Funny business is at heart of 'Utopia'

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Imagine a happy population indolent and colorfully clad, in a sort of South Seas paradise. Then imagine a constitutional "despotism tempered by dynamite" -- which is to say, if the king doesn't govern agreeably, two judges are authorized to blow him up.
You might well call this a utopia, as do author and lyricist William S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan in their 1893 comic operetta, "Utopia Limited" -- limited, however, twice over, because what society trusts its own happiness? So King Paramount sends his daughters to study what they assume is the true utopia: Victorian England. The result is a scheme to make the kingdom limited in another way, as "Utopia Ltd.," or as we'd say, "Inc."