The Story Of Iolanthe

Our Cast:
The Lord Chancellor
Earl of Mountararat
Earl Tolloller
Private Willis (Of the Grenadier Guards)
Strephon (An Arcadian Shepherd)
Queen of the Fairies
Iolanthe (A Fairy, Strephon’s Mother)

Fairies:
Celia
Leila
Fleta

Phyllis (an Arcadian Shepherdess and Ward of Chancery)

Chorus of Dukes, Marquises, Earls, Viscounts, Barons, and Fairies.

Twenty-five years before our tale takes place, Iolanthe, a fairy, committed the capital crime of marrying a mortal, for which she must die.
The Queen of the Fairies commuted her death sentence to banishment for life on condition that Iolanthe must leave her husband without explanation and never see him again. Many months after leaving her husband, she has a son, Strephon that her husband has never known about.

Meanwhile, Iolanthe's son has grown up as a shepherd, half fairy, half mortal. Strephon loves Phyllis, a shepherdess who is also a Ward in Chancery;
she returns his love, and knows nothing of his mixed origin.
At the beginning of the Operetta, the Queen is prevailed upon by other fairies to recall Iolanthe from exile. Strephon joins the glad reunion and announces his intention of marrying Phyllis in spite of the Lord Chancellor, her guardian, who refuses permission. The Queen approves, and plans to influence certain boroughs to elect Strephon to Parliament.
Meanwhile the entire House of Lords is enamored of Phyllis; they appeal in a body to the Lord Chancellor to give her in marriage to whichever peer she may select. The Lord Chancellor is also suffering the pangs of love for her, but feels he has no legal right to assign her to himself.

Phyllis declines to marry a peer; Strephon pleads his cause in court again, but in vain. Iolanthe enters and comforts her son. Since she, like all fairies, looks like a girl of seventeen, Phyllis and the peers misinterpret the situation; they ridicule Strephon's claim that Iolanthe is his mother. Phyllis declares now that she will marry either Lord Mountararat or Lord Tolloller.
At Strephon's request, the Fairies take revenge by not merely sending Strephon to Parliament, but also influencing both Houses to pass any bills he may introduce. His innovations culminate in a bill to throw the peerage open to competitive examination. The Peers, seeing their doom approaching, appeal to the Fairies to desist. The Fairies have fallen in love with the Peers and would like to oblige, but it is too late to stop Strephon. The Queen reproaches her subjects for their feminine weakness; she acknowledges her own weakness for a sentry, Private Willis, but asserts that she has it under control.
Lord Mountararat and Lord Tolloller discover that if either marries Phyllis, family tradition will require the loser to kill his successful rival; both therefore renounce Phyllis in the name of friendship. The Lord Chancellor, after considerable struggle, pleads his own cause before himself and convinces himself that the law will allow him to marry Phyllis.

Meanwhile Strephon makes Phyllis understand that his mother is a fairy, and they are reconciled. They persuade Iolanthe to appeal to the Lord Chancellor. To make the appeal effective, she reveals her identity to him — her husband — and thus again incurs the death penalty. The other Fairies, however, have married the Other Peers, and announce to the Queen that they all have incurred the same sentence.

The Lord Chancellor suggests the legal expedient of inserting a single word into the Fairy Law, to make the law read that every fairy who does NOT marry a mortal shall die. The Queen corrects the scroll, and asks Private Willis to save her life by marrying her. All the mortals present are then transformed into fairies and fly away with their consorts to Fairyland, leaving the House of Lords to be replenished according to intelligence rather than birth .

All Performances held at the Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall,

Carnegie, Pa.

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