In the outermost frame-play, the drunken tinker Christopher Sly is picked out of the mud by a rich lord and transported to his house.
On a handsome set of weathered-looking wood, designed by Donyale Werle, the production opens with the framing device, often dropped, in which a soused tinker, Christopher Sly Matthew Cowless), is duped into believing he's a rich lord.
Rodolfo: I know how you feel / Very well / Let's stay together through the winter, / And then in the spring / You can find a rich lord / To take care of you, / Even though / You are definitely going to die soon / Whether you like it / Or not.
At a time where rich lords appropriated for themselves most of the nutritional resources of the land, to prepare a feast was not just a reason to eat with friends: it was a way to flex and show off all the money and power we had.
She decreed that everyone, from the richest lord to the poorest serf, should pay the same taxes, whether they could or not.
Hacks and citizens are pouring forth their views: it's elegant; it's in the wrong place; it's a piece of international tower envy; it's a citadel of the mega-rich lording it over us morlocks below; it's a London icon.
Often the richest lords will use milk carts to transport fabulous baubles from one place to another because they are too cheap to pay for regular postage like everybody else".
Before the last general election, Lord Ashcroft lent the Tories another £3.6m.As well as being powerful and rich, Lord Ashcroft is elusive: he is the right-wing pimpernel of British politics, whose name is uttered with awe and terror by Labour MPs.
Concerning the exploits of the enticing Georgie Rivers, who spurns her devoted but penniless lover for marriage with a rich, elderly lord, "Fast and Loose," which she wrote under the pen name David Olivieri, is surprisingly funny.
One of the most curious, and little-remarked, features of this week's Presidential debate was that the only foreign country to get more than cursory treatment was Colombia, known to most television-watching, non-García Márquez-reading North Americans as a land of rich drug lords, leftist guerrillas, rightist death squads, and ubiquitous coca plantations.
Besides, they should just go online where all of us are rich as lords.
