The G in G&S

My brother informed me that today was the 100th anniversary of the untimely demise of William Schwenck (W. S.) Gilbert, the librettist (writer of words) in the partnership of Gilbert and Sullivan.

Gilbert is the author of a large number of the random things that I quote in response to various stimuli, either as snippets of dialogue or the actual songs with Sullivan’s music.

When I was in Year 10 my high school put on a production of HMS Pinafore, in which I played Buttercup … despite lacking the buxomness and worldly-wise-ness that such a character should have had. Both staff and students took on roles, including one of my sisters; there were rehearsals in the school hall that finished late on cold, dark nights; and being a school production with an abundance of females wanting to participate the aunts, sisters, and cousins really were “reckoned up by dozens”. And this was my initial experience with end-of-big-event-emptiness, when you finish something on a high and then there is a void when it is all over.

This was also my first full-fledged encounter with G&S, although I had met bits of pieces before this due to my Dad’s propensity to quote Gilbert in response to various stimuli, either as snippets of dialogue or the actual songs with … oh, heredity is a scary thing!

In the years that followed I played in the orchestra for Patience in which one of my sisters performed; saw that sister sing as Yum Yum in The Mikado with my brother in the chorus (and I have come to know The Mikado quite well though I have never done it); did Pinafore again as Buttercup, this time with my other sister, Dad and one of my brothers in the chorus; and then had the chance to play Ruth in The Pirates of Penzance a couple of years later (with the same second sister singing Mabel, and both Dad and my brother again singing in the chorus), which was good fun. Pirates is my favourite of the operettas that I know, an enjoyment enhanced by the delightfully manic version involving Simon Gallaher, Jon English and Helen Donaldson that I saw first on video and then later had the pleasure of seeing live at its 20th birthday revival.

And so to some random quotes:

• A policeman’s lot is not a happy one
• My object all sublime, I shall achieve in time, to let the punishment fit the crime
• I am a pirate king
• What never? Hardly ever.
• He pays his taxes … And cherishes the receipts (happy receipts!)
• When you say “orphan” do you mean often frequently or orphan a person who has lost his parents?
• She could very well pass for 43 in the dusk with the light behind her
• And if you remain callous and obdurate I will perish as he did and you will know why, though I probably shall not exclaim as I die: “Oh willow, tit willow, tit willow”
• With cat-like tread (THUMP)
• I am the very model of a modern major-general …………
• Hast ever thought that beneath a gay and frivolous exterior there may lurk a canker-worm which is slowly but surely eating its way into one’s very heart?
• I thought so little, they rewarded me by making me the ruler of the Queen’s Navy
• A paradox, a paradox, a most ingenious paradox
• I am a little boy of five

I’d better stop now!

Thanks, Gilbert.