"Pirates" in Translation Trivia Quiz

Answer: a cup filled to the brim

A "bumper" was a cup or glass filled for a toast. The operetta begins "Pour, oh, pour the pirate sherry. Fill, O fill the pirate glass, and, to make us more than merry, Let the pirate bumper pass!" Party time!

Answer: separating a ship from a convoy

When Frederick announces his intention to leave the pirate band, the King tells him: "But this is quite unaccountable; a keener hand at scuttling a Cunarder or cutting out a White Star never shipped a handspike." Cutting out a White Star would have meant separating a passenger ship of the White Star Line from surrounding ships in order to board and plunder her.

The original British libretto has "P & O" where American versions were changed to "White Star".

Answer: he positions the lever to raise the anchor

The process of winding old rope around a cable, with a small interval between the turns, saves the cable from chafing against the hull, and is called keckling. Belaying is tying and securing a rope. 'Carving a nog' is fashioning a wooden pin used in ship repair.

Answer: a government patrol

Custom House were the customs enforcement patrol. Usually located near seaports, they were responsible for collecting tarrifs on imported goods. Frederick asks: "Who has ventured to approach our all but inaccessible lair? Can it be Custom House? No, it does not sound like Custom House."

Answer: a barometer

"The glass is rising very high" is a reference to a weather-glass or barometer. A rising glass would be an indication of high atmospheric pressure, resulting in fair weather. The girls sing this weather ditty which sticks in your head: "How beautifully blue the sky, The glass is rising very high, Continue fine I hope it may, And yet it rained but yesterday. To-morrow it may pour again (I hear the country wants some rain), Yet people say, I know not why, That we shall have a warm July."

Answer: a travelling band

Originally from Persian for 'a stopping off place for traveling merchants', the word came to be used for anyone engaged in long distance travel. When pronounced "caravansery", it makes the rhyme with "Wards in Chancery", a reference to the Major-General's daughters.

Answer: they are foster children

Major-General Stanley's "daughters" are all minors under the protection of the Court of Chancery - a court set up within the English legal framework to adjudicate primarily civil matters.

Answer: a soothing salve

An emollient is an agent that softens or soothes the skin, or in this reference, assuages or mollifies. W.S. Gilbert's regard for poetry is such that he assails it as heaven sent and powerful enough to have an effect even on buccaneers: "Hail, Poetry, thou heav'n-born maid! Thou gildest e'en the pirate's trade. Hail, flowing fount of sentiment! All hail, all hail, divine emollient!"

Answer: quelling brawls

It was not beneath Gilbert to step away from English for a really good rhyming couplet: "When the foeman bares his steel, we uncomfortable feel, and we find the wisest thing, is to slap our chests and sing, For when threatened with emeutes, and your heart is in your boots, there is nothing brings it round like the trumpet's martial sound."

Answer: he will die without last rites

To shrive a penitent was to hear their confession and grant them absolution. (The past passive is 'shriven'.) The word 'Shrove' is still used in the context of Shrove Tuesday, (a day in which pancakes are eaten to use up fat in the house in preparation for Ash Wednesday that follows.) The Pirate King announces: "With base deceit you worked upon our feelings! Revenge is sweet and flavours all our dealings! With courage rare and resolution manly, for death prepare, unhappy Gen'ral Stanley." Mabel then entreats: "Is he to die, unshriven, unannealed?" and the girls keen "Oh, spare him!" What results is the very climax of the plot, which I shall not endeavor to spoil here!