The surviving libretto is not the version heard by audiences at the Gaiety Theatre. There are numerous discrepancies between the original libretto and what was described as happening on stage, and reviewers repeatedly quoted dialogue that has no equivalent in the published libretto. At least one song is missing, and an entire character, Venus, is mentioned in at least five reviews as stout, elderly, and heavily made-up; she does not appear in the libretto but was listed in the first night programme. Stage directions in the original are slip-shod: characters reappear without an entrance being noted, or enter twice in quick succession, without having exited. In addition, Sullivan told his mother that at least one song was cut after opening night, and there must certainly have been other cuts, given the undue length of the first performance. But the text of the libretto, as published, remained "virtually unchanged" between December 1871 and March 1872.