Page "Gilbert and Sullivan" Paragraph 35

Patience ( 1881 ) satirised the aesthetic movement in general and its colourful poets, in particular, combining aspects of Algernon Charles Swinburne, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Oscar Wilde, James McNeill Whistler and others in the rival poets Bunthorne and Grosvenor.

Grossmith, who created the role of Bunthorne, based his makeup, wig and costume on Swinburne and especially Whistler, as seen in the adjacent photo.

The work also lampoons male vanity and chauvinism in the military.

The story concerns two rival " aesthetic " poets, who attract the attention of the young ladies of the village, who had been engaged to the members of a cavalry regiment.

But the two poets are each in love with Patience, the village milkmaid, who detests one of them and feels that it is her duty to avoid the other despite her love for him.

Richard D ' Oyly Carte was the booking manager for Oscar Wilde, a then lesser-known proponent of aestheticism, and dispatched Wilde on an American lecture tour in conjunction with the opera's U. S. run, so that American audiences might better understand what the satire was all about.