Editing Iolanthe (section)

== Synopsis ==
'''Act I'''

The beloved fairy Iolanthe, who arranged the fairies' songs and dances, committed the capital crime (under fairy law) of marrying a mortal man. The Queen of the fairies commuted Iolanthe's sentence of death to banishment for life on the condition that she left her husband and never communicated with him again. After the passage of 25 years, the fairies, still missing Iolanthe deeply, plead with their Queen to pardon Iolanthe and to restore her place in fairyland ("Tripping hither, tripping thither").

[[File:Jessie Bond as Iolanthe in 1882.jpg|thumb|left|[[Jessie Bond]] as Iolanthe]]
Summoned by the Fairy Queen ("Iolanthe! From thy dark exile thou art summoned"), Iolanthe rises from the frog-infested stream that has been her home in exile. The Queen, unable to bear punishing her any longer, pardons Iolanthe, who is warmly greeted by the other fairies. Iolanthe tells her sisters that she has a son, Strephon, noting that he's a fairy down to the waist, but his legs are mortal. The fairies laugh that Iolanthe appears too young to have a grown son, as one of the advantages of a fairy's immortality is that they never grow old. Strephon, a handsome Arcadian shepherd, arrives and meets his aunts ("Good-morrow, good mother"). He tells Iolanthe of his love for the [[Lord Chancellor]]'s [[Ward (law)|ward of court]], the beautiful Phyllis, who does not know of Strephon's mixed origin. Strephon is despondent, however, as the Lord Chancellor has forbidden them to marry, partly because he feels that a shepherd is unsuitable for Phyllis, but partly because the Lord Chancellor wishes to marry Phyllis himself. In fact, so do half the members of Britain's [[House of Lords]]. The Fairy Queen promises her assistance ("Fare thee well, attractive stranger"). Soon Phyllis arrives, and she and Strephon share a moment of tenderness as they plan their future and possible elopement ("Good-morrow, good lover"; "None shall part us from each other").

A cadre of the [[peerage|peer]]s of the realm arrive in noisy splendour ("Loudly let the trumpet bray") with the Lord Chancellor ("The law is the true embodiment"). They are all smitten with Phyllis, and they have appealed to the Lord Chancellor to decide who will have her hand. The Lord Chancellor hesitates to act upon his own regard for Phyllis due to his position as her guardian. The Lords send for Phyllis to choose one of their number, but she will not marry any of them, as virtue is found only in a "lowly" cottage ("My well-loved Lord" and "Nay, tempt me not"). The peers beg her not to scorn them simply because of their "[[Nobility|blue blood]]" ("Spurn not the nobly born" and "My lords, it may not be"). Strephon approaches the Lord Chancellor, pleading that Nature bids him marry Phyllis. But the Lord Chancellor wryly notes that Strephon has not presented sufficient [[rules of evidence|evidence]] that Nature has interested herself in the matter. He refuses his consent to the marriage between Strephon and Phyllis ("When I went to the Bar").

Disappointed, Strephon calls on Iolanthe for help. She appears and promises to support her son. Spying on the two, the peers &ndash; led by the brainless and stuffy Earls Tolloller and Mountararat &ndash; together with Phyllis, see Iolanthe and Strephon in a warm embrace. All three jump to the obvious conclusion, since the centuries-old Iolanthe appears to be a girl of seventeen ("When darkly looms the day"). The peers scoff at the seemingly absurd claim that Iolanthe is Strephon's mother as Strephon pleads: "She is, has been, my mother from my birth!" Phyllis angrily rejects Strephon for his supposed infidelity and declares that she will marry either Lord Tolloller or Lord Mountararat ("...and I don't care which!"). Strephon then calls for help from the fairies, who appear but are mistaken by the peers for a girls' school on an outing. Offended, the Fairy Queen pronounces a magical "sentence" upon the peers: Strephon shall not only become a [[member of parliament]] but will also have the power to pass any bill he proposes ("With Strephon for your foe, no doubt").

'''Act II'''

Private Willis, on night guard duty, marches outside the [[Palace of Westminster]] and muses on political life ("When all night long a chap remains"). The fairies arrive and tease the peers about Strephon's parliamentary success; he is advancing a bill to open the peerage to competitive examination ("Strephon's a member of Parliament"). The peers ask the fairies to stop Strephon's mischief, stating that the House of Peers is not susceptible of any improvement ("When Britain really ruled the waves"). Although the fairies say that they cannot stop Strephon, they have become strongly attracted to the peers ("In vain to us you plead"). The fairy Queen is dismayed by this. Pointing to Private Willis of the First [[Grenadier Guards]], who is still on duty, the Queen claims that she is able to subdue her response to the effects of his manly beauty ("Oh, foolish fay").

[[File:Iolanthe Group.jpg|left|frame|"In friendship's name!"]]
Phyllis cannot decide whether she ought to marry Tolloller or Mountararat, and so she leaves the choice up to them. Tolloller tells Mountararat that his family's tradition would require the two Earls to duel to the death if the latter were to claim Phyllis. The two decide that their friendship is more important than love and renounce their claims to her ("Though p'r'aps I may incur thy blame"). The Lord Chancellor arrives dressed for bed and describes a nightmare caused by his unrequited love for Phyllis ("Love, unrequited, robs me of my rest").<ref>The Lord Chancellor says that "Love, nightmare-like, lies heavy on my chest." A well-known painting exhibited in London, "[[The Nightmare]]", had influenced several writers including [[Mary Shelley]] and [[Edgar Allan Poe]] (see Ward, Maryanne C. (Winter, 2000). "A Painting of the Unspeakable: Henry Fuseli's ''The Nightmare'' and the Creation of Mary Shelley's ''Frankenstein''". ''The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association'' 33 (1): 20–31) and had been described in a short poem by [[Erasmus Darwin]], "Night-Mare", which included the lines, "The Fiend.../ Seeks some love-wilder'd maid with sleep oppress'd,/ Alights, and grinning sits upon her breast". See Moffitt, John F. "A Pictorial Counterpart to 'Gothick' Literature: Fuseli's ''The Nightmare''", ''Mosaic'', vol. 35, issue 1 (2002), University of Manitoba</ref> The two peers try to cheer him up and urge him to make another effort to persuade himself to award Phyllis to ... himself ("If you go in you're sure to win").

Strephon now leads both parties in [[Parliament of the United Kingdom|Parliament]], but he is miserable at losing Phyllis. He sees Phyllis and reveals to her that his mother is a fairy, which accounts for her apparent youth ("If we're weak enough to tarry"). Phyllis and Strephon ask Iolanthe to plead with the Lord Chancellor to allow their marriage, for "none can resist your fairy eloquence." This is impossible, she replies, for the Lord Chancellor is her husband. He believes Iolanthe to have died childless, and she is bound not to "undeceive" him, under penalty of death. However, to save Strephon from losing his love, Iolanthe resolves to present his case to the Lord Chancellor while veiled ("My lord, a suppliant at your feet").

Although the Lord Chancellor is moved by her appeal, which evokes the memory of his wife, he declares that he himself will marry Phyllis. Desperate, Iolanthe unveils, ignoring the warnings of the unseen Fairies, revealing that she is his long-lost wife, and Strephon is his son. The Lord Chancellor is amazed to see her alive, but Iolanthe has again broken fairy law, and the Fairy Queen is now left with no choice but to punish Iolanthe with death ("It may not be ... Once again thy vow is broken"). As she prepares to execute Iolanthe, the Queen learns that the rest of the fairies have chosen husbands from among the peers, thus also incurring death sentences &ndash; but the Queen blanches at the prospect of slaughtering all of them. The Lord Chancellor suggests a solution: change the law by inserting a single word: "every fairy shall die who {{em|doesn't}} marry a mortal." The Fairy Queen cheerfully agrees and, to save her life, the dutiful soldier, Private Willis, agrees to marry her. Seeing no reason to stay in the mortal realm if peers are to be recruited "from persons of intelligence", the peers join the fairy ranks and "away [they] go to fairyland" ("Soon as we may, off and away").