History Trivia / ThePiratesOfPenzance

* TropeNamer:
** GoYeHeroesGoAndDie
** MajorGeneralSong
** ModernMajorGeneral
** TalkAboutTheWeather
** WithCatlikeTread

* AccentDepundent: An OverlyLongGag in the first act depends on people confusing the words "orphan" and "often." The pun only really works in a ''very'' posh British accent, and even then it's a bit of a stretch.
* AffectionateParody: Style parodies are littered throughout the musical score. Some notable examples:
** ''Poor Wand'ring One'' is a parody of every waltz aria by Charles Gounod, and Mabel's cadenza at the end is almost exactly the same as the one in "Sempre libera" from Giuseppe Verdi's ''Theatre/LaTraviata''.
** The chorus of ''WithCatlikeTread'' parodies the Anvil Chorus from ''Il trovatore'', also by Verdi.
** ''Sighing softly to the river'' parodies art songs of Franz Schubert.

* GeniusBonus: The MajorGeneralSong is loaded with them:
** The original song, on top of identifying him as a poor Major General also includes a great deal of meaningless accomplishments:
*** "Sing the croaking chorus from ''The Frogs'' of Aristophanes." The entire chorus is "ribbit". (Or, in the original Greek, ''Βρεκεκεκὲξ κοὰξ κοάξ''. Which is, naturally, Greek for "ribbit".)
*** "quote the fights historical from Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical" -- He has only read about them in [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifteen_Decisive_Battles_of_the_World The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: from Marathon to Waterloo ]] but can't even remember the timeline. And as a cherry on top, all the battles in the book except one are land battles.
*** "can tell undoubted Raphaels from Gerard Dows and Zoffanies" -- Raphael painted religious iconography heavy with symbolism while Dow and Zoffany painted photorealistc scenes from life. The difference is unmistakable.
*** "I can quote in elegiacs all the crimes of Heliogabalus" is well and good, but elegiacs (couplets consisting of one line of poetry in dactylic hexameter followed by a line in dactylic pentameter) celebrating the story of one of the most notoriously depraved Roman emperors, besides not having any military application, could probably not even have been published in the Victorian age.
*** "tell you every detail of Caractacus’s uniform" -- The only depiction of Caractacus shows him in the nude. Also, Caractacus was a Gallic chieftain who lived around the birth of Christ, and would never have worn a uniform anything. Further, since Caractacus was believed to have been mythologized as the "Sir Caradoc" the Major General has already mentioned, he is more or less simply repeating one accomplishment in another form.
*** "I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical." Even at this time, anyone with a university education would have been given a taste of algebra. A military officer would have done significantly more as part of their education in ballistics.
*** "In conics I can show peculiarities parabolous." Again, parabolas are a significant part of ballistics, and some of the associated maths should be common knowledge to any officer.
*** "I know the Kings of England." And so did every twelve-year-old who went to school. Memorizing the line of regents was a common part of middle-school history.
** As well as some which are outright impossible:
*** "I can write a washing bill in Babylonic Cuneiform": Cuneiform was at the time understood to be a form of writing, but nothing else was known about it.
*** "And I can hum a fugue of which I've heard the music's din a-fore": Fugues are per definition polyphonic, i.e. have more than one melody running at the same time. Tuvan throat singers can accomplish something to this effect by singing one tune and humming another, but good luck humming two tunes at once.
*** "About binomial theorem I’m teeming with a lot o’ news" -- No real advances had been made in the area since Newton generalized it more than 200 years before, hence there were no "news" for him to teem with. Unless he had only just heard of Newton... which is more likely than it should be.

*** "tell you every detail of Caractacus’s uniform" -- The only depiction of Caractacus shows him in the nude. Also, Caractacus was a Gallic chieftain who lived around the birth of Christ, and would never have worn a uniform anything.
*** "I can quote in elegiacs all the crimes of Heliogabalus" is well and good, but an elegy is very specifically a poem of ''praise''. Someone has misunderstood something here, but exactly what is somewhat unclear...

** ''Poor Wand'ring One'' is a parody of every waltz aria by Charles Gounod.
** The chorus of ''WithCatlikeTread'' parodies the Anvil Chorus from ''Il trovatore'' by Giuseppe Verdi.

*** "can tell at sight a [[http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/gewehr71.jpg Mauser rifle]] from a [[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Bregje_crolla_Europacup_2007.jpg javelin]]." Pretty sure anybody could do that.