Patience was the fifth work in the collaboration between Gilbert & Sullivan, following on from Pirates of Penzance and preceding Iolanthe.

It regularly featured in the D’Oyly Carte’s touring repertoire from the mid-1890s through to the 1970s and was popular at English National Opera in the 1980s.

Patience, the village milkmaid, is the object of desire for Reginald Bunthorne, a ‘Fleshly Poet’. Despite his feigned aesthetic taste, which has won him a chorus of female fans (bossed by Lady Jane whose love for the poet is not returned), his preference is distinctly earthy, Patience who has never loved, except once, in childhood.

The girls, led by Ladies Angela, Sapphire and Ella have former admirers too, the Colonel, Major and Lieutenant from the 35th Dragoon guards - the latter of which is a Duke and ‘a great catch’. They arrive and remonstrate with their girls for their changed affections.

Patience’s childhood love then arrives, Archibald Grosvenor, who is a rival poet. Patience cannot love him because she has been told that true love is unselfish and so to love Archibald now would be entirely selfish. To love Reginald would not be so she commits herself to him.

Reginald should be happy with this but is aghast at losing the idolatry of his female fans to Grosvenor so, aided and abetted by Lady Jane, he plots to subvert Archibald from his calling by making him ‘common’. This turn of events means that Patience can now love him after all.

The officers turn aesthetic to win their ladies back, the Duke takes Jane precisely because she is plain and nobody, it turns out, will be Bunthorne’s bride.