Below is Song 13 in the libretto for the brilliant Gilbert and Sullivan musical comedy, The Pirates of Penzance (1879). Onstage as it is sung are the buffoonish Major General Stanley, his clutch of comely female wards, and several menacing pirates. The first part of the ditty reviews Stanley's impressive intellectual and cultural attainments, while the second casts doubt upon his professional competence, despite them. This song was particularly humorous in its day because it hit the British officer corps of gentleman-dilettantes uncomfortably close to where it lived. Our Colonial gaming friends might wish to commit at least a couple of the following verses to memory.
[[MG Stanley sings, allegro, each quick, mincing stanza rising and falling]]:
I am the very model of a modern major general;
I've information veg-e-ta-ble, animal, and mineral;
I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical.
I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical;
I understand equations, both simple and quadratical;
About binomial theor-em I'm teeming with a lot o' news,
And many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.
I'm very good at integral and differential calculus;
I know the scientific names of beings animal-u-lous;
In short in matters veg-e-ta-ble, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern major general.
I know our mythic history, King Arthur's and Sir Caradoc's;
I answer hard Acrostics;
I've a pretty taste for paradox;
I quote in elegiacs
all the crimes of Helo-ga-ba-lus;
In conics I can floor peculiarities parabolous.
I can tell undoubted Raphaels from Gerard Dows and Zoffanies;
I know the Croaking Chorus from the Frogs of Aristophanes.
Then I can hum a fugue of which I've heard the music's din afore,
And whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense Pinafore!
Then I can write a washing bill in Babylonic cune-i-form,
And tell you every detail of Caractacus's uniform.
In short, in matters veg-e-ta-ble, animal and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern major general.
In fact when I know what is meant by mamelon and ravelin,
When I can tell at sight a Mauser rifle from a javelin,
When such affairs as sorties and surprises I'm more wary at,
And when I know precisely what is meant by "commissariat"
When I have learnt what progress has been made in modern gunnery,
When I know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery;
In short, when I've a smattering of elemental strategy,
You'll say a better ma-jor gen-er-al has never sat a gee.
For my military knowledge, though I'm plucky and adventur'y,
Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century.
But still in matters veg-e-ta-ble, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern major general!
Song 3, in which the leader of the pirates compares his life of crime not unfavorably with the sins of both "normal" citizens and their monarchs, might also be of interest to a certain segment of the gaming community.
[[The Pirate King sings, rousingly]]:
Oh better far to live and die,
Under the brave black flag I fly,
Than play a sanctimonious part
With a pirate head and a pirate heart
Away to the cheating world you go,
Where pirates all are well-to-do;
But I'll be true to the song I sing,
And live and die a Pirate King.
For I am a Pirate King,
And it is-it is!-a glorious thing To be a Pirate King.
When I sally forth to seek my prey
I help myself in a royal way,
I sink a few more ships, it's true,
Than a well-bred monarch ought to do.
But many a king on a first-class throne,
If he wants to call his crown his own,
Must manage somehow to get through
More dirty work than e'er I do.
For I am a Pirate King,
And it is-it is!-a glorious thing
To be a Pirate King. Hurrah for the Pirate King!
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© Copyright 2002 Hal Thinglum
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