Cultural Impact
The Sorcerer has made its way into popular culture. Isaac Asimov wrote a short story, "The Up-To-Date Sorcerer", an homage to the opera consisting largely of a series of puns on phrases from it. Charlotte MacLeod's 1985 mystery novel, The Plain Old Man concerns an amateur production of the opera. A series of four Tom Holt books, The Portable Door, In Your Dreams, Earth, Air, Fire, and Custard and You Don't Have to Be Evil to Work Here, But It Helps, are based around "J. W. Wells & Co", a company of sorcerers well known for their love philtre. In Meet Mr Mulliner by P. G. Wodehouse, the title hero sings a fragment from Dr. Daly's ballad and characterises his nephew as "the sort of young curate who seems to have been so common in the 'eighties, or whenever it was that Gilbert wrote "The Sorcerer." It has also been referenced in popular TV series, such as in the Family Guy episode "Patriot Games", where characters sing the song "If you'll marry me" from Act II.
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