Dear me! Let’s see! (counting on fingers)
Yes, yes; with yours my figures do agree!
How quaint the ways of Paradox!
At common sense she gaily mocks!
Though counting in the usual way,
Years twenty-one I’ve been alive,
Yet, reck’ning by my natal day,
Yet, reck’ning by my natal day,
I am a little boy of five!
RUTH/KING:
He is a little boy of five!
Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!
ALL:
A paradox, a paradox,
A most ingenious paradox!
Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! , etc.
FREDERIC:
Upon my word, this is most curious– most absurdly whimsical. Five-and-a-quarter! No one would think it to look at me!
RUTH:
You are glad now, I’ll be bound, that you spared us. You would never have forgiven yourself when you discovered that you had killed two of your comrades.
FREDERIC:
My comrades?
KING: (rises)
I’m afraid you don’t appreciate the delicacy of your position:
You were apprenticed to us–
FREDERIC:
Until I reached my twenty-first year.
KING:
No, until you reached your twenty-first birthday (producing document), and, going by birthdays, you are as yet only five-and-a-quarter.
FREDERIC:
You don’t mean to say you are going to hold me to that?
KING:
No, we merely remind you of the fact, and leave the rest to your sense of duty, to which we have never appealed in vain.
But have no fear, our intrepid hero in the end gets the girl of his dreams, as he and all his pirate comrades are elevated to the U.S. Senate House of Lords, since as we all know, the two are really the same occupation.
Enjoy
February 29th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
BWAHAHA lessons learned but unlearned.
The Lemoncrats (TM) consider us all peasants, subjects…to be ruled over because we don’t know any better. And they’ll produce every technical document they can to keep us in our place.
March 1st, 2008 at 10:45 am
There are some really good songs in Pirates Of Penzance. My favorites are When The Foeman Bares His Steel and With Catlike Tread. The melody of Hail, Hail, The Gang’s All Here (”…What the heck do we care?”) is actually ripped off from part of With Catlike Tread. Foeman and a few other songs from POP contain the word “tarantara”, used by the police as some kind of rallying cry, similar to “tally ho”. I have yet to use the word on any real policemen, but you never know.
March 2nd, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Bigfoot, I always considered it a unique talent that Gilbert and Sullivan had for skewering the social absurdities of their era in a way that made people see and laugh rather than provoking anger, which seems to be the mode for today.
As far as Pirates of Penzance, what a stroke of genius to build the entire plot line around the disconnect between birthday and age for people born on Feb 29th. Not to mention other broadsides so brilliantly executed, like associating chancery with nunnery (in the Hamlet sense). Tom Lehrer must have taken inspiration for his songs from the word salad of Modern Major General. A most marvelous invention indeed, this play.