Walter Meyer <[log in to unmask]> writes of Gilbert:

>It is clear from many of his texts that he liked to puncture bubbles
>of pomposity.  Not knowing more about him, I still think it possible that
>by impugning the above attitudes (alas not totally unknown in Victorian
>England) to a sort of buffoon from an exotic land, he was holding up a
>mirror to his own society reminding them that they were not really so very
>different from what they were laughing at.

Quite.  Remember the last line Gilbert puts into the mouth of his
not-so-highly-respectable Lord High Executioner:

   "But it really doesn't matter whom you put upon the list,
   For they'd none of 'em be missed - they'd none of 'em be missed!"

Yes, we're all there, every one of us - together with all the social
misfits, all the victims of our prejudice, all our cherished pet hates.

The defence rests!

Christopher Webber,  Blackheath, London,  UK.
http://www.nashwan.demon.co.uk/zarzuela.htm
"ZARZUELA!"