“For he that’d make his fellow creatures wise/ Should always gild the philosophic pill”
– Jack Point, The Yeomen of the Guard
Every theatre person knows Gilbert and Sullivan. The abundance of community theaters, opera companies and university groups dedicated to performing the comedic creations of that iconic Victorian composer-librettist duo has created a performance tradition that will stay with us for a very time. All of their 13 comic operettas have been enjoyed and hummed by generations of fans and have never failed to put butts in seats, but when we look closer at them beyond their popular appeal, we begin to see why they are so beloved. There are plenty of shows that are funny, clever and tuneful, but none of them are Gilbert and Sullivan.
When describing what makes G&S work so well, a lot of people would first talk about their ingenious satire. Many would be quick to label the operas themselves as “satires,” and this is on some level true, but this label is sometimes misapplied . Nowadays when we refer to something as a “satire” it’s usually “a satire on ____,” something that’s usually specific and very timely, which doesn’t always work for posterity. Imagine going back into the Comedy Central archives and watching episodes from the 2005 season of "The Daily Show." Trust me, they will not be nearly as funny or fresh as ones airing now and discussing contemporary topics (regardless of your opinion of Trevor Noah’s hosting abilities).
While this kind of satire certainly figures into the operas a great deal, this is never the focus of the works; Gilbert’s focus is always more broad than and more interesting than his specific targets. The Mikado is more about the shockingly banal attitude of bureaucracy towards human interests than it is about the exoticism of Japan, "Patience" is more about society’s misrepresentation of romantic love than it is about the “Aesthetic Movement” (a kind of 19th century hipster culture) and "Princess Ida" is more about ridiculously arbitrary and rigidly enforced gender roles than it is about women’s education.
Take, for example, "H.M.S Pinafore," which tells the story of a lowly British sailor who is in love with his captain’s daughter, who is being set up to marry Sir Joseph Porter, first lord of the Admiralty. Sir Joseph Porter is a clear send-up of W.H. Smith, First Lord of the Admiralty at the time, who was a bookseller turned parliament member who was appointed to the Admiral’s position with little to no seafaring experience. Gilbert takes numerous swipes at Smith in Sir Joseph’s lyrics, such as:
If your soul isn’t fettered to an office stool/ Be careful to be guided by this golden rule/ Stick close to your desks and never go to sea/ And you’ll all be made rulers of the Queen’s Navee!
Sounds like a certain orange, tiny-handed building magnate I know.
But taking blows at this particular person is hardly what Sir Joseph represents. At one point he asserts to the Pinafore’s captain that:
“That you are captain is an accident of birth. I cannot permit these noble fellows to be patronize because an accident of birth has placed you above them and them below you.”
This, of course, is nonsense. Sir Joseph and his ilk spend the entire show proclaiming that people are equal regardless of social standing, and then exploiting the very class structures that they claim to reject, striving to, as Sir Joseph says, “… teach the principle that a British sailor is any man’s equal… excepting mine!” The opera’s villain, the crusty scallywag Dick Deadeye, says it as, “when people have to obey other people’s orders, equality is out of the question!”
Now Gilbert doesn’t offer solutions to the problems he points out; I don’t think that’s his purpose. Gilbert is not Brecht, he does not seek to rally the people to action, but merely holds up a mirror to the sheer ridiculousness that surrounds us as humans every day. Gilbert’s satire much more penetrating, insightful, and truer of human nature in all periods in history than we usually imagine it to be. As the Mikado of Japan says: “I’m really very sorry for you all, but it is an unjust world, and virtue is triumphant only in theatrical performances.”
Sullivan has a unique flare to his writing as well. In addition to being a composer capable of weaving the tunes that we love and adore, he also proves to be a composer full of surprises. His particular genius lies in his unique and unexpected setting of Gilbert’s very metrical and notoriously tongue-twisty lyrics. Take for example this song from the second act of "The Mikado."
The sun whose rays /Are all ablaze/With ever-living glory/Does not deny/His majesty/Who scorns to tell a story
The metrical feet of the text almost demands a melody that goes a certain way “The sun whose rays are all ablaze,” with the accent coming down on the second syllable. A lesser composer might have done so, but Sullivan gives these words a new integrity with his setting, smoothing together the 3/4 time signature to create a seamless, flowing feel of these words that gives an equal emphasis to every syllable, while still maintaining the understandability of the text.
Sullivan’s music also excels throughout the G&S canon in its emotional variety, ranging from the tender and poignant, like the song above, to the comic and jolly, like Sir Joseph’s, to this clip from the electrifying finale of their most serious work "The Yeomen of the Guard," a tense period drama about a prison break from the tower of London. Here, the music takes a truly operatic sweep, with rushing strings and overlapping vocal lines, creating an atmosphere of both high energy and dramatic weight that only he could produce.
It’s not necessary to do this analysis to appreciate Gilbert and Sullivan, of course. The main reason these shows are still with us is they’re accessible, hilarious, and have an almost universal appeal, but I also think that if we examine the artistry behind the sparkling fun, we can gain a better appreciation of what keeps us coming back. I think that it’s best summed up by Herman Klein, a theatre critic who said this of the first performance of H.M.S Pinafore:
"We secretly marveled at the naturalness and ease with which [the Gilbertian quips and absurdities] were said and done. For until then no living soul had seen upon the stage such weird, eccentric, yet intensely human beings... [They] conjured into existence a hitherto unknown comic world of sheer delight."
