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).

To supplement his income, Gilbert wrote a variety of stories, reviews, comic rants, and, under the pseudonym "Bab" (his childhood nickname), a variety of short illustrated poems for a variety of comic magazines, primarily Fun. The poems proved immensely popular and were duly reprinted in book form as the Bab Ballads. He would later return to many of these as source material for his various plays and comic operas.

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,

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.

MARIA:

(innocently) The fairest flower? Whoever can that be?

(suddenly) Why that describes me, father, to a T.

And later, Maria again:

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!

A copy of the original libretto

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^*

It was to fill this gap that Thomas German Reed opened his Gallery of Illustration, and brought in Gilbert as one of his main playwrights. After his first offering – No Cards, a somewhat forgettable light farce full of costumed identities with music by Reed himself – Gilbert paired with Frederick Clay on ^*, the first of a long and successful series of collaborations which would continue until Clay's death.

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.

Carte then assembled a syndicate and formed the Comedy Opera Company to launch a series of original English comic operas. The Sorcerer was the first work to be presented by the new company, opening at the Opera Comique in November 1877. Gilbert was the stage director for his plays and operas. By the time of The Sorcerer, Gilbert had decided how his comedies should be played. In his preface to his play Engaged, which opened just before ''The Sorcerer, he wrote:

"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."

H.M.S. Pinafore followed in May 1878. Despite a slow start, mainly due to a scorching summer, Pinafore became a red-hot favourite by autumn. After a dispute with the Comedy Opera Company directors over the division of profits, Carte's partners hired thugs to storm the theatre one night to steal the sets and costumes, intending to mount a rival production. The attempt was repelled, and Carte continued as sole impresario of the newly renamed D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.

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* 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 with Chas. Millard	Pantomime	Astley's	1866-12-26
*Dulcamara!* or, The Little Duck and the Great Quack of Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore	Extravaganza	St. James's	1866-12-29
*La Vivandière*; or, True to the Corps! 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 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* 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 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 of Bellini's Norma	Extravaganza	Charing Cross	1869-06-19
*An Old Score* 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* in Clement Scott's Drawing-Room Plays' (1870)	One-Act Farce	St. George's Hall	1872-10-24
*The Princess* 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* 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* 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* as F. Tomline, with Gilbert à Beckett	Two-Act Burlesque of The Wicked World	Court	1873-03-03
*The Realm of Joy* 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* 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?* from the novel by Mrs Annie Edwardes	Three-Act Drama	Royalty	1874-01-17
*Committed For Trial* 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* 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* 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* 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* with Robert Reece, F.C. Burnand, and H.J. Byron; one performance	Pantomime	Gaiety	1878-02-13
*The Ne'er-Do-Weel* 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* on Goethe's Faust	Four-Act Verse Tragedy	Olympic	1879-03-24
*Lord Mayor's Day* 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 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 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* version of The Wedding March	Three-Act Comic Opera (George Grossmith)	Criterion	1892-07-27
*Utopia (Limited)*; or, The Flowers of Progress 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* The Fairy's Dilemma after a few days	Two-Act Domestic Pantomime	Garrick	1904-05-03
*Fallen Fairies; or, The Wicked World* 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; in Original Plays*, Fourth Series (1911)	One-Act Sketch	unknown	unknown

References

(Contains mostly stories from Foggerty's Fairy and Other Tales.)

External links

William Schwenck Gilbert | William S. Gilbert

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