Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (18 November 1836 - May 29, 1911) was a British playwright, librarian, poet and illustrator renowned for his collaboration with composer Arthur Sullivan, who produced fourteen operatic comics. The most famous of these are H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and one of the most frequently performed works in the history of musical theater, The Mikado. The popularity of these works is supported for over a century by their year-round performances, in the UK and abroad, by the treasury company that Gilbert, Sullivan and their producer Richard D'Oyly Carte founded, the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. These Savoy operas continue to be frequent in the English-speaking world and beyond.
Gilbert's creative results include more than 75 dramas and libretti, and many short stories, poems and lyrics, both comic and serious. After a brief career as a government employee and lawyer, Gilbert began to focus, in the 1860s, writing light verses, including Ballads, short stories, reviews and theater illustrations, often for Fun > magazine. He also began writing his first burleska and comic drama, developing a unique, upside-down absurdist style that would later be known as the "chaotic" style. He also developed a realistic stage method and reputation as a strict theater director. In the 1870s, Gilbert wrote 40 plays and libretti, including his German Reed Entertainments, several "comedy fairies," some serious dramas, and his first five collaborations with Sullivan: Thespis, Trial by Jury, The Sorcerer, HMS Pinafore and The Pirates of Penzance . In the 1880s, Gilbert focused on the Savoy opera, including Patience , Iolanthe , The Mikado , Yeomen of the Guard and The Gondoliers .
In 1890, after this long and fruitful creative partnership, Gilbert quarreled with Sullivan and their producer, Richard D'Oyly Carte, about fees at the Savoy Theater; This dispute is referred to as "carpet squabbling". Gilbert won the next lawsuit, but the argument caused pain in the partnership. Although Gilbert and Sullivan were persuaded to collaborate in the last two operas, they were not as successful as before. Within a few years, Gilbert wrote several plays, and several operas with other collaborators. He retired, with his wife, Lucy, and their neighborhood, Nancy McIntosh, to a country house, Grim's Dyke. He became knighted in 1907. Gilbert died of a heart attack while trying to save a young woman to whom he gave swimming lessons on the lake at his home.
Gilbert's drama inspired other playwrights, including Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, and his comic opera with Sullivan that inspired the subsequent developments of American music theater, especially affecting the librett writers and lyricists of Broadway. According to Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Gilbert's lyrical facility and its measurement mastery enhance the poetic quality of the operatic comic to a position never before achieved and has not been achieved since.
Video W. S. Gilbert
Early life and career
Beginner
Gilbert was born in 17 Southampton Street, Strand, London. His father, also named William, was briefly a naval surgeon, who later became a novelist and short story, some of which were illustrated by his son. Gilbert's mother is a former Anne Mary Bye Morris (1812-1888), daughter of Thomas Morris, a pharmacist. Gilbert's parents are distant and assertive, and he does not have a very close relationship with them both. They quarreled increasingly, and after their marriage breakup in 1876, his relationship with them, especially his mother, became even more tense. Gilbert has three younger sisters, two of whom were born outside the UK due to family travel during these years: Jane Morris (born 1838 in Milan, Italy - 1906), who married Alfred Weigall, a miniature painter; Anne Maude (1845-1932) and Mary Florence (born 1843 in Boulogne, France - 1911), both unmarried. Gilbert was nicknamed "Bab" as a baby, and then "Schwenck", after his father's godfather.
As a child, Gilbert went to Italy in 1838 and then France for two years with his parents, who eventually settled back in London in 1847. He was educated in Boulogne, France, from the age of seven (he later kept his diary in Bahasa French so the waiters could not read it), then at Western Grammar School, Brompton, London, and then at Great Ealing School, where she became the head of the child and wrote dramas for school shows and painted scenes. He then attended King's College London, graduating in 1856. He intended to take the exam for a commission at the Royal Artillery, but with the end of the Crimean War, fewer recruits were needed, and the only commission available for Gilbert would be in the line regiment. Instead, he joined the Civil Service: he was a scribe's assistant in the Advisory Board Office for four years and hated him. In 1859 he joined the Militia, a part-time volunteer army set up to defend England, which he served until 1878 (in between writing and other works), reached the rank of Captain. In 1863 he received a 300-pound inheritance he used to leave the civil service and take a brief career as a lawyer (he had entered Inner Temple as a student), but his legal practice was unsuccessful, averaging only five clients a year.
To supplement his income starting in 1861, Gilbert wrote stories, comics, strange illustrations, theater reviews (many in the form of drama parody being reviewed), and, with the nickname "Bab" (his childhood nickname), poetry illustration for some comic magazines, especially Fun , started in 1861 by HJ Byron. He published stories, articles, and reviews in newspapers such as Cornhill Magazine, London Society, Tinsley Magazine and Temple Bar . In addition, Gilbert is London's correspondent for L'Invalide Russe and a drama critic for the Illustrated London Times . In the 1860s he also contributed to the annual Tom Hood annuals, to Saturday Night , Comic News and Savage Club Papers . The The Observer newspaper in 1870 sent him to France as a correspondent of war reporting on the French-Prussian War.
The poems illustrated by Gilbert, proved very popular and reprinted in book form as Bab Ballads. He will then return to much of this as a material source for his comic dramas and operas. Gilbert and his colleagues of Fun, including Tom Robertson, Tom Hood, Clement Scott and FC Burnand (who defected to the Blows in 1862) often visited the Arundel Club, the Savage Club, and especially Evans cafe, where they have a table that competes with Punch 'Roundtable'.
After a relationship in the mid-1860s with novelist Annie Thomas, Gilbert married Lucy Agnes Turner, whom she called "Kitty", in 1867; he is 11 years younger than him. He wrote many letters of affection to him over the years. Gilbert and Lucy are socially active both in London and later at Grim's Dyke, often having dinner parties and being invited to other people's homes for dinner, in contrast to pictures painted by fictitization like the Topsy-Turvy movie. Gilberts has no children, but they have many pets, including some exotic animals.
First play
Gilbert wrote and directed a number of dramas at school, but his professionally produced first drama was Uncle Baby , which lasted seven weeks in the fall of 1863.
In 1865-66, Gilbert collaborated with Charles Millward on several pantomimes, including the so-called Hush-a-Bye, Baby, On the Top Tree, or Harlequin Fortunia, the King Frog of Frog Island and the Magic Toys of Lowther. Arcade (1866). Gilbert's first solo success came a few days after Hush-a-Bye Baby aired. His friend and mentor, Tom Robertson, was asked to write a pantomime but did not think he could do it in the two available weeks, and so he recommended Gilbert instead. Written and rushed to the stage in 10 days, Dulcamara, or the Little Duck and the Great Shaman, burlesque Gaetano Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore, proved very popular. This led to another long series of Gilbert opera gossip, pantomime, and farces, full of bad words (traditional in the burial of that period), although it showed, sometimes, satire marks that would later become a decisive part of Gilbert's work. Example:
This was followed by Gilbert's latest operatic parody, Robert the Devil, an opera banter of Giacomo Meyerbeer, Robert le diable, which was part of a triple bill that opened the Gaiety Theater , London, in 1868. This work is Gilbert's greatest success to date, running for over 100 nights and often revived and continues to play in the province for three years thereafter.
In Victorian theater, "[to lower] high and beautiful themes... has become commonplace in mockery, and his age is almost mistaken." However, Gilbert's burial is considered unusual compared to the others on the London stage. Isaac Goldberg writes that these pieces "reveal how a playwright can start by making operatic banter and ending by making burlesque opera." Gilbert will go farther than the burlesque style from around 1869 with dramas containing original plots and a few words of play. His first long comedy comedy was An Old Score (1869).
German Reed Entertainment and other dramas from the early 1870s
The theater, by the time Gilbert began writing, had fallen. French operetta that is untranslated and well adapted and poorly written and prewritten Bourlyques writings dominate the London stage. When Jessie Bond bluntly described it, "the stuttering tragedies and vulgar jokes are all potential players to choose from, and the theater has become a place of foul reputation for pious British people." Bond created the mezzo-soprano role in most of Gilbert and Sullivan's opera, and here leads to a description of Gilbert's role of reforming Victoria's theater.
From 1869 to 1875, Gilbert joined one of the leading figures in the theater reform, Thomas German Reed (and his wife Priscilla), whose Illustration Gallery sought to regain some of the lost theater honors by offering family entertainment in London. So successful was they that in 1885 Gilbert declared that the original British drama suited an innocent 15-year-old girl in the audience. Three months before Gilbert's last opening ( The Pretty Druidess ), the first of his works for the Gallery of Illustration, No Cards, was produced. Gilbert created six musical entertainment for the German Reeds, some with music composed by Thomas German Reed.
The intimate German Reeds theater environment allowed Gilbert to quickly develop his personal style and freedom to control all aspects of production, including set, costume, direction, and stage management. These works were successful, with Gilbert's first successful success at the Illustration Gallery, Ages Ago, opened in 1869. Ages Ago was also the beginning of a collaboration with composer Frederic Clay who would last for seven years and produce four works. It was an exercise for Ages Ago that Clay officially introduced Gilbert to his friend Arthur Sullivan. Bab Ballads and much of Gilbert's early music work gave him much practice as a lyricist even before his collaboration with Sullivan.
Many of the plot elements of German Reed Entertainments (as well as some of the previous dramas and Bab Ballads) will be reused by Gilbert later in opera Gilbert and Sullivan. These elements include the re-living painting ( Ages Ago , reused in Ruddigore ), a deaf nanny who ties the son of a respectable gentleman into a "pirate" instead of a " pilot "" By mistake ( Our Island Home , 1870, reused in The Pirates of Penzance), and a strong adult woman who is a "sense of being" > Eyes and No Eyes , 1875, reused at The Mikado .) During this time, Gilbert perfected the 'knockout' style he had developed in his Ballads Chapter, humor is derived by building a ridiculous premise and doing its logical consequences, however absurd, Mike Leigh describes the style of "Gilbertian" as follows: "Very fluently and freely, [Gilbert] constantly challenges our natural expectations. First, within the framework of the story, he makes strange things happen, and changes the world over his head. Thus the learned Judge married the Plaintiff, the soldiers metamorphosed into aesthetics, and so on, and almost every opera was completed with a nimble movement of the goal... The genius was to combine contradictions with unseen sharpness, to blend real with real, and caricature with natural. In other words, to tell a truly outrageous story in a completely flat way. "
At the same time, Gilbert created some "fairy comedies" at the Haymarket Theater. The drama series is based on the idea of ​​self-revelation by characters under the influence of magic or supernatural disorder. The first is The Palace of Truth (1870), partly based on a story by Madame de Genlis. In 1871, with Pygmalion and Galatea , one of the seven dramas he produced that year, Gilbert scored his biggest hit to date. Together, these dramas and their successors such as The Wicked World (1873), Sweethearts (1874), and Broken Hearts (1875) performing for Gilbert on a dramatic stage what Reed's German entertainment has done for him on the music scene: they determined that his ability extends far beyond doubt, won his artistic credentials, and showed that he is a writer of various circles, as comfortable as humans. drama like funny humor. The success of this drama, especially Pygmalion and Galatea , gives Gilbert a prestige that will be crucial for later collaboration with respected musicians such as Sullivan.
During this period, Gilbert also pushed the boundaries of how far the satire could get into the theater. He collaborated with Gilbert Arthur ÃÆ' Beckett at The Happy Land (1873), a political satire (in part, his own parody of The Wicked World), which was briefly forbidden because of the caricatures not interesting from Gladstone and his ministers. Similarly, The Realm of Joy (1873) was founded in the lobby of a theater performing a scandalous drama (implied to be Happy Land ), with many jokes at the expense of Mr. Chamberlain (" Lord High Disinfectant ", as it is called in the drama). In Charity (1874), however, Gilbert uses the freedom of the stage in a different way: to give a strictly written critique of the contrasting ways in which Victorian society treats men and women who have sex outside marriage, which anticipates the 'play problems' of Shaw and Ibsen.
As a director
After he became established, Gilbert was the stage director for drama and opera and had a strong opinion of how they should be done. He was strongly influenced by innovations in "stagecraft", now called stage of direction, by playwright James Planchà ©  © and especially Tom Robertson. Gilbert attended a work directed by Robertson to study this art directly from an older director, and he began applying it in some of the earliest dramas. He sought realism in acting, setting, costume and movement, if not in his drama content (although he wrote romantic comedy in the "naturalist" style, as a tribute to Robertson, Sweethearts), avoiding self-conscious interaction with the audience , and insists on a style of depiction in which characters never realize their own absurdity, but are coherent internal wholes.
In Gilbert's 1874 work, Hamencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet's character, in his speech to the players, summarizes Gilbert's comic acting theory: "I am of the opinion that no one is a henchman like your bombastic hero who, really pour out his foolishness to make his audience believe he is not aware of all the odds ". Robertson "introduced Gilbert both to the idea of ​​revolutionary disciplinary exercises and to mise-en-scÃÆ'¨ne or unity of style in the overall presentation - direction, design, music, acting." Like Robertson, Gilbert demands discipline in his actors. He requires that his actors know their words perfectly, speak them clearly and obey the direction of his stage, which is something new for many actors of that era. The main innovation was the replacement of star actors with a disciplined ensemble, "increasing the director to a new position of dominance" in the theater. "That Gilbert is a good director no doubt, he is able to extract from his actors a natural show, obviously, that serves outrageous Gilbertian requirements delivered straight away."
Gilbert carefully prepares for every new job, modeling the stage, actor and organizing pieces, and designing every action and a bit of business up front. Gilbert will not work with actors who challenge his authority. George Grossmith writes that, at least occasionally, "Mr. Gilbert is a perfect autocrat, insisting that his words should be submitted, even for inflection sounds, as he dictates.He will stand on stage beside the actor or actress, and repeat the words with the right actions repeatedly, until delivered according to his wishes. "Even during the long walk and revival, Gilbert closely watches the show, ensuring that the actors do not make additions, deletions or paraphrases without permission. Gilbert is famous for demonstrating the act itself, even as he grows up. Gilbert himself rose to the stage in a number of productions throughout his life, including several performances as an Associate in Trial by Jury, as a substitute for ailing actor in his game Broken Hearts, and in a charity show from one-act dramas, such as King Claudius at Rosencrantz and Guildenstern .
Maps W. S. Gilbert
Collaboration with Sullivan
The first collaboration in the middle of another work
In 1871, John Hollingshead commissioned Gilbert to work with Sullivan on holidays for Christmas, Thespis, or The Gods Grown Old , at the Gaiety Theater. Thespis came out of five of its nine rivals for the holiday season of 1871, and the run was extended beyond the normal duration in Gaiety, however, nothing else came at the time, and Gilbert and Sullivan split up. Gilbert worked again with Clay at Happy Arcadia (1872), and with Alfred Cellier at Topsyturveydom (1874), and wrote some jokes, libretti operas, extravaganzas, fairy comedy, adaptation from the novels, the French translation, and the drama described above. Also in 1874, he published his final contribution to the magazine Fun (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern) , after a three-year hiatus, then resigned due to the disapproval of the new owner of other publishing interests.
It will be almost four years after Thespis is produced before the two men work together again. In 1868, Gilbert published a short comic in Fun magazine titled "Trial by Jury: An Operetta". In 1873, Gilbert was asked by the theater manager, Carl Rosa, to write a paper for the 1874 season he had planned. Gilbert expanded Trial to one-round libretto. However, the wife of Rosa Euphrosyne Parepa-Rosa, Gilbert's childhood friend, died after illness in 1874 and Rosa canceled the project. Then in 1874 Gilbert offered libretto to Richard D'Oyly Carte, but Carte could not use it at that time. In early 1875, Carte managed the Royalty Theater, and he needed a short opera to play as a cover for Offenbach La PÃÆ'Â © richole . He contacted Gilbert, asked about the paper, and suggested Sullivan to arrange the work. Sullivan is very enthusiastic, and Experiment by Jury is organized in a matter of weeks. The little snippet was a runaway hit, defeating the run of La PÃÆ' Â © richole and revived in another theater.
Gilbert continued his quest to gain respect and honor for his profession. One thing that may have held back the playwrights from honor was that the drama was not published in a form suitable for "men's libraries", because, at the time, they were generally cheap and unattractive published for the use of actors rather than at home. reader. To help remedy this, at least for himself, Gilbert arranged in late 1875 for publishers Chatto and Windus to print his drama volume in a format designed to appeal to a general reader, with an interesting and binding type of interest, containing Gilbert's most distinguished drama, including his most serious works, but abused by the Experiment by the Jury .
After the success of Trial by Jury, there was a discussion to revive Thespis, but Gilbert and Sullivan could not agree terms with Carte and his supporters. Scores for Thespis were never published, and most of the music is now gone. It took some time for Carte to raise funds for other Gilbert and Sullivan operas, and in this gap Gilbert produced several works including Tom Cobb (1875), Eye and Eyes
Also during this period, Gilbert wrote his most successful comic book, Engaged (1877), which inspired Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest . Engaged is a romantic drama parody written in the "rowdy-ranting" sarcasm style of many Gilbert Bab Ballads and Savoy Opera, with one promising character of his love, in the most poetic and romantic language possible, for each single woman in drama; Scottish "innocent" caravans are revealed to earn a living by throwing a train from the lines and then filling passengers for service, and, in general, romance is happily cast for monetary gain. Engage continues today by professional and amateur companies.
Collaborative peak
Carte eventually assembled a syndicate in 1877 and formed the Opera Comedy Company to launch a series of British original comic operas, beginning with the third collaboration between Gilbert and Sullivan, The Sorcerer, in November 1877. This work was a simple success, and HMS Pinafore was followed in May 1878. Despite the slow start, especially as the hot summers, Pinafore became a hot favorite by the fall. After a dispute with Carte on profit sharing, another Comedy Opera Company partner hired thugs to storm the theater one night to steal supplies and costumes, which intend to advance rival production. The effort was rejected by stagehands and others in the theater who were loyal to Carte, and Carte continued as a single impresario of the newly renamed D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. Indeed, Pinafore is so successful that more than a hundred unlicensed productions have sprung up in America alone. Gilbert, Sullivan, and Carte tried for years to control the American performance copyright over their opera, with no results.
For the next decade, the Savoy Operas (as the series began to be known, after the Carte Theater was later built for their home) was Gilbert's main activity. Successful comic operas with Sullivan continue to emerge every year or two, some of which became one of the longest productions up to that point in the history of the music scene. After the Pinafore came The Pirates of Penzance (1879), Patience (1881), Iolanthe (1882), < Princess Ida (1884, based on previous Gilbert jokes, The Princess ), The Mikado (1885), Ruddigore (1887 ), Yeomen of the Guard (1888) and The Gondoliers (1889). Gilbert not only directs and supervises all aspects of production for this work, but he is actually designing his own costumes for Patience, Iolanthe , Princess Ida , and Ruddigore . He insisted on the correct and authentic sets and costumes, which provided the foundation to the ground and focused on his character and absurd situation.
During this time, Gilbert and Sullivan also collaborated on another great work, oratorio The Martyr of Antioch, premiered at the Leeds music festival in October 1880. Gilbert set the original epic poem by Henry Hart Milman into a libretto suitable for music, and contains some original works. During this period, too, Gilbert sometimes wrote dramas to be performed elsewhere-both serious dramas (eg The Ne'er-Do-Weel , 1878 and Gretchen, 1879) and works funny (eg Fairy Foggerty , 1881). However, he no longer needs to produce a lot of drama every year, as he has done before. Indeed, for more than nine years separating The Pirates of Penzance and The Gondoliers, he only wrote three plays outside his partnership with Sullivan. Only one of these works, Comedy and Tragedy , proved successful. Although Comedy and Tragedy has a short-term because the actress refused to act during Holy Week, the drama was revived regularly. In connection with Brantinghame Hall, Stedman wrote, "It was a failure, the worst failure in Gilbert's career."
In 1878, Gilbert realized a lifelong dream to play Harlequin, which he performed at the Gaiety Theater as part of the amateur charity production of The Forty Thieves, partly written by himself. Gilbert trained for Harlequin-style dancing with his friend John D'Auban, who has arranged dances for some of his dramas and will choreography most of Gilbert and Sullivan's opera. Producer John Hollingshead later recalled, "The gem of the show is Harlequin of W. S. Gilbert who is very serious and determined, which gives me an idea of ​​what Oliver Cromwell will do about the character." Another member of the player recalled that Gilbert was tirelessly enthusiastic about the song and often invited the performers to his home for an extra rehearsal dinner. "A friend who is more fun, more friendly, or fun than he is, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find." In 1882, Gilbert had a phone installed in his home and at an immediate table in the Savoy Theater, so he could monitor the show and practice of his studies at home. Gilbert had referred to a new technology in Pinafore in 1878, just two years after the device was invented and before London even had a telephone service.
Carpet squabbling and end of collaboration
Gilbert sometimes had a tense working relationship with Sullivan, partly because everyone saw him let his work be subdued to others, and partly because of their opposite personalities. Gilbert often confronted and was famous for thin-skinned, though inclined to act with extraordinary goodness, while Sullivan avoided conflict. In addition, Gilbert cultivated his libretti in a "chaotic" situation in which the social order was reversed. Over time, these subjects often conflict with Sullivan's desire for realism and emotional content. In addition, Gilbert's political allusions often make fun of people in privileged circles, while Sullivan is keen to socialize among the rich and classy who will be his friends and customers.
Throughout their collaboration, Gilbert and Sullivan disagree several times over the subject's choice. After both Putri Ida and Ruddigore , which were less successful than the other seven operas of H.M.S. Pinafore to The Gondoliers , Sullivan asks to abandon the partnership, saying that he finds Gilbert's plot repeatedly and his operations are not artistically satisfactory to him. While both artists resolved their differences, Carte kept the Savoy open with a revival of their early works. On each occasion, after several months of stopping, Gilbert responded with a libretto that met Sullivan's objections, and the partnership continued to succeed.
In April 1890, during the The Gondoliers , however, Gilbert challenged Carte at the expense of production. Among other items that Gilbert objected to, Carte has charged the new carpet cost for the Savoy Theater lobby for partnership. Gilbert believes that this is a maintenance expense that Carte must charge for himself. Gilbert faced Carte, who refused to reconsider the accounts. Gilbert stormed and wrote to Sullivan that "I left him saying that it was a mistake to kick the ladder where he had risen." Helen Carte writes that Gilbert has spoken to Carte "in a way I should not have thought you would get used to being rude." As proposed by scholar Andrew Crowther:
- After all, the carpet is only one of a number of disputed items, and the real problem lies not in the mere money value of these things, but whether Carte can be trusted with the financial affairs of Gilbert and Sullivan. Gilbert argued that Carte had at best made a series of serious errors in those accounts, and at least deliberately trying to deceive others. It is not easy to solve the wrong problems of the problem, but it seems quite clear that there is something wrong with the accounts at the moment. Gilbert wrote to Sullivan on May 28, 1891, a year after the end of "Quarrel", that Carte had acknowledged "an accidental overcharge of nearly Ã, Â £ 1,000 in an electric lighting account alone."
Gilbert brought a suit, and after The Gondoliers closed in 1891, he withdrew his performance rights to his profession, vowing not to write opera again for Savoy. Gilbert next wrote The Mountebanks with Alfred Cellier and the failure of Haste to the Wedding with George Grossmith, and Sullivan wrote Haddon Hall with Sydney Grundy. Gilbert eventually won the suit and felt justified, but his actions and statements had hurt his partner. Nevertheless, the partnership was so favorable that, following the failure of the Royal Opera House's Royal Bank finances, Carte and his wife sought to reunite writers and composers.
In 1891, after many failed attempts at reconciliation by the couple, Tom Chappell, the music publisher responsible for printing opera Gilbert and Sullivan, stepped in to mediate between his two most profitable artists, and within two weeks had succeeded. Two other operas produce: Utopia, Limited (1893) and The Grand Duke (1896). Gilbert also offered a third libretto to Sullivan ( Your Excellency, 1894), but Gilbert's insistence on casting Nancy McIntosh, his protégé from Utopia, caused Sullivan's rejection. Utopia, about attempting to "persecute" a southern Pacific island empire, only a modest success, and The Grand Duke , in which the theater troupe, by means of a "duel of laws" and conspiracy, taking political control of the great duchy, is a direct failure. After that, the partnership ends for good. Sullivan continued to write comic operas with other librarians but died four years later. In 1904, Gilbert would write, "... the opera of Savoy has been extinguished by the sad death of my esteemed collaborator Sir Arthur Sullivan." When that incident occurred, I did not see anyone with whom I felt that I could work with satisfaction and success, so I stopped writing
Next year
Gilbert built the Garrick Theater in 1889. Gilberts moved to Grim's Dyke in Harrow in 1890, which he bought from Robert Heriot, to whom artist Frederick Goodall had sold the property in 1880. In 1891, Gilbert was appointed Peace Judge for Middlesex. After casting Nancy McIntosh in Utopia, Limited, she and his wife developed affection for her, and she finally gained the status of an unofficial adopted son, moving to Dyke Grim to stay with them. He continued to live there, even after Gilbert died, until the death of Lady Gilbert in 1936. A statue of Charles II, engraved by the Danish sculptor Caius Gabriel Cibber in 1681, was moved in 1875 from Soho Square to an island on the lake in Grim's Dyke, at which was fixed when Gilbert bought the property. In the direction of Lady Gilbert, it was returned to Soho Square in 1938.
Although Gilbert announced his retirement from the theater after his recent short-term work with Sullivan, The Grand Duke (1896) and poor reception of his 1897 game The Fortune Hunter, at least three more dramas during the last dozen years of his life, including the failed opera, Fallen Fairies (1909), with Edward German. Gilbert also continues to oversee the revivals of his work by D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, including the London Repertory season in 1906-09. His final drama, The Hooligan , produced just four months before his death, is the study of a young preman who was cursed in a prison cell. Gilbert shows sympathy for his protagonist, the son of a thief who, raised among thieves, kills his girlfriend. As in some earlier works, the playwright featured "his belief that nurturing rather than nature is often a criminal behavior". The grim and powerful cuts became one of Gilbert's most serious dramas, and experts concluded that, in the last months of Gilbert's life, he developed a new style, "a mixture of irony, social themes, and dirty realism", to replace "Gilbertianism "the old one that made him tired. In recent years, Gilbert has also written a children's book version of H.M.S. Pinafore and The Mikado gives, in some cases, backstory not found in librettos.
Gilbert was knighted on July 15, 1907 in recognition of his contribution to the drama. Sullivan was awarded a degree thanks to his contribution to music almost a quarter of a century earlier, in 1883. Gilbert, however, was the first British writer to ever receive a knighthood for his own drama - previously dramatic knights, such as Sir William Davenant and Sir John Vanbrugh, for political and other services.
On May 29, 1911, Gilbert will give swimming lessons to two young women, Winifred Isabel Emery (1890-1972), and 17-year-old Preec Ruby on the lake of his home, Grim's Dyke, when Preece is having trouble. and ask for help. Gilbert dived to save him but suffered a heart attack in the middle of the lake and died at the age of 74. He was cremated at Golders Green and his ashes were buried in church church St. John, Stanmore. The inscription on Gilbert's monument on the south wall of the Thames Embankment in London reads: "The enemy is Folly, and his Weapon Wit". There is also a memorial plaque at All Saints' Church, Harrow Weald.
Personality
Gilbert is known for occasional thorns. Aware of this general impression, he claims that "If you give me your attention", the misanthrope song from Princess Ida , is a satiric self-reference, saying: "I think it's my duty to live up to my reputation. "However, many people defend him, often quoting his generosity. The actress May Fortescue recalled, "The goodness is remarkable.In the wet nights and when the exercise is late and the last bus is gone, she will pay the taxi fare of the girls whether they are beautiful or not, rather than letting them walk home on"... She equally heartened when he was poor as when he was rich and successful. For money as money he cares less than nothing. Gilbert is not pure, but he is an ideal friend. "Journalist Frank M. Boyd writes:
I love that rarely is a more common man being given credit for quite another personality of himself, than it is with Sir WS Gilbert... Until someone actually comes to know the man, people share the opinions held by so many , that he is a rude and unpleasant person; but nothing can be less true than a really great humorist. She has a rather ugly appearance... and like so many other clever people, she has few benefits for fools of the sex, but she is in her heart as the kind and pleasant guy you want to meet.
Jessie Bond writes that Gilbert "gets angry, often unreasonable, and he can not stand to be foiled, but how anyone can call him unamiable that I can not understand." George Grossmith wrote to The Daily Telegraph that, although Gilbert has been described as an autocrat in training, "It's really just the way he plays the part of the stage director in training." As a matter of fact, he is a man true good and generous, and I use that word in a pure and original sense. "
Aside from the occasional creative disagreement with, and the eventual rift from, Sullivan, angry Gilbert caused a loss of friendship with a number of people. For example, he quarreled with his old colleague C. H. Workman, for Nancy McIntosh's dismissal of the Fallen Fairies production, and with actress Henrietta Hodson. He also saw his friendship with Clement Scott's theater critics to be bitter. However, Gilbert can be very good. During Scott's last illness in 1904, for example, Gilbert donated funds for him, visited almost daily, and helped Scott's wife, despite being unfriendly to him for the previous sixteen years. Similarly, Gilbert has written several dramas on the orders of comic actor Ned Sothern. However, Sothern died before she could do this last one, Foggerty Fairy . Gilbert bought the drama from a grateful widow. According to one woman of London society:
[Gilbert] congenital intelligence, and his rapier rhetoric slipped out easily. His mind is naturally meticulous and clean; he never asserted himself, never tried to make an effect. She is very kind and understanding, with the underlying poetry of cheerfulness that makes her the best companion. They speak of his quick temperament, but it is completely free from envy or deceit. He is soft-hearted as a baby, but there is nothing hypocritical about him. What he thinks he says in an instant, and although by sensitive people, sometimes this can be hated, for a more subtle sensitivity, it is an additional link, binding someone to a faithful and precious friend.
Like the writings of Gilbert by husband and wife Seymour Hicks and Ellaline Terriss (a frequent visitor to his home) vividly illustrate, Gilbert's relationship with women is generally more successful than his relationship with men. According to George Grossmith, Gilbert "are the people who know him as a polite and friendly man - a man without veneer." Grossmith and many others wrote about how Gilbert liked to entertain children:
During my dangerous illness, Mr. Gilbert never fails one day to come and ask after me... and make me laugh out loud all the time... But to see Gilbert in his best condition, is to see him at one of his young parties. Even though she has no children of her own, she loves them, and there is nothing she does not do to please them. I have never been so surprised when on one occasion he fired some of his own friends to come with Mrs. Gilbert to a teenage party in my own home.
Gilbert's niece, Mary Carter, asserted, "... he loves children very much and does not lose the opportunity to make them happy... [He] is the kindest and most humane uncle." Grossmith quoted Gilbert as saying, "Stalking with deer would be a very good sport if only the deer had a gun."
Legacy
In 1957, a review in The Times explained the continuing vitality of the Savoy opera as follows:
[T] hey never really contemporary in their idioms... Gilbert and Sullivan, from the first moment obviously not the world of the audience, [the] artificial world, with neat and tidy precision that has not gone out of fashion - because it's never in mode in the sense of using a fleeting convention and contemporary human society's way of thinking... The tidy articulation of distrust in the Gilbert plot perfectly matches the language... The dialogue, with its primitive mocking formalities, satisfies the ears and intelligence. His poetry shows an incomparable and extremely complicated talent for creating comic effects with the contrast between poetic and dull thoughts and words... How delicious [the lines] pierce the bubble of sentiment. Gilbert has many imitators, but there is no equivalent, on this sort of thing... [...] Just as important... The lyrics of Gilbert almost always take the extra point and sparkle when set to Sullivan music... Both men together remains endless and much fun... Light, and even trivial, although the [opera] may seem seriously considered, they do not yet have perfection and elegance that can make a bit of a work of art.
The legacy of Gilbert, in addition to building the Garrick Theater and writing the Savoy Opera and other works that are still being performed or printed almost 150 years after their creation, are felt to be perhaps the most powerful today through its influence in American and British musical theater. Innovation in the content and form of work he and Sullivan developed, and in Gilbert's theory of acting and stage direction, directly influenced the development of modern musicals throughout the 20th century. The lyrics of Gilbert use puncture, as well as internal rhyme schemes and two and three complex syllables, and serve as models for librarians and lyricists of Broadway of the 20th century such as P.G. Wodehouse, Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin, Lorenz Hart, and Oscar Hammerstein II.
Gilbert's influence on English has also been marked, with well-known phrases such as "Many unhappy cops", "short, sharp surprises", "What never? Well, hardly ever!", And "let his punishment be in harmony" arising from the questioner. In addition, biographies continue to be written about the life and career of Gilbert, and his work is not only done, but is often parodied, pasted, cited and imitated in comedy, film, television, and other popular media routines.
Ian Bradley, in connection with the 100th anniversary of Gilbert's death in 2011 wrote:
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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