Tom Cobb; or Fortune's Toy

Young surgeon Tom Cobb has a problem: an elderly pauper in his mentor's asylum shares his name. When the old man falls ill, Tom discovers a grotesque legal trap - if the pauper dies first, Tom is legally declared dead, his debts erased but his fortune vanished. W.S. Gilbert constructs a brilliantly absurd comedy where identity becomes a bureaucratic weapon, and being mistaken for a pauper could literally kill you. The plot spirals through fraudulent wills, desperate schemes to keep the old man alive, and the growing suspicion that the lunatics might be the only sensible people in the room. It's pure Victorian topsy-turvydom - a world where proving you're alive is harder than being declared dead, and where a name is the most dangerous thing you can share.