There is a lot to unpack in this cartoon. One thing of note is that the opening specifically informs us that Mickey, etc., are explicitly playing characters. We are told that this is the cast, playing these characters. Notably including “Dippy Dawg,” as he was still then known. I’d also note that the king’s credit is at the bottom and is cut off; this king appeared in multiple shorts and still never got a name; the Disney Wiki doesn’t have a page for him. Named or otherwise. That’s how obscure he is.

Mickey is playing a wandering minstrel. Minnie is a princess, the daughter of the King of Kalapazoo. Her father wants her to marry the Prince of Poopoopadoo, played by Dippy Dawg as was. She refuses. She and her handmaiden, played by Clarabelle Cow, are thrown in “the attic,” so called to get the rhyme. It’s a tower. The wandering minstrel goes to rescue her. Unfortunately, they’re spotted making their getaway, and the king declares that the minstrel and the prince will fight a duel.

The duel in question is something of a cross between a joust and one of those swashbuckling swordfighting scenes that were all the rage. And involves a guillotine which had previously been put into use cutting sausage, in one of those weirdly dark bits of stageplay you sometimes get in cartoons like this. The end of the duel is never in any doubt, of course, but while it’s going, it goes to some weird places. The ’30s Disney cartoons were much weirder than people remember, I think, because the studio would rather that you think of the Bing Crosby version of Mickey and has only very recently been embracing the more anarchic versions.

Let’s be real—we do not expect historical accuracy from even a modern Disney cartoon, much less one of this era. Clarabelle is wearing a bustle. Mickey is wearing slop pants. As are all the other male characters. Minnie is wearing your standard Fantasy Princess Garb, with an approximately sixteenth-century dress and fourteenth-century hat. And of course the guillotine, developed in the form we see here in approximately 1789. This is the sort of thing where historians just sigh and admit that it’s not in any way supposed to be realistic.

Though it does allow me to present you with an interesting detail—this would not, historically, have been pronounced “ye.” The “y” in these things is an attempt at reproducing a long-lost letter dropped from the English language around the time of the printing press. It seems that type was generally imported from Germany or Italy, languages which didn’t have the thorn. I don’t know why we went with “th” instead, but “y,” a letter which sounds nothing like “th,” looked slightly like the thorn. And now you know.

Reward valuable information like that by supporting my Patreon or Ko-fi!