One final visit with the Modern Major-General (final for now, anyway... I promise!)

[As explained in previous post, there's nothing in today's news I feel compelled to discuss... so I've decided to post several commentaries on the Modern Major-General's song from Gilbert & Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance. This is the latest and, with any luck, the last in the series.]

The Modern Major-General boasts that he can "... tell you every detail of Caractacus's uniform."

Here's a contemporary illustration of a statue of Caractacus on public display in London in the second half of the 19th century:An illustration of J.H. Foley's statue of Caractacus from The Illustrated London News, 1859.

This is the Caractacus with which Gilbert & his Victorian audience would have been acquainted.

I can't help feeling that Gilbert's lyric is a Victorian inside-joke! “Caractacus’s uniform” was little more than a loin-cloth. Knowing every detail of this uniform is not that much of an achievement!