Foggerty's Fairy
Channel: the aleatoric learning channel
Date: 2021-12-15

Foggerty's Fairy, subtitled "An Entirely Original Fairy Farce", is a three-act farce by W.S. Gilbert based loosely on Gilbert's short story, "The Story of a Twelfth Cake", which was published in the Christmas Number of The Graphic in 1874, and elements of other Gilbert plays. Gilbert wrote Foggerty's Fairy for British actor Edward Sothern, who had commissioned two earlier plays from Gilbert, Dan'l Druce, Blacksmith and The Ne'er-do-weel. The same issue of The Era states that definite plans had been made for Sothern to appear at the Gaiety Theatre, London in Foggerty's Fairy, as the new play was now called, in October 1880, after the end of his American tour. Sothern came to England for a six-week holiday in June 1880, still planning to produce Foggerty's Fairy in New York. Gilbert slightly modified the story and renamed it Foggerty's Fairy when he republished it in his 1890 collection of stories and essays, Foggerty's Fairy and Other Tales. The Ko-Ko, Nanki-Poo and Yum-Yum exchange from The Mikado, about lovers being too affectionate in front of another man who loves the woman, is used in the first act of Foggerty's Fairy. Foggerty's Fairy still receives occasional amateur productions and rare professional ones. Foggerty has not told Jenny that he has another fiancée in Melbourne, Delia Spiff, a rich old woman who is a distant relative of Jenny's. Foggerty is afraid that Spiff will ruin his marriage, but a fairy guardian named Rebecca arrives and offers help. Fairy Rebecca awakens Foggerty, and he finds himself in a different drawing room. Jenny's father has called the doctors to report that Foggerty has gone mad. He instructs Walkinshaw to keep him there until he can be hauled off to the asylum, but Walkinshaw hides from Malvina. For the hand of pretty Jennie Talbot, the sentimental daughter of a wholesale cheesemonger, there have been two rivals, Foggerty and Walkinshaw.... The... business-like air of the fairy, the incredulity of Foggerty, and the means by which a charm is made to work through a pill and a draught - all these combine to render this unique scene irresistibly ludicrous.