Gilbert Heart and Soul. G. K. Chesterton said somewhere that the conventional wisdom about the romantic illusions of youth which are shattered as we grow older was exactly the opposite of the truth. In fact it is the young who sneer at romance, and it is only as they grow older that they discover, much to their surprise, that romance is not a sham and a con-trick, but a real, living thing. But I can say it applies to my case. When I was a lad, nothing amused me more than to think that love was a construct to account for our insatiable desire to reproduce ourselves.
Boys can be very morbid.
However, I've recently started to change my mind on this. As to the reason why I should be doing so, that's none of your business, but I suppose you can take a reasonable guess. I used to think the Gilbert and Sullivan operas were overwhelmingly intellectual satires, from which operetta sentimentality was, thankfully, almost entirely absent. Jack Point's tragedy is obvious enough, but make no mistake, there is no false sentimentality here - it is true from start to finish. He has become too much of the professional fool, and his comic manner prevents him from expressing his feelings as he should.