Creatures of Impulse - Songs

Songs

The number of songs varied from production to production. The version submitted to the Lord Chamberlain had six songs, and an early review in The Times wrote that it was "overweighted with a quantity of extremely undramatic music", though the London Echo thought the music was "pretty". Nonetheless, the version printed in Gilbert's Original Plays (1911) cut these six songs to three, and some productions omitted the songs entirely.

The list of songs in the licence copy is:

  1. "Did you ever know a lady so particularly shady" – Jacques and villagers
  2. "Some people love Spring" – Boomblehardt
  3. "At home at last all danger past" – Sergeant Klooque
  4. "A soldier in the King's Hussars" – Sergeant Klooque, Pipette, and Peter
  5. "With furious blow" – Peter, Pipette, Sergeant Klooque, and Martha
  6. "Finale: Go away, ma'am, go away, ma'am" – ensemble

While the lyrics survive, none of the music was ever published, and it has been lost. The version in Original Plays omits the second verse of Nos. 1 and 6 and cuts Nos. 2, 3, and 5.

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