The Princess (play)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Princess is a blank verse farcical play, in five scenes with music, by W. S. Gilbert first produced at the Olympic Theatre in London on January 8, 1870, which travesties Alfred Lord Tennyson's humorous 1847 narrative poem, The Princess: A Medley. Gilbert called it "a whimsical allegory ...a respectful operatic per-version" of Tennyson's poem. The play was a modest success, playing through April and enjoying a provincial tour.[1] Gilbert liked the theme so much that he adapted it in 1883 as the libretto to Princess Ida, one of his Savoy Operas with Arthur Sullivan. The Princess is a satire of women's education, still a controversial subject in 1847, when Queen's College first opened in London, though less so in 1870, and even less so in 1883.
Contents |
[edit] Background
This play came fairly early in Gilbert's playwriting career, after his very successful one-act comic opera, Ages Ago (1869) and before Our Island Home (1870, another such piece). The play was Gilbert's first of the 1870s, a decade during which he wrote more than thirty-five plays, encompassing most genres of comedy and drama, including his series of blank verse "fairy comedies", beginning with The Palace of Truth later in 1870 and his first operas with Arthur Sullivan. In 1870, Gilbert was establishing his "topsy-turvy" style and proving that his capabilities extended well beyond his early burlesques and extravaganzas.
The lyrics to the songs in The Princess were set to popular tunes from popular operetta and grand opera of the time, including Hervé and Jacques Offenbach. The three young men are played by women, so that, during a large part of the play, women are playing men disguised as women. Gilbert had been eager to try a "blank verse burlesque in which a picturesque story should be told in a strain of mock-heroic seriousness." The satire in the piece is of a higher intellectual order than usual burlesques playing in London at the time (and indeed than many of Gilbert's earlier pieces), and the publicity for the play touted this.[2]
[edit] Roles
- King Hildebrand
- Prince Hilarion, his Son
- Cyril and Florian, his friends, Noblemen of King Hildebrand's Court
- King Gama
- Prince Arac, Prince Guron, and Prince Scynthius, his Sons
- Atho, King Hildebrand's Chamberlain
- First Officer and Second Officer
- Gobbo a Porter
- Princess Ida, Daughter of King Gama and Principal of the Ladies' University
- Lady Psyche, Professor of Experimental Science
- Lady Blanche, Professor of Abstract Philosophy
- Melissa, her Daughter
- Bertha, Ada, Chloe, Sacharissa, Sylvia, Phoebe, Amarinthe, and Laura, Lady Undergraduates
[edit] Scenes and story
The play is divided into five scenes:
- SCENE FIRST — Court in King Hildebrand's Palace.
- SCENE SECOND — The Gates of Castle Adamant.
- SCENE THIRD — Grounds of Castle Adamant.
- SCENE FOURTH — Hildebrand's Camp before Ida's Castle.
- SCENE FIFTH — Inner Gate of Castle Adamant.
The plot is essentially the same as the poem and the later opera: The beautiful Princess Ida rules a women's university and excludes all men from entering -- even the Prince to whom she was betrothed in infancy. He and two companions disguise themselves as girl students and sneak inside the walls, but they are soon discovered, eventually causing chaos and panic. In a tournament, the Prince and his friends are wounded by Ida's brothers, after which, however, she comes to love and accept the Prince as her husband.
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ Information about the play
- ^ Gilbert, W. S. "An Autobiography" in Theatre, NS 1 (Apr. 1883), p. 220, quoted in Stedman, p. 77.
[edit] References
- Stedman, Jane W. (1996). W. S. Gilbert, A Classic Victorian & His Theatre. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-816174-3.
- Introduction to the play
- Information about the play
