Tragedy ages better than comedy. Shakespeare’s sober soliloquys continue to soar, while his jokes—no doubt riotous in Elizabethan London—fail to land. Woe keeps, like whiskey; humor skunks, like beer. How did Morrissey put it? That joke isn’t funny anymore. (Morrissey also isn’t funny anymore, but that’s neither here nor there.)
This may be because the best comedy pushes the boundaries, and the boundaries in 2023 are well beyond what they were in 1593. It may be because comedy evolves while tragedy is static. How many gut-busting jokes from the early 20th century are not funny as much as mean-spirited? How many comedies can we no longer watch without being conscious of the latent misogyny, homophobia, or racism in the humor? (Looking at you, Breakfast at Tiffany’s.) How much material from current comics and podcasters enjoyed by MAGA-minded dudes relies on these things, or laments the evolution of empathy, and rages against “cancel culture?”
An exception is the work of Gilbert and Sullivan, especially Pirates of Penzance—my favorite thing of all time ever. I love it more than any movie, any TV show, any album: anything. The comic opera was written, somehow, in 1879, and yet remains funny. Although W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan were British, this particular work was written and first performed in New York. (Their popular previous effort, H.M.S. Pinafore, was often performed illegally, using pirated copies of the music and lyrics and thus denying them royalty money, so they had pirates on the brain.) The cleverness and absurdity and brilliance of Pirates continues to blow my mind, almost 40 years after my first exposure to it: playing viola in the pit during a fantastic summer production just before freshman year of high school. (Senior year, when my high school again put on the show, I played the Major-General. It is delightful, I assure you, to spend the entire second act in a fancy bathrobe.)
“Oh, better far to live and die” is better known as the Pirate King’s Song. It occurs early in the first act, introducing the compelling and scene-stealing eponymous character, and like all great comedy, it’s short and sweet:
Oh, better far to live and die
Under the brave black flag I fly,
Than play a sanctimonious part,
With a pirate head and a pirate heart.
Away to the cheating world go you,
Where pirates all are well-to-do;
But I’ll be true to the song I sing,
And live and die a Pirate King.
For I am a Pirate King!
And it is, it is a glorious thing
To be a Pirate King!
For I am a Pirate King!
(You are! Hurrah for our Pirate King!)
And it is, it is a glorious thing
To be a Pirate King.
(It is! Hurrah for our Pirate King!
Hurrah for the Pirate King!)
When I sally forth to seek my prey,
I help myself in a royal way.
I sink a few more ships, it’s true,
Than a well-bred monarch ought to do;
But many a king on a first-class throne,
If he wants to call his crown his own,
Must manage somehow to get through
More dirty work than ever I do.
For I am a Pirate King!
And it is, it is a glorious thing
To be a Pirate King!
For I am a Pirate King!
(You are! Hurrah for our Pirate King!)
And it is, it is a glorious thing
To be a Pirate King.
(It is! Hurrah for our Pirate King!
Hurrah for the Pirate King!)
The genius lies in how Gilbert, the lyricist, quickly and ruthlessly points out the hypocrisy, skewering the moneyed class. In the civilized world, he correctly notes, “pirates all are well-to-do.” This characterization does not restrict itself to sea-based brigands. Any rich, powerful, greedy bastard (including those who possess very nice boxes at the opera house where the show was performed) fits the bill. But it is historical fact that in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries, actual pirates were made respectable by society. They had a different name: privateers. But they were bona fide pirates, sanctioned by the Crown.
Say what you will about the Pirate King; at least he doesn’t pretend to be something he’s not, unlike some people we might mention. In that way, the King of the Pirates is more honest than any member of polite society—and, for all his buccaneering, does less harm, in the big picture, than any legit monarch.
The music is rollicking and fun, and I love the ironically dumb rhyme of king and thing in the chorus—this from the wordsmith who rhymes “a lot o’ news” with “hypotenuse” later in the show. This is my favorite recording:
It feels almost disrespectful, after such a bleak week, to write about comedy. But the ability to laugh, to find and savor the humor in the day-to-day of life, is essential to our humanity. As the playwright George Bernard Shaw once remarked, “Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.”
Comedy helps us process sadness. Laughter is—it is!—a glorious thing.
ICYMI
On The Five 8 this week, we broke down the Hamas attacks and the situation in Israel from several different angles, including the spiritual. Our guests were the retired Rev. Jeff Black and his wife, Barbara—LB’s lovely parents—who shared with us their wisdom and taught us how to safeguard our spirit.
On the subject of comedy, we made this Five 8 karaoke, which was inspired by this story in the New York Times:
Recording the song and playing it over and over helped keep me grounded this week. (And yes, that is a much younger Yours Truly in the photo, channeling my inner Caesar Augustus.)
Photo credit: GS Archive. Image of Henry Lytton as the Pirate King denouncing the Major General (C. H. Workman) in The Pirates of Penzance, 1909.
I played Edith in my high school's production of Pirates and I still love the play. I agree that the humor is timeless.
"To whom, Lady Astor, referred to as 'That b!@#$.' A NYC publication, early 2000s." Media