A/N This is a revision to the final dialog in the play Iolanthe, which has always struck me as being too rushed, with the final resolution too silly and gimmicky. It starts where Leila says, "Hold!" in the canon text, but Leila doesn't say it here. Total awareness of the canon plot is assumed, but (spoilers ahead) the crux of the issue for this dialogue is that the Fairy Queen has given Strephon essentially carte blanche to call on the fairies for their aid (doubt or danger, peril or perplexitee), and Strephon does so, when the Peers lead his betrothed Phyllis to see him in a bizarre situation and give it the ugliest spin they can. She throws him over and offers her hand to one of them. Strephon will not allow his fortunes to fade and calls upon the fairies to save them, i.e., get him his fiancee back. Iolanthe, his mother, a fairy who looks like a teenage girl, is under penalty of death if she reveals her continued existence to her mortal husband, the Lord Chancellor, who has veto power over any marriage Phyllis tries for and has claimed her for himself. Only Iolanthe's reveal of her continued existence makes him stop. So the Queen's promised aid forces Iolanthe to break her vow.

Add to this that Strephon's half-fairyhood ('down to the waist') has always been a source of pain for him. Making him full-fairy or no-fairy would be a kindness, one which the Queen does not show him on first meeting, even though in canon she has that power and apparently likes him and adores his mother. So in this version she does not have that power until after Strephon sacrifices his own fairyhood to save the rest.

(PHYLLIS and STREPHON enter.)

STREPHON. Hold! You cannot kill Iolanthe.

QUEEN. I must kill Iolanthe. She has broken fairy law. (unfolding a scroll) every fairy must die who marries a mortal!

STREPHON. You cannot kill her. She only broke your law to keep your word. Only the reveal of her face and name won my Phyllis' freedom to return to me.

QUEEN. Oh. (She lowers the spear.) This is true? You release your claim on the girl? (LORD CH. nods eagerly) Well, that is good, I suppose, but this is very uncomfortable for me. It feels much like sitting on a woolsack stuffed with thorns.

LORD CH. Your Majesty, allow me to express my sincere sympathy with your Majesty's most painful position.

QUEEN. Thank you.

LORD CH. Allow me, as an old Equity draftsman, to make a suggestion. The subtleties of the legal mind are equal to the emergency. The thing is really quite simple – the insertion of a single word will do it. Let it stand that every fairy shall die who doesn't marry a mortal, and there you are, out of your difficulty at once!

QUEEN. That gets us out of no difficulty whatever. This change would save Iolanthe only to put the rest of us at risk.

LEILA. Not much risk, your Majesty.

(Enter peers, each to a fairy. LORD MOUNT. to LEILA, LORD TOLL. to CELIA)

CELIA. We would all be fairy duchesses, marchionesses, countesses, viscountesses, and baronesses.

LORD MOUNT. It's our fault. They can't help themselves.

QUEEN. It seems they are helping themselves, and pretty freely, too! (After a pause.) It is a worthy thought, but of no use. Only fairy blood can change fairy law. Is there a fairy willing to die for this?

STREPHON. I will gladly offer my fairy blood to this noble cause. It has brought me nothing but misery.

QUEEN. You will live as a mortal. Die as a mortal.

STREPHON. I will live and die with Phyllis. We will be happy.

LORD CH. You will be married.

STREPHON. It's the same thing.

QUEEN. We like your attitude. Very well! (Touches her wand to Strephon's finger, then to the scroll. (PHYLLIS and STRTEPHON exit.) Private Willis!

SENTRY (coming forward). Ma'am!

QUEEN. To save my life, it is necessary that I marry at once. How should you like to be a fairy guardsman?

SENTRY. Well, ma'am, I don't think much of the British soldier who wouldn't ill convenience himself to save a female in distress.

QUEEN. You are a brave fellow.

(ALL look at LORD CH.)

LORD CH. Very well, I hereby declare you men and wives.

QUEEN. (to SENTRY) You're a fairy from this moment. (Wings spring from Sentry's shoulders.)

LORD CH. You can do that?

QUEEN. I can now, thanks to Strephon. I have lived in love, but I've never loved. It is a greater magic. And you, my Lords, how say you, will you join our ranks?

(Fairies kneel to Peers and implore them to do so.)

LORD MOUNT. (to LORD TOLL.). Well, now that the Peers are to be recruited entirely from persons of intelligence, I really don't see what use we are down here, do you, Tolloller?

LORD TOLL. None whatever.

QUEEN. Good! (Wings spring from shoulders of Peers.) Then away we go to Fairyland.