Patience

Patience, or Bunthorne's Bride (Sullivan). Libretto by W. San Gilbert; 2 acts; first performance London 1881, conducted by Arthur Sullivan.

England, 19th cent.: The poet Reginald Bunthorne loves the dairymaid Patience, the only young lady of his acquaintance who is not in love with him. Patience rejects her other admirer, the poet Archibald Grosvenor, because she doesn't know what love is. Lady Jane, worried about her own advancing years, encourages Bunthorne to challenge Grosvenor to abandon his highflown poetic ideas and become an ordinary person, then he can marry Patience. The Dragoon Lieut., the Duke of Dunstable, proposes to Jane, leaving Bunthorne the only man with no bride.