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Home , Arthur Sullivan, Bab Ballads, Gilbert and Sullivan, Thespis (opera), The Grand Duke, The Mikado

Insights A Study Guide to the Utah Shakespeare Festival

The Mikado The articles in this study guide are not meant to mirror or interpret any productions at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. They are meant, instead, to be an educational jumping-off point to understanding and enjoying the plays (in any production at any ) a bit more thoroughly. Therefore the stories of the plays and the interpretative articles (and even characters, at times) may differ dramatically from what is ultimately produced on the Festival’s stages. Insights is published by the Utah Shakespeare Festival, 351 West Center Street; Cedar City, UT 84720. Bruce C. Lee, communications director and editor; Phil Hermansen, art director. Copyright © 2011, Utah Shakespeare Festival. Please feel free to download and print Insights, as long as you do not remove any identifying mark of the Utah Shakespeare Festival.

For more information about Festival education programs: Utah Shakespeare Festival 351 West Center Street Cedar City, Utah 84720 435-586-7880 www.bard.org.

Cover photo: Erin Annarella (top), Carol Johnson, and Sarah Dammann in , 1996 Contents

Information on the Synopsis 4 CharactersThe Mikado 5 About the Playwright 6

Scholarly Articles on the Play Mere Pish-Posh 8

Utah Shakespeare Festival 3 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 Synopsis: The Mikado Nanki-Poo, the son of the royal mikado, arrives in Titipu disguised as a peasant and looking for Yum- Yum. Without telling the truth about who he is, Nanki-Poo explains that several months earlier he had fallen in love with Yum-Yum; however she was already betrothed to Ko-Ko, a cheap tailor, and he saw that his suit was hopeless. However, he has since learned that Ko-Ko has been condemned to death for flirting; and he has come to find Yum-Yum, his true love. Nanki-Poo’s high hopes are dashed once more when Pish-Tush, a noble lord, informs him that Ko-Ko was reprieved and raised to the rank of lord high executioner. Pooh-Bah, first lord of the treasury, lord chief justice, commander-in-chief, etc., enters next, and he also holds out no hope for Nanki-Poo. Then Ko-Ko himself enters, ready to execute “plenty of people whose loss will be a distinct gain to society at large.” Next enters Yum-Yum, who reluctantly allows Ko-Ko to kiss her, even though she doesn’t love him; however, she catches sight of Nanki-Poo and rushes over to him. Nanki-Poo, expecting an angry reaction from Ko-Ko, blurts out that he loves Yum-Yum. “Anger!” responds Ko-Ko. “Not a bit, my boy. Why, I love her myself.” The crowd departs, and Yum-Yum and Nanki-Poo are left alone. He confides to her that he is really the son of the mikado, but, ordered by his father to marry Katisha, an elderly lady of the court, he has fled. However, they realize the hopelessness of their situation--and, sadly, they part. Ko-Ko, Pooh-Bah, and Pish-Tush enter, bearing a letter from the mikado which complains that no exe- cutions have taken place in Titipu for a year and, unless somebody is beheaded within the month, Titipu will be reduced to a mere village. Nanki-Poo decides that his only option is to commit suicide, but Ko-Ko persuades Nanki Poo to let him behead him instead. To clinch the deal, Ko-Ko even agrees to let Nanki-Poo marry Yum-Yum, provid- ing he agrees to be executed in one month. As wedding preparations progress, Ko-Ko arrives with bad news: he has learned that the law dictates that when a man is beheaded, his wife must be buried alive. Yum-Yum, while not wishing to appear selfish, points out that this revelation does change things. In despair, Nanki-Poo pulls out a dagger and threatens to kill himself if Ko-Ko doesn’t agree to behead him now. However, Ko-Ko can’t; he can’t kill anything, not even a fly. Then, just before the mikado arrives, they come up with a solution: Nanki-Poo and Yum-Yum will be married and will go into hiding, while everyone pretends that the execution has taken place. When the mikado and Katisha arrive, he is pleased that an execution has taken place, but admits that his real purpose in visiting is to find his son. Katisha spots the name on the execution certificate--Nanki- Poo!--and the mikado, while agreeing that a mistake has certainly been made, says that killing the royal heir involves a horrible death. Nanki-Poo surreptitiously suggests that Ko-Ko marry Katisha; that way Nanki-Poo can come back to life, no one will be killed, and Katisha will be off his back. Ko-Ko, while unenthusiastic, agrees. All are happy, except the mikado, who says that now no one has been executed. Ko-Ko comes up with the explana- tion: “When your majesty says, ‘let a thing be done,’ it’s as good as done--practically is done--because your majesty’s word is law.” The mikado is satisfied, and everyone happily sings the finale. Characters: The Mikado The mikado of : The and the father of Nanki-Poo, the mikado is the law. In fact,

4 Utah Shakespeare Festival 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 “When [his] majesty says, ‘Let a thing be done,’ it’s as good as done—practically it is done— because [his] majesty’s will is law.” Nanki-Poo: The son of the mikado, Nanki-Poo has fled the royal court because his father has prom- ised him in marriage to Katisha. Nanki-Poo, however, loves Yum-Yum and has gone in search for her, disguised as a wandering minstrel. Ko-Ko: The lord high executioner of Titipu (the highest rank a citizen can obtain), Ko-Ko was a cheap tailor who had been sentenced to death for flirting, until he was raised to his high position through “remarkable circumstances.” He is also to marry Yum-Yum, even though she doesn’t love him. Pooh-Bah: The lord high everything else, Pooh-Bah is “first lord of the treasury, lord chief justice, commander-in chief, lord high admiral, master of the buckhounds, groom of the back stairs, archbishop of Titipu, and lord mayor, both acting and elect, all rolled into one.” Pish-Tush: A noble lord of Titipu. Yum-Yum: A ward of Ko-Ko and sister of Pitti-Sing and Peep-Bo, Yum-Yum is in love with Nanki- Poo, even though she is betrothed to Ko-Ko, whom she doesn’t love. Pitti-Sing: A ward of Ko-Ko and sister of Yum-Yum and Peep-Bo. Peep-Bo: A ward of Ko-Ko and sister of Yum-Yum and Pitti-Sing. Katisha: An elderly lady of the mikado’s court, Kathisha is in love with Nanki-Poo and has been promised to him by the mikado. However, Nanki-Poo does not return her love.

W. S. Gilbert and By Rachelle Hughes From Insights, 2006

Utah Shakespeare Festival 5 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 So far reaching is the effect of the or comic of 130 years ago that contemporary media continues to belt out the in everything from an episode of to an episode of The West Wing. While the influence of the playwright/lyricist Sir W.S. Gilbert and composer Sir Arthur Sullivan can still be felt today, in Victorian England they defined a new kind of theatre with their fifteen timeless collaborations. Sir W.S. Gilbert (1836–1911) was born in Strand, on November 18, 1836. He spent much of his youth touring Europe with his father (a retired naval surgeon), mother, and three sis- ters until he was about thirteen years old. Little is known about his family except that his parents were inflexible and stern people and that his relationship with them was strained. He finished col- lege at Kings College London and then went on to try a couple of different careers in government as a clerk and barrister. Finally, at around the age of twenty-six, Gilbert found his true calling in the creative arts and started writing short illustrated poems in the magazine Fun. He used his childhood nickname “Bab,” and the poetry collection is now known as The . Some of these first creative ventures became the base concepts for several of his liberatti, including H.M.S. Pinafore and . Not long after his poetic beginnings Gilbert produced his first professional play, Uncle Baby in 1863. It ran for only seven weeks. He had no more dramatic successes until 1866. In 1867 he married Lucy Agnes Turner. In 1871 Gilbert and Sullivan collaborated on their first comic , . Although it was moderately successful, the musical score was never published and most of the songs were lost to posterity, although some were recycled into later works. In addition to his initial collaboration with Sullivan, Gilbert premiered no fewer than seven plays in 1871. “He was writing farces, oper- etta libretti, extravaganzas, fairy comedies, adaptations from novels, translations from the French and even the occasional serious drama” (Andrew Crowther, The Life of W.S. Gilbert, The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive [http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/html/gilbert_l.html), 3). Despite Gilbert’s sizeable repertoire, it was his work with Sullivan that would always be the most successful. Four years after Thespis, Richard D’Oyly Carte commissioned Gilbert and Sullivan to write the one-act play, Trial by Jury. It was their first major hit and the beginning of the trio’s highly successful but often tumultuous partnership that would last for twenty years and twelve more operettas, until their break-up over a quarrel about a new carpet for the . Gilbert’s stoic and much more thrifty nature finally got the best of him, and he ended the partnership. He did, however, team back up with Sullivan to launch two other productions Utopia, Limited and . After The Grand Duke, in 1896Gilbert went into pretend retirement at his home in Grim’s Dyke, Harrow Weald. He went on to write four more plays, The Hooligan being produced just four months before his death. On May 29, 1911 he was giving swimming lessons to two young women when he tried to rescue one of the women and died from heart failure. He left behind a legacy of plays that were a mixture of cynicism and topsy-turvydom. Perhaps one of his great- est contributions to the world of theatre was his style of directing which helped create a more polished and dignified play. Gilbert flouted the trend of the day to write plays for a specific per- former. He insisted that a performer interpret his work as he intended and held auditions. After the success of in 1877, “Gilbert would no longer hire stars, he would create them. He hired the performers subject to veto from Sullivan on purely musical grounds” (Wickipedia [http://en.wickipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_and_Sullivan] 2). Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan (1842-1900) was born in , London on May 13, 1842. Sullivan’s musical destiny was discovered early. His father was a military bandmaster, and, by

6 Utah Shakespeare Festival 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 the time he was eight years-old, Arthur could play all the instruments in the band. After four years of private school at Bayswater, Sullivan was admitted to the choir at School where he was often one of the choir’s soloists. During his three-year stay he began to compose and songs. At age fifteen one of those compositions became his first published piece. In 1856 he received the first Mendelssohn prize and was then accepted to the . After leaving the Royal Academy of Music, Sullivan furthered his education in a German conserva- tory. The time in Germany helped mature his music sensibilities and talents. In 1862 he was back in London and ready to win her over. His orchestral suite concert to Shakespeare’s garnered the attention and praise of Charles Dickens. The next several years his work continued to grow in popularity. Between 1863 and 1870 his work included the Irish Symphony, in Memoriam (inspired by the death of his father), The Prodigal Son, and the popular , Onward, Christian Soldiers. Sullivan also wrote religious music which was highly popular during his time. But it was not his serious music that would give his name immortality. “In the lighter vein of , Sullivan proved himself to be incomparable,” said David Ewan (Arthur Sullivan, Gilbert and Sullivan Archive [http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/html/sullivan2.html], 3). Thus, the success of his collabora- tions with Gilbert; somehow their minds met perfectly in the productions of their comic operas that continued to grow in popularity, each more successful than the last. After the success of HMS Pinafore, they traveled to America to quell the copyright infringement of that work. While there they produced The Pirates of . New York loved them. Sullivan’s style of music in the Savoy Operas has been well-praised by critics. Cecil Forsyty points out that Sullivan’s “recognition of the fact that it was not only necessary to set his text to music which was pleasing in itself, but to invent melodies in such close alliance with the words that the two things become indistinguishable. . . In this respect. Sullivan did more for the English stage than any musician of his time” (David Ewan on Arthur Sullivan, Gilbert and Sullivan Archive [http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/html/sullivan2.html], 4). Sullivan and Gilbert were a phenomenal team, each of them contributing the best of their talents. Both of them received knighthoods from and both of them were successful both together and apart. It is unfortunate that such distinct personalities had to split up eventually. But Gilbert was a stoic and Sullivan was a lover of indulgence. Sullivan died after a boisterous life and a long struggle with health from pneumonia in London on November 22, 1900.

Mere Pish-Posh? By Stephanie Chidester Gilbert and Sullivan--one might argue that their operettas are immensely entertaining but basically trivial and that their literary and musical achievement was ultimately insubstantial. In fact, the two men

Utah Shakespeare Festival 7 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 might have agreed with this estimation of their collaborations; both argued that the “serious” work they produced individually was superior to their comic operettas, somewhat like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s insistence that his most popular fiction--Sherlock Holmes--was inferior to his other creations. Deems Taylor, in his preface to Gilbert’s Complete Operas, disagrees with Gilbert’s evaluation of his own work: “Occasionally, in the ballads, he is serious, either in attack or defense, and results are almost invariably unfortunate. Gilbert always affected to regard the Bab Ballads as inconsequential trifles, and was even heard to refer to his operettas as ‘twaddle.’ While he was doubtless a good deal less indifferent to his humorous writings than he pretended to be, it is true that he took himself very solemnly as a serious thinker and dramatist, and resented the fact that neither his serious plays nor his serious thoughts were as much esteemed as his nonsense” ([New York: Dorset Press, 1932] xiii-xiv). But are the operettas truly nonsense? One might believe it upon hearing Sullivan’s “bouncy” music--as Stravinsky, who was a fan, described it (Caryl Brahmns, Gilbert and Sullivan: Lost Chords and Discords [Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1975] 13)--and such lines as “it might have been on his pocket-handkerchief, but Japanese don’t use pocket-handkerchiefs” (The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan [Garden City, New York: Nelson Doubleday, Inc., n.d.] 334). However, Edith , that lover of the classical world, clearly holds a very high opinion of Gilbert; she compares the librettist to Aristophanes at great length in The Greek Way, concluding that “the mid-Victorian Gilbert of Pinafore fame saw eye to eye with Aristophanes as no other has done. The differences between Aristophanes and Gilbert are superficial; they are due to the differences of their time. In their essential genius they are alike” ([New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1930] 99). And indeed they are--the notion that Gilbert’s lyrics are mere nonsense may be dispelled by a close examination of The Mikado, where he nastily satirizes everything and everyone from moral legislation to “that singular anomaly, the lady novelist” (304). Legislation and the Victorian legal system feature prominently in Gilbert’s --most notably in Trial by Jury--very likely because of Gilbert’s early unsuccessful career as a barrister (which reads like something out of the operettas [see , 20]). Gilbert jabs at Victorian moral legislation in The Mikado, where the title character has “Resolved to try / A plan whereby / Young men might best be steadied. / So he decreed, in words succinct, / That all who flirted, leered or winked / (Unless con- nubially linked), / Should forthwith be beheaded” (299). This sounds to a modern audience like the height of silliness (and on one level it is), but it must have had a sharper ring in a society where, because of absurd blasphemy and obscenity laws, one con- servative judge declared blasphemy “a hanging charge” (Leonard W. Levy, Blasphemy: Verbal Offense Against the Sacred, from Moses to Salmon Rushdie [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1933] 483), and Sir Richard Francis Burton feared imprisonment after the private publication and sale of his translation of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night. Gilbert attacks lawmakers (“that’s the slovenly way in which these Acts are always drawn,” laments the Mikado after sentencing Ko-Ko, Pooh-Bah, and Pitti-Sing to a lingering death; “I’ll have it altered next session” [334-35]); judges (“Lord High Executioner of Titipu! Why, that’s the highest rank a citi- zen can attain! . . . Our logical Mikado, seeing no moral difference between the dignified judge who condemns a criminal to die, and the industrious mechanic who carries out the sentence, has rolled the two offices into one” [300-301]); aristocrats and politicians (Pooh-Bah, who can “trace [his] ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule,” is “Lord High Everything Else,” and “degrades” himself by taking bribes and socializing with the lower classes [301]); and even himself, grouping “the Judicial humorist” among those people who “never would be missed” (304). Perhaps one reason for the dismissal of Gilbert and Sullivan’s operettas as trivial is the same reason that Shakespeare’s comedies are, historically, less likely to receive standing ovations than his tragedies.

8 Utah Shakespeare Festival 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 There exists an unfortunate but widespread belief that literature must be serious to be truly great and that comedy’s only (or at least primary) purpose is the production of laughter. And the combi- nation of Gilbert’s biting lyrics with Sullivan’s sentimental music produces a tremendous amount of laughter. However, tragedy and comedy, society and are closely linked. Comparing the drama of “Elizabethan England and the Athens of Pericles,” Edith Hamilton finds that “uproarious com- edy flourished side by side with gorgeous tragedy, and when one passed away the other passed away too. There is a connection between the sublime and the ridiculous” (91). And just as a court fool may serve as an emotional and critical outlet for the subjects of absolute rulers, Gilbert and Sullivan’s provides an antidote for the daunting heaviness of Wagner and the stuffiness of Victorian England. (In fact, Patrick O’Connor argues that the developed as a direct consequence of Wagner’s weighty operatic style: See “The Case for a Lighter Mood,” BBC Music Magazine [Opera Special, Autumn 1995] 48-49.) One may wonder at this point if Gilbert’s social satire is still relevant in the late twentieth century, and the answer is a resounding “yes.” While some of his targets may be dated, others--in- cluding capital punishment, the censorship of speech and behavior, and even sexual harassment (do Katisha’s actions qualify?)--still loom in modern life, enormous bull’s eyes which Gilbert’s words continue to pierce. So perhaps our culture’s obsession with Gilbert and Sullivan is not merely an infatuation with comic nonsense but also a recognition that some serious maladies are best cured with the medicine of comedy.

Utah Shakespeare Festival 9 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880