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The Gilbert and Sullivan Newsletter Archive
GILBERTIAN GOSSIP
No 14 — August 1979
Edited by Michael Walters
ELSIE MAYNARD REARS HER HEAD AGAIN . . . .
[In search for more vitriolic opinions, I found this comment by George Tyson in the September 1960 edition of the G&S Journal. Ed.]
The significance of the last verse [of “I have a song to sing”] as it occurs in Act 1 is surely that after the opera ends Elsie finds Fairfax to be unworthy of her, and deserts him to return to Point; no other interpretation is reasonable. Yet Gilbert approved the end of the opera with Point falling dead at Elsie's feet. According to Lytton, Gilbert's word's were "It is just what I want. Jack Point should die and the end of the opera should be a tragedy". What else could Gilbert have said in Victorian England? Whatever he thought, could he possibly have answered "No, Point must stay alive, because it is clearly implied that Elsie has as illicit love affair with him after she has left her husband" ?
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