Although a respectable hit, Gilbert and Sullivan's "Princess Ida" is criticised for being routine. Arthur Sullivan tends to agree, finding he has run out of musical ideas for Gilbert's increasingly predictable stories. He would rather be composing a full opera, an idea that jeopardises not only the pair's relationship but the future of the stage company that Richard D'Oyly Carte has built around the comic operas. Then Mrs Gilbert persuades her husband to take her to an exhibition of Japanese life...

As Sir Arthur Sullivan and his mistress Fanny Ronalds casually discuss aborting their baby, the incidental music is a passage from Gilbert and Sullivan's "Iolanthe." The lyric which goes with the music is, "Plead for my boy. He dies."

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

Continuity: Length of Sullivan's cigarette and ash during their lengthy discussion

(1884)
from "Princess Ida"
Music by Arthur Sullivan
Lyrics by William S. Gilbert
Performed by Martin Savage and chorus