W.S. Gilbert
British playwright and lyricist Sir William Schwenck Gilbert wrote a series of comic operas, including
Her Majesty's Ship Pinafore
(1878) and
The Pirates of Penzance
(1879), with composer Sir Arthur Sullivan. This English dramatist, librettist, poet, and illustrator in collaboration with this composer produced fourteen comic operas, which include
The Mikado
, one of the most frequently performed works in the history of musical theatre. Opera companies, repertory companies, schools and community theatre groups throughout and beyond the English-speaking world continue to perform regularly these operas as well as most of their other Savoy operas. From these works, lines, such as "short, sharp shock", "What, never? Well, hardly ever!", and "Let the punishment fit the crime," form common phrases of the English language.
Gilbert also wrote the
Bab Ballads
, an extensive collection of light verse, which his own comical drawings accompany.
His creative output included more than 75 plays and libretti, numerous stories, poems, lyrics and various other comic and serious pieces. His plays and realistic style of stage direction inspired other dramatists, including Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. According to
The Cambridge History of English and American Literature
, the "lyrical facility" of Gilbert "and his mastery of metre raised the poetical quality of comic opera to a position that it had never reached before and has not reached since."
“Wafted by a favouring galeAs one sometimes is in trances,To a height that few can scale,Save by long and weary dances”
“Oh, dry the glistening tear that dues that marshal cheekThy loving childern here in them thy comfort seek With sympathetic care their arms around the creep, For oh they can not bear to see their father weep”
“The meaning doesn't matter if it's only idle chatter of a transcendental kind.”
“It's love that makes the world go round.”
“CHORUSWhat, never?CAPTAINNo, never!CHORUSWhat, never?CAPTAINWell, hardly ever!”
“Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.”
“Gilbert's response to being told they (the words 'ruddy' and 'bloody') meant the same thing was: "Not at all, for that would mean that if I said that I admired your ruddy countenance, which I do, I would be saying that I liked your bloody cheek, which I don't.”
“Crushed again!”
“When everyone is somebody, then no one’s anybody.”
“To sit in solemn silence on a dull, dark dockin a pestilential prison with a life-long lockawaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shockfrom a cheap and chippy chopper on a big, black block.”
“Sing 'Hey to you — good-day to you' —Sing 'Bah to you — ha! ha! to you' —Sing 'Booh to you — pooh, pooh to you' —And that's what you should say!”
“I'm really very sorry for you all, but it's an unjust world, and virtue is triumphant only in theatrical performances.”