SLPAD - 78

[Michael Bailey]

Creole isn’t in Buttercup’s immediate circle of concern, Levine discovers.
He responds by asking her to say “out” & she says “oot.”

Maybe an example of that “tin ear” mentioned in the preface.

Isn’t a southern “out” more of an “aout?”




Reality recapitulates fiction to a degree - Buttercup has a “Swamp Wench”
hideout with a mattress.


Trying to remember anything about the Gilbert & Sullivan Buttercup. Had to
look it up.

She was a midwife…who mixed up the babies…

Sir Joseph wants to marry Captain Corcoran’s daughter Josephine.

Josephine wants to marry Ralph, a lowly sailor.

Buttercup reveals the accidental switcheroo.

So Ralph becomes Captain Ralph.

And Corcoran becomes a mere tar.

As Corcoran’s tar-daughter, Josephine is now ineligible for the honor of
becoming Mrs Sir Joseph.

Sir Joseph perpetuates aristocratic inbreeding by instead marrying his
cousin Hebe.

Josephine now meets no objections to marrying Captain Ralph.

And Corcoran, who has had a thing for Buttercup all along, is now free to
marry her.


Wow, a lot of marrying! Such a lot of social class and accidents of birth!


By choosing that character, partially assuming that role - apposite to
handing out sandwiches and coffee to the guys, like Little Buttercup vends
to the sailors - she’s tentatively inviting Levine into the Pinafore
Universe…another type of dude would play along with that.

One might say she’s pretending to more nous than she really has. Like, in
the Pinafore Universe, Buttercup is a career woman with enough of a past to
have been midwife to the recipient of her attentions, enough allure to
abnegate the age difference, and enough credibility that all & sundry
believe her correction of the historical record in life-affecting ways.

That’s a lot for a co-ed to take on.

Maybe that’s why she’s unsurprised by Levine waving all that aside,
“knowing a better game*” and she’s prepared with her “and how do you like
plowing?” quip.

(Something like this prefigures Benny Profane and Rachel Owlglass, but it
has a certain charm of its own, imho)


* like getting under her actual pinafore.