Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator. He is best known for his collaboration with composer Arthur Sullivan, which produced 14 comic operas. The most famous of these include H. M. S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado. His creative output included over 75 plays and libretti, and numerous short stories, poems and lyrics, both comic and serious.
About W. S. Gilbert in brief
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator. He is best known for his collaboration with composer Arthur Sullivan, which produced 14 comic operas. The most famous of these include H. M. S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado. Gilbert’s creative output included over 75 plays and libretti, and numerous short stories, poems and lyrics, both comic and serious. He died of a heart attack while attempting to rescue a young woman to whom he was giving a swimming lesson in the lake at his home. His plays inspired other dramatists, including Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, and his comicOperas with Sullivan inspired the later development of American musical theatre, especially influencing Broadway librettists and lyricists. He was knighted in 1907 and died at Grim’s Dyke, a country estate in Buckinghamshire, England, on December 25, 1929. He had a son and two daughters, one of whom died in childhood. Gilbert was nicknamed \”Babab\” as a baby, and then \”Schwenck\”, after the surname of his great aunt and uncle, also his father’s godparents, who were his father and uncle. He also had a daughter, Anne Mary Bye Morris, who married Alfred Weigall, a miniatures painter; Mary Florence ; and Anne Maude. The younger two never married. Gilbert had three younger sisters, two of whom were born outside England because of the family’s travels during these years: Jane Morris and Mary Florence.
His father, also named William, was briefly a naval surgeon, who later became a writer of novels and short stories,. some of which his son illustrated. He was educated at Boulogne, France, then at Western Grammar School, Brompton, London, and at the Great Ealing School, where he became head boy and wrote plays for school performances and painted scenery. In the 1860s, Gilbert began to focus on writing light verse, including his Bab Ballads, short stories and theatre reviews and illustrations, often for Fun magazine. He then began to write burlesques and his first comic plays, developing a unique absurdist, inverted style that would later be known as his \”topsy-turvy\” style. In 1890, after this long and profitable creative partnership, Gilbert quarrelled with Sullivan and Carte concerning expenses at the Savoy Theatre. Gilbert won the ensuing lawsuit, but the argument caused hurt feelings among the partnership. Gilbert and Sullivan were persuaded to collaborate on two last operas, but they were not as successful as the previous ones. In later years, Gilbert wrote several plays, and a few operas with other collaborators. He retired, with his wife Lucy, and their ward, Nancy McIntosh, to a country Estate, Grim’s Dyke. In 1856, he attended King’s College London, graduating in 1856. He intended to take the examinations for a commission in the Royal Artillery, but would only be needed to commission the Crimean War.
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