Pooh-Bah's Science
Pooh-Bah uses science, like he uses big words, to confuse and deceive himself. He's claiming that his ancestry is so ancient it goes back before what Charles Darwin calls "the descent of man," which Pooh-Bah thinks makes him very up to date and learned. He's hoping to get the best of all worlds. His ancestors are ancient, both in scientific and Christian terms, and he himself is so up on current ideas (even if they're a half century old), he's too good for the rest of us. That's why he sneers, as best he can.
His ancestry is so ancient, his ancestors aren't people or nobles, they're not even apes: they're globules. Just to be sure he's got all the bases covered, Pooh-Bah is sure not to dismiss Christianity when he adopts science: so his ancestors go back so far, they predate Adam and Eve ("pre-Adamite ancestral descent").
All nonsense, of course.
protoplasmal
Although an instance of the use of protoplasmator occurs in 1550 and protoplast from 1532, almost all uses of words based on protoplasm occur beginning in the mid-nineteenth century. In the first edition of the OED, protoplasm is defined as
A viscid, semifluid, semitransparent, colourless or whitish substance, consisting of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen (often with a small amount of some other elements) in extremely complex and unstable combination, and manifesting what are known as vital properties, i.e. irritability, contractility, spontaneous movement, assimilation, and reproduction; constituting 'the physical basis of life' (Huxley) in all plants and animals, and forming the essential substance of the cells ... out of which their bodies are built up. Also called BIOPLASM, CYTOPLASM, and (in animals) formerly SARCODE.
By the mid-nineteenth century most uses of the word appear to be biological, but there were some metaphoric uses and an echo of the use of "protoplast" to mean "The first former, fashioner, or creator."
primordial
Usage of primordial dates back to 1398, and variations on the word seem to have been in steady use since then. The first sense of the word is "Of, pertaining to, or existing at (or from) the very beginning; first in time, earliest, original, primitive, primeval."
atomic
Pooh-Bah probably merely intends to sound learning here. Atoms were accepted as real though invisible units in nature as early as ????, so possibly by "I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule," he means his essential, basic, first ancestral globules, but probably he's just using words approximately here.
globule
Globule means the same thing now that it did then -- a small sphere of something.
This discussion is based in part on the definition of the words protoplasm, primordial, atomic, and globule in the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, which requires a little explanation.
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
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Last update: 19 May 1998.