Sir William Schwenck Gilbert

The English playwright and poet Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911) collaborated with Sir Arthur Sullivan to create a famous series of comic operas.

William Gilbert was born in London, the son of a retired naval surgeon who became a prolific novelist. As an infant, he traveled to Germany and Italy with his parents, was kidnaped by brigands in Naples, and was later ransomed—almost a scenario for his later operettas. After receiving a fine education at Boulogne, France, and then at the University of London, the young man was granted a military commission in the Gordon Highlanders. He spent 4 years as a clerk in the education department of the Privy Council, studied law with no particular distinction, and drifted into journalism.

Gilbert contributed drama criticism and humorous verse to various London periodicals under his boyhood nickname "Bab" and also illustrated several of his father's novels. His artwork for his own "Bab Ballads" (1866-1871) possesses a direct and quaint humor. In 1866 Gilbert began his career as a playwright. His penchant for satire was revealed in Dulcamara (1866), in which he ridiculed grand opera, and in several shorter burlesques. He had a series of dramatic successes, including The Palace of Truth (1870) and Pygmalion and Galatea (1871).

Gilbert's association with Sullivan was initiated in 1871. Their first major production, Trial by Jury (1875), produced under D'Oyly Carte's able management, contained Gilbert's characteristically gay and jibing wit, well accentuated by Sullivan's score. So popular was this work that a company was formed, and in rapid succession The Sorcerer (1877), H. M. S. Pinafore (1878), The Pirates of Penzance (1880), and Patience (1881) were performed in London and New York. The Savoy Theatre was constructed by Carte for their works, and the Savoyard productions included Iolanthe (1882), The Mikado (1885), Ruddigore (1887), The Yeoman of the Guard (1888), and The Gondoliers (1889).

The comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan are characterized by sharply satirical attacks on Victorian bureaucracy, the grotesquely sentimental qualities of currently popular art and amusements, and contemporary topics such as the estheticism of Oscar Wilde. The cleverness of form and the acerbic wit gave their plays—especially The Mikado and H.M. S. Pinafore—a transcendent reference, and time has not diminished their relevance. Gilbert and Sullivan developed a new dramatic art form. No longer was the narrative subordinated to the music, as in formal opera, but rather through the integration of the two the characterizations and plot structure are rendered more meaningful. Gilbert's lyrics with their unique rhythms and internal rhymes suggested the music Sullivan provided for them.

After 20 years of fruitful collaboration a conflict developed, and the two severed their relationship. The quarrel was actually between Gilbert and Carte over finances, but Sullivan had been drawn into the disagreement. A reconciliation was effected, but their subsequent productions fell short of their major accomplishments. Gilbert was knighted in 1907 and subsequently retired to Middlesex, where he lived as a country squire; he accidently drowned in 1911 near his estate there.

Further Reading

Sidney Dark and Rowland Grey, W. S. Gilbert: His Life and Letters (1923), is the most substantial biography of Gilbert. Hesketh Pearson, Gilbert and Sullivan: A Biography (1935), and William A. Darlington, The World of Gilbert and Sullivan (1950), are excellent accounts of the two men and the Victorian musical world. John Bush Jones, ed., W. S. Gilbert: A Century of Scholarship and Commentary (1970), is an anthology of critical opinion from 1869 to 1968.

Additional Sources

Baily, Leslie, Gilbert and Sullivan, their lives and times, Harmondsworth, Eng.; New York: Penguin Books, 1979, 1973.

Eden, David, Gilbert & Sullivan, the creative conflict, Rutherford N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1986.

James, Alan, Gilbert & Sullivan, London; New York: Omnibus Press, 1989.

Pearson, Hesketh, Gilbert and Sullivan: a biography, London: Macdonald and Jane's, 1975.

Pearson, Hesketh, Gilbert, his life and strife, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978.

Stedman, Jane W., W.S. Gilbert: a classic Victorian and his theatre, New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. □

Gilbert, Sir William Schwenck (1836–1911), began in 1861 contributing regular columns of comic verse, with his own illustrations, to the magazine Fun; this was the beginning of the Bab Ballads (collected in 1869). In these he showed his ingenious metrical skill and sketched out his fantasy world, turning the odd into the ordinary, calling it ‘Topsy-Turvydom’. The ballads became the favourite literature of sailors, soldiers, lawyers, doctors, and other non-literary people, though Gilbert had a low opinion of his ballads: ‘I am a doggerel bard’, runs the refrain in one of them. Encouraged by T. W. Robertson he produced his first dramatic work, Dulcamara (1866), a burlesque based on Donizetti's opera L'elisir d'amore. His second period, which began with The Palace of Truth (1870), a poetical fantasy, included the verse plays Pygmalion and Galatea (1871); The Wicked World (1873) and a burlesque version, The Happy Land (1873), in collaboration with Gilbert Arthur À Beckett; and The Princess (1870), a ‘respectful perversion’ of Tennyson's poem. Gilbert was a great verbal rhythmist and in his third period he found his true genius in comic opera. He met Sullivan in 1869 and in 1874 D'Oyly Carte. For him Gilbert and Sullivan wrote Trial by Jury (1875), which began the series of light operas which was permanently to link the names of Gilbert and Sullivan (see Gilbert and Sullivan operas). D'Oyly Carte built the Savoy Theatre especially for the D'Oyly Carte company. The collaboration lasted for over 20 years, though after The Gondoliers (1889) there was a rift resulting from a business transaction in which Sullivan sided with D'Oyly Carte. Utopia, Limited (1893) healed the breach. Gilbert continued writing plays and operas without Sullivan; among them Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (1891), Fallen Fairies (1909), and The Hooligans (1911). He was knighted in 1907. He used the profits from his plays to build the Garrick Theatre.

Sir William Schwenck Gilbert 1836–1911, English playwright and poet. He won fame as the librettist of numerous popular operettas, written in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan . While on the staff of the magazine Fun, he first became known as the author of Bab Ballads, amusing but often bitter and cynical poems, published in that magazine and collected in 1869. His first play Dulcamara was produced in 1866. It was followed by several fairly successful comedies, dramas, and burlesques. In 1871, Gilbert began his collaboration with Arthur Sullivan, lasting about 20 years, which resulted in the popular operettas for which they are famous. The first of their joint works was Thespis (1871) and the last was The Grand Duke (1896). Their most famous operettas are Trial by Jury (1875), H.M.S. Pinafore (1878), The Pirates of Penzance (1879), Patience (1881), Iolanthe (1882), Princess Ida (1884), The Mikado (1885), Ruddigore (1887), The Yeoman of the Guard (1888), and The Gondoliers (1889). Gilbert's lyrics are those of a metrical craftsman. In his songs he satirized various aspects of Victorian life: aesthetes, the navy, the law, and women's education. The Savoy Theatre, built by Richard D'Oyly Carte in 1881 to house Gilbert and Sullivan operas, gave them the name Savoy operas. About 1896 a quarrel between Gilbert and Sullivan concerning a business arrangement with Carte terminated their collaboration. Thereafter neither of them produced anything to equal their joint works.

Bibliography: See Gilbert's collected poems and plays (1947); his life and letters by S. Dark and R. Grey (1923, repr. 1972); study by H. Pearson (1957); bibliography by T. Searle (1931, repr. 1967); L. Ayre, The Gilbert and Sullivan Companion (1972); C. Williams, Gilbert and Sullivan: Gender, Genre, Parody (2010).

Gilbert, Sir William Schwenck (1836–1911), English dramatist, whose name is always associated with that of Sir Arthur Sullivan, for whose music he wrote the libretti of the Savoy operas. Their collaboration began with Thespis; or, The Gods Grown Old (1871), and lasted for over 20 years, ending with The Grand Duke (1896), though The Gondoliers (1889) was the last of those which still hold the stage. The others are: The Sorcerer (1877), HMS Pinafore (1878), The Pirates of Penzance (1880), Patience (1881), Iolanthe (1882), Princess Ida (1884), The Mikado (1885), Ruddigore (1887), and The Yeoman of the Guard (1888). Utopia Limited (1893) was never revived. Gilbert wrote libretti for other composers but without success, just as Sullivan wrote music for other librettists but failed to recapture the brilliance of the Savoy operas. Yet their partnership was not a happy one, Gilbert being a man of irascible temperament and a martinet at rehearsals. He was already known as a dramatist before joining forces with Sullivan, having been encouraged by T. W. Robertson to write for the stage. His early works were mainly burlesques and extravaganzas, the first being Dulcamara; or, The Little Duck and the Great Quack (1866). Of his more serious plays the most successful were The Palace of Truth (1870), Pygmalion and Galatea (1871), Dan'l Druce, Blacksmith (1876), whose title-role was long a favourite with character actors, and Engaged (1877). He continued writing almost up to his death, but of all his works only the librettos for Sullivan have survived.