gooseweasel:

Just finished up a run of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience: or Buthorne’s Bride. I’ve never done any of their musicals, and really knew nothing about them before now, but what I’ve learned is that pretty much everything they do is satire about how fucking ridiculous and bizarre pretentious white people are -specifically, the Victorian English; but Patience in particular seems to still apply today as it’s literally about group of rich white people obsessed with ~*aesthetic*~ for no particular reason

Oh it gets better – Patience exists because James MacNeill Whistler had just sued art critic John Ruskin for libel after Ruskin gave his paintings a really bad review, and Gilbert was like ‘this is comedy gold, I’m going to rewrite that script about the two clergymen trying to outdo each other in mild unworldliness and make it about Aesthetics instead.“ And before the show played the US, his producer made sure to send over Oscar Wilde on a lecture tour, so the audience would be able to get the jokes.