Folklore: Was Frederick Released from Indentures?

Subject: Folklore: Was Frederick Released from Indentures?
From: robomatic
Date: 27 Feb 04 - 06:24 PM

I've been wondering this for some time, being a long time G & S fan:

In Pirates of Penzance, Frederick, the hero, discovers that since he was born on the 29th of February, he will not celebrate his 21st birthday until 1940 (The action must be placed in 1877).

So I was wondering, in the early years of WWII did anyone in Britain remember that indeed Frederick was out of his indentures? Was D'Oyly Carte still operating and did they celebrate the fact?

I've had no idea who would be aware of this great question and then I figured maybe some mudcatters of the Anglo pursuasion would either know, or know someone whut knows.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Was Frederick Released from Indentures?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 27 Feb 04 - 06:35 PM

Fantastic, Robomatic! Not into G&S myself but love the idea. When would the hero have been born then? I presume he would not have been 18 in WW1 and therefore could not have enlisted then either? Give us a timeline!

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: Folklore: Was Frederick Released from Indentures?
From: Crane Driver
Date: 27 Feb 04 - 06:40 PM

Released from his dentures? Something to get his teeth into ......................... oh, sorry, misread that.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Was Frederick Released from Indentur
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 27 Feb 04 - 06:59 PM

Dunno about England, but a repertory company in Greenwich Village presented Penzance to celebrate the date. (Might have been Cherry Lane Theater, but I disremember--I saw the show, but I was a mite younger then.)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Was Frederick Released from Indentures?
From: Gareth
Date: 27 Feb 04 - 07:01 PM

Hmmm ! Unfortunatley by then the practice of hanging felons convicted of crimes on the water, where the tide flows free, at execution dock at Wapping - East London, on the London River, and leaving them dangling till 3 tides has passed over thier heads had ceased.

I suspect that would have released Fredrick from his indentures !!!

Gareth

Subject: RE: Folklore: Was Frederick Released from Indentures?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 27 Feb 04 - 08:10 PM

Would have been an ideal punishment for G & S as well (still remember being press-ganged into the school cast for P of P).

Subject: RE: Folklore: Was Frederick Released from Indentures?
From: robomatic
Date: 27 Feb 04 - 10:26 PM

Okay, I'm going to dive in again with a summary of the plot of Gilbert and Sullivan's Operetta and 'splain myself.

Frederick is an upper class chap whose father entrusted him when young to a plain rotund nursemaid who didn't hear too well. The old man's instructions were to take young Fred out and apprentice the brave young nurk to a pilot (of the seafaring kind). But this burgeoning Brunhilde mishears the operative word and takes the likely lad to a pirate. As Fred gets older he realizes that he's entering into an immoral profession and he informs all his pirate buddies that he will join the forces of good and hunt them to extinction, but that's got to wait until he's 21, and free of his indentures. (It's not for nothing that the Operetta's subtitle is "The Slave of Duty").

One of the subplots is that the nursemaid intends to marry him and has told him that she herself is a peerless peach of womankind, which he believes since living among the pirates he's never seen a girl. This changes by accident, and in no time he's engaged to a proper beauty from a good family, and then his nursemaid and the king of the pirates spring on Frederick that his contract with them expires not when he's 21, but on his 21st birthday, and he was born on the 29th of February. Since he's a slave of duty he has to tell his intended that he must remain a pirate until 1940.

So I was wondering if Gilbert And Sullivan philes commemmorated the event when that year in fact rolled around. It was a year when there were other events to distract folk. .

We can do a litle math here. If Frederick's birthday is on leap years and his 21st birthday is February 29th, 1940, then he must have been born February 29, 1856*. Since the opening scene in the Operetta has him celebrating turning 21 years old, the action must occur at the end of February, 1877.

*Now a vagrant memory. I think that Isaac Asimov wrote something about this subject, but for the moment I can't place it. In fact, while I was writing this it occurred to me that he took up the question of what year the events take place in a short story collection. I did a brief search and it is from the book 'Banquets of the Black Widowers' short story called 'The Year Of The Action. I don't remember what his conclusion was between 1873 and 1877.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Was Frederick Released from Indentures?
From: LadyJean
Date: 27 Feb 04 - 11:55 PM

Since, if you will remember, The Pirates of Penzance stopped being Pirates, and went back to the House of Lords, (Iolanthe?) I presume Frederick was out of his indentures when they gave up piracy.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Was Frederick Released from Indentures?
From: JennieG
Date: 28 Feb 04 - 12:14 AM

I think I read somewhere, some time ago, that a special performance of P of P was given in 1940 by the D'Oyley Carte Company to celebrate Frederick's coming of age.
Cheers
JennieG - a G&S fan - there are some great songs in those operettas!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Was Frederick Released from Indentures?
From: Flash Company
Date: 29 Feb 04 - 11:15 AM

D'Oyley Carte put on a special performance of 'Pirates' at the Streatham Hill Theatre in London on 29-02-40 to celebrate Frederick's birthday. the audience had to brave the blitz to attend.
An announcement was also made on the BBC.
Source:- The Gilbert & Sullivan Book by Leslie Bailey.
I think I have seen a photo somewhere, but it ain't in the book.
FC

Subject: RE: Folklore: Was Frederick Released from Indentures?
From: Penny S.
Date: 29 Feb 04 - 12:04 PM

Bother you lot, my brain you've captured,
There's tunes on my mind and I'm not enraptured,
All I can hear are Fred and Mabel
I'm trying to forget but I am not able.

Penny

Subject: RE: Folklore: Was Frederick Released from Indentures?
From: Barbara
Date: 29 Feb 04 - 07:36 PM

There's tunes upon the table
Oh, Sing of Fred and Mabel
But to forget them she's not able,
She's not able, she's not a-BLE....


Blessings,
Barbara who once got to be Buttercup, but had more fun as a pirate.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Was Frederick Released from Indentures?
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 01 Mar 04 - 06:24 AM

During my G&S days, I've performed "Pirates" many times - parts include Major General, Pirate King, Frederick, Samuel.

As someone has already mentioned, the pirates who were "All noblemen who have gone wrong" are told by the Major General to "Assume your ranks and legislative duties and take my daughters all of whom are beauties". I assume that Frederick is therefore released from his indentures and marries Mabel. Poor old Ruth seems to be a bit left out of things, but in many productions, she and the Major General are flirting with each other by the final curtain.

One of the things that always puzzled me was that if the pirates were all orphans as they claimed, how did anyone know that they were noblemen ?

Isaac Asimov made lots of references to G&S in various books - he even had a deranged robot singing extracts, and I seem to remember a set of lyrics about writing a story, set to the tune of "The Nightmare Song" from Iolanthe. He did have a theory that Gilbert would have preferred an alternate ending to "The Sorcerer" in which due to a "love philtre" administered to the whole village, single people have fallen in love with the most unsuitable partners. The spell is broken in the opera by the sorcerer being sent down to hell - rather unfairly as it was the son of the local lord of the manor who concocted and carried out the deed. Asimov suggested that if these couples had been allowed to marry, the efect of the magic, which only affected single people, would cease, and they would all split up and divorce. This would not have been considered a morally suitable ending in Gilbert's day though.

Climbing rough and Ragged Passes
. . . . Sliding down them on their . . . bottoms.
as the men would tend to sing in the wings.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Was Frederick Released from Indentures?
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 01 Mar 04 - 06:45 AM

Robomatic:

only one point to make, the musical would seem to be set in 1873 not 1877. Frederick will not reach his 21st birthday until he is 88. (1900 not being a Leap Year!)

Nigel

Subject: RE: Folklore: Was Frederick Released from Indentures?
From: GUEST,Keith A of Hertford.
Date: 01 Mar 04 - 07:18 AM

I once played the seargent of police, the true hero of the piece.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Was Frederick Released from Indentures?
From: HuwG
Date: 01 Mar 04 - 07:33 AM

If I remember Asimov's "Black Widowers" series, the debate on the date that Pirates of Penzance was set, was decided by the Henry the waiter, who pointed out a line in the song, "I am the very model of a modern Major-General". It goes,

"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."


Since Pinafore was released in 1875 (??) but certainly not before 1873, W.S. Gilbert either forgot or ignored for dramatic purposes, that 1900 was not a leap year; and Pirates of Penzance was set in 1877.

A Google search brings up this authoritative site for Pirates of Penzance.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Was Frederick Released from Indentures?
From: Flash Company
Date: 01 Mar 04 - 09:45 AM

Talk of the Nightmare Song reminds me that Leslie Bailey also refers to a young baritone from Liverpool singing this for an audition piece in the '30s. By the time the Doyly Carte company got round to offering him a job, he had already signed up with another company touring the halls with a sketch called 'The Disorderley Room'. His name was Tommy Handley, later of ITMA fame,
FC

Subject: RE: Folklore: Was Frederick Released from Indentures?
From: GUEST,Penny S. (elsewhere)
Date: 01 Mar 04 - 12:11 PM

Some productions have a Frederick who looks old enough to be out of his indentures, 1900 or no 1900. Or did, when I was a little lass.

Penny

Subject: RE: Folklore: Was Frederick Released from Indentures?
From: robomatic
Date: 01 Mar 04 - 10:06 PM

I had imaginings of various English officers' messes lifting a mug in hono(u)r of the occassion.
I was in the chorus of a Production at Stanford University, got to be a pirate in the first act, a policeman in the second. And in true Goon Show fashion we loudly went "rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb" when we had to mutter amongst ourselves

Thank you folks very much.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Was Frederick Released from Indentures?
From: GUEST,Gibbet
Date: 02 Mar 04 - 05:08 AM

Gareth - would "the London river" perhaps be the Thames or does it exist in your imagination like the twaddle about hanging men in it.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Was Frederick Released from Indentures?
From: Micca
Date: 02 Mar 04 - 06:26 AM

Gibbet, as an ex sailor, NO british seafaring men EVER refers to the Thames by that name ALL refer to it as the London River, as for the hanging of Pirates Try Here

Subject: RE: Folklore: Was Frederick Released from Indentures?
From: Flash Company
Date: 02 Mar 04 - 06:29 AM

John Stow, writing at the end of the 16th century refers to 'Wapping in the Wose, the usual place for hanging all pirates & sea rovers, at the low-water mark, and there to remain until three tides have overflowed them.' Source, The Annals of London by John RIchardson.

I don't sing much these days, but I read a lot!

FC

Subject: RE: Folklore: Was Frederick Released from Indentures?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 02 Mar 04 - 07:30 AM

My brother's high school did the play, and I got dragged into doing the lighting for it - 1 night performance - the day before tech rehearsal and minimal equipment set in a giant barn of a Gymnasium! Thanks to a friend who was able to supply an intercom set, we managed to tie the performance together on the fly with the 2 follow spots doing much of the lighting work to cover all the dead spots! :-)!

Robin

Subject: RE: Folklore: Was Frederick Released from Indentu
From: greg stephens
Date: 02 Mar 04 - 07:39 AM

Gibbet: yes indeed, the London River is indeed the tidal stretch of the Thames. And in Oxford it is called the Isis. Just because Gareth has a Welsh name, it doesnt mean he doesnt know what he's talking about.
    On a completely different note, I was in Orford once and asked an elderly local what the river was called. He said it was called The River.(I have added the capitals, he was just speaking).

Subject: RE: Folklore: Was Frederick Released from Indentures?
From: GUEST,Andy
Date: 03 Mar 04 - 05:28 AM

i think they were his own teeth wernt they?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Was Frederick Released from Indentures?
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 03 Mar 04 - 10:35 AM

Someone mentioned rather elderly Fredericks - one of the silly sets of words that the chorus would try and get each other to sing was:

Here's good luck to Fredericks ventures
Frederick's lost his flipping dentures

There were all sorts of alternative words that the old hands in the chorus would sing and if the newer members started singing them, they had to be careful not to do it in the actual performance. In Michael Green's book "The Art of Coarse Acting" (a "must" for any would-be thespian) he remarks that you always know everybody elses words (especially those of your partner) better than you know your own. I once heard "Sir Despard" in Ruddigore sing "Mad Margaret's" verse: "I once was a particularly odd young lady" - it brought the house down.