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<title>W. S. Gilbert</title>
<authors>Wikipedia</authors>
<publisher>wikipedia.org</publisher>
<publishedplace>network</publishedplace>
<publishedyear>2010</publishedyear>
<edition></edition>
<category>All articles with dead external links</category>
<section id="40774" fatherid="0" title="" lv="" priority="-1" level="1">
Sir William Schwenck GilbertThe name Gilbert is pronounced with a hard G. (18 November 1836 - 29 May 1911) was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and one of the most frequently performed works in the history of musical theatre, The Mikado.Kenrick, John. G-anddocsymbol-S Story: Part III, accessed 13 October 2006; and Powell, Jim. William S. Gilbert's Wicked Wit for Liberty accessed 13 October 2006. These, as well as most of their other Savoy operas, continue to be performed regularly throughout the English-speaking world and beyond by opera companies, repertory companies, schools and community theatre groups. Lines from these works have become part of the English language, such as "short, sharp shock", "What, never? Well, hardly ever!",Lawrence, Arthur H. "An illustrated interview with Sir Arthur Sullivan" Part 3, from The Strand Magazine, Vol. xiv, No.84 (December 1897) and "Let the punishment fit the crime".Green, Edward, "Ballads, songs and speeches", BBC, 20 September 2004, accessed 16 October 2006.  The latter phrase is a satiric take on Cicero's De Legibus, 106 BC
Gilbert also wrote the Bab Ballads, an extensive collection of light verse accompanied by his own comical drawings. His creative output included over 75 plays and libretti, numerous stories, poems, lyrics and various other comic and serious pieces. His plays and realistic style of stage direction inspired other dramatists, including Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw.Feingold, Michael, "Engaging the Past", in The Village Voice May 4, 2004. According to The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Gilbert's "lyrical facility and his mastery of metre raised the poetical quality of comic opera to a position that it had never reached before and has not reached since".The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Volume XIII, Chapter VIII, Section 15 (1907–21)

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<section id="40775" fatherid="0" title="Early life and career" lv="" priority="2" level="1">
<section id="40776" fatherid="40775" title="Beginnings" lv="" priority="-1" level="2">
Gilbert was born at 17 Southampton Street, Strand, London. His father, also named William, was a naval surgeon who later became a writer of novels and short stories, some of which were illustrated by his son.  Gilbert's mother was the former Ann Mary Bye Morris (1812-88), the daughter of Dr. Thomas Morris. 
Stedman, Jane W. "Gilbert, Sir William Schwenck (1836–1911)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Septtember 2004, online edn, May 2008, accessed 10 January 2010 (subscription required)  Gilbert's parents were distant and stern, and he did not have a particularly close relationship with either of them.  They quarrelled constantly, and following the break-up of their marriage in 1876, his relationships with them, especially his mother, became even more strained.Pearson, pp. 16–17 Gilbert had three younger sisters, two of whom were born outside England because of the family's travels during these years: Jane Morris (b. 1838 in Milan, Italy – 1906), who married Alfred Weigall, a miniature painter; and Anne Maude (1845–1932) and Mary Florence (b. 1843 in Boulogne, France – 1911), neither of whom married.Ainger, p. xxiEden, David. Gilbert: Appearance and Reality, p. 44, Sir Arthur Sullivan Society (2003) Gilbert was nicknamed "Bab" as a baby, and then "Schwenck", after his father's godparents.
As a child, Gilbert travelled in Europe with his parents (they finally settled in London in 1849). He was educated at Boulogne, France from the age of seven (he later kept his diary in French so that the servants could not read it),Noted in Morrison, Robert, The Controversy Surrounding Gilbert's Last Opera then Western Grammar School, Brompton, London, and then at the Great Ealing School, where he became head boy and wrote plays for school performances and painted scenery. He then attended King's College London, graduating in 1856. After taking his degree, he intended to take the examinations for a commission in the Royal Artillery, but with the end of the Crimean War, fewer recruits were needed, and the only commission available to Gilbert would have been in a line regiment. He served instead in the Civil Service, as an assistant clerk in the Privy Council Office, for four years and hated it. In 1859 he joined the Militia, a part-time home service force, with which he remained until 1878 (in between writing and other work), reaching the rank of Captain.Pearson, p. 16. He first joined the 5th West Yorkshire Militia, and later the Royal Aberdeenshire Highlanders. Upon leaving the Militia, Gilbert was given an honorary promotion to major. Stedman (1996) p. 157 and Ainger, p. 154 In 1863 he received a bequest of £300 that he used to leave the civil service and take up a brief career as a barrister (he had already entered the Inner Temple as a student), but his legal practice was not successful, averaging just five clients a year.Gilbert, W.S. ed. Peter Haining - Introduction
To supplement his income from 1861 on, Gilbert wrote a variety of stories, comic rants, grotesque illustrations, theatre reviews (many in the form of a parody of the play being reviewed),Stedman, Jane W. W. S. Gilbert's Theatrical Criticism. London: The Society for Theatre Research, 2000. ISBN 0-85430-068-6 and, under the pseudonym "Bab" (his childhood nickname), illustrated poems for several comic magazines, primarily Fun, started in 1861 by H. J. Byron. He published stories, articles, and reviews in papers such as the Cornhill Magazine, London Society, Tinsley's Magazine and Temple Bar. In addition, Gilbert was the London correspondent for L'Invalide Russe and a drama critic for the Illustrated London Times. In the 1860s he also contributed to Tom Hood's Christmas annuals, to Saturday Night, the Comic News and the Savage Club Papers. The Observer newspaper in 1870 sent him to France as a war correspondent reporting on the Franco-Prussian War.
The poems, illustrated humorously by Gilbert, proved immensely popular and were reprinted in book form as the Bab Ballads.Stedman (1996), pp. 26–29. See also the introduction to Gilbert, W.S. (1908), The Bab Ballads, etc, which details the history of the collections it was drawn from. He would later return to many of these as source material for his plays and comic operas. Gilbert and his colleagues from Fun, including Tom Robertson, Tom Hood, Clement Scott and F. C. Burnand (who defected to Punch in 1862) frequented the Arundel Club, the Savage Club, and especially Evans's café, where they had a table in competition with the Punch 'Round table'.Stedman (1996), pp. 16–18. See also Tom Robertson's play Society, which fictionalised the evenings in Evans's café in one scene.
Gilbert married Lucy Agnes Turner, whom he called "Kitty", in 1867; she was 11 years his junior. He wrote many affectionate letters to her over the years. Gilbert and Lucy were socially active both in London and later at Grim's Dyke, often holding dinner parties and being invited to others' homes for dinner, in contrast to the picture painted by fictionalisations such as the film Topsy-Turvy. The Gilberts had no children, but they had many pets, including some exotic ones.Ainger, p. 148 and Stedman (1996), pp. 318-20. See also Bond, Jessie,Reminiscences, Chapter 16 and McIntosh.

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<section id="40777" fatherid="40775" title="First plays" lv="" priority="2" level="2">
Gilbert wrote and directed a number of plays at school, but his first professionally produced play was Uncle Baby, which ran for seven weeks in the autumn of 1863.David Eden (in Gilbert and Sullivan: The Creative Conflict 1986) suggests that this play was by, or in collaboration with, Gilbert's father, although Crowther says that Eden gives no foundation for this suggestion. See Crowther, Andrew, The Life of W. S. Gilbert. In 1865–66 he collaborated with Charles Millward on several pantomimes, including one called Hush-a-Bye, Baby, On the Tree Top, or, Harlequin Fortunia, King Frog of Frog Island, and the Magic Toys of Lowther Arcade (1866).Stedman (1996), pp. 34–35. Gilbert's first solo success, however, came a few days after Hush-a-Bye Baby premiered. His friend Tom Robertson was asked to write a pantomime but did not think he could do it in the two weeks available, and so he recommended Gilbert instead. Written and rushed to the stage in 10 days, Dulcamara, or the Little Duck and the Great Quack, a burlesque of Gaetano Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore, proved extremely popular. This led to a long series of further Gilbert opera burlesques, pantomimes and farces, full of awful puns (traditional in burlesques of the period),Gilbert, W. S. La Vivandière, or, True to the Corps! (a burlesque of Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment) though showing, at times, signs of the satire that would later be a defining part of Gilbert's work.The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Volume XIII, Chapter VIII, Section 15 (1907–21), The full quote refers to Pygmalion and Galatea and reads: "The satire is shrewd, but not profound; the young author is apt to sneer, and he has by no means learned to make the best use of his curiously logical fancy. That he occasionally degrades high and beautiful themes is not surprising. To do so had been the regular proceeding in burlesque, and the age almost expected it; but Gilbert's is not the then usual hearty cockney vulgarity." For instance:
This was followed by the last of Gilbert's operatic parodies, Robert the Devil, a burlesque of Giacomo Meyerbeer's opera, Robert le diable, which was part of a triple bill that opened the Gaiety Theatre, London in 1868. The piece was Gilbert's biggest success to date, running for over 100 nights and being frequently revived and played continuously in the provinces for three years thereafter.Stedman (1996), p. 62
In Victorian theatre, "to degrade high and beautiful themes... had been the regular proceeding in burlesque, and the age almost expected it...." However, Gilbert's burlesques were considered unusually tasteful compared to the others on the London stage, and he would depart even further from the burlesque style from about 1869 with plays containing original plots and fewer puns.Crowther, Andrew, The Life of W. S. Gilbert

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<section id="40778" fatherid="40775" title="The German Reed entertainments and other plays of the early 1870s" lv="" priority="3" level="2">
Theatre, at the time Gilbert began writing, had fallen into disrepute. Badly translated and adapted French operettas and poorly written, prurient burlesques dominated the London stage. As Jessie Bond vividly described it, "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 eous British householder."Bond, Jessie, Reminiscences, Introduction. Bond created the mezzo-soprano roles in most of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, and is here leading in to a description of Gilbert's role reforming the Victorian theatre.
From 1869 to 1875, Gilbert joined with one of the leading figures in theatrical reform, Thomas German Reed (and his wife Priscilla), whose Gallery of Illustration sought to regain some of theatre's lost respectability by offering family entertainments in London.  So successful were they that by 1885 Gilbert stated that original British plays were appropriate for an innocent 15-year-old girl in the audience.Gilbert gave a speech in 1885 at a dinner to benefit the Dramatic and Musical Sick Fund, which is reprinted in The Era, 21 February 1885, p. 14, in which he said: "In... the dress circle on the rare occasion of the first performance of an original English play sits a young lady of fifteen.  She is a very charming girl—gentle, modest, sensitive—carefully educated and delicately nurtured... an excellent specimen of a well-bred young English gentlewoman; and it is with reference to its suitability to the eyes and ears of this young lady that the moral fitness of every original English play is gauged on the occasion of its production.  It must contain no allusions that cannot be fully and satisfactorily explained to this young lady; it must contain no incident, no dialogue, that can, by any chance, summon a blush to this young lady’s innocent face.  ...I happen to know that, on no account whatever, would she be permitted to be present at a première of M. Victorien Sardou or M. Alexandre Dumas.  ...the dramatists of France can only ring out threadbare variations of that dirty old theme—the cheated husband, the faithless wife, and the triumphant lover."  Three months before the opening of Gilbert's last burlesque (The Pretty Druidess), the first of his pieces for the Gallery of Illustration, No Cards, was produced. Gilbert created six musical entertainments for the German Reeds, some with music composed by Thomas German Reed himself.
The environment of the German Reeds' intimate theatre allowed Gilbert quickly to develop a personal style and freedom to control all aspects of production, including set, costumes, direction and stage management. These works were a success,Stedman (1996), pp. 69–80. with Gilbert's first big hit at the Gallery of Illustration, Ages Ago, opening in 1869. Ages Ago was also the beginning of a collaboration with the composer Frederic Clay that would last seven years and produce four works.Crowther, Andrew, Analysis of Ages Ago It was at a rehearsal for Ages Ago that Clay formally introduced Gilbert to his friend, Arthur Sullivan. The Bab Ballads and Gilbert's many early musical works gave him much practice as a lyricist even before his collaboration with Sullivan.
Many of the plot elements of the German Reed Entertainments (as well as some from his earlier plays and Bab Ballads) would be reused by Gilbert later in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. These elements include paintings coming to life (Ages Ago, used again in Ruddigore), a deaf nursemaid binding a respectable man's son to a "pirate" instead of to a "pilot" by mistake (Our Island Home, 1870, reused in The Pirates of Penzance), and the forceful mature lady who is "an acquired taste" (Eyes and No Eyes, 1875, reused in The Mikado).Smith, J. Donald, W. S. Gilbert's Operas for the German Reeds During this time, Gilbert perfected the 'topsy-turvy' style that he had been developing in his Bab Ballads, where the humour was derived by setting up a ridiculous premise and working out its logical consequences, however absurd.Andrew Crowther's description of Gilbert's style of humour. See also Gilbert's play, Topsyturveydom. Mike Leigh describes the "Gilbertian" style as follows: "With great fluidity and freedom, Gilbert continually challenges our natural expectations. First, within the framework of the story, he makes bizarre things happen, and turns the world on its head. Thus the Learned Judge marries the Plaintiff, the soldiers metamorphose into aesthetes, and so on, and nearly every opera is resolved by a deft moving of the goalposts.... His genius is to fuse opposites with an imperceptible sleight of hand, to blend the surreal with the real, and the caricature with the natural. In other words, to tell a perfectly outrageous story in a completely deadpan way."
At the same time, Gilbert created several 'fairy comedies' at the Haymarket Theatre. This series of plays was founded upon the idea of self-revelation by characters under the influence of some magic or some supernatural interference."Miss Anderson as Galatea", The New-York Times, 1883 January 23 32(9791): 5, col. 3 Amusements Downloaded 15 October, 2006. The first was The Palace of Truth (1870), based partly on a story by Madame de Genlis.  In 1871, with Pygmalion and Galatea, one of seven plays that he produced that year, Gilbert scored his greatest hit to date.  Together, these plays and their successors such as The Wicked World (1873), Sweethearts (1874), and Broken Hearts (1875), did for Gilbert on the dramatic stage what the German Reed entertainments had done for him on the musical stage: they established that his capabilities extended far beyond burlesque, won him artistic credentials, and demonstrated that he was a writer of wide range, as comfortable with human drama as with farcical humour. The success of these plays, especially Pygmalion and Galatea, gave Gilbert a prestige that would be crucial to his later collaboration with as respected a musician as Sullivan.Wren, Gayden, 2006, A Most Ingenious Paradox: The Art of Gilbert -anddocsymbol- Sullivan, Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 13. ISBN 0195145143.
Though dated, these works demonstrate Gilbert's desire to give respectable and well-educated theatre audiences comedies that were more refined and tasteful than the usual farces and burlesques playing in London. On the other hand, during the same period, Gilbert pushed the boundaries of how far satire could go in the theatre. He collaborated with Gilbert Arthur à Beckett on The Happy Land (1873), a political satire (in part, a parody of his own The Wicked World), which was briefly banned because of its unflattering caricatures of Gladstone and his ministers. Similarly, The Realm of Joy (1873) was set in the lobby of a theatre performing a scandalous play (implied to be the Happy Land), with many jokes at the expense of the Lord Chamberlain (the "Lord High Disinfectant", as he's referred to in the play).Crowther, Andrew, Synopsis of The Realm of Joy and Terence Rees' introduction to Gilbert, W. S., The Realm of Joy In Charity (1874), however, Gilbert uses the freedom of the stage in a different way: to provide a tightly-written critique of the contrasting ways in which Victorian society treated men and women who had sex outside of marriage, which anticipated the 'problem plays' of Shaw and Ibsen.Crowther, Andrew, Synopsis of Charity

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<section id="40779" fatherid="40775" title="As a director" lv="" priority="4" level="2">
Gilbert was the stage director for his plays and operas and had strong opinions on how they should best be performed. Gilbert was strongly influenced by the innovations in 'stagecraft', now called stage direction, by the playws James Planché and especially Tom Robertson. Gilbert attended rehearsals directed by Robertson to learn this art firsthand from the older director, and he began to apply it in some of his earliest plays. He sought realism in acting, if not in content of his plays (although he did write a romantic comedy in the "naturalist" style, as a tribute to Robertson, Sweethearts), shunned self-conscious interaction with the audience, and insisted on a style of portrayal in which the characters were never aware of their own absurdity, but were coherent internal wholes.Cox-Ife, William. W. S. Gilbert: Stage Director. Dobson, 1978 ISBN 0-234-77206-9. See also Gilbert, W. S., "A Stage Play" and Bond, Jessie, Reminiscences, Introduction. In Gilbert's 1874 burlesque, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the character Hamlet, in his speech to the players, sums up Gilbert's theory of comic acting: "I hold that there is no such antick fellow as your bombastical hero who doth so earnestly spout forth his folly as to make his hearers believe that he is unconscious of all incongruity". With his work along these lines, Gilbert set the ground for later playws such as George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde to be able to flourish on the English stage.
Robertson "introduced Gilbert both to the revolutionary notion of disciplined rehearsals and to mise-en-scène or unity of style in the whole presentation - direction, design, music, acting." Like Robertson, Gilbert demanded discipline in his actors.  He required that his actors know their words perfectly, enunciate them clearly and obey his stage directions, which was something quite new to many actors of the day.Cox-Ife, William. W. S. Gilbert: Stage Director. Dobson, 1978 ISBN 0-234-77206-9. A major innovation was the replacement of the star actor with the disciplined ensemble, "raising the director to a new position of dominance" in the theatre.Stedman, Jane W. "General Utility: Victorian Author-Actors from Knowles to Pinero", Educational Theatre Journal, Vol. 24, No. 3, October 1972, pp. 289-301, The Johns Hopkins University Press "That Gilbert was a good director is not in doubt. He was able to extract from his actors natural, clear performances, which served the Gilbertian requirements of outrageousness delivered straight." Gilbert prepared meticulously for each new work, making models of the stage, actors and set pieces, and designing every action and bit of business in advance.From Real Conversations by William Archer, 1904, pp. 129-30 Gilbert would not work with actors who challenged his authority.Vorder Bruegge, Andrew "W. S. Gilbert: Antiquarian Authenticity and Artistic Autocracy" (Associate Professor, Department Chair, Department of Theatre and Dance, Winthrop University). Professor Vorder Bruegge presented this paper at the Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States annual conference in October 2002. Retrieved March 26, 2008. In addition, "Mr. Gilbert is a perfect autocrat, insisting that his words should be delivered, even to an inflection of the voice, as he dictates. He will stand on the stage beside the actor or actress, and repeat the words with appropriate action over and over again, until they are delivered as he desires them to be." Even during long runs and revivals, Gilbert closely supervised the performances of his plays, making sure that the actors did not make unauthorised additions, deletions or paraphrases.See, e.g. Stedman (1996), p. 269 (quoting a 30 April 1890 letter from Gilbert to D'Oyly Carte); Gilbert, W.S., A Stage Play; Bond, Jessie,Reminiscences, Chapter 4; PeoplePlay UK, D'Oyly Carte, etc. Gilbert was famous for demonstrating the action himself, even as he grew older.In Gilbert, W. S., A Stage Play, Gilbert describes the effect of these demonstrations: "...when he endeavours to show what he wants his actors to do, he makes himself rather ridiculous, and there is a good deal of tittering at the wings; but he contrives, nevertheless, to make himself understood...." See also Stedman (1996), p. 325; and Hicks, Seymour and Terriss, Ellaline Views of W.S. Gilbert Gilbert himself went on stage in a number of productions throughout his lifetime, including several performances as the Associate in Trial by Jury, as substitute for an ailing actor in his play Broken Hearts, and in charity matinees of his one-act plays, such as King Claudius in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.Robert Morrison, in editorial notes to Henry Lytton's book, The Secrets of a Savoyard.

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<section id="40780" fatherid="0" title="The collaboration with Sullivan" lv="" priority="3" level="1">
<section id="40781" fatherid="40780" title="" lv="" priority="-1" level="2">
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<section id="40782" fatherid="40780" title="First collaborations amidst other works" lv="" priority="2" level="2">
In 1871, John Hollingshead commissioned Gilbert to work with Sullivan on a holiday piece for Christmas, Thespis, or The Gods Grown Old, at the Gaiety Theatre. Thespis outran five of its nine competitors for the 1871 holiday season and was later revived for a benefit performance. However, nothing more came of it at that point, and Gilbert and Sullivan went their separate ways. Gilbert worked again with Clay on Happy Arcadia (1872), and with Alfred Cellier on Topsyturveydom (1874), as well as writing several farces, operetta libretti, extravaganzas, fairy comedies, adaptations from novels, translations from the French, and the dramas described above. Also in 1874, he published his last contribution for Fun magazine ("Rosencrantz and Guildenstern"), after a gap of three years, then resigned due to disapproval of the new owner's other publishing interests.Jones, John Bush, "W.S. Gilbert's Contributions to Fun, 1865–1874", published in the Bulletin of the New York Public Library, vol 73 (April 1969), pp. 253–66
It would be nearly four years after Thespis was produced before the two men worked together again. In 1868, Gilbert had published a short comedic sketch libretto in Fun magazine entitled "Trial by Jury: An Operetta". In 1873, Gilbert arranged with the theatrical manager and composer, Carl Rosa, to expand the piece into a one-act libretto. Rosa's wife was to sing the role of the plaintiff. However, Rosa's wife died in childbirth in 1874. Later in 1874 Gilbert offered the libretto to Richard D'Oyly Carte, but Carte could not use the piece at that time. By early 1875, Carte was managing the Royalty Theatre, and he needed a short opera to be played as an afterpiece to Offenbach's La Périchole. He contacted Gilbert, asked about the piece, and suggested Sullivan to set the work. Sullivan was enthusiastic, and Trial by Jury was composed in a matter of weeks. The little piece was a runaway hit, outlasting the run of La Périchole and being revived at another theatre.Walbrook, H. M. (1922), Gilbert and Sullivan Opera, a History and Comment(Chapter 3). See also Barker, John W. "Gilbert and Sullivan", which quotes Sullivan's recollection of Gilbert reading the libretto of Trial by Jury to him: "As soon as he had come to the last word he closed up the manuscript violently, apparently unconscious of the fact that he had achieved his purpose so far as I was concerned, in as much as I was screaming with laughter the whole time."
Gilbert continued his quest to gain respect in and respectability for his profession. One thing that may have been holding dramatists back from respectability was that plays were not published in a form suitable for a "gentleman's library", as, at the time, they were generally cheaply and unattractively published for the use of actors rather than the home reader. To help rectify this, at least for himself, Gilbert arranged in late 1875 for publishers Chatto and Windus to print a volume of his plays in a format designed to appeal to the general reader, with an attractive binding and clear type, containing Gilbert's most respectable plays, including his most serious works, but mischievously capped off with Trial by Jury.
After the success of Trial by Jury, there were discussions towards reviving Thespis, but Gilbert and Sullivan were not able to agree on terms with Carte and his backers. The score to Thespis was never published, and most of the music is now lost. It took some time for Carte to gather funds for another Gilbert and Sullivan opera, and in this gap Gilbert produced several works including Tom Cobb (1875), Eyes and No Eyes (1875, his last German Reed Entertainment), and Princess Toto (1876), his last and most ambitious work with Clay, a three-act comic opera with full orchestra, as opposed to the shorter works for much reduced accompaniment that came before. Gilbert also wrote two serious works during this time, Broken Hearts (1875) and Dan'l Druce, Blacksmith (1876).
Also during this period, Gilbert wrote his most successful comic play, Engaged (1877), which inspired Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. Engaged is a parody of romantic drama written in the "topsy-turvy" satiric style of many of Gilbert's Bab Ballads and the Savoy Operas, with one character pledging his love, in the most poetic and romantic language possible, to every single woman in the play; the "innocent" Scottish rustics being revealed to be making a living through throwing trains off the lines and then charging the passengers for services, and, in general, romance being gladly thrown over in favour of monetary gain. Engaged continues to be performed today by both professional and amateur companies.Gilbert, W. S., Engaged, see also Feingold, Michael, "Engaging the Past" (Note the last paragraph, where Feingold writes, "Wilde pillaged this piece for ideas."); Gardner, Lyn, Review of Engaged in The Guardian, etc.

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<section id="40783" fatherid="40780" title="The peak collaborative years" lv="" priority="3" level="2">
Carte finally assembled a syndicate in 1877 and formed the Comedy Opera Company to launch a series of original English comic operas, beginning with a third collaboration between Gilbert and Sullivan, The Sorcerer, in November 1877. This work was a modest success, and 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 Carte over the division of profits, the other Comedy Opera Company 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 by stagehands and others at the theatre loyal to Carte, and Carte continued as sole impresario of the newly renamed D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.Bond, Jessie, Chapter 4. Indeed, Pinafore was so successful that over a hundred unauthorised productions sprang up in America alone. Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte tried for many years to control the American performance copys over their operas, without success.
For the next decade, the Savoy Operas (as the series came to be known, after the theatre Carte later built to house them) were Gilbert's principal activity. The successful comic operas with Sullivan continued to appear every year or two, several of them being among the longest-running productions up to that point in the history of the musical stage.List of longest running London shows through 1920. This list shows that Pinafore, Patience and The Mikado each held the position of second longest-running musical theatre production in history for a time (after adjusting Pinafore's initial run down to 571 performances), and The Gondoliers was not far behind. After Pinafore came The Pirates of Penzance (1879), Patience (1881), Iolanthe (1882), Princess Ida (1884, based on Gilbert's earlier farce, The Princess), The Mikado (1885), Ruddigore (1887), The Yeomen of the Guard (1888), and The Gondoliers (1889). Gilbert not only directed and oversaw all aspects of production for these works, but he actually designed the costumes himself for Patience, Iolanthe, Princess Ida, and Ruddigore.  He insisted on precise and authentic sets and costumes, which provided a foundation to ground and focus his absurd characters and situations.Stedman (1996), p. 155
During this time, Gilbert and Sullivan also collaborated on one other major work, the oratorio The Martyr of Antioch, premiered at the Leeds music festival in October 1880. Gilbert arranged the original epic poem by Henry Hart Milman into a libretto suitable for the music, and it contains some original work. During this period, also, Gilbert occasionally wrote plays to be performed elsewhere-both serious dramas (for example The Ne'er-Do-Weel, 1878; and Gretchen, 1879) and humorous works (for example Foggerty's Fairy, 1881). However, he no longer needed to turn out multiple plays each year, as he had done before. Indeed, during the more than nine years that separated The Pirates of Penzance and The Gondoliers, he wrote just three plays outside of the partnership with Sullivan. Only one of these works, Comedy and Tragedy, proved successful.Foggerty's Fairy: Crowther, Andrew, "Foggerty's Failure," Comedy and Tragedy: Stedman (1996), pp. 204–05. Although Comedy and Tragedy had a short run due to the lead actress refusing to act during Holy Week, the play was revived regularly. With respect to Brantinghame Hall, however, Stedman (1996), p. 254, says, "It was a failure, the worst failure of Gilbert's career."
In 1878, Gilbert realized a life-long dream to play Harlequin, which he did at the Gaiety Theatre as part of an amateur charity production of The Forty Thieves, partly written by himself.   Gilbert trained for Harlequin's stylised dancing with John D'Auban, who would choreograph many of his operas.  Producer John Hollingshead later remembered, "the gem of the performance was the grimly earnest and determined Harlequin of W. S. Gilbert. It gave me an idea of what Oliver Cromwell would have made of the character."Hollingshead, John. My Lifetime, vol 2, p. 124 (1895) S. Low, Marston: London Another member of the cast recalled that Gilbert was tirelessly enthusiastic about the piece and often invited the cast to his home for dinner extra rehearsals. "A pleasanter, more genial, or agreeable companion than he was it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to find."Elliot, William Gerald. "The Amateur Pantomime of 1878", Amateur Clubs and Actors, Chapter VI, pp. 122–23 (1898) London: E. Arnold In 1882, Gilbert had a telephone installed in his home and at the prompt desk at the Savoy Theatre, so that he could monitor performances and rehearsals from his home study. Gilbert had referred to the new technology in Pinafore in 1878, only two years after the device was invented and before London even had telephone service.Bradley, p. 176.

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<section id="40784" fatherid="40780" title="The Carpet Quarrel and end of the collaboration" lv="" priority="4" level="2">
Gilbert sometimes had a strained working relationship with Sullivan, partly caused by the fact that each man saw himself allowing his work to be subjugated to the other's, and partly caused by the opposing personalities of the two-Gilbert was often confrontational and notoriously thin-skinned (though prone to acts of extraordinary kindness), while Sullivan eschewed conflict. In addition, Gilbert imbued his libretti with "topsy-turvy" situations in which the social order was turned upside down. After a time, these subjects were often at odds with Sullivan's desire for realism and emotional content.See, e.g. Ainger, p. 288, or Wolfson, p. 3 In addition, Gilbert's political satire often poked fun at those in the circles of privilege, while Sullivan was eager to socialize among the wealthy and titled people who would become his friends and patrons.See, e.g. Jacobs, Arthur (1992); Crowther, Andrew, The Life of W.S. Gilbert; and Bond, Jessie, Chapter 16 Stedman (1996), pp. 264–65, notes some of Sullivan's cuts to Gondoliers to remove anti-monarchist sentiments.
Throughout their collaboration, Gilbert and Sullivan quarrelled several times over the choice of a subject. After both Princess Ida and Ruddigore, which were less successful than the seven other operas from H.M.S. Pinafore through The Gondoliers, Sullivan asked to leave the partnership, saying that he found Gilbert's plots repetitive and that the operas were not artistically satisfying to him. While the two artists worked out their differences, Carte kept the Savoy open with revivals of their earlier works. On each occasion, after a few months' pause, Gilbert responded with a libretto that met Sullivan's objections, and the partnership was able to continue successfully.Crowther, Andrew, The Carpet Quarrel Explained.
During the run of The Gondoliers, however, Gilbert challenged Carte over the expenses of the production. Carte had charged the cost of a new carpet for the Savoy Theatre lobby to the partnership. Gilbert believed that this was a maintenance expense that should be charged to Carte alone. As scholar Andrew Crowther has explained:
After all, the carpet was only one of a number of disputed items, and the real issue lay not in the mere money value of these things, but in whether Carte could be trusted with the financial affairs of Gilbert and Sullivan. Gilbert contended that Carte had at best made a series of serious blunders in the accounts, and at worst deliberately attempted to swindle the others. It is not easy to settle the s and wrongs of the issue at this distance, but it does seem fairly clear that there was something very wrong with the accounts at this time. Gilbert wrote to Sullivan on 28 May 1891, a year after the end of the "Quarrel", that Carte had admitted "an unintentional overcharge of nearly £1,000 in the electric lighting accounts alone."Crowther, Andrew, The Carpet Quarrel Explained
Sullivan sided with Carte, who was building a theatre in London for the production of new English grand operas, with Sullivan's Ivanhoe as the inaugural work. While the protracted quarrel worked itself out in the courts and in public, Gilbert wrote The Mountebanks with Alfred Cellier and the flop Haste to the Wedding with George Grossmith.
In 1891, after many failed attempts at reconciliation by the pair, Tom Chappell, the music publisher responsible for printing the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, stepped in to mediate between two of his most profitable artists, and within two weeks had succeeded.Wolfson, p. 7. Two more operas resulted: Utopia, Limited (1893) and The Grand Duke (1896). Gilbert also offered a third libretto to Sullivan (His Excellency, 1894), but Gilbert's insistence on casting Nancy McIntosh, his protégée from Utopia, led to Sullivan's refusal. Wolfson, pp. 61–65. Utopia, concerning an attempt to "anglicise" a south Pacific island kingdom, was only a modest success, and The Grand Duke, in which a theatrical troupe, by means of a "statutory duel" and a conspiracy, takes political control of a grand duchy, was an out failure. After that, the partnership ended for good.Wolfson, passim Sullivan continued to compose comic opera with other librettists but died four years later. In 1904, Gilbert would write, "...Savoy opera was snuffed out by the deplorable death of my distinguished collaborator, Sir Arthur Sullivan. When that event occurred, I saw no one with whom I felt that I could work with satisfaction and success, and so I discontinued to write libretti."Letter to the Editor, The Times, Saturday, Mar 12, 1904; pg. 9; Issue 37340; col C

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<section id="40785" fatherid="0" title="Later years" lv="" priority="4" level="1">
Gilbert built the Garrick Theatre in 1889.Garrick Theatre history site. The Gilberts moved to Grim's Dyke in Harrow in 1890, which he purchased from Robert Heriot, to whom the artist Frederick Goodall had sold the property in 1880.Stedman (1996), p. 278. In 1891, Gilbert was appointed Justice of the Peace for Middlesex.Stedman (1996) p. 281. After casting Nancy McIntosh in Utopia, Limited, he and Lady Gilbert developed an affection for her, and she eventually gained the status of an unofficially adopted daughter, moving to Grim's Dyke to live with them. She continued living there, even after Gilbert's death, until Lady Gilbert's death in 1936.Who Was Who in The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company: Nancy McIntosh at the Gilbert and Sullivan Archive. A statue of Charles II was carved by Danish sculptor Caius Gabriel Cibber in 1681 and placed at the centre of Soho Square. By the early 19th century, the statue was described as being 'in a most wretched mutilated state; and the inscriptions on the base of the pedestal quite illegible'."Soho Square Area: Portland Estate: Soho Square Garden" in Survey of London volumes 33 and 34 (1966) St Anne Soho, pp. 51-53. Date accessed: 12 January 2008. In 1875, it was removed during alterations in the square and given for safekeeping to Frederick Goodall, with the intention that it might be restored. Goodall placed the statue on an island in his lake at Grim's Dyke, where it remained when Gilbert purchased the property. In her will, Lady Gilbert directed that the statue be returned, and it was restored to Soho Square in 1938.Photo of the statue
Although Gilbert announced a retirement from the theatre after the poor initial run of his last work with Sullivan, The Grand Duke (1896) and the poor reception of his 1897 play The Fortune Hunter, he produced at least three more plays over the last dozen years of his life, including an unsuccessful opera, Fallen Fairies (1909), with Edward German.Wolfson, pp. 102–03. Gilbert also continued to supervise the various revivals of his works by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, including its London Repertory seasons in 1906–09.Wolfson, p. 102. His last play, The Hooligan, produced just four months before his death, is a study of a young condemned thug in a prison cell. The piece was so grim and powerful that, according to Mrs. Alec Tweedie, "women in the audience had gone out fainting". The Hooligan was one of Gilbert's most successful serious dramas, and experts conclude that, in those last months of Gilbert's life, he was developing a new style, a "mixture of irony, of social theme, and of grubby realism,"Stedman (1996), p. 343. to replace the old "Gilbertianism" that he had grown weary of.Crowther, Andrew, Notes on the Hooligan  In these last years, Gilbert also wrote children's book versions of H.M.S. Pinafore and The Mikado giving, in some cases, backstory that is not found in the librettos.Stedman, p. 331Gilbert, W. S. The Pinafore Picture Book, London: George Bell and Sons (1908)Gilbert, W. S. The Story of The Mikado, London: Daniel O'Connor (1921)
Gilbert was knighted on 15 July 1907 in recognition of his contributions to drama.Ainger, pp. 417–18 Sullivan had been knighted for his contributions to music almost a quarter of a century earlier, in 1883. Gilbert 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 Vanbrugh, were knighted for political and other services.Stedman (1996), p. 328.
On 29 May 1911, Gilbert was giving swimming lessons to two young ladies in the lake of his home, Grim's Dyke, when one of them lost her footing and called for help. Gilbert dived in to save her, but suffered a heart attack in the middle of the lake and drowned. His ashes were buried at the Church of St. John the Evangelist, Stanmore. The inscription on Gilbert's memorial on the south wall of the Thames Embankment in London reads: "His Foe was Folly, and his Weapon Wit". There is also a memorial plaque at All Saints' Church, Harrow Weald.

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<section id="40786" fatherid="0" title="Personality" lv="" priority="5" level="1">
Although many have written that Gilbert was often prickly, many have defended him.  Actress May Fortescue recalled, "His kindness was extraordinary.  On wet nights and when rehearsals were late and the last buses were gone, he would pay the cab-fares of the girls whether they were pretty or not, instead of letting them trudge home on foot ... He was just as large-hearted when he was poor as when he was rich and successful.  For money as money he cared less than nothing.  Gilbert was no plaster saint, but he was an ideal friend.  Journalist Frank M. Boyd wrote,
I fancy that seldom was a man more generally given credit for a personality quite other than his own, than was the case with Sir W. S. Gilbert ... Till one actually came to know the man, one shared the opinion held by so many, that he was a gruff, disagreeable person; but nothing could be less true of the really great humorist. He had rather a severe appearance ... and like many other clever people, he had precious little use for fools of either sex, but he was at heart as kindly and lovable a man as you could wish to meet.Boyd, Frank M. A Pelican's Tale, Fifty Years of London and Elsewhere, p. 195, London: Herbert Jenkins, Ltd (1919)
Jessie Bond wrote that Gilbert "was quick-tempered, often unreasonable, and he could not bear to be thwarted, but how anyone could call him unamiable I cannot understand."Bond, Jessie, Chapter 16 George Grossmith to The Daily Telegraph, that although Gilbert had been described as an autocrat at rehearsals, "That was really only his manner when he was playing the part of stage director at rehearsals. As a matter of fact, he was a generous, kind true gentleman, and I use the word in the purest and original sense."George Grossmith's tribute to Gilbert in The Daily Telegraph, 7 June 1911
Aside from his occasional creative disagreements with, and eventual rift from, Sullivan, Gilbert's temper led to the loss of friendships with a number of people. For instance, he quarrelled with his old associate C. H. Workman, over the firing of Nancy McIntosh from the production of Fallen Fairies, and with actress Henrietta Hodson. He also saw his friendship with theatre critic Clement Scott turn bitter. However, Gilbert could be extraordinarily kind. During Scott's final illness in 1904, for instance, Gilbert donated to a fund for him, visited nearly every day, and assisted Scott's wife,Scott, Mrs. Clement, Old Days in Bohemian London (c.1910). New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company. pp. 71–72 despite having not been on friendly terms with him for the previous sixteen years.See Stedman (1996), pp. 254-56 and 323-24 Similarly, Gilbert had written several plays at the behest of comic actor Ned Sothern. However, Sothern died before he could perform the last of these, Foggerty’s Fairy. Gilbert purchased the play back from his grateful widow.See, e.g., Ainger, pp. 193–94.  According to one London society lady:

As the writings about Gilbert by husband and wife Seymour Hicks and Ellaline Terriss (frequent guests at his home) vividly illustrate, Gilbert's relationships with women were generally more successful than his relationships with men. Hicks, Seymour and Terriss, Ellaline Views of W.S. Gilbert Also, according to George Grossmith, Gilbert loved children:
Gilbert's niece Mary Carter confirmed, "... he loved children very much and lost no opportunity of making them happy ... He was the kindest and most human of uncles."Carter, Mary. Letter to the editor of The Daily Telegraph, 6 January 1956 Grossmith quoted Gilbert as saying, "Deer-stalking would be a very fine sport if only the deer had guns."

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<section id="40787" fatherid="0" title="Legacy" lv="" priority="6" level="1">
In 1957, a review in The Times, explained "the continued vitality of the Savoy operas" as follows: 

Gilbert's legacy, aside from building the Garrick Theatre and writing the Savoy Operas and other works that are still being performed or in print over a hundred and twenty-five years after their creation, is felt perhaps most strongly today through his influence on the American and British musical theatre. The innovations in content and form of the works that he and Sullivan developed, and in Gilbert's theories of acting and stage direction, directly influenced the development of the modern musical throughout the 20th century.Downs, Peter. "Actors Cast Away Cares". Hartford Courant, 18 October 2006. Available for a fee at courant.com archives.Cox-Ife, William. W. S. Gilbert: Stage Director. Dobson, 1978 ISBN 0-234-77206-9 Gilbert's lyrics employ punning, as well as complex internal and two and three-syllable rhyme schemes, and served as a model for such 20th century Broadway lyricists as P.G. Wodehouse,PG Wodehouse (1881–1975) guardian.co.uk, Retrieved on 2007-05-21. Cole Porter,Lesson 35-Cole Porter: You're the Top PBS.org, American Masters for Teachers, Retrieved on 2007-05-21. Ira Gershwin,Furia, Phillip.Ira Gershwin: The Art of a Lyricist Oxford University Press, Retrieved on 2007-05-21. and Lorenz Hart.
Gilbert's influence on the English language has also been marked, with well-known phrases such as "A policeman's lot is not a happy one", "short, sharp shock", "What never? Well, hardly ever!", and "let the punishment fit the crime" arising from his pen. In addition, biographies continue to be written about Gilbert's life and work,e.g., Stedman (1996), Crowther (2000) and his work is not only performed, but frequently parodied, pastiched, quoted and imitated in comedy routines, film, television and other popular media.Bradley (2005), Chapter 1

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<section id="40789" fatherid="0" title="Notes" lv="" priority="-8" level="1">
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<section id="40790" fatherid="0" title="References" lv="" priority="-9" level="1">
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<section id="40791" fatherid="0" title="Further reading" lv="" priority="-10" level="1">
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<section id="40792" fatherid="0" title="External links" lv="" priority="-11" level="1">
Category:1836 births
Category:1911 deaths
Category:Gilbert and Sullivan
Category:Alumni of King's College London
Category:British theatre directors
Category:Opera librettists
Category:Deaths by drowning
Category:Deputy Lieutenants of Middlesex
Category:English dramatists and playws
Category:English illustrators
Category:English poets
Category:People from Pinner

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