A Satire on Female Education in Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera Princess Ida (1884)

Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera Princess Ida or Castle Adamant (1884) develops the themes of Lord Tennyson’s narrative poem The Princess: A Medley of 1847, using the central image of an all-female university as a pretext to pour mockery on feminist ideas. There is, however, another way of reading Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta – as a comical commentary on the generation gap rather than gender issues, with the young protagonists striving to overcome the influence of their aggressive and warlike parents.