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The Pirates of Penzance – The Story
ACT I - ACT 2
- Act 1 opens with a rocky sea-shore scene on the coast of Cornwall and shows a number of pirates drinking and playing cards. They toast young Frederic, the Pirate Apprentice, who being over twenty one, "rises from indenture freed" and is "a pirate now indeed!"
- However Ruth, his former nursemaid, and now a piratical maid-of-all-work, explains to the pirates her unfortunate mistake in apprenticing the boy to their own Pirate King.
- Frederic tells them that while he likes them as individuals but now that out of indenture, he considers it his duty to exterminate them, but points out that this would be unnecessary if they would give up piracy. In any case, they are too tender-hearted to make it pay. As orphans themselves they never molest an orphan; a fact well known to others who always claim to be orphans when captured, and so are set free.
- Ruth implores Frederic to take her with him, but as he has never seen another woman since eight years old he cannot tell how she compares with them and, unfortunately for Ruth, a bevy of beautiful maidens, daughters of Major General Stanley who has bought a near-by estate, come clambering over the rocks and into the pirates lair.
- Frederic realizes that Ruth is plain and old, although only 47. She goes off, and he speaks to the girls who are about to go paddling until their father and the picnic hampers arrive. He implores one of them to marry him, but they refuse, all save one, Mabel, who hearing his plea as she enters readily agrees to do so and sings her beautiful waltz song, "Poor wand'ring one!".They go off together.
- The pirates return and seize the girls, delighted at the prospect of getting married with impunity; but their joy is short-lived as the Major-General, resplendent in scarlet and gold. a somewhat unusual garb for a picnic by the sea, suddenly appears and sings his famous patter song.
- In order to dissuade the pirates from marrying his daughters and leaving him to go through the remainder of his life unfriended, unprotected and alone he appeals to their sense of fair play by explaining that he, too, is an orphan.
- The Act ends with Ruth imploring Frederic not to leave her, but he scorns her and casts her from him.
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