PATIENCE " Patience," or " Bunthorne's Bride," a comic opera in two acts with music by Sir Arthur Sullivan and text by W. S. Gilbert, was produced at the Opera Comique, London, Aug. 23, 1881.
Reginald Bunthorne, a fleshy poet.
Archibald Grosvenor, an idyllic poet.
Colonel Calverly, Major Murgatroy, officers of the Dragoon Lieutenant, The Duke of Dumstable, Guards.
Chorus of Dragoon Guards.
The Lady Angela, The Lady Saphir, The Lady Ella, rapturous maidens.
The Lady Jane, Patience, a milkmaid. Chorus of maidens.
Like most of its fellows, this Gilbert-Sullivan opera is a satire, this time directed against the aesthetic school which flourished at the time of its composition, and which, it may be added, declined immediately thereafter. Mr. Gil bert hints not too subtly, in Bunthorne's confession, that the aesthetic culture may be a pose rather than a great new thought.
Am I alone And unobserved? I am! Then let me own I'm an xsthetic sham! It is an opera with two heroes, the aesthetic Bunthorne and the idyllic Grosvenor. The curtain rises on the twenty rapturous maidens dressed in aesthetic draperies and playing dolefully on lutes, apparently in the last stages of despair for unrequited love. Their concerted affections have alighted upon Bunthorne. Patience, a buxom unaffected milkmaid, in whose dairy the loved one recently has been discovered eating butter with a tablespoon, arrives and is much con cerned at the spectacle of their woe, voicing her delight however that she never has known this disturbing thing, love. She hopes to cheer them by the announcement that the Dragoon Guards, for whom a year ago they were sob bing and sighing, are in the village. But it seems that since the etherealization of their tastes they care nothing for such earthy creatures as Dragoon Guards. When these heroes appear on the scene of their former conquests and find that a melancholy literary man has routed them, they are deeply indignant. Utterly ignoring them, the maidens fall on their knees and beg to hear Bunthorne's poem. He bids them cling passionately to one another and think of faint lilies and taking care to retain the hand of Patience in his, he recites a dreary composition on the general com monplaceness of things, entitled, " Oh Hollow, Hollow, Hol low ! " When finally left alone, Bunthorne makes a declara tion of love to Patience, and the milkmaid has to confess that she does not know the meaning of the tender passion, never having loved anyone save her great-aunt. She goes
to Lady Angela for enlightenment, and that person gives her an atsthetic definition of which she can understand little except " that it is the one unselfish emotion in this whirl pool of grasping greed." Patience, greatly impressed, vows that she will not go to bed until she is head over heels in love with someone, and Grosvenor, the apostle of simplicity, conveniently enters. They discover that they have been playmates in childhood and fall mutually in love, but their brief bliss is spoiled by the thought of Patience that since it makes her happy, it must be selfish to love him, so they decide that they must sunder. The scene is enlivened by the arrival of Bunthorne, who, crowned with roses and hung with garlands, is followed by a procession of maidens dancing classically and playing on archaic instruments. Ile nobly has decided to be raffled off. Patience, who per ceives that to devote herself to loving Bunthorne would be very unselfish indeed, brushes the others aside and offers to wed him herself. The poet overjoyed to escape the pos sibility of falling into the hands of the antique Jane, accepts without hesitation. The maidens have recourse to the Guards, but forsake them again for the more poetic Gros venor, whom Bunthorne recognizes with jealous discomfiture may prove a rival.
The ancient Jane is discovered at the rising of the curtain of the second act sitting in a glade and promising herself ever to be faithful to Bunthorne, whom the others have deserted because he has " glanced with passing favor on a puling milkmaid." A little later her hero arrives, but her devotion does not seem to be superlatively consoling to the jealous aesthetic.