Original Text for "A More Humane Mikado"
We changed a couple of verses of this aria, to do something about the word "nigger" and to do something about the verse about billiards, which has some wonderful lines in it but which was not really intelligible for our audiences. These are Gilbert's original words:
No. 17. "A more humane Mikado"
Solo and Chorus
Mikado, Girls, and Men
Mikado
Are more humane Mikado never
Did in Japan exist,
To nobody second,
I'm certainly reckoned
A true philanthropist.
It is my very human endeavour
To make, to some extent,
Each evil liver
A running river
Of harmless merriment.
My object all sublime
I shall achieve in time --
To let the punishment fit the crime,
The punishment fit the crime;
And make each pris'ner pent
Unwillingly represent
A source of innocent merriment,
Of innocent merriment!
All prosy dull society sinners,
Who chatter and bleat and bore,
Are sent to hear sermons
From mystical Germans
Who preach from ten till four.
The amateur tenor, whose vocal villainies
All desire to shirk,
Shall, during off hours,
Exhibit his powers
To Madame Tussaud's waxwork.
The lady who dyes a chemical yellow,
Or stains her grey hair puce,
Or pinches her figger,
Is blacked like a nigger
With permanent walnut juice.
The idiot who, in railway carriages,
Scribbles on window-panes,
We only suffer
To ride on a buffer
In Parliament'ry trains.
My object all sublime
I shall achieve in time --
To let the punishment fit the crime,
The punishment fit the crime;
And make each pris'ner pent
Unwillingly represent
A source of innocent merriment,
Of innocent merriment!
Chorus
His object all sublime
He will achieve in time --
To let the punishment fit the crime,
The punishment fit the crime;
And make each pris'ner pent
Unwillingly represent
A source of innocent merriment,
Of innocent merriment!
Mikado
The advertising quack who wearies
With tales of countless cures,
His teeth, I've enacted,
Shall all be extracted
By terrified amateurs.
The music-hall singer attends a series
Of masses and fugues and "ops"
By Bach, interwoven
With Spohr and Beethoven,
At classical Monday Pops.
The billiard sharp whom anyone catches,
His doom's extremely hard --
He's made to dwell
In a dungeon cell
On a spot that's always barred.
And there he plays extravagant matches
In fitless finger-stalls,
On a cloth untrue,
With a twisted cue
And elliptical billiard balls.
My object all sublime
I shall achieve in time --
To let the punishment fit the crime,
The punishment fit the crime;
And make each pris'ner pent
Unwillingly represent
A source of innocent merriment,
Of innocent merriment!
Chorus
His object all sublime
He will achieve in time --
To let the punishment fit the crime,
The punishment fit the crime;
And make each pris'ner pent
Unwillingly represent
A source of innocent merriment,
Of innocent merriment!
Since it became clear that the word "nigger" has been unacceptable in this context, the replacement in this aria has historically been "is painted with vigour," so that the line reads
The lady who dyes a chemical yellow,
Or stains her grey hair puce,
Or pinches her figger,
Is painted with vigour
And permanent walnut juice.
Not much better, to my mind. As with replacing "nigger" with "banjo" in Ko-Ko's original "As Someday It May Happen," leaving in darkening her skin as part of the punishment takes out the offensive word and leaves the offensive idea where it was. I don't argue that my writing here (helped as I was by a real poet, Steve Klepetar) is great, only that it's more intelligible to our audience and topical where Gilbert was topical. We don't have parliamentary trains any more, and none of us really got the references to billiards.
Martyn Green traces some of the history of the handling of this song. Besides the change noted above, he also lists the following revisions, all (including the one above) written by Sir Alan P. Herbert, whose "banjo" has been the accepted replacement for "nigger" in Ko-Ko's song. In addition to the fix listed above, here are three more versions written by Herbert:
"Or stains her grey hair green,
Is taken to Dover
And painted all over
A horrible ultramarine."
"Or stains her grey hair puce,
Is made to wear feathers
In all the worst weathers,
And legibly labeled 'Goose.'"
"Or stains her grey hair blue
Is made to wear feathers
In all the worst weathers
And live in a draughty zoo."
Well [Martyn Green goes on] -- I must agree that Carte chose the best, but I am still somewhat fogged as to how it is possible to paint any one with "vigour and permanent walnut juice." What color is "vigour"? Or is it some sort of special pigment? Here again I have taken some liberty with the printed word and have had the Mikado sing either "painted, with vigour, with permanent walnut juice" or "painted with vigour, or stained with walnut juice."
Green's objection to the traditional fix to this verse -- that in painting "with vigour," the word with is used one way, and in "And [with] permanent walnut juice" it is used another -- is quite correct even if his fix is not acceptable any more. The word with used these two different ways in such close proximity is stylistically imprecise and beneath Gilbert even at his worst.
What I don't really like about my own emendations to Gilbert's writing is that he was pretty careful to make the punishments all something that a human could dispense, and mine require some supernatural aid.
To a page that outlines some of the questions that must be addressed in thinking about the racism and ethnic bigotry in The Mikado.
To Act I or Act II of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado.
To the homepage of this Mikado website.
Suggestions, contributions, criticisms, questions? Email Sharon Cogdill.
(c) Copyright 1998 Sharon Cogdill, dramaturg for this production and author of this website.
College of Fine Arts and Humanities
St. Cloud State University
This URL: http://web.stcloudstate.edu/scogdill/mikado/humanemikado.html.
Last update: 16 May 1998.