 This work is the last in a series of six one-act musical plays written by Gilbert for Thomas German Reed and his wife Priscilla between 1869 and 1875.The German Reeds presented respectable, family-friendly musical entertainments beginning in 1855, at a time when the theatre in Britain had gained a poor reputation as an unsavoury institution and was not attended by much of the middle class.Shakespeare was played, but most of the entertainments consisted of poorly translated French operettas, risqué Victorian burlesques and incomprehensible broad farces.