During the year following the disappointingly short run of Ruddigore, D'Oyly Carte, the impresario who had brought Gilbert and Sullivan together, continually pressed the librettist and the composer to produce something new; it was becoming unprofitable to keep the Savoy Theatre running on revivals of past successes. "My chance of running present establishment seems to be to rush on new piece," he telegraphed.

Then came the stroke of luck, like the falling of the Japanese sword which had inspired The Mikado. Gilbert wrote: "The genesis of this libretto was a placard advertisement of the Tower Furnishing Company in which a Beefeater was a conspicuous figure. I was on my way from Uxbridge to Paddington and, having missed my train at Uxbridge, I had an hour to wait, and so it came to pass that I had plenty of time in which to study the advertisements on the walls. The Beefeater on the placard suggested to me that an effective libretto might be constructed, the scenes in which should represent two views of the Tower of London, with a body of Beefeaters as male chorus. My first idea was to make the piece modem, with young ladies, guardsmen, a Lieutenant of the Tower, and so forth; but a picture of a jester in a magazine which I bought to read while I was waiting suggested to me the advisability of putting the piece back into the sixteenth century in order that I might be able to weave that effectively dramatic figure into the story. I had christened the piece "The Beefeaters", but Sir Arthur Sullivan considered "Beefeaters" to be an ugly word; so at his urgent instance the title was altered to "The Yeomen of the Guard", notwithstanding the fact that the Yeomen of the Guard, properly so called, have no association whatever with the Tower of London. I believe that this piece was a special favourite of Sir Arthur Sullivan's, and I am certainly disposed to regard it as the best piece of work that he and I have produced in collaboration. I am also disposed to believe that, if I had not missed that train, I should never have written that piece."

Sullivan liked the plot and declared himself "immensely pleased with it. Pretty story, no topsy-turvydom, very human and funny also".

The Yeomen of the Guard opened October 3, 1888, at the Savoy Theatre and ran for 423 performances in its first season. It has been revived regularly since, including productions actually staged in the Tower of London itself.