Gilbert and Sullivan and institutions more freely by clothing them in superficial Japanese trappings. Gilbert wrote, "The Mikado of the opera was an imaginary monarch of a remote period and cannot by any exercise of ingenuity be taken to be a slap on an existing institution." G. K. Chesterton compared it to Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels": "Gilbert pursued and persecuted the evils of modern England till they had literally not a leg to stand on, exactly as Swift did... I doubt if there is a single joke in the whole play that fits the Japanese. But all the jokes in the play fit
The Mountebanks work was released in 2018. The story of the opera revolves around a magic potion that transforms those who drink it into whoever, or whatever, they pretend to be. The idea was clearly important to Gilbert, as he repeatedly urged his famous collaborator, Arthur Sullivan, to set this story, or a similar one, to music. For example, he had written a treatment of the opera in 1884, which Sullivan rejected, both because of the story's mechanical contrivance, and because they had already produced an opera concerning a magic potion, "The Sorcerer" (1877); Sullivan felt that the story lacked "human emotion".