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Gilbert And Sullivan

Gilbert and Sullivan

Playwright/lyricist W. S. Gilbert (1836-1911) and composer Sir Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) defined operetta or comic operas in Victorian England with a series of their internationally successful and timeless works known as the Savoy Operas.

History

Savoy Opera] Savoy Opera] Their first collaboration was Thespis (1871). At the time, W. S. Gilbert was widely known for the Bab Ballads, a popular series of doggerel verse that explored the farthest reaches of topsy-turvydom, such as the ballad of Captain Reece, whose "sisters, cousins, aunts and niece" sailed on the H.M.S. Mantelpiece. He was a successful man of the London theatrical scene, with a string of sketches, comedies, pantomimes, burlesques and musicals which were accounted successful by the standards of the day. Arthur Sullivan was the most popular musician in England and regarded as the bright young hope of serious British music. He was much in demand as a conductor and composer of oratorios, anthems and hymns. He was also earning a considerable income by churning out popular ballads, the Victorian equivalent of Top Forty hits. Thespis was an extravaganza in which the gods of the classical world, now become elderly, were temporarily replaced by a troupe of Nineteenth Century actors and actresses. In concept, the piece was consistent with the Offenbachian Orpheus in the Underworld and The Beautiful Helen which (in translation) then dominated the English musical stage. Thespis had a run estimated at between 64 and 80 performances at the small and not especially attractive Opera Comique Theatre. It was successful as such things were then measured, even moderately profitable, but perceived by no one at the time as the beginning of a great collaboration. The musical score was never published and, except for one song and one chorus, has entirely perished. However, some of the music was recycled by the collaborators into later works. Composers since then have attempted to fill in the gaps by supplying "Sullivan-like" music for the play. [http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/thespis/html/thespis_home.html] Gilbert and Sullivan's first major hit was Trial by Jury (1875). Impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte had hit on the idea of creating an English national opera. He asked W. S. Gilbert for a one-act work to serve as an afterpiece for Offenbach's popular but short La Perichole. Gilbert had already written just such a short piece on commission from another producer, whose unexpected death had left Gilbert's work an orphan. He extracted the libretto of Trial by Jury from his pocket and handed it to Carte. Carte was delighted with it. He suggested that it be set to music by Sullivan and he brought the two men together. Sullivan was equally delighted. Trial by Jury, with Sullivan's brother, Fred, as the Learned Judge, was added to the bill with La Perichole and proved itself to be even more popular than Offenbach's work. Trial by Jury ran for 135 performances, a new record for an English musical, far outdistancing the former record holder, The Beggar's Opera (1728). The Sorcerer (1877) is the first full-length example of what came to be known as the Savoy operas (although the Savoy Theatre had yet to be built.) D'Oyly Carte asked Gilbert for a comic operetta that would serve as the centerpiece for an evening's entertainment. Gilbert rummaged around in his published comic verse and hit on the tale of a respectable Cockney businessman who happened to be a sorcerer, a purveyor of blessings (not much called for) and curses (very popular). With The Sorcerer, the D'Oyly Carte repertory and production system came into being. Until this time, Gilbert had been forced to contend with casts built around one or two established stars, as had been the case with Thespis, a casually collected group of supporting players and a pick-up band of musicians. From The Sorcerer onwards, Gilbert would no longer hire stars, he would create them. Gilbert hired the performers, subject to veto from Sullivan on purely musical grounds. He oversaw the designs of sets and costumes. He directed the performers on stage. Sullivan oversaw musical preparation. The result of all this was a wholly new crispness and polish in English musical theater. A side-effect was that all subsequent Gilbert and Sullivan comic operettas with the exception of The Gondoliers, would have interchangeable casts. The repertory system ensured that the comic patter man who would perform the role of the sorcerous John Wellington Wells, would go from his desk to be ruler of the Queen's navy as Sir Joseph Porter, then join the army as Major General Stanley and so on. Lady Sangazure would transform into Little Buttercup, then Ruth, the piratical maid-of-all-work . . . Two relative unknowns hired by Gilbert for The Sorcerer would stay with his opera company for many years to become great stars of the Victorian stage, George Grossmith, a comic patter man, and Rutland Barrington, baritone and character actor. Gilbert was a tireless taskmaster, seeing to it that The Sorcerer opened as a fully polished show--in marked contrast to the under-rehearsed Thespis. Their first world-wide success was with HMS Pinafore (1878), satirizing the Royal Navy and the British obsession with social status. The Pirates of Penzance (1879), written in a fit of pique at American copyright pirates, also poked fun at romantic melodrama, sense of duty, family obligation, and the relevance of a liberal education. Patience (1881) satirized the aesthetic movement in general and the poet and aesthete Algernon Swinburne in particular. Iolanthe (1882) pokes fun at English law and at the House of Lords. Ruddigore (1887) is a topsy-turvy take on the Victorian Melodrama, and viciously satirizes that entire genre. The Yeomen of the Guard (1888), their only joint work with a tragic ending, concerns a strolling jester who finds himself embroiled in a risky intrigue at the Tower of London. The Gondoliers (1889) pokes fun at the plot devices of opera in the setting of a kingdom ruled by a pair of gondoliers who try to run it in a spirit of "republican equality". Trial By Jury is rather self-evident, but is unique because it was the only operetta with no spoken dialogue. Their most popular work was The Mikado (1885), where English bureaucracy was made fun of in a Japanese setting. Gilbert's plots remain perfect examples of "topsy-turvydom," in which primeval fairies rub elbows with English lords, gondoliers ascend to the monarchy and pirates reconcile with major-generals. Gilbert's lyrics employ double (and triple) rhyming and punning, and served as the very model for such 20th century Broadway lyricists as Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin, and Lorenz Hart. Sullivan, a classically trained musician who devoted much of his career to religious hymns and grand opera, contributed catchy melodies which were also emotionally moving. As seamless as their onstage collaboration was, Gilbert and Sullivan were temperamentally incompatible, and their partnership was frequently ruptured. Their last joint work, The Grand Duke, opened in 1896, and the sickly Sullivan died four years later. Their works were originally produced by British impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte, considered by some to be the third member of this partnership, who built the Savoy Theatre in London to present their operettas, and formed the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, which would perform the Savoy Operettas with exacting detail until 1982. The Gilbert and Sullivan operettas were even more popular abroad, and many American cities saw amateur and professional Gilbert and Sullivan performing groups. This trend has continued to the present day, and it can be argued that these operettas and The Mikado in particular were instrumental in shaping the American musical of the 20th century.

Cultural influence

Many cultural movements saw the influence of Gilbert and Sullivan. For instance, aestheticism, the cultural movement characterized by Oscar Wilde and satirized in Patience, was actually introduced to the United States by Richard D'Oyly Carte in order that Americans could understand the operetta. In terms of humor, the idea of extending a joke throughout a piece of literature and/or comedy work is prevalent in the Savoy Operas. In 1999 Mike Leigh's film Topsy-Turvy presented an acclaimed film depiction of the team and the creation of their most popular operetta, The Mikado. The works of Gilbert and Sullivan, filled as they are with parodies of their contemporary culture, are themselves frequently parodied or pastiched; a notable example of this is Tom Lehrer's Elements song, which consists of Lehrer's rhyming rendition of the names of all the chemical elements set to the music of Major General's Song from the operetta The Pirates of Penzance. Lehrer also includes a verse parodying a Gilbert and Sullivan finale in his patchwork of stylistic creations Clementine ("full of words and music and signifying nothing", as Lehrer put it, thus parodying G & S and Shakespeare in the same sentence). The Popeye theme song was apparently directly inspired by G & S. The first two phrases :I'm Popeye the Sailor Man, I'm Popeye the Sailor Man are nearly identical to the first two phrases of the "Pirate King" song from The Pirates of Penzance :For I am a Pirate King! (Hoorah for the Pirate King!) except for the high note on the first "King". Another song from "Pirates", which starts "With cat-like tread..." leads up to a segment that starts "Come, friends who plough the sea..." which is more recognizable with its modern lyric, "Hail, hail, the gang's all here..." Allan Sherman sang several parodies...
- I'm called Little Butterball (about Allan's admitted corpulence)
- When I was a lad I went to Yale (about a young advertising agent)
- You need an analyst, a psychoanalyst (a variant on "I've got a little list")
- Titwillow (about a Yiddish-talking bird that meets a sad fate) Anna Russell performed a parody called "How to Write Your Own Gilbert and Sullivan Opera". In Runaround, a short story in Isaac Asimov's I, Robot, Powell and Donovan encounter a robot who is in a state similar to drunkenness, singing "There Grew a Little Flower" (from Ruddigore), upon which Donovan remarks "Where did he pick up Gilbert and Sullivan"? In the early 1980s, around the time of the straight version of "Pirates" starring Kevin Kline and Linda Ronstadt, there was a parody (or "updated") film called The Pirate Movie starring Christopher Atkins and Kristy McNichol. The film Chariots of Fire also draws much from the G & S repertoire. The popular TV series Family Guy drew from Gilbert and Sullivan with a parody of the Captain's Song from H.M.S. Pinafore. Larry David's show Curb Your Enthusiasm uses Three Little Maids from The Mikado as background music. In The Simpsons episode "Cape Fear" Bart asks Sideshow Bob to sing "the entire score of H.M.S. Pinafore" as a last request, which is fulfilled. In the ninth Star Trek feature film Star Trek: Insurrection the characters Captain Picard, Worf and Data sing "A British Tar". The character Sallah in Raiders of the Lost Ark sings Pinafore tunes when he is excited or overjoyed. In Angel in the fifth season Charles Gunn has the ability to be a good lawyer input into his head, along with a lot of Gilbert and Sullivan, because it's "great for elocution". He then mentions that he could sing all of "The Pirates of Penzance", and later in the series broke into "Three Little Maids" from The Mikado. The episode "And It's Surely To Their Credit" (2x05) of The West Wing has several references of Gilbert and Sullivan works, H.M.S. Pinafore in particular. In the popular sci-fi series Babylon 5 one of Marcus' many comic interludes involves his singing the 'Modern Major General' song from Pinafore over the closing credits of one episode, much to Doctor Franklin's distress.

Collaborations


- Thespis, or, The Gods Grown Old (1871)
- Trial by Jury (1875)
- The Sorcerer (1877)
- HMS Pinafore, or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor (1878)
- The Pirates of Penzance, or, The Slave of Duty (1879)
- The Martyr of Antioch (cantata) (1880) (Gilbert modified the poem by Dean Milman)
- Patience, or Bunthorne's Bride (1881)
- Iolanthe, or, The Peer and the Peri (1882)
- Princess Ida, or, Castle Adamant (1884)
- The Mikado, or, The Town of Titipu (1885)
- Ruddigore, or, The Witch's Curse (1887)
- The Yeomen of the Guard, or, The Merryman and his Maid (1888)
- The Gondoliers, or, The King of Barataria (1889)
- Utopia, Limited, or, The Flowers of Progress (1893)
- The Grand Duke, or, The Statutory Duel (1896)

Alternative versions

Non-English language versions

- Die Piraten - German language version of "The Pirates of Penzance"
Gilbert & Sullivan inspired Ballets

- Pirates! The Ballet, later renamed as Pirates of Penzance - The Ballet!
- Pineapple Poll - from a story by Gilbert - and music by Sullivan

Well-known Gilbert & Sullivan actors


- Donald Adams
- Rutland Barrington
- Jessie Bond
- Leonora Braham
- Rosina Brandram
- W.H. Denny
- Darrell Fancourt
- Martyn Green
- George Grossmith
- Marion Hood
- Durward Lely
- Henry Lytton
- Valerie Masterson
- Dennis Olsen
- Walter Passmore
- Courtice Pounds
- Peter Pratt
- John Reed
- Thomas Round
- Frederick Sullivan
- Richard Temple
- C.H. Workman

See also


- George Baker (record singer)
- Edward German
- The International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival held annually
- Staveley, Cumbria - a village with a fifty year G&S tradition

References


- Leslie Bailey, The Gilbert and Sullivan Book, 3rd ed, London. 1953.
- John Lane, The Life of Jessie Bond, London, 1927.
- Arthur Lawrence, Sir Arthur Sullivan, London, 1899.
- Deems Taylor (preface), Plays and Poems of W. S. Gilbert, New York, 1932.

Further Reading


- The Savoy Operas - Wordsworth Editions Ltd, Hertfordshire, England (1994)
- The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - W. W. Norton and Company, inc - New York, USA (1976)
- Michael Ainger, Gilbert and Sullivan, a dual biography OUP (2002)
- Leslie Ayre, The Gilbert & Sullivan Companion - (Foreword by Martyn Green) - Pan Books Ltd, London, England (1972)
- Leslie Baily, Gilbert & Sullivan and their world - Thames and Hudson Ltd, London, England (1973)
- Ian Bradley, The Annotated Gilbert and Sullivan - Penguin Books Ltd, Middlesex, England (1982)
- Ian Bradley, The Annotated Gilbert and Sullivan 2 - Penguin Books Ltd, Middlesex, England (1984)
- Michael Ffinch, Gilbert and Sullivan - Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, England (1993)
- Martyn Green, Treasury of Gilbert & Sullivan - Simon and Schuster, Inc., New York, USA (1961)
- Christopher Hibbert, Gilbert & Sulivan and Their Victorian World - American Heritage Publishing Co., Inc, New York, USA (1976)
- Alan James Gilbert & Sulivan - Omnibus Press, Wiltshire, England (1989)
- Geoffrey Smith, The Savoy Operas - Robert Hale Limited, London, England (1983)
- Audrey Williamson,Gilbert and Sullivan Opera - Marion Boyars, London, England (1953)
- Robin Wilson & Frederic Lloyd, Gilbert & Sullivan - The Official D'Oyly Carte Picture History - Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, USA (1984)
- John Wolfson, Final Curtain - The Last Gilbert and Sullivan Operas - Chappell & Company Limited, London, England (1976)

External links


- [http://diamond.boisestate.edu/gas/ The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive]
- [http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/mikado/html/mikado_by_mencken.html Article by H. L. Mencken on the impact of The Mikado from 1910)]
- [http://negass.org/index.html The New England Gilbert and Sullivan Society (includes links to other North American societies)]
- [http://www.cris.com/~oakapple/savoynet Savoynet - an email-based G&S listserv]
- [http://www.mugss.org/ Manchester Universities' Gilbert & Sullivan Society (includes links to other G&S resources)]
- [http://www.gsyork.co.uk/ University of York Gilbert and Sullivan Society (includes links to other societies and G&S resources)]
- [http://www.savoy.ca/ McGill University Savoy Society (includes links to other societies in the Montreal area and G&S resources)]
- [http://www.pattersong.org/seattle_productions.htm Seattle Gilbert and Sullivan Society (includes photos of their G&S productions)]
- [http://hcs.harvard.edu/hrgsp/ The Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert and Sullivan Players (includes an archive of their performances for the past fifty years, with photos, lyrics, and other information)]
- [http://www.cris.com/~oakapple/gasdisc/mc-adelaide.htm Gilbert and Sullivan Highlights] - recordings of songs from Gilbert and Sullivan Savoy Operas
- [http://www.fvgss.org/ The Fraser Valley Gilbert and Sullivan Society (includes photos of their G&S productions and other information)] Sullivan, Arthur Gilbert and Sullivan Gilbert and Sullivan Gilbert, W. S.

W. S. Gilbert

Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (November 18, 1836 – May 29, 1911) was a British dramatist and librettist best known for his operatic collaborations with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan. Gilbert published numerous short pieces of humour and was a cartoonist. Gilbert's father, also named William, was a naval surgeon and he spent much of his youth touring Europe before settling down in London in 1849, later becoming a novelist in his own right, the most famous of his works being The Magic Mirror, the original edition of which was illustrated by his son. Gilbert's parents were distant and stern, and he did not have a particularly good relationship with either of them. Following the breakup of their marriage in 1876, his relationships became even more strained, especially with his mother. In the late 1850s and early 1860s, he began a career as a barrister, supplementing his income and indulging his creative side with the publication of many short illustrated poems in the magazine, Fun, using the childhood nickname "Bab" as his pen name. As a result the poems have become known as the Bab Ballads. The ballads proved to be very popular and were later published in book form several times. In addition, Gilbert used some of them as the base concepts for several of his libretti, including Trial by Jury and HMS Pinafore. In 1863, he wrote his first professional play, Uncle Baby, which ran for seven weeks. This represented his only dramatic success until 1866 when he had a burlesque and a pantomime produced. The following year, he married Lucy Agnes Turner. Following their marriage, he began to turn his attention more and more to writing for the stage and directing his work so that it would resemble his vision. Gilbert became a stickler that his actors interpret his work only in the manner he desired. This ran against the production style of the times, which was to let the actors have their way, the result of which had been a decline in the quality of English playwriting and dramatic production over the course of the late 18th century and the first half of the 19th century. By helping to reverse this trend, Gilbert not only improved the production of his own work; he also created an environment in which the work of later and more highly regarded playwrights such as Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw could be produced properly. It is more important that these authors' plays are produced in the manner that their authors intended, and thus it could be argued that Gilbert indirectly encouraged the creation of their work. In 1871, John Hollingshead commissioned Gilbert to work with Sullivan to create the Grotesque Operetta Thespis, or The Gods Grown Old for the Christmas season at the Gaiety Theatre. This proved successful in that it outran five of its nine competitors, closing only at Easter and being revived for the benefit of Nellie Farren, one of its stars, later in April 1872. However, this proved to be a false start in the men's collaborative efforts. It would be another four years before the men worked together again. Gilbert and Sullivan's real collaborative efforts began in 1875 when Richard D'Oyly Carte commissioned them to write a one-act play, Trial by Jury. The operetta's success was so great that the three men formed an often turbulent partnership which lasted for twenty years and a further twelve operettas. Initially D'Oyly Carte's company, known as the Comedy Opera Company, needed to enlist financial backing. It was his backers who stood in the way of the initial plans to revise and revive Thespis, insisting that they wanted a new work for their money – and thereby losing Thespis to posterity, as the full vocal score was never published. Richard D'Oyly Carte The first work to be presented by the new company at London's Opera Comique was The Sorcerer in November 1877. This was followed by H.M.S. Pinafore in May 1878, which, despite a slow start, mainly due to a scorching summer, became a red-hot favourite in the autumn, causing the directors to storm the theatre one night in an attempt to steal the sets and costumes to mount a rival production. The attempt was repelled and D'Oyly Carte continued as sole impresario of the newly renamed D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. While working with Sullivan on the Savoy Operas, Gilbert continued to write plays to be performed elsewhere, both serious dramas (e.g. The Ne'er-Do-Weel, 1878) and more humorous works (e.g. Foggerty's Fairy, 1881). Sullivan, too, had a career of his own. Two ballets, a symphony, a cello concerto, and number of large-scale choral pieces, incidental music to five of Shakespeare's plays and, of course, other operatic works, including Ivanhoe, which opened D'Oyly Carte's new Royal English Opera House (now the Palace Theatre) in Cambridge Circus in 1891. Gilbert and Sullivan had many rifts in their career, partly caused by the fact that each saw himself allowing his work to be subjugated to the other's, and partly caused by the gap in their social status. Sullivan was knighted in 1883, not long after the company moved to its new home, the Savoy Theatre.However this knighthood was not so much for his popular and finacially rewarding work with Gilbert, but more for his more 'serious' music such as the musical drama The Martyr of Antioch, first produced late in 1881. Sullivan was at ease among the wealthy and titles who woul dbecome his firends and patrons. Gilbert was a loner who did not choose to move in those social circles.He was not knighted until 1907, and also in recognition of his more "serious" stage work. Gilbert filled his plays with a strange mixture of cynicism about the world and "topsy-turvydom" in which the social order was turned upside down. The latter in particular, did not go down well with Sullivan's desire for realism (not to mention his vested interest in the status quo). In 1893, Gilbert was named a Justice of the Peace in Harrow Weald. Although he announced a retirement from the theatre after the poor initial run of his last work with Sullivan, The Grand Duke (1896), he continued to produce plays up until the year of his death including an opera, Fallen Fairies, with Edward German (Savoy 1909), and an excellent one-act play set in a condemned cell, The Hooligan (Colliseum 1911). Gilbert also continued to personally supervise the various revivals of his works by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. On 29 May 1911, he was giving swimming lessons to two young ladies at his lake when one of them began to flail around. Gilbert dived in to save her, but suffered a heart attack in the middle of the lake and drowned.

Books


- Gilbert Before Sullivan - Six Comic Plays by W. S. Gilbert - Edited and with an Introduction by Jane W. Stedman - The University of Chicago Press, USA (1969)
- Contradiction Contradicted - The Plays of W. S. Gilbert Andrew Crowther - Associated University Presses (2000). ISBN 0-8386-3839-2

External links


- [http://web.ukonline.co.uk/ajcrowth/wsgsoc.htm The W. S. Gilbert Society]
- [http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/authrec?fk_authors=395 Gutenberg etexts of W.S Gilbert's works] Gilbert, W. S. Gilbert, W. S. Gilbert, W. S. Gilbert, W. S. Gilbert, W. S. Gilbert, W. S.

1836

1836 was a leap year starting on Friday (see link for calendar).

Events


- January - Book by Maria Monk claims that she was sexually exploited in a Canadian convent
- February 3 - United States Whig Party holds its first convention in Albany, New York.
- February 23 - The siege of the Alamo begins in San Antonio, Texas.
- February 24 - Samuel Colt receives a patent for the Colt revolver
- March 1 - Convention of delegates from 57 Texas communities convenes in Washington-on-the-Brazos to deliberate independence from Mexico
- March 1 - Antonio García Gutiérrez's play El Trovador played for the first time
- March 2 - Declaration of independence of the Republic of Texas from Mexico.
- March 5 - Samuel Colt makes the first pistol (.34-caliber).
- March 6 - After a 13-day siege by an army of 3,000 Mexican troops, the 189 Texas volunteers defending the Alamo are defeated and the fort taken.
- March 27 - Texas Revolution: Goliad massacre - Antonio López de Santa Anna orders the Mexican army to kill about 400 Texans at Goliad, Texas
- March 31 - Marshall College, named for John Marshall, opens in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. It later merges with Franklin College to become Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
- April 20 - U.S. Congress passes act creating the Wisconsin Territory
- April 21 - Texas Revolution: Battle of San Jacinto - Republic of Texas forces under Sam Houston defeat troops under Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna. (Santa Anna and hundreds of his troops are taken prisoner along the San Jacinto River the next day.)
- May 15 - Francis Baily, during an eclipse of the sun, observes the phenomenon named after him as Baily's beads
- June 15 - Arkansas is admitted as the 25th U.S. state.
- July 11 - President Andrew Jackson issues the Specie Circular, beginning the failure of the land speculation economy that would lead to the Panic of 1837.
- September 1 - Narcissa Whitman, one of the first white woman to settle west of the Rocky Mountains, arrives at Walla Walla, Washington.
- September 5 - Sam Houston is elected as the first president of the Republic of Texas.
- September 8 - Transcendental Club founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts
- October 2 - Naturalist Charles Darwin returns to Falmouth, England aboard the HMS Beagle after a 5-year journey collecting biological data he will later use to develop his theory of evolution.
- October 31 - Bristol riot - In Bristol, England, large crowd protests against the decision of the House of Lords to defeat the Reform Act. They burn down 100 houses, including the Bishop's Palace, the Custom House and the Mansion House and release prisoners. The dragoons attack the crowd and kill and wound hundreds
- November - Martin Van Buren defeats William Henry Harrison in the U.S. presidential election
- December 10 - Emory College, the forerunner of Emory University, is chartered in Oxford, Georgia.
- December 20 - Sudden freeze kills many travelers in Illinois.
- December 28 - Proclamation of the colony of South Australia, now celebrated in the state of South Australia as Proclamation Day.
- December 28 - Spain recognizes independence of Mexico.

Unknown dates


- Chartists in Britain demand universal male suffrage.
- Boers in South Africa begin the Great Trek across the Orange River.
- Henry R. Campbell builds the first 4-4-0, a steam locomotive type that will soon become the most common on all railroads of the United States.
- First printed literature in Assyrian Neo-Aramaic is produced by Justin Perkins, an American Presbyterian missionary.
- Andrew Crosse's electrical experiment seems to produce strange insects; they are named acarus calvanicus
- American Temperance Union established.

Births


- January 2 - Mendele Moykher Sforim, Russian Yiddish writer (d. 1917)
- January 14 - Henri Fantin-Latour, French painter (d. 1904)
- January 27 - Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Austrian writer (d. 1895)
- February 16 - Robert Halpin, Irish mariner and cable layer (d. 1894)
- February 18 - Ramakrishna Paramhansa, Bengali religious leader (d. 1886)
- February 21 - Léo Delibes, French composer (d. 1891)
- February 24 - Winslow Homer, American artist (d. 1910)
- March 20 - Sir Edward Poynter, French-born artist (d. 1919)
- April 27 - Major Charles Bendire, U.S. Army captain and ornithologist (d. 1897)
- May 27 - Jay Gould, American financier (d. 1892)
- May 28 - Alexander Mitscherlich, German chemist (d. 1918)
- May 31 - Jules Chéret, French printmaker (d. 1932)
- June 2 - Mily Balakirev, Russian composer (d. 1910)
- July 8 - Joseph Chamberlain, British politician (d. 1914)
- July 9 - Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1908)
- August 13 - Bishop Nikolai of Japan, Russian Orthodox priest (d. 1912)
- August 24 - Susan Agnes Bernard, First Lady of Canada (d. 1920)
- August 25 - Bret Harte, American writer (d. 1902)
- September 11 - Fitz Hugh Ludlow, American author (d. 1870)
- October 15 - James Tissot, French artist (d. 1902)
- November 11 - Thomas Bailey Aldrich, American poet and novelist (d. 1907

Arthur Sullivan

Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan (May 13, 1842 – November 22, 1900) was a British composer best known for his operatic collaborations with librettist William S. Gilbert. Sullivan was born in Lambeth, now part of London. His father was a military bandmaster, and by the time Arthur had reached the age of 8, he was proficient with all the instruments in the band. Following a stay at private school in Bayswater, he was admitted to the choir of the Chapel Royal, attending its school in Cheyne Walk. While there, he began to compose anthems and songs. In 1856, he received the first Mendelssohn prize and became a student at the Royal Academy of Music until 1858. In 1858, Sullivan travelled to Leipzig, where he continued his studies and took up conducting. He credited this period with tremendous musical growth, and his return to London in 1862 saw the production of his incidental music to Shakespeare's The Tempest performed at the Crystal Palace. He began building a reputation as Britain's premier composer, and 1866 saw the first performance of his Symphony in E Major (Irish). Other pieces from this period include the overture In Memoriam (1866), the oratorio The Prodigal Son (1869), the well-known tune to the hymn "Onward, Christian Soldiers" (1872, lyrics by Sabine Baring-Gould) and the song "The Lost Chord" (1877, lyrics by Adelaide Anne Procter). In 1866, he supplemented his income by producing the musical score to a one act comic operetta, Cox and Box. This led to his most famous and lucrative works as a composer for the musical theatre. In the spring of 1867, the play was reviewed by William S. Gilbert on behalf of a humor magazine called Fun, unknowingly taking the first step in their eventual working relationship. In the autumn of 1867, he travelled with Sir George Grove to Vienna, returning with a treasure-trove of rescued Schubert scores. In 1871, John Hollingshead commissioned Sullivan to work with Gilbert to create the burlesque Thespis for the Gaiety Theatre. The show was successful in the context that it was conceived specifically as a Christmas entertainment and as such ran through to Easter 1872. Plans to revise and revive the piece in 1876 were abandoned when Richard D'Oyly Carte's backers demanded a new show for their money and not a revival. The score was subsequently lost, though one number Little Maid of Arcadee was published by Cramer in 1872 and another was later re-used in The Pirates of Penzance. Recent research would seem to indicate that more than just this one number was reused in the later show. Gilbert and Sullivan's real collaborative efforts began in 1875, when Richard D'Oyly Carte commissioned them to write a one-act piece, Trial by Jury. Its success was so great that the three men formed an often turbulent partnership which lasted for twenty years and thirteen operettas. Trial was followed in 1877 by The Sorcerer, and in 1878 by their greatest success so far, HMS Pinafore. This last was much pirated in America, and in 1879, Gilbert and Sullivan crossed the Atlantic to protect their copyrights, producing The Pirates of Penzance in New York. The next Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, Patience, opened in the Opera Comique, London, in 1881 and was transferred to the specially built Savoy Theatre later the same year. All the duo's subsequent collaborations, which include Iolanthe (1882), The Mikado (1885) and The Yeomen of the Guard (1888), opened there, and the genre of operetta that they created is sometimes known as "Savoy Opera" as a result. The final two Savoy operas were Utopia, Limited and The Grand Duke. Sullivan's orchestra was typical of any other vaudeville orchestra of that era: 2 flutes (+piccolo), oboe, 2 clarinets, bassoon, 2 horns, 2 cornets, 2 trombones, timpani, percussion, strings. By the time he got to composing Yeomen, Sullivan had argued hard for an increase in the pit orchestra's size. This was successful and Yeomen, Gondoliers, Utopia and Grand Duke all included the usual plus 2nd bassoon + bass trombone. It is interesting to note that Sullivan used horns crooked in many different pitches and treated them rather like Brahms, with little chromatic language and very economically use. Sullivan's orchestration was delicate and concise (though never boring). Iolanthe has some interesting quotes of a Bach fugue (played by clarinets and bassoon) in one of the Lord Chancellor's patter song. In 1883, Sullivan was knighted by Queen Victoria. Contemporary critics felt that this should put an end to his career as an operetta composer, believing that a musical knight should not stoop below the level of oratorio or "grand opera". Sullivan too, despite the financial security the Savoy operettas gave him, increasingly viewed his work with Gilbert as unimportant and beneath his skills. Furthermore, he was unhappy that he was having to tone down his music to ensure that Gilbert's words could be heard. In 1886, Sullivan went some way to appeasing his critics by the production of the cantata The Golden Legend, which he and most of his contemporaries considered his masterpiece. Gilbert wrote the more serious Yeomen to satisfy Sullivan's urge for grand opera, and, while Sullivan was pacified for a time, in 1890, he broke away acrimoniously from Gilbert following the production of The Gondoliers and, with D'Oyly Carte, produced his only grand opera, Ivanhoe, at the new English Opera House. Subsequently however he returned to work with Gilbert on two more operettas and wrote three more with other collaborators. Sullivan, who had suffered from ill health throughout his life, succumbed to pneumonia at the age of 58 at his house in London on November 22, 1900. A monument in his memory was erected in the Victoria Embankment Gardens]. he wished to be buried in Bromley cemetery with his parents and brother, but by order of the queen was buried in St Pauls Cathedral.

Gilbert and Sullivan inspired Ballet

"[[Pineapple Poll]]" is a comic [[ballet written by John Cranko in collaboration with Sir Charles Mackerras. The music which is used for the ballet is exclusively by Arthur Sullivan, from various Gilbert and Sullivan operas, and also from Arthur Sullivan's overture "Di Ballo", as well as from the comic opera "Cox and Box" (which Arthur Sullivan wrote in collaboration with Francis Burnand).

External links


- [http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/html/sullivan.html Arthur S. Sullivan's Biography]
-
- [http://condor.stcloudstate.edu/~scogdill/mikado/sullivan.html Arthur S. Sullivan]
- [http://www.nps.gov/edis/edisonia/very_early.htm Earliest recordings] Including Lost Chord (1888) and Sullivan's voice (1888) Sullivan, Arthur Sullivan, Arthur Sullivan, Arthur Sullivan, Arthur Sullivan, Arthur Sullivan, Arthur Sullivan, Arthur ja:アーサー・サリヴァン

1900

1900 (MCM) is a common year starting on Monday.

Events

January


- January 1 - Chris Smith Born in 1972
- January 2 - John Hay announces the Open Door Policy to promote trade with China.
- January 2 - Chicago Canal opens.
- January 5 - Irish leader John Edward Redmond calls for a revolt against British rule.
- January 6 - It is reported that millions are starving in India.
- January 6 - Boers attack Ladysmith - over 1000 people were killed.
- January 8 - United States President William McKinley places Alaska under military rule.
- January 13 - Kaiser of Germany declares that German is the command language in the German army
- January 14 - Premier presentation of opera Tosca in Rome - actors have received death threats and nameless letters.
- January 16 - The United States Senate accepts the Anglo-German treaty of 1899 in which the United Kingdom renounced its claims to the Samoan islands.
- January 24 - Battle of Spion Kop in Second Boer War.
- January 24 - The governments in London and Pretoria begin negotiations to end the Boer Wars.
- January 27 - Boxer rebellion: Foreign diplomats in Peking China demand that the Boxer rebels be disciplined.
- January 29 - The American League of Professional Baseball Clubs is organized in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with 8 founding teams.
- January 30 - United Kingdom forces fighting Boers in South Africa ask for reinforcements.

February

South Africa
- February 3 - Gubernatorial candidate William Goebel is assassinated in Frankfort, Kentucky. Former-Secretary of State Caleb Powers was later found guilty in a conspiracy to kill Goebels.
- February 7 - The British Labour Party is formed.
- February 8 - British troops are defeated by Boers at Ladysmith, South Africa.
- February 9 - Richard Wigginton Thompson, U.S. congressman, dies.
- February 14 - Russia responds to international pressure to free Finland by tightening imperial control over the country.
- February 14 - Boer War: In South Africa, 20,000 British troops invade the Orange Free State.
- February 17 - Battle of Paardeberg in the Second Boer War
- February 22 - Hawaii officially becomes a territory of the United States.
- February 23 - Boer War: Battle of Hart's Hill - In South Africa the Boers and British troops battle.
- February 27 - Boer War: In South Africa, British military leaders receive an unconditional notice of surrender from Boer General Piet Cronje.
- February 27 - Ramsay MacDonald appointed secretary of newly formed British Labour Party.

March


- March 3 - Mining strike ends in Germany.
- March 6 - A coal mine explosion in West Virginia traps 50 coal miners.
- March 9 - Women in Germany demand right to participate in university entrance exams
- March 11 - Boer War: Boer leader Paul Kruger's peace overtures are rejected by Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Lord Salisbury.
- March 13 - Boer War: British forces occupy Bloemfontein, Orange Free State.
- March 13 - In France, length of a workday for women and children is limited to 11 hours by law
- March 14 - The Gold Standard Act is ratified placing United States currency on the gold standard.
- March 16 - Sir Arthur Evans discovers the ruins of Knossos on Crete
- March 24 - New York City Mayor Van Wyck breaks ground for a new underground "Rapid Transit Railroad" that would link Manhattan and Brooklyn.

April


- April 1 - Every French policeman is assigned to carry a gun.
- April 1 - Irish Guards formed by Queen Victoria
- April 4 - Anarchist shoots at the Prince of Wales during his visit to Belgium in the birthday celebrations of the king of Belgium.
- April 14 - Paris World Exhibition opens.

May


- May 1 - Explosion of blasting powder in coal mine in Scofield, Utah kills 200
- May 2 - Oscar II, King of Sweden, declares support for Britain at the time of the Boer War.
- May 17 - Boer War: British troops relieve Mafeking
- May 17 - Boxers destroy three villages near Peking and kill 60 Chinese Christians
- May 18 - Boer delegation travels to USA to ask for assistance
- May 18 - The United Kingdom proclaims a protectorate over Tonga.
- May 21 - Russia invades Manchuria
- May 23 - Sergeant William Harvey Carney becomes the first African American to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor (awarded for heroism in the Battle of Fort Wagner during the American Civil War).
- May 24 - Boer War: British annex Orange Free State as Orange River Colony.
- May 25 - Boer soldiers vote for the continuance of the war
- May 28 - Boxers attack Belgian personnel in the Fengtai railway station
- May 29 - Chinese government condemns Boxers
- May 30 - Boxers occupy Tientsin
- May 31 - Peacekeepers from various European countries arrive in China
- May 31 - British under Lord Robert occupy Johannesburg

June


- June 1 - Carrie Nation demolishes 25 saloons in Medicine Lodge
- June 5 - Boer War: British soldiers take Pretoria, South Africa.
- June 14 - The Reichstag approves a second law that allows the expansion of the German navy.
- June 20 - The Boxers gather about 20,000 people near Peking and kill hundreds of European citizens, including the German ambassador.
- June 30 - Piers of North German Lloyd Steamship line burned in Hoboken, New Jersey - 326 dead

July

Hoboken, New Jersey
- July 2 - First zeppelin flight on Lake Constance near Friedrichshafen, Germany
- July 5 - Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act passes British Parliament
- July 9 - Queen Victoria gives royal assent to Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act
- July 13 - Boxer Rebellion: In China, Tientsin is retaken by European Allies from the rebelling Boxers
- July 29 - In Italy, King Umberto I of Italy is assassinated by Italian-born anarchist Gaetano Bresci.
- July 30 - The Duke of Albany becomes Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha as Carl Eduard following the death of his uncle, Duke Alfred

August


- August 14 - An international contingent of troops, under British command, invades Peking and frees the Europeans taken hostage.
- August 27 - British defeat Boer commandos at Bergendal

September


- September 8 - Galveston Hurricane of 1900: a powerful hurricane hits Galveston, Texas killing about 8,000 people.
- September 17 - Philippine-American War: Filipinos under Juan Cailles defeat Americans under Colonel Benjamin F. Cheatham at Mabitac.

October


- October - The Norwegian inventor Johann Vaaler demands a patent for his invention, the paperclip.

November


- November 3 - the first automobile show in the United States opened at New York's Madison Square Garden under the auspices of the Automobile Club of America.
- November 6 - U.S. presidential election, 1900: Republican incumbent William McKinley is reelected by defeating Democrat challenger William Jennings Bryan.

Births

January


- January 5 - Yves Tanguy, French painter (d. 1955)
- January 26 - Karl Ristenpart, German conductor (d. 1967)
- January 27 - Hyman Rickover, American admiral (d. 1986)

February


- February 4 - Jacques Prévert, French lyricist and author (d. 1977)
- February 5 - Adlai Stevenson, American politician (d. 1965)
- February 11 - Hans-Georg Gadamer, German philosopher (d. 2002)
- February 12 - Roger J. Traynor, American judge (d. 1983)
- February 19 - Giorgos Seferis, Greek writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1971)
- February 22 - Luis Buñuel, Spanish film director (d. 1983)
- February 28 - Wolfram Hirth, German pilot and aircraft designer (d. 1959)

March


- March 9 - Howard Aiken, American computing pioneer (d. 1973)
- March 19 - Frédéric Joliot, French physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (d. 1958)
- March 23 - Erich Fromm, German-born psychologist and philosopher (d. 1980)
- March 29 - John McEwen, eighteenth Prime Minister of Australia (d. 1980)
- March 31 - Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester (d. 1974)

April-June


- April 2 - Roberto Arlt, Argentinian writer (d. 1942)
- April 5 - Spencer Tracy, American actor (d. 1967)
- April 25 - Wolfgang Ernst Pauli, Austrian-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1958)
- April 26 - Charles Richter, American geophysicist and inventor (d. 1985)
- April 30 - Cecily Lefort, English World War II heroine (executed) (d. 1945)
- May 1 - Ignazio Silone, Italian author (d. 1978)
- May 12 - Helene Weigel, Austrian actress (d. 1971)
- May 28 - Tommy Ladnier, American jazz trumpeter (heart attack) (d. 1939)
- June 3 - Rolland Fisher, American temperance movement leader (d. 1982)
- June 5 - Dennis Gabor, Hungarian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1979)
- June 15 - Paul Mares, American jazz trumpeter (d. 1949)
- June 29 - Antoine de Saint-Exupery, French pilot and writer (d. 1944)

July-September


- July 13 - George Lewis, American jazz clarinetist (d. 1969)
- July 29 - Eyvind Johnson, Swedish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1976)
- August 3 - Ernie Pyle, American journalist (d. 1945)
- August 4 - Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, queen of King George VI of the United Kingdom (d. 2002)
- August 6 - Cecil H. Green, British-born geophysicist and businessman (d. 2003)
- August 10 - Arthur Espie Porritt, New Zealand politician and athlete (d. 1994)
- August 15 - Jan Brzechwa, Polish poet (d. 1966)
- August 22 - Sergei Ozhegov, Russian lexicographer (d. 1964)
- August 25 - Sir Hans Adolf Krebs, German physician and biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1981)
- August 26 - Hellmuth Walter, German engineer and inventor (d. 1980)
- September 3 - Urho Kekkonen, President of Finland (d. 1986)
- September 6 - W.A.C. Bennett, Canadian politician (d. 1979)

October-December


- October 6 - Stan Nichols, English cricketer (d. 1961)
- October 7 - Heinrich Himmler, Nazi official and leader of the SS (d. 1945)
- October 30 - Ragnar Granit, Finnish neuroscientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1991)
- November 5 - Martin Dies, Jr., American politician (d. 1972)
- November 8 - Charlie Paddock, American athlete (d. 1943)
- November 8 - Margaret Mitchell, American writer (d. 1949)
- November 11 - Halina Konopacka, Polish athlete (d. 1989)
- November 14 - Aaron Copland, American composer (d. 1990)
- December 3 - Ulrich Inderbinen, Swiss mountain guide (d. 2004)
- December 3 - Richard Kuhn, Austrian chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1967)
- December 12 - Sammy Davis, Sr., American dancer (d. 1988)

Deaths


- January 20 - John Ruskin, English writer and social critic (b. 1819)
- March 6 - Gottlieb Daimler, German inventor and automotive pioneer (b. 1834)
- April 5 - Joseph Louis François Bertrand, French mathematician (b. 1822)
- April 24 - George Douglas Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll, British politician (b.1823)
- April 30 - Casey Jones, American train wreck victim (b. 1864)
- May 18 - Jean Gaspard Felix Ravaisson-Mollien, French philosopher (b. 1813)
- June 3 - Mary Kingsley, English explorer and writer (b. 1862)
- June 5 - Stephen Crane, American author (b. 1871)
- June 11 - Belle Boyd, American Confederate spy and actress (b.1843)
- July 29 - Umberto I, King of Italy (assassinated) (b. 1844)
- July 30 - Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (b. 1844)
- August 10 - Charles Russell, Baron Russell of Killowen, Lord Chief Justice of England (b.1832)
- August 12 - Wilhelm Steinitz, Austrian-born chess player (b. 1836)
- August 16 - Eça de Queirós, Portuguese writer (b. 1845)
- August 25 - Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher and writer (b. 1844)
- August 25 - Kuroda Kiyotaka, Prime Minister of Japan (b. 1840)
- September 23 - William Marsh Rice, American philanthropist and university founder (murdered) (b. 1816)
- September 29 - Samuel Fenton Cary, American politician and temperance movement leader (b. 1814)
- October 15 - Zdeněk Fibich, Czech composer (b. 1850)
- October 22 - John Sherman, American politician (b.1823)
- November 22 - Sir Arthur Sullivan. English composer (b. 1842)
- November 30 - Oscar Wilde, Irish writer (b. 1854)

Month/day unknown


- Henry D. Cogswell, American philanthropist and temperance movement pioneer (b. 1820)

Notes


- 1900 is not a leap year even though the number is divisible by 4. It is one of the dropped leap years of the Gregorian Calendar.
- ko:1900년 ms:1900 ja:1900年 simple:1900 th:พ.ศ. 2443

Comic opera

Comic opera is a subcategory of opera, and denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature. It is different than an opera seria, which is more serious. In the long history of opera, this term has had many meanings: in Italy, opera buffa; in France, opéra comique; in Germany, singspiel; in England, Ballad opera in Spain, zarzuela. Sometimes the term is loosely applied to operetta, although this is best viewed as a separate category. In comic opera, dialogue is generally spoken rather than sung (although eighteenth-century Italian opera buffa is a major exception). Both Italian and French forms of comic opera were hugely popular in Europe in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and constituted a major artistic export to other parts of Europe.

Comic Operas


- The Marriage of Figaro - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1786)
- The Barber of Seville - Gioacchino Rossini (1816)
- Don Pasquale - Gaetano Donizetti (1843)
Category:Comedy Category:Opera genres Category:Musical forms

Victorian era

) gave her name to the historic era]] The Victorian era of Great Britain is considered the height of the British industrial revolution and the apex of the British Empire. It is often defined as the years from 1837 to 1901, when Queen Victoria reigned, though many historians believe that the passage of the Reform Act 1832 marks the true inception of a new cultural era. The Victorian era was preceded by the Regency era and came before the Edwardian period.

Politics

The period is ostensibly characterized as a long period of peace and economic, colonial, and industrial consolidation, temporarily disrupted by the Crimean War, although Britain was at war every year during this period. Towards the end of the century, the policies of New Imperialism led to increasing colonial conflicts and eventually the Boer War. Domestically, the agenda was increasingly liberal with a number of shifts in the direction of gradual political reform and the widening of the franchise. In the early part of the era the House of Commons was dominated by the two parties, the Whigs and the Tories. From the late 1850s onwards the Whigs became the Liberals. Many prominent statesmen led one or other of the parties, including Lord Melbourne, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Derby, Lord Palmerston, William Ewart Gladstone, Benjamin Disraeli and Lord Salisbury. The unsolved problems relating to Ireland played a great part in politics in the later Victorian era, particularly in view of Gladstone's determination to achieve a political settlement. In January 1858, the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, responded to the Orsini plot against French emperor Napoleon III, the bombs for which were purchased in Birmingham, by attempting to make such acts a felony, but the resulting uproar forced him to resign. In July 1866, an angry crowd in London, protesting Russell's resignation as prime minister, was barred from Hyde Park by the police; it tore down iron railings and trampled the flower beds. Disturbances like this convinced Derby and Disraeli of the need for further parliamentary reform. During 1875 Britain purchased Egypt's shares in the Suez Canal as the African nation was forced to raise money to pay off its debts. In 1882 Egypt became a protectorate of Great Britain after British troops occupied land surrounding the Suez Canal in order to secure the vital trade route, and the passage to India. In 1884 the Fabian Society was founded in London by a group of middle-class intellectuals, including Quaker Edward Pease, 17, Havelock Ellis, 25, and Edith Nesbit, 26, to promote socialism. George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells would be among many famous names to later join this society. On Sunday, November 13, 1887, tens of thousands of people, many of them socialists or unemployed, gathered in Trafalgar Square to demonstrate against the government. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Charles Warren ordered armed soldiers and 2,000 police constables to respond. Rioting broke out, hundreds were injured and two people died. This event was referred to as Bloody Sunday.

Events

In 1851 the Great Exhibition (the first World's Fair) was held in The Crystal Palace, with great success and international attention. In 1888, the serial killer known as Jack the Ripper murdered and mutilated prostitutes on the streets of London, leading to world-wide press coverage and hysteria. Newspapers used the deaths to bring greater focus on the plight of the unemployed and to attack police and political leaders. The killer was never caught, and the affair contributed to Sir Charles Warren's resignation.

Science, technology and engineering

prostitutes]] The impetus of the industrial revolution had already occurred, but it was during this period that the full effects of industrialisation made themselves felt, leading to the mass society of the 20th century. The revolution led to the rise of railways across the country and massive leaps forward in engineering, most famously by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. During the Victorian era, science grew into the discipline it is today. In addition to the increasing professionalism of university science, many Victorian gentlemen devoted their time to the study of natural history. Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published in 1859 and had a tremendous effect on the popular mindset. In January 1863, Prime Minister Gladstone opened the first section of the London Underground. In 1882, incandescent electric lights were introduced to London streets, although it took many long years before they were installed everywhere.

The fallen woman

In the writings of Henry Mayhew, Charles Booth and others, prostitution began to be seen as a social problem, rather than just a fact of urban life. It also began to be seen as a feminist issue in the work of Josephine Butler, who attacked the long-established double standard of sexual morality. Prostitutes were often presented as victims in sentimental literature such Thomas Hood's poem "The Bridge of Sighs" and Dickens' novel Oliver Twist. The emphasis on the purity of women found in such works as John Ruskin's Sesame and Lilllies led to the portrayal of the prostititute as soiled and corrupted, who needed to be cleansed. This emphasis on purity was allied to the stress on the homemaking role of women, who helped to create a space free from the pollution and corruption of the city. In this respect the prostitute came to have symbolic significance as the embodiment of the violation of that divide. The double standard remained in force. Divorce legislation introduced in 1857 allowed for a man to divorce his wife for adultery, but a woman could only divorce if adultery was accompanied by cruelty. The anonymity of the city led to a large increase in prostitution and unsanctioned sexual relationships. Dickens and other writers associated prostitution with the mechanisation and industrialisation of modern life, portraying prostitutes as human commodities consumed and thrown away like refuse when they were used up. Moral reform movements attempted to close down brothels, something that has sometimes been argued to have been a factor in the concentration of street-prostitution in Whitechapel by the late 1880s.

See also


- Victorian architecture
- Victorian fashion
- Victorian morality
- Victorian literature
- History of British society
- Women in the Victorian era

Sources and further reading


- Altick, Richard Daniel. Victorian People and Ideas: A Companion for the Modern Reader of Victorian Literature. W.W. Norton & Company: 1974. ISBN 039309376X.
- Burton, Antoinette (editor). Politics and Empire in Victorian Britain: A Reader. Palgrave Macmillan: 2001. ISBN 0312293356.
- Flanders, Judith. Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England. W.W. Norton & Company: 2004. ISBN 0393052095.
- Mitchell, Sally. Daily Life in Victorian England. Greenwood Press: 1996. ISBN 0313294674.
- Wilson, A. N. The Victorians. Arrow Books: 2002. ISBN 0099451867

External links and references


- [http://www.victorianweb.org/ The Victorian Web]
- [http://www.victorianlondon.org/ The Victorian Dictionary]
- [http://www.victorian-music.com Victorian Music 1835-1903] Category:Victorian era ja:ヴィクトリア朝

England

:For an explanation of often-confusing terms like England, (Great) Britain and United Kingdom see British Isles (terminology). England is a nation and the largest and most populous constituent country of the United Kingdom accounting for more than 83% of the total UK population. It occupies most of the southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain and shares land borders with fellow home nations Scotland, to the north, and Wales, to the west. Elsewhere, it is bordered by the sea. England is named after the Angles, one of a number of Germanic tribes believed to have originated in Angeln in Northern Germany, who settled in England in the 5th and 6th centuries. It has not had a distinct political identity since 1707, when Great Britain was established as a unified political entity; however, it has a legal identity separate from those of Scotland and Northern Ireland, as part of the entity "England and Wales;". England's largest city, London, is also the capital of the United Kingdom.

History

Main article: History of England England has been inhabited for at least 500,000 years, although the repeated Ice Ages made much of Britain uninhabitable for extended periods until as recently as 20,000 years ago. Stone Age hunter-gatherers eventually gave way to farmers and permanent settlements, with a spectacular and sophisticated megalithic civilisation arising in western England some 4,000 years ago. It was replaced around 1,500 years later by Celtic tribes migrating from Western and continental Europe, mainly from France. These tribes were known collectively as "Britons", a name bestowed by Phoenician traders — an indication of how, even at this early date, the island was part of a Europe-wide trading network. The Britons were significant players in continental politics and supported their allies in Gaul militarily during the Gallic Wars with the Roman Republic. This prompted the Romans to invade and subdue the island, first with Julius Caesar's raid in 55 BC, and then the Emperor Claudius' conquest in the following century. The whole southern part of the island — roughly corresponding to modern day England and Wales — became a prosperous part of the Roman Empire. It was finally abandoned early in the 5th century when a weakening Empire pulled back its legions to defend borders on the Continent. Unaided by the Roman army, Roman Britannia could not long resist the Germanic tribes who arrived in the 5th and 6th centuries, enveloping the majority of modern day England in a new culture and language and pushing Romano-British rule back into modern-day Wales and western extremities of England, notably Cornwall and Cumbria. Others emigrated across the channel to modern-day Brittany, thus giving it its name and language (Breton). But many of the Romano-British remained in and were assimilated into the newly "English" areas. The invaders fell into three main groups: the Jutes, the Saxons, and the Angles. As they became more civilised, recognisable states formed and began to merge with one another. (The most well-known state of affairs being the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy.) From time to time throughout this period, one Anglo-Saxon king, recognised as the "Bretwalda" by other rulers, had effective control of all or most of the English; so it is impossible to identify the precise moment when the Kingdom of England was unified. In some sense, real unity came as a response to the Danish Viking incursions which occupied the eastern half of "England" in the 8th century. Egbert, King of Wessex (d. 839) is often regarded as the first king of all the English, although the title "King of England" was first adopted, two generations later, by Alfred the Great (ruled 871–899). The principal legacy left behind in those territories from which the language of the Britons were displaced is that of toponyms. Many of the place-names in England and to a lesser extent Scotland are derived from celtic British names, including London, Dumbarton, York, Dorchester, Dover and Colchester. Several place-name elements are thought to be wholly or partly Brythonic in origin, particularly bre-, bal-, and -dun for hills, carr for a high rocky place, coomb for a small deep valley. Until recently it has been believed that those areas settled by the Anglo-Saxons were uninhabited at the time or the Britons had fled before them. However, genetic studies show that the British were not pushed out to the Celtic fringes – many tribes remained in what was to become England (see C. Capelli et al. A Y chromosome census of the British Isles. Current Biology 13, 979–984, (2003)). Capelli's findings strengthen the research of Steven Bassett of the University of Birmingham; his work during the 1990s suggests that much of the West Midlands was only very lightly colonised with Anglian and Saxon settlements.
This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,—
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.
The English are great lovers of themselves, and of everything belonging to them; they think that there are no other men than themselves, and no other world but England; and whenever they see a handsome foreigner, they say that 'he looks like an Englishman', and that 'it is a great pity that he should not be an Englishmen'.
Venetian ambassador to England
Early 16th century
Charlotte Augusta Sneyd
Italian Relations of England (p. 20)
Richard II] Richard II] In 1066,