W. S. Gilbert
Encyclopedia : W : WS : WSG : W. S. Gilbert
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (November 18, 1836 – May 29, 1911) was an English dramatist and librettist best known for his operatic collaborations with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, known as the Savoy Operas. Gilbert also published numerous pieces of light verse known as the Bab Ballads, many of which were accompanied by his own comic drawings. His creative output included over 75 plays and libretti, numerous stories, poems, lyrics and various other comic pieces.
Life and career
Beginnings
Gilbert's father, also named William, was a naval surgeon and he spent much of his youth touring Europe before settling down in London in 1849, later becoming a novelist. The most famous of his works was The Magic Mirror, the original edition of which was illustrated by his son. Gilbert's parents were distant and stern, and he did not have a particularly good relationship with either of them. Following the breakup of their marriage in 1876, his relationships became even more strained, especially with his mother.
In the late 1850s, Gilbert received a bequest of £300 and used it to take up a career as a barrister. He was not particularly successful, averaging just five clients a year. In a short story called "My Maiden Brief" that is usually taken as partly autobiographical, his client, a female pickpocket, hurled abuse (and a boot) at him:
- "No sooner had the learned judge pronounced this sentence than the poor soul stooped down, and taking off a heavy boot, flung it at my head, as a reward for my eloquence on her behalf; accompanying the assault with a torrent of invective against my abilities as a counsel, and my line of defence." (Gilbert 1890, pp. 158–9).
First plays
Some controversy exists as to the start of Gilbert's career as a playwright. Gilbert himself always named Dulcamara, (an 1866 burlesque of Gaetano Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore) as his first play. Terence Rees discovered a play called Uncle Baby from 1863, but whether this is indeed by Gilbert or his father is disputed. Further confusion is created by another play, with the ridiculously overblown title Hush-a-Bye Baby, on the Tree Top or Harlequin Fortunia, King Frog of Frog Island, and the Magic Toys of Lowther Arcade that opened a few days before Dulcamara (though the latter could well have been written or sold first). In any case, Dulcamara's popularity ensured a long series of further burlesques and farces.A few quotes from La Vivandiêre: or, True to the Corps! (a burlesque of Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment) will give the spirit of these. (The italicised words are the traditional way in these plays of drawing attention to a contrivance or pun.)
SERGEANT SULPIZIO:
- ::Come, stop these starts,
- Your case is not uncommon in these parts!
- Long years ago upon a battle plain,
- The Captain of my company was slain,
- But ere he died, he handed to my care
- A pretty baby beautifully fair,
- In this silk handkercheif the captain wropped it,
- ::[producing handkerchief.]
- But 'ere I could adopt it, he had hopped it!
- The baby grew up exquisite indeed,
- Now she's the fairest flower you ever seed.
- (innocently) The fairest flower? Whoever can that be?
- (suddenly) Why that describes me, father, to a T.
- That men were monkeys once -- to that I bow;
- (looking at Lord Margate) I know one who's less man than monkey, now,
- That monkeys once were men, peers, statesmen, flunkies--
- That's rather hard on unoffending monkeys!
As good as some of these are, it wouldn't be until 1869 that the first truly Gilbertian plays – with original plots and fewer puns – would begin to appear.
The Gallery of Illustration entertainments
- "The stage was at a low ebb, Elizabethan glories and Georgian artificialities had alike faded into the past, stilted tragedy and vulgar farce were all the would-be playgoer had to choose from, and the theatre had become a place of evil repute to the righteous British householder.
- Oratorio was then at the height of its vogue, and Shakespearean drama as interpreted by the Kean, Macready, and Kendal school still held its public; but at the other extreme there were only farc'es or the transplanted operettas of Offenbach, Lecocq and other French composers, which were as a rule very indifferently rendered, and their librettos so badly translated that any wit or point the dialogue might have possessed was entirely lost."
- ::—Jessie Bond[link]
The plot is typically Gilbertian: In the haunted Scottish Castle of Glen Cockaleekie, where the deed, much like Brigadoon is only ever found once every hundred years, Ebenezer Tare has decided, that as possession is nine-tenths of the law, he might as well be in possession of it until such time as the deed shows up again. Being your typical money-grubbing elderly relative, he refuses to let his niece Rosa marry her poor suitor, Columbus Hebblethwaite. That night the paintings of the castle's former owners come to life, step out of their frames (As would happen again in Ruddigore several decades later). However, there's a problem: They were all painted at different ages, so Lord Carnaby (65), has a grandmother (Lady Maud), of 17. And lusts after her, no less. Eventually, though, and after some wrangling, the paintings pair off with each other, get a painting of a solicitor to marry them, and then leave the deed behind, giving the property (of course) to Hebblethwaite, the poor suitor. He strikes a deal whereby Tare is allowed to stay on if he gets to marry Rosa, and all ends happily.
The Collaboration with Sullivan
In 1871, John Hollingshead commissioned Gilbert to work with Sullivan a holiday piece for Christmas, Thespis, or The Gods Grown Old, at the Gaiety Theatre. Thespis was not a failure. It outran five of its nine competitors for the 1871 holiday season, and it appeared on the programme for an April 1972 performance benefiting Nellie Farren, who had created the role of Mercury. However, no one took Thespis as the beginning of a great collaboration, and Gilbert and Sullivan went their separate ways.It would be another four years before the men worked together again. In 1875, Richard D'Oyly Carte commissioned Gilbert and Sullivan to write a one-act afterpiece to Offenbach's La Périchole. After Trial's success, there were discussions of reviving Thespis, but the duo were not able to agree on terms with Carte and his backers. Thespis was never published, and the music is now lost.
- "It is absolutely essential to the success of this piece that it should be played with the most perfect earnestness and gravity throughout. There should be no exaggeration in costume, makeup or demeanour; and the characters, one and all, should appear to believe, throughout, in the perfect sincerity of their words and actions. Directly the actors show that they are conscious of the absurdity of their utterances the piece begins to drag."
For the next decade, the Savoy Operas (as the series came to be known, after the theatre Carte built to house them) were Gilbert's principal activity. The financially successful comic operas with Sullivan continued to appear every year or two with predictable regularity. After Pinafore came The Pirates of Penzance (1879), Patience (1881), Iolanthe (1882), Princess Ida (1884), The Mikado (1885), Ruddigore (1887), The Yeomen of the Guard (1888), and The Gondoliers (1889).
During this period, Gilbert occasionally wrote plays to be performed elsewhere – both serious dramas (e.g. The Ne'er-Do-Weel, 1878) and more humorous works (e.g. Foggerty's Fairy, 1881). However, he no longer needed to turn out multiple plays per year, as he had done before. During the eight years that separated The Pirates of Penzance and The Gondoliers, he wrote just three plays outside of the partnership with Sullivan. After The Gondoliers, the partnership broke up temporarily over a financial dispute. In the interregnum, he wrote The Mountebanks with Alfred Cellier. His last two works with Sullivan, Utopia Limited (1893) and The Grand Duke (1896), were less successful.
Sullivan, too, had a career of his own. Two ballets, a symphony, a cello concerto, and number of large-scale choral pieces, incidental music to five of Shakespeare's plays and, of course, other operatic works, including Ivanhoe, which opened Carte's new Royal English Opera House (now the Palace Theatre) in Cambridge Circus in 1891.
Gilbert and Sullivan had many rifts in their career, partly caused by the fact that each saw himself allowing his work to be subjugated to the other's, and partly caused by the two men's opposing personalities. Sullivan was eager to socialize among the wealthy and titled people who would become his friends and patrons. Gilbert was considered to have a prickly and sarcastic personality, and his often political satire was not always well-received in the circles of privilege.
Sullivan was knighted in 1883, not long after the company moved to its new home, the Savoy Theatre. However this knighthood was not for his popular and financially rewarding work with Gilbert, but more for his contributions to musical education and his more 'serious' music. One such work was the musical drama The Martyr of Antioch, first produced late in 1881, for which Gilbert arranged the original epic poem into something suitable for music, and some of the song lyrics in that work are, in fact, Gilbert's original work. Gilbert was not knighted until 1907, in recognition of his contributions to drama. He was, however, the first British writer ever to receive a knighthood for his plays alone — earlier dramatist knights such as Sir William Davenant and Sir John Vanburgh, were knighted for political and other services.
Gilbert filled his librettos with a strange mixture of cynicism about the world and "topsy-turvydom" in which the social order was turned upside down. These subjects sometimes did not satisfy Sullivan's desire for realism and emotional content.
Later years
In 1893, Gilbert was named a Justice of the Peace in Harrow Weald. When Who's Who was revised to include biographical details, Gilbert refused to co-operate until the editors sent him the proof of an entry they proposed to run unless he sent back a corrected version. Their draft referred to him as "librettist for the operas of Sir Arthur Sullivan" and resulted in Gilbert sending his correct details back. Although he announced a retirement from the theatre after the poor initial run of his last work with Sullivan, The Grand Duke (1896), he continued to produce plays up until the year of his death including an opera, Fallen Fairies, with Edward German (Savoy 1909), and a one-act play set in a condemned cell, The Hooligan (Colliseum 1911). Gilbert also continued to personally supervise the various revivals of his works by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.On 29 May 1911, he was giving swimming lessons to two young ladies at the lake of his home Grim's Dyke when one of them began to flail around. Gilbert dived in to save her, but suffered a heart attack in the middle of the lake and drowned.
List of dramatic works
In the following list, the title appears in the first column, along with any further information (such as the source of an adaptation). The genre appears in the second column – if the piece had music, the composer's name is listed in parentheses. The theatre and date of first performance appear in the third and fourth columns. All theatres were in London, unless otherwise stated. The works are listed in the approximate order of composition. (In a few cases, the first performance was many years after the work was first published.)
| Title | Genre | Theatre | Date
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Uncle Baby | One-Act Comedietta | Lyceum | 1863-10-31
|
| Ruy Blas [published in Warne's Christmas Annual, 1866] | Burlesque | unperformed | N/A
|
| Hush-a-Bye, Baby, on the Tree Top; or, Harlequin Fortunia, King Frog of Frog Island, and the Magic Toys of Lowther Arcade [written with Chas. Millard] | Pantomime | Astley's | 1866-12-26
|
| Dulcamara! or, The Little Duck and the Great Quack [parody of Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore] | Extravaganza | St. James's | 1866-12-29
|
| La Vivandière; or, True to the Corps! [parody of Donizetti's La fille du Régiment] | Extravaganza | St. James's Hall, Liverpool | 1867-06-15
|
| Robinson Crusoe; or, The Injun Bride and the Injured Wife [written with H. J. Byron, Thomas Hood, H. S. Leigh and Arthur Sketchley] | Burlesque | Haymarket | 1867-07-06
|
| Allow Me To Explain | One-Act Farce | Prince of Wales's | 1867-11-04
|
| Highly Improbable | One-Act Farce | Royalty | 1867-12-05
|
| A Colossal Idea [first pub. 1932] | One-Act Farce | unperformed | N/A
|
| Harlequin Cock Robin and Jenny Wren; or, Fortunatus and the Water of Life, the Three Bears, the Three Gifts, the Three Wishes, and the Little Man who Woo'd the Little Maid | Pantomime | Lyceum | 1867-12-26
|
| The Merry Zingara; or, The Tipsy Gipsy and the Pipsy Wipsy | Extravaganza | Royalty | 1868-03-21
|
| Robert the Devil; or, The Nun, the Dun, and the Son of a Gun [parody of Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable] | Extravaganza | Gaiety | 1868-12-21
|
| No Cards | One-Act Musical Entertainment (German Reed/Lionel Elliott?) | Gallery of Illustration | 1869-03-29
|
| The Pretty Druidess; or, The Mother, the Maid, and the Mistletoe Bough [parody of Bellini's Norma] | Extravaganza | Charing Cross | 1869-06-19
|
| An Old Score [revived as Quits] | Three-Act Comedy | Gaiety | 1869-07-26
|
| Ages Ago | One-Act Musical Entertainment (Frederic Clay) | Gallery of Illustration | 1869-11-22
|
| A Medical Man [published in Clement Scott's Drawing-Room Plays' (1870)] | One-Act Farce | St. George's Hall | 1872-10-24
|
| The Princess [based on Tennyson's poem] | Blank-Verse Parody | Olympic | 1870-01-08
|
| The Gentleman in Black | Two-Act Musical Play (Frederic Clay) | Charing Cross | 1870-05-26
|
| Our Island Home | One-Act Musical Entertainment (German Reed) | Gallery of Illustration | 1870-06-20
|
| The Palace of Truth | Three-Act Fairy Comedy | Haymarket | 1870-11-19
|
| The Brigands [translated from Les Brigands by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy; published by Boosey, 1871] | Three-Act Comic Opera (Jacques Offenbach) | Theatre Royal, Plymouth | 1889-09-02
|
| Randall's Thumb | Three-Act Comedy | Court | 1871-01-25
|
| A Sensation Novel | Musical Entertainment in Three "Volumes" (German Reed) | Gallery of Illustration | 1871-01-30
|
| Creatures of Impulse | One-Act Musical Play (Alberto Randegger) | Court | 1871-04-28
|
| Great Expectations [adapted from the Dickens novel] | Drama | Court | 1871-05-29
|
| On Guard | Three-Act Melodramatic Comedy | Court | 1871-10-28
|
| Pygmalion and Galatea | Three-Act Fairy Comedy | Haymarket | 1871-12-09
|
| Thespis; or, The Gods Grown Old | Two-Act Comic Opera (Arthur Sullivan) | Gaiety | 1871-12-26
|
| Happy Arcadia | One-Act Musical Entertainment (Frederic Clay) | Gallery of Illustration | 1872-10-28
|
| The Wicked World | Three-Act Fairy Comedy | Haymarket | 1873-01-04
|
| The Happy Land [written as F. Tomline, with Gilbert à Beckett] | Two-Act Burlesque of The Wicked World | Court | 1873-03-03
|
| The Realm of Joy [written as F. Latour Tomline: freely adapted from Le Roi Candaule by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy; title changed after a few nights to The Realms of Joy] | One-Act Farce | Royalty | 1873-10-18
|
| The Wedding March [written as F. Latour Tomline: translated from Un Chapeau de Paille d'Italie by Eugène Labiche] | Three-Act Farce | Court | 1873-11-15
|
| Charity | Four-Act Drama | Haymarket | 1874-01-03
|
| Ought We To Visit Her? [adapted from the novel by Mrs Annie Edwardes] | Three-Act Drama | Royalty | 1874-01-17
|
| Committed For Trial [written as F. Latour Tomline: translated from Le Reveillon by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy] | Two-Act Farce | Globe | 1874-01-24
|
| The Blue-Legged Lady [no author named: translated from La Dame aux Jambes d'Azur by Eugène Labiche and Marc-Michel] | One-Act Farce | Court | 1874-03-04
|
| Topsyturveydom | One-Act Extravaganza (Alfred Cellier) | Criterion | 1874-03-21
|
| Sweethearts | Two-Act Comedy | Prince of Wales's | 1874-11-07
|
| Rosencrantz and Guildenstern [published in Fun, December 1874] | Burlesque in Three Short "Tableaux" | Vaudeville | 1891-06-03
|
| Trial by Jury | One-Act Comic Opera (Arthur Sullivan) | Royalty | 1874-03-25
|
| Tom Cobb; or, Fortune's Toy | Three-Act Farce | St. James's | 1875-04-24
|
| Eyes and No Eyes; or, The Art of Seeing | One-Act Musical Entertainment (German Reed) | St. George's Hall | 1875-07-05
|
| Broken Hearts | Three-Act Verse Drama | Court | 1875-12-09
|
| Princess Toto | Three-Act Comic Opera (Frederic Clay) | Theatre Royal, Nottingham | 1876-06-24
|
| Dan'l Druce, Blacksmith | Three-Act Drama | Haymarket | 1876-09-11
|
| On Bail [revised version of Committed for Trial] | Three-Act Farce | Criterion | 1877-02-03
|
| Engaged (play) | Three-Act Farcical Comedy | Haymarket | 1877-10-03
|
| The Sorcerer | Two-Act Comic Opera (Arthur Sullivan) | Opera Comique | 1877-11-17
|
| The Forty Thieves [written with Robert Reece, F.C. Burnand, and H.J. Byron; one performance] | Pantomime | Gaiety | 1878-02-13
|
| The Ne'er-Do-Weel [rewritten and restaged three weeks later as The Vagabond] | Three-Act Drama | Olympic | 1878-02-25
|
| H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass that Loved a Sailor | Two-Act Comic Opera (Arthur Sullivan) | Opera Comique | 1878-05-25
|
| Gretchen [based on Goethe's Faust] | Four-Act Verse Tragedy | Olympic | 1879-03-24
|
| Lord Mayor's Day [translated from La Cagnotte by Eugène Labiche. Gilbert translated the first two acts, but was not credited.] | Three-Act Farce | Folly | 1879-06-30
|
| The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty | Two-Act Comic Opera (Arthur Sullivan) | Bijou, Paignton & Fifth Avenue, New York | 1879-12-30 & 1879-12-31
|
| Patience; or, Bunthorne's Bride | Two-Act Comic Opera (Arthur Sullivan) | Opera Comique | 1881-04-23
|
| Foggerty's Fairy | Three-Act Farce | Criterion | 1881-12-15
|
| Iolanthe; or, The Peer and the Peri | Two-Act Comic Opera (Arthur Sullivan) | Savoy | 1882-11-25
|
| Princess Ida; or, Castle Adamant [revised version of The Princess] | Three-Act Comic Opera (Arthur Sullivan) | Savoy | 1884-01-05
|
| Comedy and Tragedy | One-Act Drama | Lyceum | 1884-01-26
|
| The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu | Two-Act Comic Opera (Arthur Sullivan) | Savoy | 1885-03-14
|
| Ruddygore; or, The Witch's Curse [retitled Ruddigore after a few days] | Two-Act Comic Opera (Arthur Sullivan) | Savoy | 1881-01-22
|
| The Yeomen of the Guard; or, The Merryman and his Maid | Two-Act Comic Opera (Arthur Sullivan) | Savoy | 1888-03-10
|
| Brantinghame Hall | Four-Act Drama | St. James's | 1888-11-29
|
| The Gondoliers; or, The King of Barataria | Two-Act Comic Opera (Arthur Sullivan) | Savoy | 1889-07-12
|
| The Mountebanks | Two-Act Comic Opera (Alfred Cellier) | Lyric | 1892-01-04
|
| Haste to the Wedding [operatic version of The Wedding March] | Three-Act Comic Opera (George Grossmith) | Criterion | 1892-07-27
|
| Utopia (Limited); or, The Flowers of Progress [retitled Utopia Limited after a few days] | Two-Act Comic Opera (Arthur Sullivan) | Savoy | 1893-10-07
|
| His Excellency | Two-Act Comic Opera (Osmond Carr) | Lyric | 1894-10-27
|
| The Grand Duke; or, The Statutory Duel | Two-Act Comic Opera (Arthur Sullivan) | Savoy | 1896-03-07
|
| The Fortune-Hunter | Three-Act Drama | Theatre Royal, Birmingham | 1897-09-27
|
| Harlequin and the Fairy's Dilemma [retitled The Fairy's Dilemma after a few days] | Two-Act Domestic Pantomime | Garrick | 1904-05-03
|
| Fallen Fairies; or, The Wicked World [operatic version of The Wicked World] | Two-Act Comic Opera (Edward German) | Savoy | 1909-12-15
|
| The Hooligan | One-Act Drama | Coliseum | 1911-02-27
|
| Trying a Dramatist; [published in Original Plays, Fourth Series (1911)] | One-Act Sketch | unknown | unknown |
References
- (Contains mostly stories from Foggerty's Fairy and Other Tales.)
External links
- [The W. S. Gilbert Society]
- [The Gilbert & Sullivan Archive's W. S. Gilbert page]
- [The Babliophile, An Internet Magazine for the Seriously Deranged W.S. Gilbert Enthusiast]
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.