Original Plays, Second Series

In Short

This collection gathers nine plays, spanning fairy tales, farces, and the celebrated libretti that revolutionized the English stage. Through intricate wordplay and deadpan irony, the characters navigate mismatched romances, class conflicts, and the rigid social conventions of the nineteenth century. Whether depicting the earnest absurdity of a pirate king or the bureaucratic stiff-upper-lip of a Royal Navy captain, the writing exposes the folly of human vanity. By prioritizing logical consistency within illogical premises, these pieces create a timeless, self-contained universe where the earnestness of the participants makes their predicaments all the more hilarious for the audience.

The Story

The collection opens with the melancholy Broken Hearts, a fairy play set on an island where ladies renounce love to mourn lost happiness, only to be disrupted by the arrival of a prince. The tone shifts abruptly to the cynical, laugh-out-loud comedy of Engaged, where fortune-hunting lovers treat marriage as a purely mercenary negotiation, shifting their loyalties instantly when the financial prospects change. Sweethearts offers a quieter, poignant look at the passage of time, tracking the missed connections between a man and a woman over several decades.

Dan’l Druce, Blacksmith introduces a darker, more dramatic arc, focusing on a man who has retreated from society into self-imposed exile, only to have his past—and his long-lost daughter—force him back into the light of human connection. This is followed by Gretchen, a retelling of the Faust legend that centers on a pure-hearted woman’s struggle to save the soul of a man caught between his own cynicism and his desire for her innocence. Tom Cobb acts as a farce on the romantic ideal, featuring a man who finds himself trapped in a web of false identities and unwanted breach-of-promise suits.

The final three plays represent the height of comic collaboration. The Sorcerer introduces a village turned upside down by a love philtre, where a respectable populace is compelled to express desires they never knew they possessed. H.M.S. Pinafore brings this sharp satire to the deck of a warship, where the captain’s daughter finds herself in love with a common sailor, highlighting the ridiculous nature of rigid class structures through the lens of a "slave of duty." Finally, The Pirates of Penzance follows a young man who, having been apprenticed to a band of pirates by mistake, tries to balance his pirate obligation with his innate desire to be a respectable, law-abiding citizen. The resolution of each play often relies on a sudden, absurd reversal of fortune or a revelation of identity that highlights the inherent silliness of the characters' previous, self-important posturing.

How It Unfolds

The island of seclusion The ladies of the Island of Broken Hearts attempt to protect themselves from further pain by veiling their faces and swearing off affection. Their orderly misery is shattered when Prince Florian arrives, forcing them to confront the very emotions they have spent years burying.

The mercenary dance In the farcical world of Engaged, characters treat romantic declarations as financial contracts, constantly checking their ledgers before committing to a heart. The plot moves through a series of rapid-fire betrothals and breakups that leave the audience questioning if anyone in the play is capable of sincerity.

The blacksmith’s penance Dan’l Druce lives as a recluse, protecting his daughter Dorothy from the "hollow, lying world" that once robbed him of his own happiness. His carefully constructed life of solitude is shattered when a knight arrives, dredging up secrets that force Dan’l to accept the fragility of his isolation.

The philtre’s influence The villagers in The Sorcerer are transformed by a magical potion that forces them to ignore social standing and marry the first person they see. This chaos allows for a pointed examination of how easily "proper" society can be upended when the artificial barriers of status are stripped away.

The duty of the sailor Ralph Rackstraw finds himself in love with a woman of higher rank, a situation deemed impossible by the strict hierarchy of the Royal Navy. The resolution arrives not through logic, but through the timely intervention of a baby-farmer who reveals the true, and equally absurd, origins of the main characters.

The paradoxical end In the final act of The Pirates of Penzance, the police and the pirates clash in a series of stealthy maneuvers that prioritize rhythm and rhyme over actual conflict. The "slave of duty" is finally released from his apprenticeship, allowing for a happy, if entirely illogical, conclusion to the romantic entanglements.

The People

The characters are archetypes who insist on behaving with extreme, often misguided, intensity. Dan’l Druce is the quintessential recluse, a man whose strength is replaced by a bitterness that only his daughter, Dorothy, can soften. She represents the pure, uncorrupted heart that serves as the moral anchor in his otherwise cynical world. In the comedies, Tom Cobb embodies the hapless social climber, a man who finds himself constantly over his head in romantic obligations he never truly sought. He is contrasted by Matilda O'Fipp, a woman who navigates the marriage market with a matter-of-fact bluntness that makes her far more formidable than the men who try to court her. Sir Joseph Porter and the Pirate King serve as two sides of the same coin: one is a caricature of bureaucratic entitlement, the other a caricature of criminal bravado. Both are entirely defined by their adherence to a code—whether it be the "rules of the Navy" or the "code of the black flag"—which the narrative treats with equal skepticism. They do not grow in a traditional sense; rather, they are forced to reveal the absurdity of their own self-imposed labels, eventually landing in positions that highlight the total lack of difference between the "respectable" and the "outlawed."

In Its Own Voice

"I have a large income, which I do not spend recklessly. I love you passionately; you are the essence of every hope; you are the tree upon which the fruit of my heart is growing--my Past, my Present, my Future--you are my own To Come."

In Engaged, Cheviot Hill delivers this extravagant, mercenary proposal to a woman he has only just met, highlighting the play's satirical take on romantic tropes.

"A living heart, inurned and sepulchred!"

Faustus, in Gretchen, laments the fate of those who, like himself, have retreated from the world to hide their misery in a self-imposed prison of bitterness.

"Stick close to your desks and never go to sea, and you all may be rulers of the Queen’s Navee!"

In H.M.S. Pinafore, this cynical advice to a young recruit skewers the idea that merit has anything to do with one's success in the British hierarchy.

What It's Really About

These plays are ultimately concerned with the discrepancy between the masks people wear and their internal motivations. They argue that human behavior is rarely driven by the lofty ideals of duty, honor, or romantic love that society publicly champions. Instead, the characters are shown to be motivated by vanity, money, and the simple, often contradictory, desire to be "correct." By placing these motivations into the mouths of characters who are speaking in highly stylized, rhythmic prose, the author exposes the artificiality of social norms. The core question—is life a farce of our own making?—is answered with a resounding "yes." The plays suggest that if we are all merely playing parts in a grand, socially constructed theater, we might as well admit the absurdity of the script.

Why Read It Today

Readers who enjoy quick, intelligent dialogue and the kind of sharp, self-aware humor found in modern political satire will find much to admire here. The experience of reading these plays is akin to watching a clockwork mechanism run at high speed; the plotting is precise, the jokes are layered, and the rhythm is relentless. However, a modern reader must be prepared for the period-specific attitudes, particularly regarding class, gender, and the occasionally patronizing treatment of "rustic" characters. The language, while accessible, carries the weight of a Victorian sensibility that values formal structure and wordplay over naturalistic subtext.

If you appreciate the way the absurdity of Monty Python or the musical complexity of modern theater can highlight the failures of bureaucracy and tradition, you will find the ancestors of those styles in these pages. The plays do not aim to comfort; they aim to expose the ridiculousness of the human condition. What stays with you long after finishing is not a moral lesson, but the sheer, buoyant delight of watching a writer dismantle the pretensions of his own society with nothing more than a well-placed rhyme and a perfectly timed, ironic retort. It is a masterclass in how to be deeply serious about the necessity of not taking oneself too seriously.