All this shows how Sullivan in his music was perfectly and typically British. What about Gilbert? In his way I think he was the same. British audiences, he knew, did not want either abstruse plots or out-and-out farces, but they did like to be indulged with gentle ripples of laughter. They did not care over-much for the incongruous, but they did love rollicking, good-natured burlesque. And Gilbert was a master of burlesque. Endless arrows are released from his bow, but they hit the mark without disfiguring it, for the tips are not dipped in poison. The Briton can laugh with the best when his own weaknesses and foibles are held up to satire. Certain people would go at once into a tantrum. The Germans, as we know, could never understand "H.M.S. Pinafore." They said it was impossible! No doubt to them it was impossible. Gilbert was making play with Britain's proudest possession—her Navy. Well, the Germans could never have produced a Gilbert of their own in any case, but imagine the enormity of the crime if such a one had written a play caricaturing the omnipotent German War Lords and the old German Army!
Whatever the national costume in which the Gilbert characters are dressed, and however remote the age to which these costumes belong, we know at once that the garb is the purest "camouflage." We have met their like in present-day London or Glasgow or Liverpool. What a lot of folk in real life we know with the same little oddities! The Duke of Plaza-Toro, though described as a Spanish grandee, is really very much an Englishman. He sings, too, about the human weakness for small titles and orders, and we know that that is not an exclusive weakness of the Venetians or the Baratarians in "The Gondoliers." The cap can find a head to fit it much nearer home. Then there is the character of Sir Joseph Porter in "Pinafore." No doubt he is an exaggerated political type, but he is not exaggerated, after all, beyond recognition.
"The Yeomen of the Guard" is, of all operas ever written, the one most essentially English. The Elizabethan setting is there, and so is the happy spirit of old Merrie England. Slightly, perhaps, it may be a drama, but it brings to the surface the tears of gentle melancholy only. That also stamps it as typically British. Colonel Fairfax, under the shadow of the executioner's axe, does not strike a dramatic pose and tell us that it is a far, far better thing he is going to do than he has ever done. Not a bit! In effect, he says its rather hard luck, but there it is anyhow, and after all things might be very much worse. A British officer always was ready to face death with a smile. Nor does Jack Point himself, the most lovable of characters, make a parade of his grief. The burning, aching pain is smothered almost to the end beneath the outward jesting, and when his honest heart breaks there is no murmur against the cruelty of fate, nor any cry of vengeance upon the rival who has won Elsie Maynard.
Yes, we British people can often see ourselves in these characters as if in a mirror, and it is probably due to this, together with the exquisite blend of inimitable music and wit, that the popularity of these operas is so strong and enduring. Stage "puppets" as they may be, they do show us a lot about both our virtues and follies, but rather more about our follies, because as a race we are notoriously shy of our praises being sung! They are always ready to own up to their weaknesses in some capital song. So like the self-depreciating British! Like the rest of us, too, they are for ever getting into some dilemma or other, and they disentangle themselves without excitement or flurry. Each point is made without the banging of drums or the sounding of trumpets. Contrast this with Wagner, who makes a terrible fuss about the merest trifle, and works up his orchestration in a manner that might suggest that the heavens were falling. Whether we like our music like this must be a matter of taste and individual discretion. Here in Gilbert and Sullivan at all events we have common sense—for there can be common sense even in the ridiculous—and a tranquilising atmosphere. In a busy, workaday world, with its ceaseless nervous and physical strain, it is surely a grateful attribute, a pleasant diversion between the burdens of one day and those of the next!
Sir William Gilbert, as I have said before, had a master mind as a playwright. Every opera he wrote had a definite and an interesting plot, and a plot which had, moreover, a purpose. "H.M.S. Pinafore," as we know, was a shrewd shaft aimed at some of the absurdities of our political life, though I say this without being in any way a politician myself! In "Patience" he held up to ridicule the æsthetic craze of the 'eighties. With "Iolanthe" we enter the fantastic field, and to me there is always something uncommonly whimsical in the idea that Parliament is ruled by the fairies, who thus must be the real rulers of England. "Princess Ida" was a clever anticipation of the women's movement, though it is well-known that Gilbert took the outlines of the story from Tennyson. Then "The Mikado" transports to the romantic and picturesque land of Japan. "Ruddigore" was intended to be a travesty on the melodramatic stage. Following this came an historical play, designed to show his gifts in a new, more serious and no less successful light. I refer, of course, to "The Yeomen of the Guard." Then "The Gondoliers" carried us to beautiful Venice, whilst last of all were "Utopia Limited," which I trust will soon be revived, and "The Grand Duke." It is remarkable that so wide a range could be covered in one series of plays.
Gilbert, at an O.P. Club dinner in 1906, admitted his "indebtedness to the author of the 'Bab Ballads,' from whom I have so unblushingly cribbed." The diligent student of the ballads and the operas will find many evidences of the development of ideas from the chrysalis to the butterfly stage. I have to thank Mr. Robert Bell for the following notes—confirmed and amplified by Gilbert during his lifetime—on the pedigree of a few of the more popular operas:—
"H.M.S. Pinafore," it will be seen, owed more to the ballads than did any of the later operas, and it will be noticed that Captain Corcoran, with his solicitude for his crew and his carefully moderate language, was clearly of the stock of Captain Reece, of "The Mantelpiece," who
"Did all that lay within him to
Promote the comfort of his crew;
A feather bed had every man
Warm slippers and hot-water can,
Brown Windsor from the captain's store,
A valet, too, to every four."