Sweethearts (play)
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Sweethearts is a comic play billed as a "dramatic contrast" in two acts by W. S. Gilbert. It was first produced on November 7, 1874 at the Prince of Wales's Theatre in London.
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[edit] Background
This romantic comedy of manners was written for Squire Bancroft and his wife Marie (nee Wilton), managers of the Prince of Wales's Theatre, and starred Mrs. Bancroft. The Bancrofts had produced the best plays of Tom Robertson in the 1860s, and Sweethearts was Gilbert's tribute to Robertson's "realist" style. Its emphasis on the importance of small incidents, the revealing of character through apparent "small talk", and the idea that what is not said in the dialogue is as important as what is said are all Robertson trademarks, though they are not key features of Gilbert's other work. However, the play combines sentiment with a typically Gilbertian sense of irony. The story of the play deals with themes as diverse as the differences between men's and women's recollections of romantic episodes, and the spread of housing developments to green-field sites. Squire Bancroft called Sweethearts "one of the most charming and successful plays we ever produced."[1] After Sweethearts' success, the Bancrofts went on to produce several other plays by Gilbert.
Early in his career, Gilbert experimented with his dramatic style. After a number of broad comedies, farces and burlesques, he wrote a series of short comic operas for the German-Reeds at the Gallery of Illustration. At the same time, he created several 'fairy comedies' at the Haymarket Theatre, including The Palace of Truth (1870) and Pygmalion and Galatea, one of seven plays that he produced that year.[2] These works, as well as another series that included The Wicked World (1873), Sweethearts, Charity (1874), and Broken Hearts (1875), established that Gilbert's capabilities extended far beyond burlesque, won him artistic credentials, and demonstrated that he was a writer of wide range, as comfortable with human drama as with farcical humour. The success of these plays gave Gilbert a prestige that would be crucial to his later collaboration with as respected a musician as Sullivan.
A drawing room ballad of the same name was created in 1875 to help advertise the play, based on the story-line of the play, with music by the composer who would go on to become Gilbert's most famous collaborator, Arthur Sullivan. It is one of only three Gilbert and Sullivan songs that were not part of a larger work.
The first professional production of Sweethearts in Britain in recent memory is being given in the spring of 2007 at the Finborough Theatre in London, along with a rare professional production of Sullivan's The Zoo.[3]
[edit] Roles
- Mr. Harry Spreadbow (Age 21 in Act I; Age 51 in Act II)
- Wilcox, a Gardener
- Miss Jenny Northcott (Age 18 in Act I; Age 48 in Act II)
- Ruth, a Maidservant
[edit] Synopsis
Act I - 1844
A stiff Victorian youth, Henry Spreadbrow, has been suddenly called away to India and must leave immediately. He visits his childhood friend, a delicate if spirited young woman, Jenny Northcott, who is busy in her garden. Henry summons the courage to propose marriage to her, but Jenny is flirtatious and capricious, and frustrates his every overture, letting him know that she does not care for him. He asks her to give him a flower to remember her by, and he gives her a flower in return, which she puts to one side without seeming to care about it. At last, dejected, he leaves, but then she bursts into tears.
Act II - 1874
Jenny, still single, lives in the same house, though the garden has grown much in thirty years. Henry, now Sir Henry Spreadbrow, returns, and when they meet again, the full nature of the irony reveals itself: Jenny has remained faithful to him all those thirty years and remembers their last meeting in every detail. But Henry had recovered from his passion for her within the month and has forgotten most of the details of their meeting. Jenny has kept the flower he gave her, while Henry had long ago lost the flower she gave him. "How like a woman!" says Sir Henry, to throw aside the flower and then keep it for thirty years; "How like a man!" Jenny retorts, to swear undying love and then forget almost immediately. As the curtain falls, however, Henry makes it clear that their romance is only just beginning.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Crowther's introduction to Sweethearts
- ^ "Miss Anderson as Galatea", The New-York Times, 1883 January 23 32(9791): 5, col. 3 Amusements Downloaded 15 October, 2006.
- ^ Notice of upcoming first modern professional production
[edit] References
- Goldberg, Isaac, The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan (1929)
- Sweethearts libretto and plot summary at the Gilbert and Sullivan archive
- Crowther, Andrew (2000). Contradiction Contradicted – The Plays of W. S. Gilbert. Associated University Presses. ISBN 0-8386-3839-2.
- Stedman, Jane W. (1996). W. S. Gilbert, A Classic Victorian & His Theatre. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-816174-3.
