Major-General's Song
[1] Sung by Major-General Stanley at his first entrance, towards the end of Act I, the character introduces himself by presenting his résumé as a polymath but admitting to fundamental shortcomings.
The song is replete with historical and cultural references, in which the Major-General describes his impressive and well-rounded education in non-military matters, but he says that his military knowledge has "only been brought down to the beginning of the century".
Nevertheless, in the original London production, George Grossmith imitated Wolseley's mannerisms and appearance, particularly his large moustache, and the audience recognised the allusion.
[7] I am the very model of a modern Major-Gineral,[a] I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral, I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical;[b] I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical, I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical, About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot o' news, With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.
I'm very good at integral and differential calculus; I know the scientific names of beings animalculous: In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral, I am the very model of a modern Major-Gineral.
I know our mythic history, King Arthur's and Sir Caradoc's; I answer hard acrostics, I've a pretty taste for paradox, I quote in elegiacs all the crimes of Heliogabalus, In conics I can floor peculiarities parabolous; I can tell undoubted Raphaels from Gerard Dows and Zoffanies,[c] I know the croaking chorus from The Frogs of Aristophanes!
Then I can write a washing bill in Babylonic cuneiform, And tell you ev'ry detail of Caractacus's uniform:[e] In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral, I am the very model of a modern Major-Gineral.
[21] For example, The Muppet Show (season 3, episode 52) staged a duet of the song with guest host Gilda Radner and a 7-foot-tall (2.1 m) talking carrot.
[22] In a short cutaway from the 2012 Family Guy episode "Killer Queen", Peter plays the Major-General in a community theater production and mumbles all through the opening verse of the song.
[24] In Season 2, Episode 13 of USA Network series In Plain Sight, "Let's Get It Ahn", WITSEC workers, Mary and Eleanor, sing along to the song while listening to it being played as hold music.
[34][35] In a 2011 GEICO commercial, a couple that wants to save money, but still listen to musicals, finds a roommate, dressed as the Major-General, who awkwardly begins the song while dancing on a coffee table.
[44] In 2010, a parody version of the song was posted as an op-ed piece in the Richmond Times-Dispatch mocking actions of the Attorney General of Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli.
[47] The character George Washington, in the song "Right Hand Man" from the 2015 musical Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda, refers to himself with irony as "The model of a modern major-general", which he rhymes with "men are all" and "pedestal".
