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摘要
摘要
W. S. Gilbert was one of the giants of nineteenth-century Victorian theatre. He was already the leading young dramatist of his day when he began his celebrated collaboration with Arthur Sullivan, a partnership that produced the great Savoy Operas--still the most popular light operas in the world--and established him at the pinacle of his craft. Now, in W. S. Gilbert: A Classic Victorian and His Theatre, Jane W. Stedman provides an insightful biography of this major theatrical figure.
To write this biography, Stedman has returned to the original sources, has talked or corresponded with survivors of Gilbert's generation who knew him, researched deeply into Victorian publications such as Punch, Athenaeum, and Theatre, and has had access to hitherto unpublished materials. The result is not only the most accurate biography of Gilbert ever written, but also the most finely textured, revealing a Gilbert of more complexity and interest than has emerged before. Stedman covers his entire career, including his early journalism, his writing of the Bab Ballads (which are still in print today), theatrical works such as The Palace of Truth, The Wicked World, and Pygmalion and Galatea, and of course his collaboration with Arthur Sullivan. The author also illuminates Gilbert's private life, including a hitherto undiscovered early romantic attachment, and his life-long work for the social acceptance of the theatre and of theatre people, both on and off the stage.
A perfect companion volume to Arthur Jacobs's Arthur Sullivan: A Victorian Musician, this deeply researched, vividly written biography will enthrall all fans of Gilbert and Sullivan and anyone interested in the Victorian theatre.
评论 (3)
Kirkus评论
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. (16 pages b&w illustrations)
Choice 评论
This book will be compared inevitably with its companion volume, Arthur Jacobs's first-rate Arthur Sullivan: A Victorian Musician (CH, Jan'85). Stedman (Roosevelt Univ.) deserves equal praise. Indefatigably researched, and benefiting from the availability of new materials, her volume transports the reader into an era whose atmosphere is gradually fading as the years pass, an age of "topsy-turveydom" and whimsy, as is so ably satirized by Gilbert, an age of a paradoxical admixture of double standards for women and dramatists, problems of piracy of literary works and copyrights both in England and the US, and above all the teeming, pulsating theatrical world of the late 19th century. The book is as exciting and entertaining as any Gilbert and Sullivan production. Like his collaborator Sullivan, Schwenk Gilbert aspired to become a serious dramatist but achieved his greatest fame in the Savoy operettas. Here is the full story of the "Babs ballads," the years with Fun magazine, the meeting with Sullivan and Richard D'Oyly Carte, his happy marriage to Kitty Turner, the seemingly endless litigation and problems with actors, and the eventual breakup of the Savoy trio--Schwenk Gilbert, Arthur Sullivan, and the D'Oyly Cartes. An excellent book highly recommended to all readers. G. Muns emeritus, Eastern Kentucky University
《图书馆杂志》(Library Journal )书评
Lovers of Gilbert and Sullivan will be in heaven with the publication of these two books, which nicely complement each other. Stedman (English, Roosevelt Univ., Chicago) offers an outstanding study of this playwright and his often overlooked works, with much of its value deriving from its study of Gilbert without Sullivan. The author is a recognized expert on Gilbert as well as the Victorian time period, and she shows him to be a complex and interesting man who often found himself at odds with his time. Stedman highlights his contribution to Victorian theater as a forerunner of Wilde and Shaw. She also exposes some of the myths about Gilbert (and his relationship with Sullivan) that have been perpetrated by earlier writers. The index and bibliography are excellent. The annotated collection serves a dual purpose: Readers can now sing along with any Gilbert and Sullivan song and know all the words, and they will understand everything the song was meant to convey. This volume combines two previously published paperbacks from Penguin and adds the libretti to The Grand Duke and Utopia Limited. All notes are on the left page, and the actual song texts (complete with stage directions) are on the facing right page. There are also new introductions to each opera, a new introduction to the volume, and corrections to the original text. Print and text layout are very good. Both titles are recommended for public and academic libraries, as well as libraries with theater holdings.-Susan L. Peters, Emory Univ., Atlanta, Ga. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
目录
Curtain-Raiser | p. vii |
List of PLATES | p. xiv |
Abbreviations | p. xvii |
Notes | p. xviii |
1 A Miscellany of Beginnings | p. 1 |
2 The 1860s: First Pages | p. 11 |
3 The 1860s: First Stages | p. 30 |
4 Love, Marriage, Farce, and Burlesque | p. 41 |
5 Babs, Reeds, and Druidesses | p. 63 |
6 Burlesque into Fairy Play | p. 77 |
7 A Wicked World -- A Happy Land | p. 100 |
8 Problem Plays and Sweethearts | p. 114 |
9 Operatical, Comical, Tragical | p. 128 |
10 Storms and Clear Sailing | p. 144 |
11 Not Poetic, but Aesthetic | p. 165 |
12 At the Savoy | p. 187 |
13 A Short Chapter on Method | p. 211 |
14 The Mikado and After | p. 221 |
15 Doing and Undoing | p. 239 |
16 Stringing the Lyre with a Tangled Skein | p. 257 |
17 The Road to Utopia | p. 278 |
18 Other Voices -- Other Tunes | p. 298 |
19 Growing on the Sunny Side | p. 318 |
20 Quick Curtain | p. 336 |
Select Bibliography | p. 351 |
Index | p. 361 |