Dulcamara, or the Little Duck and the Great Quack Dulcamara, or the Little Duck and the Great Quack Dulcamara, or the Little Duck and the Great Quack, is one of the earliest plays written by W.S. Gilbert, his first solo stage success. The work is a musical burlesque of Donizetti's "L'Elisir d'Amore", and the music was arranged by Mr. Van Hamme. It opened at the St James's Theatre on 29 December 1866, the last item in a long evening, following a farce and Dion Boucicault's new play "Hunted Down". "Dulcamara" ran for a successful 120 nights. The popularity of the piece encouraged further commissions for opera burlesques from Gilbert,
Pygmalion and Galatea (play) said, In 2012, biologist Fred Sander used the play "as a 'hook' to explore the ethics and science of cloning" in his book "Created In Our Own Images.com". Sander wrote: "Gilbert’s drama not only anticipates psychoanalysis in the 20th century, but also, written a hundred years before the discovery of stem cells, it metaphorically resonates with the 21st century of genomic medicine. ... Gilbert's comedy ... points to new biological, psychological, social, and ethical issues raised by the ... sequencing of the genome and the explosion of stem cell research." Pygmalion and Galatea (play) Pygmalion and Galatea, an Original Mythological