The so-called Nightmare aria sung by the Lord Chancellor in Iolanthe is one of the longest and fastest patter songs in all opera. The rapid and unrealistic changes in locale and people are typical of nightmares and gave Gilbert a vehicle in which to include many unrelated ideas in a nonsensical way.

When you're lying awake with a dismal headache, and repose is taboo'd by anxiety.
I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in, without impropriety.
For you're brain is on fire — the bedclothes conspire of usual slumber to plunder you.
First your counterpane goes, and uncovers your toes, and you sheet slips demurely from under you;
Then the blanketing tickles — and you feel like mixed pickles — so terribly sharp is the pricking.
And you're hot, and you're cross, and you tumble and toss till there's nothing ‘twixt you and the ticking.
Then the bedclothes all creep to the ground in a heap, and you pick ‘em all up in a tangle.
Next your pillow resigns and politely declines to remain at its usual angle!
Well, you get some repose in the form of a doze, with hot eye-balls and head ever aching,
But your slumbering teems with such horrible dreams that you'd very much better be waking;
For you dream you are crossing the Channel, and tossing about in a steamer from Harwich
Which is something between a large bathing machine and a very small second-class carriage —
And you're giving a treat (penny ice and cold meat) to a party of friends and relations —
They're a ravenous horde— and they all came on board at Sloane Square and South Kensington Stations.
And bound on that journey you find your attorney (who started that morning from Devon);
He's a bit undersized, and you don't feel surprised when he tells you he's only eleven.
Well, you're driving like mad with this singular lad (by the way the ship's now a four-wheeler),
And you're playing round games, and he calls you bad names when you tell him that "ties pay the dealer";
But this you can't stand, so you throw up your hand, and you find you're as cold as an icicle,
In your shirt and your sock (the black with gold clock), crossing Salisbury Plain on a bicycle:
And he and the crew are on bicycles too — which they've somehow or other invested in —
And he's telling the tars all the particulars of a company he's interested in —
It's a scheme of devices, to get at low prices all goods from cough mixtures to cables
(Which tickled the sailors), by treating retailers as though they were all vegetables —
You get a good spadesman to plant a small tradesman (first take off his boots with a boot-tree),
And his fingers will shoot, and they'll blossom and bud like a fruit-tree —
From the greengrocer tree you get grapes and green pea, cauliflower, pineapple, and cranberries,
While the pastrycook plant cherry brandy will grant, apple puffs, and three corners, and Banburys —
The shares are a penny, and ever so many are taken by Rothschild and Baring,
And just as a few are allotted to you, you awake with a shudder despairing —
You're a regular wreck with a crick in your neck, and no wonder you snore, for your heads on the floor,
   and you've needles and pins from your soles to your shins, and your flesh is a-creep,
   for your left leg's asleep,and you've cramp in your toes, and a fly on your nose, and some fluff
   in your lung, and a feverish tongue, and a thirst that's intense, and a general sense
   that you haven't been sleeping in clover;
But the darkness has passed, and it's daylight at last, and the night has been long —
   ditto ditto my song — and thank goodness they're both of them over!

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Revised January 2007
Please credit Lyric Opera San Diego when using this material.