page_title: W. S. Gilbert
section_title: First collaborations amidst other works
hierarchical_section_title: W. S. Gilbert / Collaboration with Sullivan / First collaborations amidst other works
caption_attribution_description: Detail from "The Pantomimes" by D.H. Friston in the January 6, 1872 Illustrated London News, showing Thespis by Gilbert and Sullivan. The original has two other pantomimes stacked above it. It has been slightly cleaned up to isolate Thespis from the illustration of Noah's Ark above. The scene is from late in Act I, either just after the gods appear to Thespis (and before they chase the other Thespians off) in the dialogue before the finale, or at the return of the Thespians within the Act I finale. Given the lack of Diana, it's probably the former. Terence Rees, in Thespis: A Gilbert and Sullivan Enigma identifies the actors on page 99. From left to right: Apollo (Fred Sullivan), Mars (Frank Wood), Jupiter (John Maclean), Thespis (J. L. Toole), Stupidas [background, in pointy hat] (Fred Payne), Preposteros [arms crossed] (Harry Payne), and Mercury (Nelly Farren)
context_page_description: Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his collaboration with composer Arthur Sullivan, which produced fourteen comic 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. The popularity of these works was supported for over a century by year-round performances of them, in Britain and abroad, by the repertory company that Gilbert, Sullivan and their producer Richard D'Oyly Carte founded, the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. These Savoy operas are still frequently performed in the English-speaking world and beyond.
  Gilbert's creative output included over 75 plays and libretti, and numerous short stories, poems and lyrics, both comic and serious. After brief careers as a government clerk and a lawyer, Gilbert began to focus, in the 1860s, on writing light verse, including his Bab Ballads, short stories, theatre reviews and illustrations, often for Fun magazine.
context_section_description: In 1871, John Hollingshead commissioned Gilbert to work with Sullivan on a holiday piece for Christmas, Thespis, or The Gods Grown Old, at the Gaiety Theatre. Thespis outran five of its nine competitors for the 1871 holiday season, and its run was extended beyond the length of a normal run at the Gaiety, However, nothing more came of it at that point, and Gilbert and Sullivan went their separate ways. Gilbert worked again with Clay on Happy Arcadia (1872), and with Alfred Cellier on Topsyturveydom (1874), as well as writing several farces, operetta libretti, extravaganzas, fairy comedies, adaptations from novels, translations from the French, and the dramas described above. Also in 1874, he published his last contribution for Fun magazine ("Rosencrantz and Guildenstern"), after a gap of three years, then resigned due to disapproval of the new owner's other publishing interests.
  It would be nearly four years after Thespis was produced before the two men worked together again. In 1868, Gilbert had published a short comic sketch in Fun magazine titled "Trial by Jury: An Operetta". In 1873, Gilbert was asked by the theatrical manager, Carl Rosa, to write a work for his planned 1874 season. Gilbert expanded Trial into a one-act libretto. However, Rosa's wife Euphrosyne Parepa-Rosa, a childhood friend of Gilbert's, died after an illness in 1874 and Rosa dropped the project. Later in 1874 Gilbert offered the libretto to Richard D'Oyly Carte, but Carte could not use the piece at that time. By early 1875, Carte was managing the Royalty Theatre, and he needed a short opera to play as an afterpiece to Offenbach's La Périchole. He contacted Gilbert, asked about the piece, and suggested Sullivan to set the work. Sullivan was enthusiastic, and Trial by Jury was composed in a matter of weeks. The little piece was a runaway hit, outlasting the run of La Périchole and being revived at another theatre.
  Gilbert continued his quest to gain respect in and respectability for his profession. One thing that may have been holding dramatists back from respectability was that plays were not published in a form suitable for a "gentleman's library", as, at the time, they were generally cheaply and unattractively published for the use of actors rather than the home reader. To help rectify this, at least for himself, Gilbert arranged in late 1875 for publishers Chatto and Windus to print a volume of his plays in a format designed to appeal to the general reader, with an attractive binding and clear type, containing Gilbert's most respectable plays, including his most serious works, but mischievously capped off with Trial by Jury.
  After the success of Trial by Jury, there were discussions towards reviving Thespis, but Gilbert and Sullivan were not able to agree on terms with Carte and his backers. The score to Thespis was never published, and most of the music is now lost. It took some time for Carte to gather funds for another Gilbert and Sullivan opera, and in this gap Gilbert produced several works including Tom Cobb (1875), Eyes and No Eyes (1875, his last German Reed Entertainment), and Princess Toto (1876), his last and most ambitious work with Clay, a three-act comic opera with full orchestra, as opposed to the shorter works for much reduced accompaniment that came before. Gilbert also wrote two serious works during this time, Broken Hearts (1875) and Dan'l Druce, Blacksmith (1876).
  Also during this period, Gilbert wrote, Engaged (1877), which inspired Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. Engaged is a parody of romantic drama written in the "topsy-turvy" satiric style of many of Gilbert's Bab Ballads and the Savoy Operas—with one character pledging his love, in the most poetic and romantic language, to every single woman in the play. The story portrays some "innocent" Scottish rustics making a living by throwing trains off the lines and then charging the passengers for services and, in parallel, romance being gladly thrown over in favour of monetary gain. A New York Times reviewer wrote in 1879, "Mr Gilbert, in his best work, has alway
caption: Illustration of Thespis in The Illustrated London News, 6 January 1872
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