Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion / Theatre

Subverted Rhymes in theatre.

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Creators:

• A Stanley Holloway monologue has this line:
  And was George afraid? Yes, he was and he run,
  And he hid there in one of the ditches,
  While the Dragon, the pig, ate his ferrets and pup,
  Aye, best of his prize-winning er - she dogs.
• Daniel Rabinovitch, from Les Luthiers, does this in "Vote A Ortega".
  ¡Ortega, amigo, el pueblo está con usted!^note Ortega, friend, the people are with you. The joke here is that in Spanish there are two ways to say "With you": "Contigo" and "Con usted" (more formal).

Works:

• Variation from the musical Altar Boyz: The song is about waiting until marriage to have sex. The line rhymes, but it's still not the word that the audience might be expecting:
  So 'till then, I'll have to master...my own fate.

In another example, in the song, Epiphany, Mark sings a pride song about Catholicism, after making the audience believe that he is gay

But you won't truly be you until you can say...I...am...a Catholic.

• In a reversal of this trope's conventional use, "Feelings", from the Bock and Harnick musical The Apple Tree: after Eve sings at some length about how nervous and dreamy she gets around Adam, she concludes with:
  Is there a source for this congestion
  That I must learn to rise above?
  Is there a name for this condition?
  Yes, there's a name, and it is hell!
• The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged) has this rhyme:
  I'm Salomé, that is my name
  I am an evil lass
  Boys love the way I dance all night
  They always grab my mule.
• It's not exactly a rhyme, since it's just the same word over and over again, but from The Book of Mormon:
  "Here's the butcher! He has AIDS! Here's the teacher! She has AIDS! Here's the doctor! He has AIDS! Here's my daughter! She has Aaaaaaaa wonderful disposition..."
• "Fie on Goodness" in the musical Camelot contains the following lines:
  Ah, my heart is still in Scotland
  Where the lasses woo the best
  On some bonny hill in Scotland
  Stroking someone's bonny...
  
  Fie on Scotland, fie!
  Fie on Scotland, fie!
• Although it's not used for comedic effect, Company features one in Poor Baby:
  There's no one
  In his life,
  Robert ought to have a woman...
  • There's another one that is used for comic effect at the end of "Barcelona", the morning after Bobby and April have slept together and she is getting ready to leave to be on a flight to Barcelona. Bobby makes the usual false pleas that she stay, clearly wanting nothing more than to go back to sleep, leading to this exchange:
    April: That's not to say
    That if I had my way...
    Oh, well...I guess...okay!
    Bobby: What?
    April: I'll stay!
    Bobby: But...oh God!
• Used in the "Othello Rap" from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged):
  Now Othello loved Desi like Adonis loved Venus.
  And Desi loved Othello
  'Cuz he had a big...SWORD!
  • Even before that, they've already pulled a similar trick:
  Their fate pursues them, they can't seem to duck it,
  (pause) And then in Act 5, they both kick the bucket.
• Curtains
  • Near the end of the song "It's a Business", after using several inappropriate words without qualms:
    Carmen: Yes, green's my favorite color,
    And I don't mean on the grass
    It's a business.
    And the shows I do do business,
    And I'm good at doin' business,
    And if you don't like my business, sweetie,
    Blow it out your...
    Guys: Business!
  • Played with in the song "Thataway". The script offers this line to alternate with the original or be used in its place for younger productions.
    Cowboys: What's that music?
    What's that dance?
    What's that stirring?
    It's romance!
    • The original line?
      Cowboys: What's that stirring?
      In my pants?
• "When the Idle Poor Become the Idle Rich" from Finian's Rainbow:
  And when all your neighbors are upper class
  You won't know your Joneses from your Astors.
  ...
  When we're in the dough and off of the nut,
  You won't know your banker from your butler.
• In Funny Girl, "Rat-Tat-Tat-Tat" has Fanny Brice sing as "Private Schvartz from Rockaway" (whose vocabulary has just been shown to include "bagels" and "tzimmis"):
  I'm through and through
  Red, white and bluish—
  I talk this way
  Because I'm British! (Cue 4 bars of "Rule Britannia")
• From a sanitized version of "Beauty School Dropout" in a junior high production of Grease:
  Well, they couldn't teach you anything; you think you're such a looker,
  But no customer would go to you unless she was a...fool!
• Used by Shakespeare himself in Hamlet:
  Hamlet: (singing) For thou dost know, O Damon dear,
  This realm dismantled was
  Of Jove himself; and now reigns here
  A very, very—pajock.
  • "Pajock" was a synonym for "peacock", and "was" would have been pronounced to approximately rhyme with "ass". Immediately Lampshaded by Horatio:
    Horatio: You might have rhymed.
• The song "Random Black Girl" from Homemade Fusion by Kooman and Dimond:
  The designers can't light me
  Director don't know my name
  And the makeup artists think
  We all wear the same shade
  And Mr. Stage Manager thinks I got too much sass
  And the costumer don't know what to do with my big old...black...head, oh!
• In another bit of Sondheim's cleverness, in "Maybe They're Magic" from Into the Woods the word "bean" is telegraphed:
  Baker's Wife: There are rights and wrongs and in-betweens,
  No one waits when fortune intervenes.
  And maybe they're really magic,
  Who knows?
  • Until it becomes the last line of the song:
    Baker's Wife: Only three more tries,
    And we'll have our prize,
    When the end's in sight you'll realize,
    If the end is right,
    It justifies the beans!
• In The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan, Katisha is trying to reveal to the chorus that Nanki-Poo is the son of the Mikado, but she keeps getting interrupted: "No minstrel he, despite bravado! He is the son of..."; "I'll spoil your gay gambado! He is the son of..."; and so on. Fortunately for Nanki-Poo, the chorus is Genre Blind enough that they don't realize that the word that keeps getting cut off must be "Mikado".
• In the musical My Fair Lady, Eliza causes pandemonium at the Ascot races by shouting, "Come on, Dover! Move your bloomin' arse!" Shortly afterwards, Freddie is about to rhyme "farce" by repeating her words when Mrs. Pearce interrupts him.
  • Later, Eliza sings in "Without You":
    You, dear friend, who talk so well,
    You can go to
    Hertford, Hereford, and Hampshire.
  • Higgins' "Why Can't the English" has a very subtle one:
    In France, every Frenchman
    Knows his language from A to Zed
    (The French don't care what they do actually
    As long as they do it in bed pronounce it properly.)
• "They Couldn't Compare To You" from Out Of This World:
  Mercury: There was Mélisande,
  A platinum blonde
  (How I loved to ruffle her locks).
  There was bright Aurora,
  Then Pandora,
  Who let me open her—
  Chorus Girls (not half a beat too late): They couldn't compare to us!
• In The Pirates of Penzance, Major-General Stanley will often be called on to do a high-speed encore of the final verse of "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General". Having had to do a Painful Rhyme the first time around, this time the Major-General goes with this:
  When I have learned what progress has been made in modern gunnery,
  When I know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery,
  In short, when I've a smattering of elemental strategy,
  You'll say a better Major-General has never rode a horse!
• From the play Saturday's Children by Maxwell Anderson:
  Florrie: It's vain of its face
  It's vain of its figger
  It's just fat enough
  But it mustn't get - larger
  Willy: Rhyme it you dancing fool, rhyme it!
  Florrie: Um - it never uses bad words.
• In Six: The Musical, during the opening number "Ex-Wives" we have:
  Anne of Cleves: Ich bin Anne of Cleves (Ja!)
  When he saw my portrait he was like (Ja!)
  But I didn't look as good as I did in my pic.
  Funny how they all discuss that but never Henry's little...
  Catherine Howard: PRICK up your ears I'm the Catherine who lost her head!
• A Strange Loop: The Thoughts (the Greek Chorus) tell Usher (the aspiring playwright) that white theater critics aren't going to like his show, and sing, "Watch them write you off as lazy/Not to mention navel-gazey/Lacking both in craft and rigor/'Cause you're just a fucking nig—", and then the song goes back to the chorus with "Big, Black and queer-ass American Broadway show!"
• The subversion still rhymes (of course it rhymes, it's Sondheim) but Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street teeters over the edge of profanity in Mrs. Lovett's song "The Worst Pies In London":
  Mrs. Lovett: Is that just revolting,
  All greasy and gritty?
  It looks like it's moulting,
  And tastes like...
  Well, pity
  A woman alone...
  • At the very end of the show, Todd and Mrs. Lovett are singing a reprise of "A Little Priest": "Life is for the alive, my dear, / So let's keep living it, really living it—" and then Todd flings her into the oven, making the implied, but never sung, last line "in here!"
• In The Unsinkable Molly Brown, the last rhyming word in every chorus of "Belly Up To The Bar, Boys" except the last is conveniently interrupted in "Miss Susie" fashion, e.g.
  Belly up,
  Belly up to the bar, boys,
  Better have a few more.
  Never whirl with a three-toed girl
  Or a discontented wh—
  Horrible example, like the girl whose name was Carrie...
• An example in the musical of The Wedding Singer:
  Julia: So you're back where you started,
  On your way to success.
  So
  Will you sing at my wedding?
  Beat
  Robbie: NOOOOOOO!
  • The catch: It's a subversion because "No" does rhyme... with "So."
• Wicked:
  • During Elphaba's birth in "No One Mourns the Wicked":
    I see a nose!
    I see a curl!
    It's a healthy, perfect, lovely little - (her father and the midwife realize she's green and start screaming)
  • Also, earlier in the song...
    Galinda: Let us rejoicify that goodness could subdue / The wicked workings of you-know-who / Isn't it nice to know? / That good will conquer evil? / The truth we all believe'll by and by / Outlive a lie / For you and...
    Villager 1: No one mourns the Wicked!
    Villager 2: No one cries: "They won't return!"
• In the Lippa version of The Wild Party, Burrs sings in "Make Me Happy" (while waving a loaded pistol):
  We've got a situation:
  Shit or get off the pot!
  Whaddaya say? You wanna give her away
  Or do you wanna get—
  On your knees?

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