Social Victorians/People/Gilbert

Also Known As

• Family name: Gilbert
• William Schwenk Gilbert
• W. S. Gilbert

Demographics

• Nationality:

Family

• William Schwenk Gilbert (18 November 1836 – 29 May 1911)

Acquaintances, Friends and Enemies

Friends

• Arthur Sullivan
• Richard D'Oyly Carte

Timeline

1886, Gilbert's portrait, which now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, was painted by Frank Holl, R.A.

1907, Gilbert was knighted by Edward VII, about twenty-five years after Sullivan was knighted by Queen Victoria and seven years after Sullivan's death. Of his title, according to Leslie Ayre, Gilbert said in a speech given at Harrow School,

I am not an agricultural labourer, but I have this in common with a certain type of ploughman who in bygone days was awarded by the squire with a pair of corduroy breeches and a crown piece in each pocket, in consideration of his having brought up a family of fifteen children without extraneous assistance. I have been rewarded for having brought up a family of sixty-three plays without ever having to apply to the relieving officer for parochial assistance. This knighthood I take to be a sort of commuted old-age pension. (Ayre 408)

Ayre goes on with the story:

Of the same event [Gilbert's getting his knighthood], he wrote to a friend: "I found myself politely described in the official list as Mr William Gilbert, playwright, suggesting that my work was analogical to that of a wheelwright, or a millwright, or a wainwright, or a shipwright, as regards the mechanical character of a process by which our respecitve results are achieved. There is an excellent word, 'dramatist,' which seems to fit the situation, but it is not applied until we are dead, and then we become dramatists, as oxen, sheep and pigs are transfigured into beef, mutton and pork on their demise. You never hear of a novel-wright or a picture-wright or a poem-wright, and why a play-wright?" (Ayre 408).

1911 May 29, Gilbert's death: H. L. Mencken wrote Gilbert's obituary, "The Passing of Gilbert," for the Baltimore Sun in 1911. The title of the obituary may refer to the last book of Tennyson's Idylls of the King, "The Passing of Arthur."

Anthology

Gilbert said, "I know only two tunes. One is 'God Save the Queen.' - the other isn't."

Bibliography

Gilbert's Works

Libretti

• 1871, Thespis, or the Gods Grown Old, with Arthur Sullivan
• 1875, Trial by Jury, with Sullivan
• 1877, The Sorcerer, with Sullivan, produced by Richard D'Oyly Carte
• 1878, H.M.S. Pinafore, with Sullivan, produced by Richard D'Oyly Carte
• 1879, New York; 1880, London, The Pirates of Penzance, with Sullivan, produced by Richard D'Oyly Carte
• 1881, Patience, or Bunthorne's Bride, with Sullivan, produced by Richard D'Oyly Carte
• 1882, Iolanthe, or the Peer and the Peri, with Sullivan, produced by Richard D'Oyly Carte
• 1884, Princess Ida, or Castel Adamant, with Sullivan, produced by Richard D'Oyly Carte
• 1885, The Mikado, or the Town of Titipu, with Sullivan, produced by Richard D'Oyly Carte
• 1887, Ruddigore, or the Witch's Curse, with Sullivan, produced by Richard D'Oyly Carte
• 1886, The Yeomen of the Guard, with Sullivan, produced by Richard D'Oyly Carte
• 1889, The Gondoliers, with Sullivan, produced by Richard D'Oyly Carte
• 1893, Utopia Limited, with Sullivan, produced by Richard D'Oyly Carte
• 1896, The Grand Duke, with Sullivan, produced by Richard D'Oyly Carte
• 1909, Fallen Fairies, or the Wicked World, with Edward German

Plays

• Dulcamara, or the Little Duck and the Great Quack
• 1911, The Hooligan

Poems

Gilbert's poems are collectively and sometimes generically called "The Bab Ballads," named after his childhood nickname. Poems he had written, illustrated, and published under the name Bab in Fun, a magazine whose staff he was on as well, were collected and published in 1869. Another collection was published in 1873, and both collections, which contain "the germ of many of the later operas," were published in 1898 in one volume called Songs of a Savoyard ("Gilbert").

• 1869, The Bab Ballads
• 1873, more Bab ballads
• 1898, Songs of a Savoyard

Secondary Sources

• Ayre, Leslie. The Gilbert and Sullivan Companion. Forward by Martyn Green. New York: New American Library, 1972.
• "Gilbert, Sir W(illiam) S(chwenk)." Britannica Online. (Accessed 09 April 1998).
• Mencken, H. L. "The Passing of Gilbert." Baltimore Evening Sun 30 May 1911.