Overview

Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911) was the most brilliant dramatist of Victorian England. His plays were considered daring and cynical, and he was the forerunner of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. He was also a prolific journalist and humorous poet (his Bab Ballads are still widely read), and he achieved worldwide fame through his long collaboration with the composer Arthur Sullivan. The libretti of H.M.S Pinafore, The Mikado, and all the other Savoy Operas were written by Gilbert, and the story of their often stormy relationship is here chronicled by a renowned authority on Gilbert's life and on the theatrical and literary scene in Victorian London. For this biography Jane Stedman has returned to original sources, has interviewed survivors, and has scoured a whole variety of Victorian periodicals for reviews and personal comment. Gilbert emerges as a much more complex and interesting figure than has previously been thought, and the book is a worthy companion piece to Arthur Jacobs's recent biography Arthur Sullivan: A Victorian Musician.

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9780198161745

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Reviews

Stedman, editor of a collection of Gilbert's non-G&S works (Gilbert Before Sullivan, 1967), now offers a solid, stylish, well-researched critical biography - which effectively emphasizes the Victorian-theater context of Gilbert's writings but fails to pay proper attention to his genius as a lyricist. Unlike most Gilbert biographers, Stedman gives as much weight to his straight plays and non-Sullivan collaborations as to the Savoy operas. She examines his early journalism, his farces, burlesques, pantomimes, and fairy plays, offering sturdy background information on each of these particularly Victorian genres. Stedman emphasizes Gilbert's role as a socio-political satirist, his mockery of double standards (sexual, class-based), his odd blend of iconoclasm and conservatism, and his determination to upgrade the level of late-19th-century theater writing and performance. While wryly recounting Gilbert's unhappy first romance (before a long happy marriage) and his many feuds and lawsuits, she firmly rejects the familiar portrait of a misogynistic curmudgeon. Stedman's treatment of the Gilbert & Sullivan classics, however, is seriously lopsided. Avoiding the oft-told anecdotes, she persuasively relates the themes and plots of Pinafore, Mikado, etc., to earlier works by Gilbert and others; provides welcome detail on less familiar works like Utopia, Ltd.; and sketches in the stormy Gilbert/Sullivan/Carte dynamic neatly enough. However, she shows relatively little interest in the art of Gilbert's lyric-writing - which is largely responsible (along with Sullivan's music) for the G&S phenomenon and which became a major inspiration (unmentioned here) for Ira Gershwin, Lorenz Hart, and other musical theater pioneers. Not the definitive biography, then, and certainly not for casual G&S fans - but the most authoritative effort of its kind thus far, and, particularly considering the often-academic content, crisply readable. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

About the Author: Jane W. Stedman is Emeritus Professor of English at Roosevelt University, in Chicago. A recognized authority on W. S. Gilbert, she is the author of Gilbert Before Sullivan

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