Topsy-Turvy

Gilbert:
Madam, I had rather spend an afternoon in a Turkish bath with my mother than visit the dratted dentist.

Helen Lenoir:
The more I see of men, the more I admire dogs.

Richard Temple:
Laughter, tears, curtain.

Gilbert:
There's something inherently disappointing about success.

Gilbert's Father:
Am I to understand, sir, that you have been in communication with your mother?

Gilbert:
No, Father, not for some considerable time, I'm glad to say.

Gilbert's Father:
You are a liar, sir.

Gilbert:
No, sir. I can assure you, Papa, that the very last person with whom I wish to have any communication at all is your estranged wife, the vicious woman who bore me into this ridiculous world.

Gilbert's Father:
How dare you, sir? Have you no respect?

Gilbert:
Don't misunderstand me, Father. Nobody respects her more than I do, and I can't stand the woman.

Gilbert:
Oh, for God's sake you pair of bloody harpies - get out, I'm WORKING!

Sullivan:
This work with Gilbert is quite simply killing me.

Richard D'Oyly Carte:
Working with Gilbert would kill anybody.

Gilbert's Father:
A father should not have to seek permission to visit his own son!

Gilbert:
The son shouldn't be expected to be clairvoyant.

Gilbert:
Every theatrical performance is a contrivance by its very nature.

Sullivan:
Yes, but this piece consists entirely of an artificial and implausible situation.

Gilbert:
If you wish to write a Grand Opera about a prostitute, dying of consumption in a garret, I suggest you contact Mr Ibsen in Oslo. I am sure he will be able to furnish you with something suitably dull.

Gilbert:
A terrible thing has just happened, Grossmith. You've become a cockney.

Lucy Gilbert (Kitty):
Schwenk speaks to The Savoy every morning in code, father-in-law. Just in case the telephone operator should be eavesdropping.

Gilbert's Father:
One might as well open the window and shout down the street.

Gilbert:
I don't quite know how to take praise. It makes my eye red.

Gilbert:
Barker, what are you doing? Do you propose to join in?

Richard Barker:
My dancing days are long over, Mr. Gilbert.

Gilbert:
Over, Barker, but not forgotten.

Gilbert's Mother:
Maude...

Maude Gilbert:
Yes, Mama?

Gilbert's Mother:
Never bear a humorous baby.

Maude Gilbert:
I shall endeavor not to, Mama.

John D'Auban, Choregrapher:
I haven't laughed so much since my tights caught fire in "Harlequin Meets Itchity Witch and the Snitch".

Pidgeon, Gilbert's Houseman:
It's a fine-looking instrument, sir. Now would that be Spanish or Italian?

Gilbert:
Neither, Pidgeon.

Pidgeon, Gilbert's Houseman:
Of course, sir.

Gilbert:
How was your crossing, Sullivan?

Sullivan:
Mercifully smooth, thank you.

Gilbert:
As smooth as D'Oyly Carte?

Sullivan:
No, not quite, Gilbert.

Gilbert:
Your performances were, on the whole, promising, which is more than can be said, alas, for that of the sliding doors. One of which might have thought it was in Japan, but the other was apparently stubbornly laboring under the misapprehension that it was on holiday in Yorkshire.

Richard Barker:
Where was the man, Mr. Seymour?

Mr. Seymour, Production Manager:
Rest assured, Mr. Barker, that tomorrow night he will be with us in Japan.

Fanny Ronalds:
Lady Colin is irresistible. She cannot conceive why the Irish are starving when there's lots of good fish in the sea.

Sullivan:
She most probably has a point.

Wilhelm:
Rest assured, Mr. Lely, my designs are properly researched and authentic to the last thread.

Durward Lely:
No disrespect to you, Mr. Wilhelm, but your authentically tailored costume seems to have left me rather in the buff, somewhat!

Wilhelm:
No more in the buff than Japanese peasants have been for the last eight hundred years, sir.

Durward Lely:
May I draw your attention, Mr. Wilhelm, to the fact that I am not actually a Japanese peasant?

Gilbert:
No, you are a Scotch actor who is taking the part of a Japanese prince who is posing as an itinerant minstrel.

Wilhelm:
Will you remove your corset.

Durward Lely:
I beg your pardon?

Wilhelm:
Kindly remove your corset, Mr. Lely, it will spoil the hang of the cloth.

Durward Lely:
Mr. Gilbert, I never perform without my corset!

Gilbert:
What, never?

Richard Temple:
Shocking news from Khartoum. Something will have to be done tout-de-suite. Mrs. Temple hit the nail on the head as usual.

Durward Lely:
Oh, really? What did she say?

Richard Temple:
"The nation loses a hero, but the family loses a loved one."

Durward Lely:
Oh, how apt.

Richard D'Oyly Carte:
Who told you that?

Richard Barker:
Hollingshead. I played a game of cricket with him this morning before breakfast at Coram's Fields.

Helen Lenoir:
In this heat?

Richard Barker:
Yes, madam, but not in this attire.

Helen Lenoir:
Oh, good.

Richard D'Oyly Carte:
Well, I don't know about you, but speaking for myself, I could murder a pork chop.

Fanny Ronalds:
Oh, there's good news from Dublin.

Sullivan:
Mm?

Fanny Ronalds:
The Churchills are to return to London.

Sullivan:
Forgiven, but not forgotten.

Fanny Ronalds:
I do hope so. Jenny says Winston is eleven, covered in freckles, and has a total disdain for authority.

Lucy Gilbert (Kitty):
I do apologize, sir, that neither I nor Schwenck was here to welcome you on your arrival last night.

Gilbert's Father:
I do not appreciate being left upon the doorstep like a hawker!

Gilbert:
If you'll only take the trouble to press the electric bell, Father, you'll be admitted at once. Is that not so, Pidgeon?

Pidgeon, Gilbert's Houseman:
Indeed it is, sir.

Gilbert's Father:
I have no intention of placing my life in danger, sir!

Gilbert:
How many doorstep deaths have we had thus far, Pidgeon?

Pidgeon, Gilbert's Houseman:
None to my certain knowledge, sir.

Gilbert's Father:
There you are, Father. The odds would appear to be in your favour.

Sullivan:
What's this?

Richard D'Oyly Carte:
Pull it.

Richard D'Oyly Carte:
It's a reservoir pen. Contains its own ink.

Sullivan:
Good gracious me. Whatever will they think of next?

Sullivan:
Oh, Gilbert! You and your world of topsy-turvydom. In 1881, it was a magic coin; and before that it was a magic lozenge; and in 1877 it was an elixir.

Gilbert:
In this instance it is a magic potion.

Mrs. Judd, Gilbert's Maid:
I've made you some beef tea, Mr. Gilbert.

Gilbert:
Take it away.

Mrs. Judd, Gilbert's Maid:
You've not had anything since yesterday afternoon, sir.

Gilbert:
Take it away.

Mrs. Judd, Gilbert's Maid:
You can't work on an empty stomach.

Gilbert:
I can't work at all, Mrs. Judd, if I'm being constantly pestered by interfering women with hot beef tea, cold compresses, mustard poultices, and excessive attacks of philanthropic zeal.

Sullivan:
May I remind you, Helen, that I am not a machine.

Helen Lenoir:
I would not suggest for one moment that you were.

Sullivan:
You all seem to be treating me as a barrel-organ. You have but to turn my handle, and Hey Presto! Out pops a tune.

Gilbert:
I have other things on my mind, you know that.

Lucy Gilbert (Kitty):
Yes, I do know that, Willie, and I understand, but a little distraction will do you good.

Gilbert:
Kitty, I don't want to be distracted.

Lucy Gilbert (Kitty):
Yes, you do.

Gilbert:
Oh, do I? You know my mind better than I do, do you?

Lucy Gilbert (Kitty):
I know you better than you think I do, Willie.

Lucy Gilbert (Kitty):
My goodness! It's perfectly green.

Gilbert:
Spinach water.

Lucy Gilbert (Kitty):
Oh, Willie.

Gilbert:
Thank you very much.

Miss 'Sixpence Please':
Shickerspen, preas.

Gilbert:
I beg your pardon?

Miss 'Sixpence Please':
Shickerspen, preas.

Lucy Gilbert (Kitty):
Oh, she speaks English.

Gilbert:
What did she say?

Lucy Gilbert (Kitty):
She said, "Sixpence, please."

George Grossmith:
The Hottentot in the desert doesn't play cricket. His natural habitation being the jungly-bungly tree, he is as yet hardly able to walk upright, don't you know.

Jessie Bond:
Is one to presume one is to be prevented from wearing one's corset, Madame Leon?

Madame Leon:
Miss Bond, none of the ladies shall be wearing corsets during the performance.

Jessie Bond:
That's simply preposterous!

Madame Leon:
Our aim is to emulate the Japanese ladies, and Japanese ladies are as thin as thread paper, inasmuch a Roman column as opposed to a Grecian urn.

Gilbert:
You have my sympathies, Lely. But unfortunately your avocation as an actor compels you on occasion to endure the most ignominious indignities, as Grossmith will doubtless testify.

George Grossmith:
Without question, sir.

Gilbert:
They walked downstage in the Japanese manner.

John D'Auban, Choregrapher:
They walked downstage in the Japanese manner because they are Japanese.

Gilbert:
Exactly, and that is precisely why they are here.

John D'Auban, Choregrapher:
Our three little maids are not Japanese. However, they are very funny.

Gilbert:
No funnier, however, than they would be if they all sat down on pork pies.

Lucy Gilbert (Kitty):
I should rather like to be an actor, upon the stage.

Gilbert:
An actor?

Lucy Gilbert (Kitty):
Yes. Wouldn't it be wondrous if perfectly commonplace people gave each other a round of applause at the end of the day?

Lucy Gilbert (Kitty):
Well done, Kitty! Well done!

Leonora Braham, Lead Soprano:
Yes, I am indeed beautiful. Sometimes I sit and wonder, in my artless Japanese way, why it is that I am so much more attractive than anybody else in the whole world. Can this be vanity? No! Nature is lovely, and rejoices in her loveliness. I am a child of Nature, and take after my mother.

Gilbert:
Can we do that line again please, Barrington, and this time try it in English.

Richard Temple:
One should be rewarded on one's merits, not on one's ability to ingratiate oneself with the management. Particularly when the management have difficulty in locating the relative whereabouts of the arse and the elbow.

Gilbert:
I was unable to present you with the libretto until you returned from your Grand Tour of Europe.

Sullivan:
That is neither here nor there.

Gilbert:
No, Sullivan, indeed. I was here and you were there!

Richard Barker:
And now, sir, I am going in search of some Italian hokey-pokey, and I care not who knows it.