@shimyereh / shimyereh.tumblr.com
Sorry for more obscure fanart but i came across this tumblr post and the animation intrigued me so I watched it and now here's fanart XD
(I changed the design of this guy's "evil" version to look more like his nice-guy design for fun!)
I hope you enjoy, and have an AWESOME day!!
Happy Halloween! Have some festive ghosts singing one of my favorite songs from Ruddigore.
(Favorite things here: all the ancestors dancing with skeletons in the background, Robin’s look of disgust when Roderic kisses the skull, and that one ancestor who apparently had a bust made instead of a portrait. This Ruddigore [full version here, I think?] is full of delightfully low-budget special effects and inexplicable staging choices and I love it. Also features Vincent Price as Sir Despard, some endearingly bad greenscreening, and an entire chorus of gentlemen on very strange bicycles.)
Just came across the word “welkin” [heavens, firmament] in Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor:
NYM I have operations which be humors of revenge.
PISTOL Wilt thou revenge?
NYM By welkin and her star!
[I.iii.92-4]
The other place I know I’ve seen this word is in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Ruddigore, when the chorus of bridesmaids announce the arrival of Richard Dauntless in Act I:
From the briny sea Comes young Richard, all victorious! Valorous is he — His achievements all are glorious! Let the welkin ring With the news we bring! Sing it — shout it — Tell about it — Safe and sound returneth he, All victorious from the sea!
I realized I didn’t know where this word comes from, other than a sense that it feels old and Germanic. My instincts were right!
Modern English “welkin” comes from a Middle English word (welken, welkne, wolkne) describing a range of sky-related concepts: cloud, sky, heavens, the celestial sphere, and (possibly) weather. This in turn comes from an Old English word whose singular (wolcn) means “cloud” and whose plural (wolcnu) means “sky, heavens”. (I love the idea of conceptualizing the sky as the plural of “cloud”! A reflection of typical weather patterns where that usage emerged?) And then, that Old English word traces back to Proto-Germanic *wulkaną [cloud], which in turn traces back to Proto-Indo-European *welg- [damp, wet]. (The defining salient feature of clouds in early Germanic languages was, apparently, that they are wet!)
That same PIE root also turns out to be the source of Proto-Slavic *volga [moisture, wetness] — which is the root of Russian влага/vlaga [moisture] and влажный/vlazhny [moist, damp, humid] *and* of the name of the River Volga!
“You know, Old Adam, some don’t seek the void Of their dark past and fixedly go stare in it.” “Your past is dark — but, sir, I am employed As your valet, and so I have a share in it.” “…Well, dig me up.” “Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd!!!” The old man yelled with patent gusto, “Baronet!! Of!! Ruddigore!!” (To good old men, you see, The truth is a refreshing novelty.)
Been bugging me for a while: what's the story with the elision in "Ruthven"? I can't seem to find any information about it.
I also got nothing.
Anyone? Anyone? @shimyereh?
My understanding is that to pronounce it “Rivven” is to elide (omit) the “th”. To say it “with greater precision / (without the elision)” is to pronounce all sounds indicated in the spelling.
The consonant cluster /θv/ (θ = voiceless “th”) doesn’t seem to come up much in English. We have words like “truthful” and “wrathful”, but that’s /θf/, both voiceless, which is at least slightly easier to pronounce. It’s easy to imagine the “th” in “Ruthven” getting dropped in casual usage.
The name “Ruthven” seems to come from an anglicized re-spelling of a Scottish clan name. So, it’s adapted from a language with different phonology and different spelling rules. I see some references to a river called Ruithabhainn (“the swift/rushing stream”).
Happy Halloween!
Does Patience share a universe with Ruddigore? Why is a curse something to be do terrified of? Is Grosvenor superstitious? Was Victorian society in general?
Utopia, Ltd has language that strongly suggests that the operas share a continuity - King Paramount talks about corresponding with the Mikado of Japan, and there’s the whole …thing… with Sir Edward Corcoran, KCB.
Conversely, the line “and whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense Pinafore” in the Modern Major General song seems to indicate that the operas exist as fiction with respect to one another…
(One solution is to adopt the @heroofthreefaces approach and say the operas are all are reflected fictional planes of one another, and someone - probably Sir Mervyn Murgatroyd, Bad Baronet of Evil Time Travel - is a fiction plane traveler. The other solution is Whatever is Most Fun at the Time)
(…a third solution that has only just occurred to me is that General Stanley is referring to Pinafore the ship and not Pinafore the opera, because the crew is famously just Like That - see Ralph’s line “I know the value if a kindly chorus.” And maybe Sir Edward knows the Song because he’s also a fan…)
Continuity aside, though, the Victorians were also extremely superstitious. Victorian Spiritualism is a whole thing, that maybe someone better versed in the period than I can say more about.
Thanks for the reminder that I need to see Gondoliers, Utopia, and Grand Duke already! GSCU connected universe coming when?
I love the idea that the HMS Pinafore is famous for having an annoying singing crew- reminds me of Ruddigore’s professional bridesmaids (“They sing choruses in public, and that’s mad enough!)
also… a fiction plane travelling Bad Baronet? Y E S P L E A S E
For more on Sir Mervyn and his Evil Time Travel, talk to @shimyereh and @mrpinniped, as he and the other one whose name I forget are their creations. Reference images may already exist :)
Here is my original post explaining Evil Time Travel! It was part of the backstory I came up with for Sir Mervyn (20th baronet) when I played him in a production of Ruddigore nine years ago. @mrpinniped was in the same production, as Sir Conrad (12th baronet). We decided that both of our Bad Baronet ghost characters had been mad scientists in life, and we had a lot of fun with headcanons about them having used Evil Time Travel to get up to shenanigans together during their baronetcies.
I also have a tag: #bad baronets of ruddigore in the wrong operetta
That is awesome. @shimyereh and @mrpinniped, may I draw a couple of evil time travel comics based on your headcanons? Sir Mervyn has been living rent free in my brain for a couple of days now
@feydruthven ABSOLUTELY. Go for it!
I WOULD LOVE TO SEE SUCH A COMIC!
My profile pic is still my drawing of Sir Conrad from some years ago- he’s got a white lab coat, spikey brown hair, and often carries a chemistry flask. Sir Mervyn wears a blue lab coat, has longer curly hair, and has a pet bat named Antoine. (These were our actual costumes for the show, I can probably dig up a photo if you want a visual reference.)
I have other headcanons about continuity between the operas. Obviously Major Murgatroyd from Patience, on the day he was to marry Angela, was informed that his uncle died, so he had to go take up the Baronetcy. Also the Pirate King is Ruthven’s disinherited son.
Also, going back to the OP, yes, Victorian society definitely had some mysticism fads- we see it most clearly in Ruddigore and Sorcerer, but you’re right that Bunthorne threatening to curse Grosvenor does seem more out of place to a modern audience.
The evil time travel heritage discussion is BACK BITCHES
*strolls casually back in with some character designs*
@shimyereh @mrpinniped thanks for your blessing and input!! I’ve been really busy but I promise I’ll draw an evil time travel comic this month
Does Patience share a universe with Ruddigore? Why is a curse something to be do terrified of? Is Grosvenor superstitious? Was Victorian society in general?
Utopia, Ltd has language that strongly suggests that the operas share a continuity - King Paramount talks about corresponding with the Mikado of Japan, and there's the whole ...thing... with Sir Edward Corcoran, KCB.
Conversely, the line "and whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense Pinafore" in the Modern Major General song seems to indicate that the operas exist as fiction with respect to one another...
(One solution is to adopt the @heroofthreefaces approach and say the operas are all are reflected fictional planes of one another, and someone - probably Sir Mervyn Murgatroyd, Bad Baronet of Evil Time Travel - is a fiction plane traveler. The other solution is Whatever is Most Fun at the Time)
(...a third solution that has only just occurred to me is that General Stanley is referring to Pinafore the ship and not Pinafore the opera, because the crew is famously just Like That - see Ralph's line "I know the value if a kindly chorus." And maybe Sir Edward knows the Song because he's also a fan...)
Continuity aside, though, the Victorians were also extremely superstitious. Victorian Spiritualism is a whole thing, that maybe someone better versed in the period than I can say more about.
Thanks for the reminder that I need to see Gondoliers, Utopia, and Grand Duke already! GSCU connected universe coming when?
I love the idea that the HMS Pinafore is famous for having an annoying singing crew- reminds me of Ruddigore's professional bridesmaids ("They sing choruses in public, and that's mad enough!)
also... a fiction plane travelling Bad Baronet? Y E S P L E A S E
For more on Sir Mervyn and his Evil Time Travel, talk to @shimyereh and @mrpinniped, as he and the other one whose name I forget are their creations. Reference images may already exist :)
Here is my original post explaining Evil Time Travel! It was part of the backstory I came up with for Sir Mervyn (20th baronet) when I played him in a production of Ruddigore nine years ago. @mrpinniped was in the same production, as Sir Conrad (12th baronet). We decided that both of our Bad Baronet ghost characters had been mad scientists in life, and we had a lot of fun with headcanons about them having used Evil Time Travel to get up to shenanigans together during their baronetcies.
I also have a tag: #bad baronets of ruddigore in the wrong operetta
I was recently thinking about how the concept of marking people’s ages by summers is a thing that exists in both English and Russian.
In English, I’m pretty sure I’ve only seen this used poetically. I can immediately think of two examples from Gilbert & Sullivan. In the Act I finale of Ruddigore, Rose enters to: “Hail the Bride of seventeen summers!” In Act I of Pirates, Ruth pleads with Frederic: “Take a maiden tender — her affection raw and green, / At very highest rating, / Has been accumulating / Summers seventeen…” Wiktionary adds that this usage is esp. for younger ages — which checks out with those examples, each emphasizing (or attempting to emphasize) a character’s youth.
In Russian, the word for “year”, год/god, takes the alternate genitive plural лет/let [lit. “summers”, declined from лето] when it’s used for counting numbers of years. So most ages are actually given in summers! I’ve definitely seen years referred to as “summers” in other contexts, too, typically in the plural (лета) and with a somewhat poetic feel. Looking at the etymology, I see Old Church Slavonic лѣто/leto means both “summer” and “year”.
Also, note words like летопись/letopis’ [chronicle, lit. “summer/year” + “write” --> “record of summers, yearly record”]. English has “annals”, which comes from Latin annales libri [books of years], without the double meaning of “summers”. (And then there’s also English “chronicle” and Russian хроника/khronika, which both trace back to Greek χρόνος/khrónos [time].)
Why mark years by summers, in particular? My guess would be it’s something to do with summer as the prime of the year, in a metaphorical framework where spring is new life and winter is death.
For the character asks: Sir Despard Murgatroyd?
Thanks, it’s about time I got some Ruddygore back on this blog!
YES to all of these! You would be an excellent Despard.
I suppose one can handwave an older-looking Despard as having been prematurely aged by his Life of Crime, but I too like to see a Despard who actually reads as the younger brother.
I would *love* to see a production where Despard and Margaret’s visit is very clearly from Motive #2. They’re such a good team, and Margaret would be an amazing Bad Baronetess.
Happy Halloween!
cute things to call your s/o!
spooky AND in-season
[Today in crossovers nobody asked for: an alternate version of the duel scene from Onegin, set to the Matter Patter from Gilbert & Sullivan’s Ruddigore.]
ONEGIN My eyes are fully open to my awful situation: We’ve progressed beyond the point of peaceful reconciliation. What an idiot I’ve been! These were such trivial offenses. If I’d only kept a level head and never lost my senses And approached the situation in a manner more sagacious, Not so quick to seek revenge. The kid’s eighteen, man! Goodness gracious. But as reckoning approaches, these considerations scatter — For when honor’s on the line, there’s little else that seems to matter!
LENSKY and ZARETSKY Honor’s all that seems to matter, matter, matter… etc.
LENSKY My golden days of spring, it seems, have permanently vanished. O idyllic youthful fantasies, now whither are ye banished? Just uncertainty before me, and the past has also perished, And I stare into the gloom and face the loss of all I cherished, My ephemeral existence soon cut short with little warning By a little leaden pellet on this chilly winter morning. Will I die? will I be spared? Although I’d much prefer the latter, I’ll trust Fate to sort it out, so my opinion doesn’t matter!
ONEGIN and ZARETSKY His opinion doesn’t matter, matter, matter… etc.
ZARETSKY If I had been a milder and more lenient sort of fellow (And if I weren’t such a stickler for the sacred Code Duello) I’d have got you both to talk this out and not resort to fighting… But the method duelistic is so terribly exciting! It’s a noble old tradition. Come on, gents, I’ve marked the paces; Kindly stop soliloquizing, for it’s time to take your places, Take your weapons; let’s take care of this. No time for idle chatter! For you know there is no other way to settle such a matter.
ONEGIN and LENSKY One must settle such a matter, matter, matter… etc.
ALL Yes, indeed, we must take care of this. No time for idle chatter! For we know there is no other way to settle such a matter.
Tagged by @vera-dauriac to share favorite opera duets/trios/etc. I decided to go with Gilbert and Sullivan this time, because there are so many delightful small ensemble pieces in the G&S canon! Here are 5 duets and 5 trios. Tagging anyone who sees this and wants to do the meme!
DUETS “If the light of love’s lingering ember…” [The Grand Duke] (text) “Prithee, pretty maiden…” [Patience] (text) “You understand?” “I think I do…” [Ruddigore] (text) “I once was a very abandoned person…” [Ruddigore] (text) “Welcome joy, adieu to sadness!…” [The Sorcerer] (text)
TRIOS “Never mind the why and wherefore…” [HMS Pinafore] (text) “If you go in…” [Iolanthe] (text) “When you had left our pirate fold…” [The Pirates of Penzance] (text) “My eyes are fully open to my awful situation…” [Ruddigore] (text) “How say you, maiden, will you wed…” [The Yeomen of the Guard] (text)
I recently came across the French word poltron, and *immediately* knew it meant “coward”. (See: English poltroon, one of the many things Sir Ruthven’s ancestors shout at him in the Ruddigore ghost scene. Thank you, W. S. Gilbert.)
