Engaged: An Entirely Original Farcical Comedy, in Three Acts (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Engaged: An Entirely Original Farcical Comed...)
Excerpt from Engaged: An Entirely Original Farcical Comedy, in Three Acts
Ang. Nae, Meg, not if takin' care and thought could h he poor dumb thing! (wiping his eyes.) There.
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This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Works of William Schwenck Gilbert - Kindle edition by William Schwenck Gilbert. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.
(6 works of William Schwenck Gilbert English dramatist, li...)
6 works of William Schwenck Gilbert English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator (1836-1911) This ebook presents a collection of 6 works of William Schwenck Gilbert. A dynamic table of contents allows you to jump directly to the work selected. Table of Contents: Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs Fifty Bab Ballads More Bab Ballads Songs of a Savoyard The Bab Ballads The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan
(A lighthearted burlesque of Victorian English culture and...)
A lighthearted burlesque of Victorian English culture and the vagaries of love, The Mikado offers an ideal matching of William Schwenck Gilbert's elegant comedic gifts with Arthur Sullivan's agile and refined musicianship. The tale unfolds amid a fanciful version of Japanese society, in which a wandering minstrel has the misfortune to fall in love with the beautiful ward of the Lord High Executioner of Titipu. The sparkling lyrics and witty dialogue of this comic masterpiece are as much a delight to read as they are to hear with musical accompaniment. The complete libretto is reprinted in this edition from the standard performance text of The Mikado, complete with nine charming illustrations drawn by W. S. Gilbert himself.
Delphi Complete Works of Gilbert and Sullivan (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 7) eBook: William Schwenck Gilbert, Arthur Seymour Sullivan: Kindle Store
(From Trial by Jury to The Pirates of Penzance: the comple...)
From Trial by Jury to The Pirates of Penzance: the complete librettos of all fourteen Gilbert and Sullivan operas. Gilbert's verses for Sullivan's music are the most fastidiously turned and inventively rhymed in all lyric comedy. As the Savoy Operas enter their second century on a swell of renewed popularity, Gilbert's reputation as the supreme wordsmith of light opera remains secure. Complete and authentic, these are the librettos on which modern performances and recordings are based. Scattered among the songs are over seventy of the amusing, quirky pictures Gilbert drew to illustrate them. A chronology prepared for this edition sketches the authors' lives and careers. This is a book that no lover of Gilbert and Sullivan, musical comedy, or indeed the English theater will want to be without.
The Collected Works of W. S. Gilbert: The Complete Works PergamonMedia (Highlights of World Literature) - Kindle edition by W. S. Gilbert, William Schwenck Gilbert. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.
The Pinafore Picture Book: The Story of H. M. S. Pinafore (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from The Pinafore Picture Book: The Story of H. M...)
Excerpt from The Pinafore Picture Book: The Story of H. M. S. Pinafore As I would not for the world deceive my young readers, I think it right to state that this story is entirely imaginary. It might very well have hap pened but, in point of fact, -it never did. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
The Bab Ballads (Illustrated): With Which are Included Songs of a Savoyard - WITH 350 ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR eBook: William Schwenck Gilbert: Kindle Store
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was a British playwright, dramatist, librettist, and poet, best known for his collaboration with Sir Arthur Sullivan in creation of a famous series of fourteen comic operas (known as the Savoy operas). The most famous of these 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.
Background
Gilbert was born on November 18, 1836 at 17 Southampton Street, Strand, London. His father, also named William Schwenck Gilbert, was briefly a naval surgeon, who later became a writer of novels and short stories, some of which were illustrated by his son. Gilbert was nicknamed "Bab" as a baby, and then "Schwenck", after his father's godparents. Gilbert's parents were distant and stern, and he did not have a particularly close relationship with either of them. They quarrelled increasingly, and following the break-up of their marriage in 1876, his relationships with them, especially his mother, became even more strained. 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 miniatures painter; Anne Maude (1845–1932) and Mary Florence (b. 1843 in Boulogne, France – 1911), neither of whom married.
Education
He first received a fine education at Boulogne, France, where he studied from the age of seven. Then he attended the Western Grammar School, Brompton, London, and the Great Ealing School, where he became head boy and wrote plays for school performances and painted scenery. After that he went to the King's College of London, graduating in 1856 without a degree.
He then spent 4 years as a clerk in the education department of the Privy Council, where he studied law with no particular distinction, and after that drifted into journalism.
After his graduation from the King's College in London, he decided 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'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."
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.
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. 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.
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.
Gilbert's creative output included over 75 plays and libretti, and numerous short stories, poems and lyrics, both comic and serious. Gilbert's plays inspired other dramatists, including Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, and his comic operas with Sullivan inspired the later development of American musical theatre, especially influencing Broadway librettists and lyricists.
Gilbert was knighted on 15 July 1907 in recognition of his contributions to drama. Gilbert was, however, the first British writer ever to receive a knighthood for his plays alone - earlier dramatist knights.
Gilbert's reputation was waxing, and he was positioning himself as one of the major forces on the English stage. 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."
The play "The Happy Land", 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.
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.
Quotations:
One of his epigrams could serve as his epitaph, tongue-in-cheek: "Did nothing in particular, and did it very well."
"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."
Personality
Gilbert was known for being prickly. However, many people have defended him, often citing his generosity.
He loved children very much.
Quotes from others about the person
George Grossmith wrote that, at least sometime, "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. "
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. "
The 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."
According to one London society lady:
"[Gilbert]'s wit was innate, and his rapier-like retorts slipped out with instantaneous ease. His mind was naturally fastidious and clean; he never asserted himself, never tried to make an effect. He was great-hearted and most understanding, with an underlying poetry of fancy that made him the most delicious companion. They spoke of his quick temper, but that was entirely free from malice or guile. He was soft-hearted as a babe, but there was nothing of the hypocrite about him. What he thought he said on the instant, and though by people of sensitive vanity this might on occasion be resented, to a sensitiveness of a finer kind it was an added link, binding one to a faithful, valued friend."
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.
Connections
Gilbert married Lucy Agnes Turner on of August 6, 1867. Little is known of her, except that he called her "Kitty" and she was 11 years his junior. 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. There were no children in this marriage.
Father:
William Gilbert
He was a naval surgeon, b. 20 May 1804 – d. 3 January 1890.
Mother:
Anne Mary Bye Morris (1812–1888)
daughter of Thomas Morris
Mother:
Anne Mary Bye Morris
1812–1888
niece:
Mary Carter
Wife:
Lucy Agnes Turner
Lucy Agnes Blois Turner was born on November 14, 1847.
He collaborated with Gilbert a Beckett on the political satire "The Happy Land" in 1873.
collaborator:
Arthur Sullivan
Sir Arthur Sullivan, in full Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan, (born May 13, 1842, London, England—died November 22, 1900, London), composer who, with W.S. Gilbert, established the distinctive English form of the operetta. Gilbert’s satire and verbal ingenuity were matched so well by Sullivan’s unfailing melodiousness, resourceful musicianship, and sense of parody that the works of this unique partnership won lasting international acclaim.
Collegue :
Charles Millward
References
The Complete Gilbert & Sullivan
Profiles two of the best-loved figures in the musical theater, and describes each of their works, including details of memorable performances
Gilbert and Sullivan: Their Lives and Times
Traces the phenomenal careers of the lyricist and composer, focusing on their business relationship with D'Oyly Carte and role in revolutionizing Victorian theater
