W.S. Gilbert(1836-1911)
- Writer
- Music Department
- Additional Crew
William Schwenck Gilbert was born in London on November 18, 1836, to
William Gilbert, a retired naval surgeon, and his wife Anne. The
Gilberts would add three younger girls to the brood: Jane, Maud and
Florence. His parents were cold and distant, with prickly characters.
Stern and unyielding, they did not show affection for their son, who
absorbed their inflexibility and emotional frigidity. His parents'
relationship was strained, and they separated in 1876. Gilbert cared
more for his father than his mother, but his biographers are mute on
his feelings towards his father's death, or indeed, about his relations
with his parents at all . Gilbert remained detached from life,
regarding its triumphs and defeats with a reserve, a sense of
atomization likely inherited from his parents.
Young William spent his formative years touring Europe with his parents
before they returned to London in 1847. He was sent to the Great Ealing
School and completed his education at King's College, London. He did
not go on to Oxford as he was determined to join the Army to fight in
Crimea. He failed to obtain a commission, and turned his attention
towards making a career as a government clerk and barrister in the
years 1857-66.
His interest in the theater seems to have come to him at an early age.
Circa 1861, he began making submissions of prose, verse and drawings to
the comic magazine "Fun," writing "The Bab Ballads" for the wag rag. He
turned to playwriting, and his first legitimate production, "Uncle
Baby," debuted at London's Royal Lyceum Theatre ion the October 31,
1863. The play ran seven weeks, but he was not produced again until
1866, when his pantomime "Hush-a-Bye Baby" and his burlesque
"Dulcamara" were produced in December. He continued to work in
burlesques for the next three years , making a reputation for himself
as a tasteful and intelligent writer. Burlesque in the 19th century was
akin to vaudeville, with star turns, ballet, and spectacle. Gilbert had
no control over his work as in burlesque, as the stars were the thing,
a position of powerlessness he resented.
Gilbert married Lucy Agnes Turner on of August 6, 1867. Little is known
of her, although most biographers speculated that her personality was
soothing and conciliatory, a fitting counterpoint to Gilbert's own
abrasive and confrontational personality. She likely dominated her
household, and Gilbert even may have been afraid of her anger lest he
trespass her in her domestic fiefdom.
Gilbert's last burlesque, "The Pretty Druidess," debuted on June 19,
1869. He had already began writing for the Gallery of Illustration, a
small, sophisticated theater that produced his "No Cards" on March
29th, earlier that year. Freed from the interference of stage-managers
of the more vulgar, commercial theater, Gilbert was able to develop his
personal style while writing for the Gallery. The Gallery presented six
Gilbert musicals in which his unique tone of voice began to emerge.
Adopting a more restrained style, he produced "fairy comedies" in blank
verse for the Haymarket Theatre. The fairy comedies presented a more
tasteful and popular entertainment than the farce and burlesque that
dominated the theater. He became a theatrical director in this period,
and began directing his own plays so as to exert artistic control over
them and fully realize their potential. In 1867, he directed the
Liverpool production of "La Vivandiere" and the London production of
"Thespis" in 1871, a year that saw six other Gilbert productions on the
boards. As a director, he aimed to introduce subtlety into the English
theater. "Thespis," though not a hit, is significant in that it is his
first collaboration with Arthur Sullivan. Their first hit would come with their
second collaboration, four years later, with "Trial by Jury."
His output for the theater included farces, operetta librettos,
adaptations of novels such as Dickens' "Great Expectations," and
translations of French drama. He even dabbled in writing serious drama,
though he was not notably successful in that genre. The strain of so
much work led to his leaving "Fun."
Gilbert's reputation was waxing, and he was positioning himself as one
of the major forces on the English stage. He collaborated with Gilbert
a Beckett on the political satire "The Happy Land" in 1873. The play,
which lampooned prime minister Gladstone and two of his ministers, was
banned briefly. This was the beginning of Gilbert pushing the
parameters of what could be presented on the English stage. While
Gilbert did tend to be iconoclastic, he worked in the popular theater
and needed success to continue to work. Drama was then the least
respected of the literary professions, and in his career, he attempted
to make it more respectable, succeeding to the degree that the next
generation's leading lights, Oscar Wilde and Bernard Shaw, were able to
tackle more sensitive subjects while being respected as major authors.
Up until Gilbert decided to publish his oeuvre, plays were published
very cheaply, as pamphlets for the use of actors rather than readers.
Gilbert wanted his plays published as real books, proofread and
attractive so they could find a place in the home libraries of
gentlemen. The first volume of Gilbert's plays was published in 1875 by
the respectable house Chatto and Windus in a an attractively-bound,
well-printed volume that eliminated stage jargon intended for actors.
Such a well-published book was unheard of for a new, relatively
controversial dramatist like Gilbert, as it typically was the province
of older, for long-established dramatists to be published in
respectable volumes. Gilbert eventually published three more volumes of
his original plays, and his popularity was such that he even made a
profit from them.
After the success of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Trial by Jury," Richard
D'Oyly Carte became the duo's producer. The third Gilbert and Sullivan
collaboration, "The Sorcerer," was presented in 1877, as was his
masterpiece "Engaged," a cynical and ironic work that was very funny.
Critics attacked the play as debasing the human spirit. However,
critics and audiences eventually would accept Gilbert's cynicism when
he wrote in tandem with Sullivan due to the ameliorating affect of the
latter's music. The audience also began to get used to Gilbert's
cynical voice.
"The Sorcerer" was a success, but their next production, "H.M.S.
Pinafore" (1878) was a blockbuster hit that engendered multiple pirate
productions in the United States. The next year, they had an equivalent
hit with their "The Pirates of Penzance." To stymie the American
pirates, D'Oyly Carte presented its own "H.M.S. Pinafore" production in
New York City in 1879, then introduced Gilbert and Sullivan's
as-yet-unpirated "Pirates of Penzance" to the New York audience.
Gilbert continued to write plays without the participation of Sullivan,
but they were not successes. His serious drama "The Ne'er-Do-Weel"
(1878) flopped after opening to awful reviews, and the rewritten
version, "The Vagabond," also proved a flop. Gilbert's blank-verse
tragedy "Gretchen" (1879) lasted but three weeks on the boards, as did
his farce "Foggerty's Fairy" (1881). The 1881, Gilbert and Sullivan's
satire on Oscar Wilde and his circle, "Patience" was a success.
("Patience" eventually was transferred to the new Savoy Theatre, which
Gilbert's personal company also made its home.) Coming after the
failure of "Foggerty's Fairy," Gilbert decided to focus his writing to
his collaboration with Sullivan. His production slowed down, partly due
to his economic success obviating a need to continually turn out new
plays like clockwork, but mostly due to the new careful and systematic
writing methods he adopted.
In an 1885 interview, he admitted to laboriously developing his plots,
in consultation with Sullivan in multiple drafts. He would create a
skeleton libretto using the fewest words possible to sketch out the
actions of the piece. Songs and dialog would be slowly developed and
polished. This new process was time-intensive, and produced but one
operetta per year, and while it produced many masterpieces, it took the
risk out of Gilbert's work. He started settling into formula, which
betrayed his iconoclastic nature.
For the rest of the decade, Gilbert-and-Sullivan produced "Iolanthe"
(1882), "Princess Ida" (1884), "The Mikado" (1885), "Ruddigore" (1887)
and "The Yeomen of the Guard" (1888). Despite its success, the
collaboration became tenuous, and after "Princess Ida," Sullivan
refused to write anything more for D'Oyly Carte's theater, The Savoy,
and departed for a five-week-long European. When he returned to London,
both Gilbert and D'Oyly Carte tried to persuade him to continue the
collaboration, but Sullivan was tired of the contrived plots and balked
at Gilbert's insistence that the plot of their next work involve a
magic pill. Finally, Sullivan relented when Gilbert, aware of the vogue
for Japanese culture then current in Europe, developed the plot for
what became "The Mikado."
After "The Gondoliers," the Gilbert and Sullivan collaboration broke up
permanently. The split-up was triggered by the expenses incurred by the
Savoy Theater, which were shared equally by Gilbert, Sullivan and
D'Oyly Carte. Gilbert objected when D'Oyly Carte bought a very
expensive carpet for the theater. Sullivan tried to remain neutral in
the feud between Gilbert and D'Oyly Carte, but when he came down on the
side of the latter, Gilbert bolted the partnership, though he remained
friends with his collaborator. Neither Gilbert or Sullivan would prove
as successful as when they collaborated, and Sir Arthur Sullivan
eventually would become a morphine addict due to his attempts to
assuage the pain from his declining health. He died on November 22,
1900 in London. D'Oyly Carte joined him in death a few months later.
There were many reasons for the break-up of the collaboration other
than the expensive carpet. By the time of the premiere of "The
Gondoliers" (1889), Gilbert's creative powers were in decline. His wit,
once so concise, was replaced by a verbosity, which became more
pronounced with "Utopia, Limited" (1893) and "The Grand Duke" (1896).
The audiences demanded that Gilbert hew to the formula that had made
him a huge success, but he had grown weary of it. "The Grand Duke" is a
tired riff on the old formula, so much so that it is almost a parody.
Gilbert went into semi-retirement at his home in Grim's Dyke Harrow
Weald after "The Grand Duke," where he played the country squire. He
continued to write and finished four more plays in his lifetime. He
turned out the serious melodrama "The Fortune Hunter" (1897) but
returned to his lighter style with "The Fairy's Dilemma" (1904). After
being knighted in 1907, he rewrote "The Wicked World" as "Fallen
Fairies" (1909), with music provided by Edward German. His last
produced work was the short piece "The Hooligan" (1911), which hit the
boards four months before his death. "The Hooligan" represented a
departure for Gilbert into serious drama, and might have been the
direction his career would have taken had he lived.
Sir William S. Gilbert died on of May 29, 1911, while teaching two
young women how to swim in his lake at Grim's Dyke. One the women, out
of her depth, called out for help and Gilbert tried to rescue her.
Accounts are conflicting, and he died of heart failure either in the
middle of the lake during the attempted rescue or shortly thereafter.
One of his epigrams could serve as his epitaph, tongue-in-cheek: "Did
nothing in particular, and did it very well."
William Gilbert, a retired naval surgeon, and his wife Anne. The
Gilberts would add three younger girls to the brood: Jane, Maud and
Florence. His parents were cold and distant, with prickly characters.
Stern and unyielding, they did not show affection for their son, who
absorbed their inflexibility and emotional frigidity. His parents'
relationship was strained, and they separated in 1876. Gilbert cared
more for his father than his mother, but his biographers are mute on
his feelings towards his father's death, or indeed, about his relations
with his parents at all . Gilbert remained detached from life,
regarding its triumphs and defeats with a reserve, a sense of
atomization likely inherited from his parents.
Young William spent his formative years touring Europe with his parents
before they returned to London in 1847. He was sent to the Great Ealing
School and completed his education at King's College, London. He did
not go on to Oxford as he was determined to join the Army to fight in
Crimea. He failed to obtain a commission, and turned his attention
towards making a career as a government clerk and barrister in the
years 1857-66.
His interest in the theater seems to have come to him at an early age.
Circa 1861, he began making submissions of prose, verse and drawings to
the comic magazine "Fun," writing "The Bab Ballads" for the wag rag. He
turned to playwriting, and his first legitimate production, "Uncle
Baby," debuted at London's Royal Lyceum Theatre ion the October 31,
1863. The play ran seven weeks, but he was not produced again until
1866, when his pantomime "Hush-a-Bye Baby" and his burlesque
"Dulcamara" were produced in December. He continued to work in
burlesques for the next three years , making a reputation for himself
as a tasteful and intelligent writer. Burlesque in the 19th century was
akin to vaudeville, with star turns, ballet, and spectacle. Gilbert had
no control over his work as in burlesque, as the stars were the thing,
a position of powerlessness he resented.
Gilbert married Lucy Agnes Turner on of August 6, 1867. Little is known
of her, although most biographers speculated that her personality was
soothing and conciliatory, a fitting counterpoint to Gilbert's own
abrasive and confrontational personality. She likely dominated her
household, and Gilbert even may have been afraid of her anger lest he
trespass her in her domestic fiefdom.
Gilbert's last burlesque, "The Pretty Druidess," debuted on June 19,
1869. He had already began writing for the Gallery of Illustration, a
small, sophisticated theater that produced his "No Cards" on March
29th, earlier that year. Freed from the interference of stage-managers
of the more vulgar, commercial theater, Gilbert was able to develop his
personal style while writing for the Gallery. The Gallery presented six
Gilbert musicals in which his unique tone of voice began to emerge.
Adopting a more restrained style, he produced "fairy comedies" in blank
verse for the Haymarket Theatre. The fairy comedies presented a more
tasteful and popular entertainment than the farce and burlesque that
dominated the theater. He became a theatrical director in this period,
and began directing his own plays so as to exert artistic control over
them and fully realize their potential. In 1867, he directed the
Liverpool production of "La Vivandiere" and the London production of
"Thespis" in 1871, a year that saw six other Gilbert productions on the
boards. As a director, he aimed to introduce subtlety into the English
theater. "Thespis," though not a hit, is significant in that it is his
first collaboration with Arthur Sullivan. Their first hit would come with their
second collaboration, four years later, with "Trial by Jury."
His output for the theater included farces, operetta librettos,
adaptations of novels such as Dickens' "Great Expectations," and
translations of French drama. He even dabbled in writing serious drama,
though he was not notably successful in that genre. The strain of so
much work led to his leaving "Fun."
Gilbert's reputation was waxing, and he was positioning himself as one
of the major forces on the English stage. He collaborated with Gilbert
a Beckett on the political satire "The Happy Land" in 1873. The play,
which lampooned prime minister Gladstone and two of his ministers, was
banned briefly. This was the beginning of Gilbert pushing the
parameters of what could be presented on the English stage. While
Gilbert did tend to be iconoclastic, he worked in the popular theater
and needed success to continue to work. Drama was then the least
respected of the literary professions, and in his career, he attempted
to make it more respectable, succeeding to the degree that the next
generation's leading lights, Oscar Wilde and Bernard Shaw, were able to
tackle more sensitive subjects while being respected as major authors.
Up until Gilbert decided to publish his oeuvre, plays were published
very cheaply, as pamphlets for the use of actors rather than readers.
Gilbert wanted his plays published as real books, proofread and
attractive so they could find a place in the home libraries of
gentlemen. The first volume of Gilbert's plays was published in 1875 by
the respectable house Chatto and Windus in a an attractively-bound,
well-printed volume that eliminated stage jargon intended for actors.
Such a well-published book was unheard of for a new, relatively
controversial dramatist like Gilbert, as it typically was the province
of older, for long-established dramatists to be published in
respectable volumes. Gilbert eventually published three more volumes of
his original plays, and his popularity was such that he even made a
profit from them.
After the success of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Trial by Jury," Richard
D'Oyly Carte became the duo's producer. The third Gilbert and Sullivan
collaboration, "The Sorcerer," was presented in 1877, as was his
masterpiece "Engaged," a cynical and ironic work that was very funny.
Critics attacked the play as debasing the human spirit. However,
critics and audiences eventually would accept Gilbert's cynicism when
he wrote in tandem with Sullivan due to the ameliorating affect of the
latter's music. The audience also began to get used to Gilbert's
cynical voice.
"The Sorcerer" was a success, but their next production, "H.M.S.
Pinafore" (1878) was a blockbuster hit that engendered multiple pirate
productions in the United States. The next year, they had an equivalent
hit with their "The Pirates of Penzance." To stymie the American
pirates, D'Oyly Carte presented its own "H.M.S. Pinafore" production in
New York City in 1879, then introduced Gilbert and Sullivan's
as-yet-unpirated "Pirates of Penzance" to the New York audience.
Gilbert continued to write plays without the participation of Sullivan,
but they were not successes. His serious drama "The Ne'er-Do-Weel"
(1878) flopped after opening to awful reviews, and the rewritten
version, "The Vagabond," also proved a flop. Gilbert's blank-verse
tragedy "Gretchen" (1879) lasted but three weeks on the boards, as did
his farce "Foggerty's Fairy" (1881). The 1881, Gilbert and Sullivan's
satire on Oscar Wilde and his circle, "Patience" was a success.
("Patience" eventually was transferred to the new Savoy Theatre, which
Gilbert's personal company also made its home.) Coming after the
failure of "Foggerty's Fairy," Gilbert decided to focus his writing to
his collaboration with Sullivan. His production slowed down, partly due
to his economic success obviating a need to continually turn out new
plays like clockwork, but mostly due to the new careful and systematic
writing methods he adopted.
In an 1885 interview, he admitted to laboriously developing his plots,
in consultation with Sullivan in multiple drafts. He would create a
skeleton libretto using the fewest words possible to sketch out the
actions of the piece. Songs and dialog would be slowly developed and
polished. This new process was time-intensive, and produced but one
operetta per year, and while it produced many masterpieces, it took the
risk out of Gilbert's work. He started settling into formula, which
betrayed his iconoclastic nature.
For the rest of the decade, Gilbert-and-Sullivan produced "Iolanthe"
(1882), "Princess Ida" (1884), "The Mikado" (1885), "Ruddigore" (1887)
and "The Yeomen of the Guard" (1888). Despite its success, the
collaboration became tenuous, and after "Princess Ida," Sullivan
refused to write anything more for D'Oyly Carte's theater, The Savoy,
and departed for a five-week-long European. When he returned to London,
both Gilbert and D'Oyly Carte tried to persuade him to continue the
collaboration, but Sullivan was tired of the contrived plots and balked
at Gilbert's insistence that the plot of their next work involve a
magic pill. Finally, Sullivan relented when Gilbert, aware of the vogue
for Japanese culture then current in Europe, developed the plot for
what became "The Mikado."
After "The Gondoliers," the Gilbert and Sullivan collaboration broke up
permanently. The split-up was triggered by the expenses incurred by the
Savoy Theater, which were shared equally by Gilbert, Sullivan and
D'Oyly Carte. Gilbert objected when D'Oyly Carte bought a very
expensive carpet for the theater. Sullivan tried to remain neutral in
the feud between Gilbert and D'Oyly Carte, but when he came down on the
side of the latter, Gilbert bolted the partnership, though he remained
friends with his collaborator. Neither Gilbert or Sullivan would prove
as successful as when they collaborated, and Sir Arthur Sullivan
eventually would become a morphine addict due to his attempts to
assuage the pain from his declining health. He died on November 22,
1900 in London. D'Oyly Carte joined him in death a few months later.
There were many reasons for the break-up of the collaboration other
than the expensive carpet. By the time of the premiere of "The
Gondoliers" (1889), Gilbert's creative powers were in decline. His wit,
once so concise, was replaced by a verbosity, which became more
pronounced with "Utopia, Limited" (1893) and "The Grand Duke" (1896).
The audiences demanded that Gilbert hew to the formula that had made
him a huge success, but he had grown weary of it. "The Grand Duke" is a
tired riff on the old formula, so much so that it is almost a parody.
Gilbert went into semi-retirement at his home in Grim's Dyke Harrow
Weald after "The Grand Duke," where he played the country squire. He
continued to write and finished four more plays in his lifetime. He
turned out the serious melodrama "The Fortune Hunter" (1897) but
returned to his lighter style with "The Fairy's Dilemma" (1904). After
being knighted in 1907, he rewrote "The Wicked World" as "Fallen
Fairies" (1909), with music provided by Edward German. His last
produced work was the short piece "The Hooligan" (1911), which hit the
boards four months before his death. "The Hooligan" represented a
departure for Gilbert into serious drama, and might have been the
direction his career would have taken had he lived.
Sir William S. Gilbert died on of May 29, 1911, while teaching two
young women how to swim in his lake at Grim's Dyke. One the women, out
of her depth, called out for help and Gilbert tried to rescue her.
Accounts are conflicting, and he died of heart failure either in the
middle of the lake during the attempted rescue or shortly thereafter.
One of his epigrams could serve as his epitaph, tongue-in-cheek: "Did
nothing in particular, and did it very well."