HMS Pinafore Itself and the Associateci Topics That This Thesis Examines Is Not Particularly Abundant

HMS PRVAFORE AND THE QUEEN'S NAVEE: IMAGES OF THE ROYAL NAVY iN VICTORIAN MUSIC AND MUSIC THEATRE

Eric Lam

B.A., U~versityof British Columbia, 1997 B.Ed, University of British Columbia, 1998

THESIS SUBMïïlW IN PARTIAL FULFIUMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

in the Department of History

43 Eric Lam 2000 SIMON FRASERUNIVERSlTY October 2ûûû

AU rights reserved, This work may not be repduced

in whole or in part, by photocopy or other meiîtls, wittiout permission of the author. The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence ailowing the exclusive permettant B la National Li'brary of Canada to Bibliothèque nationaie du Canada de reproduce, loan, distn'bute or seîî reproduire, prêter, distribuez ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette these sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/film,de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique.

The author retains ownershrp of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui pmtège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts hmit Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be prinîed or othenivise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reprodwed without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. "A British Tar is a soiwing soul, As frec as a mountain bud, His energetic fist sliould be reaùy to resist A dictatorial word. His nose shoulci pant and lus lip should curl, His cheeks sliould flame and his brow should furl, His bosom shodd lieave and his heart shodd glow, Anù his fist be ever ready for a knock-rlown blow."

-W.S. Gilbert, HM.hdon iii ABSTRACT

The territorial and diplornatic aims of the British Empire duriag the eigbteenth and nineteenth centuries were often accomplished by the Royal Navy. Its superiority in size and strength to any 0thcomparable force was a major mer in the success of Great Britain as a global power. With such success, the Royal Navy entered into the realm of British myths. En songs, plays, poetry and otber types of literary aad musical fomis, the Royal Navy acquired a patticular image of Britisimess.

This thesis examines the notion of the mid-Victorian Royal Navy as ao image. As an institution it consisteci of sailors, officers, administrators, sbips, ports, training facilities aad other physical landmarks. As an image, it dybelonged to the mind of the person imagining. The best evidence that we have for assessing this imagery are artistic expressions in the form of titerary anà musical works as weii as &en accounts. Gilbert and Sullivan's HMS Pinqfme 6ts into the mid-Victorian period and was the most highiy acclaimed naval related musical drama of its tirne. Its popularity cm be attriited in part to the high standing the Royal Navy enjo yed. HMS P inqiore 3 construction and interpretation thus provides a revealuig look into contemporary hagery.

The conclusions reached in this thesis are basai upon a hadrange of primary sources hmvarious différent media and hmsecomlary sources that Uicluded a diverse range of disciplines: iiterary critiiism, musicology, and, above dl, history. The imagery of the Royal Navy hma bruad range of artistic media, with focus on HMS Pînc#ve, is analyzeà and contrasted with the =tuai state of the mvy. TIK creation of a dom image of tbe naval sailor adnavy as an expression of being British in this particular period, it is argued, was Wkeâ by these cuiturai works which were essentially divorceci hmreality. We leam tbt the ideas expresseci and the gulfbetween image and teality was a chasm that most Mers, composes and artists, Gilbert adSullivan included, ultimately refused to cross DEDICATION

For my Parents and Family:

Kho have always encouraged me in my academic and musical endeavours

And fot Johnson M. Chung ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

1 wouid like to acknowledge the people wb have genmusly aided me in the researching and writing of this thesis and those who have helped inspire its creation.

1 wouid like to thank my supervisor Dr. John Stubbs for overseeing my journey in writing this thesis and correcting my many mistakes and lapses. His suggestions and directions for areas unfamiliar to nie to expbre were of the utmost help.

1 would like to thank my secondary supervisor Dr. Ian Dyck for helping me realii that a branch of military history such as tbe navy could have a such an interesting and researchable cultural aspect as weli.

1 would like to thank Dr. James Winter for taking the tirne to read my work and for providing a balanced criticai voice.

1 wouid like to thank my piano and music tbeory teacher Ms. Kaethe Lange for showing me the greater world of music that was ùefore so small to me. That initial start has ftelled my desire to combine my interests in history and music.

And hlly, 1 wouid Lüce to thank Kenny Ng for his constant admonitions for me to finish my thesis in a timely manner and Johnson M. Chung for his endearing and mercurial personality which brightened many a gIoomy day and kept my inspiration hmsagging.

E. Lam Vancouver, Canada Oa0ber2ooo TABLE OF CONTENTS

0. Approval Page ......

-.* Abstract ...... 111

Dedication...... iv

Aclsnowledgements ...... v

Table of Contents ...... vi .. List of Tables ...... -..v~i

List of Iiiustrations ...... vu1 ..*

Preface ...... ix

Introduction ...... I

Chapter One ...... 14

Chapter Two ...... 29

Chapter Three ...... SS

Chapter Four ...... 105 Appendix One ...... 116

Appendix Two ...... 120 Appendk Three ...... 122

Bibliography ...... 1 29 vü LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Naval Spending as a Percentage of the Total Budget...... 95 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The British Fleet in the Dardenelles ...... 85

HMS Eurydice ...... 86

Il The Gating Gun, As Used in Our Navy"...... 87

Cutlass Drill ...... 89 PREFACE

The fist time 1attended a performance of an operetta by Gilbert and Sullivan was in the spring of 1997. The work king perfonned by Vancouver Opera at the tirne was The Mikado and 1was absolutely enthralled by the smart lyrics and the tunefid music. Up to that point, 1 had always been an opera and classical music enthusiast, but for some reason the works of Gilbert and Sullivan had managed to elude my attention When 1 was given the opportunity to write a Master's thesis at Simon Fraser University, Gilbert and Sullivan were not immediately at the forehnt of rny mind. But eventuaily, as 1 racked my brain for idem to explore in a tesearchable area on the Victorian Royal Navy, the nautical tunes of HMS Pina@re entered my head. From there, came the inspiration for a work that tries to link the wondertùl operetta with the realities of the Victorian Royal Navy. What is king done here is not entirely novel. Previous authors have made links between Gilbert and Sullivan and the$ wider Victorian world. What 1 do attempt, however, is to focus intensely on one operetta and on one facet of that Victorian world: the Royal Navy. In the present day the tunes of Gilbert and Sullivan have become fossilized as a venerable British tradition or a vehicIe for expatriates to express their Britishness, but I ûy to remind those who read this thesis that, in theù day, Gilbert and Sullivan's humour was of a sort that was at once current, rekvant and Uisightfùl.

E. Lam Vancouver, Canada ûctober 2000 Introduction: Untangling Gilbert and Sullivan and the Royal Navy

C.S. Forester's set of Horaîio Hornblower novels, foliowing in the long tradition of hicnaval storyteiüng starting with Captain Frederick Marryat, have aIways been weU- received by the public. The plucky young midshipman, who rose up through the ranks and battled heroically with the French and Spaniards during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, has ken a source of inspiration for many youtffil readers. Thus it was of no surprise that, in 1999, the television network A&E pmduced an extravagant new series bas& on the books. Words Iie "honour," 'taiour" and "heroism" punctuated the previews for each week's installrnents. Here was an obvious case of a television network combining popular historyTfiction and television culture into one tidy package for the viewing audience. On another level but a similar topic by vheof its naval connections, the Associaîed Pre~ran an extensive story on 17 April 1999 that detailed the unearthing of a previously lost song that was cut hmthe îüst performance of GiIbert and Sullivan's HMS finafore.' Lastly, the interna1 dynamics between the hed

playwright and composer involved in the cieation of The Mihdo (1885) were dramatized

for cinema audiences in the 1W f'rlm TopsyTurvy. SSituated at the beginning of the

twentieth-first century when naval wariàre bas bec ou^ a matter for supercornputers and

ever-changing tecbnology, the "olâ" Royal Navy of Nelson, a popular hundred and

twenty year old operetta about tbe navy, and the pair that created it, cm still manage to

catch out attention and hold our collective imagination in both popuiar culture and "high"

art. 2 What is it about the Royal Navy, its sailors auci their exploits, that still fwiaate us? And, extrapolating Eiom that, what was so unique about the Royd Navy that Uispired music and plays to be &en about it, not only in the Victorian period but before and fier as well? 1 intend to explore the idea of an image-the image of the Royal Navy in the late Victorian period, and in particular, withmusic theatre and other associated art forms. My task is to analyze the depiction of sailors, their habits and their highly unique cultute in music, which wili, in turn, cast light upon the Victorian conception of the

Royal Navy. Expanding hmthat ta& and reversing the analysis, it is also partially possible to see through these various depictions a minor refiection of the Victorians themlves.

The larger argument is that imagery through fiterature, visual art, music and music theatre was essentially the result of the extraordinary successes of the operational history of the Royal Navy during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; eventudy, this fed hothe generally positive and complacent depiction of the Royal Navy. The image presented was of a certain type and certain order. There was a mythological navy and sailor that did not Vary tiom the standard image. He possessed qualities that were comrnon knowledge. This image of success later gainai accretions no longer hmhard fought bath, but fiom the ~e~perpetuatingstandard image in old and new works. What was king den,drawn or sung would, in turn, help to encourage the already well- documenteci genemi complacency, lethargy, and at times, lack of change that plagued the 3 late nineteetlth-century ~ictorian~avy' Examining the most celebrated naval-themed work of that period, HMS Pinqtbre, and various 0thmusical, visual and dtamatic iiierature, will demonsirate bow completely imrnersed the operetta was in contemporary images and trends of the navy. Through pointed cnticism and accurate depictions of the navy, Gilbert artd Sullivan achieved immortality for their work. What was it about it that gave it such status? Imagery and music is much more than art and can be regarded as . potent symbols when examined in context.

While the history of Gilbert and Sullivan as an artistic duo does not s&er fiom a lack of scholariy adpopuiar attention, literature with a historical and contexnial focus on

HMS Pinafore itself and the associateci topics that this thesis examines is not particularly abundant. Their popularity has spawned a long tradition of books which focus on music, plot, costume, actors, productions and the often strained relationship between the two men. The works of one particular author in this ma, lan Bradley, stand out as behg exceptional.)

The sources that 1 am drawing upon in the estabiishing of links between naval representations in HMS Pinafore ((and other contemporary examples of popular music) to the real Victorian Royal Navy are multi-disciplinay in nature. There are both popular and academic works hmthe fields of history, music theory, musicology, theatre history

'See Paul Kennedy, The Rise und Fdof Brihkh NdM0st.y (New York: Charles Scnaia's Sons, 1976), pp. 178-202psim and K. Theodore Hoppen, The Md-iktoriim Generation, 1846-1 886 (Oxfad: Clarendon Press, 1998), p. 604. His most cecent work is a monumental annotated editim of W.S. Giibert's Lifor al1 the Savoy operas. He carefiilly notes the aigins and cites the sources of inspiration which served as a basis for Gibeft's works. While seemmgly an execcke in antiquarianian, it is very usehl fm the researchet dmgfbr the qmettas' historicai cmtexts and cwntless otha minutiae. See tan Bdey, ed., The Cornpiete Annotated Gilhand SuUivan (Oxford: MadUP, 1996) and tan Bradley, "Giibert and Sullivan and the Victaian Age" Hikt~tyToday (Sept. 198 l), pp. 17-20.

4 and literary criticism that ddwith each topic. A cioser bok at a select fèw will reveai some of the apptoacbes that other authors have taken with th topic of the ~vy,music

and Gilbert and Sullivan and will illustrate something of the gap in the üterature that this

As for primry sources, the most obvious ones to draw upon are the operettas of

Gilbert and Sullivan tllemselves, most ùnportanîly HMS Pinufire. Less obvious are contempomy reviews that are scattered throughout the periodicals and newspapers of the period. Though often rathet pert'unctory in their notation of the performance and den

anonymously, they occasbnally have valuable insights to offer. In a simiiar vein,

contemporary commentaries by colleagues of Gilbert and Sullivan in the form of letters,

recorded conversations and mernoirs are also reveding? In this respect, various older

works are particularly valuable as they document W.S. Gilbert's and Sullivan's rich lives

through letters and personal reco~ections.~Given that the bulk of the two men's private

letters remain unpublisbed in any collection of compcehensive correspondence, these

popular biographies ofkm help mi an important gap for the scholar! The singular pitfàll is that a few of the older books misattri'butefi quotes when piaced sided by side with wwer

'? am the derof the Queen's Navee.,." This Iine fiom the central patter song in

the operetta bas delighted audiences for many generations now Iiom the professional

4 Sec François Celis and Cirmiingham Bridgeman, Gilberr and SullNcm mid Their Opera (1914; rpt. New Yark: Benjamin Blm, 1970). Sidney Dark and Rowland Grey, KS, Gilbert: Li$ and Lenm (mdon], 1923; rpt. New Yark: Benjamm Blam, 1972). The buk of prnited and manuscript material by and abwt W.S. Gilbert are in the Briîish LI-, the Pierpoat Macgan Library and îhc British Theatre Museum. Jane Stedman, Ex Gilkf:A Clasic Victoriun dHisTheme (Oxford: ûxfii UP, t996), p. ix. 5 productions authorized by the D'Oyle Carte Opera Company to amateur performances by enthusiastic students? But as weU-kmwn and beloved as this opretia is, the fact is that whiie there is only one HMS Pinu$iore, there are several sources upon which to draw.

The complexity arises when one reaiizes that the operetta itse1f appears in several diEerent guises in music publications.

There is the vocal score reduced for piano and voice, there is the full score (or open score) which exhiiits the exact orchestration for the conductor in a performance and fuially there is the printed libretto or text. In al1 three cases, there are minor variances in text and stage directions.' In most of their operettas, including HMS Pinafore, the text as originally set domby W.S. Gilbert, sometimes diiered fiom the perfonning score. And, as the years passed by, the operettas as perfomd by the D'OyIe Carte Opera Company incorporated changes in both text and stage directions that have kenaccepted by the public? In addition, recorded versions on both auch and vipual media are legitimate sources for cornparison when coupled with the oiginai scores and production aesthetics.

By and large, the dierences in editions are smd. For this paper, the most authoritative text/litto cited wiil be the one as annotateci and edited by Ian Bradley as it has the

-- - - 'The D'Oyle Carte Company which had produced Gilbert and Sullivan opereitas arclusively in Britain uniil 1950 (and ihus a tespected auîhaity on stage and paformanœ practices) finally went banknipt in 1982. CanpetÏtim fiom dercanpanies and por management led to its dernise. See Tony Joseph, The D'@le Cme opera Company, 1875-1982 (Bristol: Bundiœne Books, 1994). a The case ofthe vocal scores presnrt a coofiising siniaticm. Wde thyare reduced fiam the achestral score into a playable version faa smgle piano accampanist, the questiai rernains: who did the arranging? While unanswered, the cumt mcamation of published vocal scores by Kalmus (which thmselves are cepublications ffan earlier editims: Novello, Schirmer, Belwin Milis, et ai.) match closely with early published vasiaas authaiwd by Arthur Suiiivan. men an editor is cited in scme of these editiaw with no mention ofhis role. For some of the diaarrangements and editiais curcently available in pint see W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Suliivao, ïkAutkntic Gilbert andStdliVan &mgbmk(New Yak: Dover, 1977). The most noticeable case is fiom The MM(1885) where the tenn riigger saaiadet' m K*KoTs Iist mgwas replactd with "banjo seaenada." bene& of king the most cecent and haWig access to more ment discoveries in divergent texts. The most authoritative music are both the îbll and vocal scores as publisiied by Schirmer and Kalmus over the last century.

Contemporary commentary on Gilbert and Sullivan also deserves a note. Some weli-known (and laser known) contemporary commentary hmvarious sources have recently been reproduced in an anthology.10 The extracts drawn upon are fiom memoirs, nostalgie recollections, reviews and other publications that cover both the composer and the writer individually and as a creative pair. From titled aristocrats, to business associates, to the middle-class audience member who attended a local production, the coUection aims to cover as many viewpoints as possible.

0thprimary sources used in research include some solo songs tbat were published during this period for the piano possessing middle.class consumen. Their consumption of vocal sheet music with accompaniment was voracious as the piano bec- the domestic instrument of choice. Possession of the piano, made common due to the industrialization of machining parts and the enlargement of its range, power and tom, was a sure sign of financial success." Music for such songs as WeDon't Want to Fight" and "Ship Ahoy!" were published as singles in sheet form, very often with attractive coloured covers. In an age before recorded music, this provideci enthusiasts with a way of foliowing the most current and popular musical trends. Weeklies like me IZlusaoted

London News carried "new music'' advertisements for fàmous publishing fhssuch as

'O fhyOreh ed. Gi'handSdfNan: Intervhs and RecdIectiom(L0ndon: Macmillan, 1994). " Derek B. Scott, TIie Singing Bowgeoix hgsof the VkrofianDraw@ Room adPdow @diiltan Keynes: Open UP, 1989), pp. 45-51. 7 Chappels and Boosey. In terms of sources, facsimiies of period music publications exist hvarious books about Victorian song." The great buik of Victorian art and popular song, however, have not made it to these publications as editors ofien only take as their selection the "best" songs of the period. The bulk of Victorian Song sheets are only available in theù original edaions which, ifone is lucky, are often only accessible in music libraries' special collections or, ifunlucky, crumbling and sitting in the corner of a used book store or in an attic long forgotten.

As obscure a field as Victorian melodrama is, the more pop& plays that saw successes in kir&y have been published in coliections. The more important precursors to the nautical theme of HMS Pinafore, such as Black-Ey 'd Susan (1 829) by Douglas

Ierrold, are weil-known and have been studied." Likewis, the more popuiar newspapers and periodical publications are readily available. They provide a wealth of visual sources in the cases of perÏodicalsIike Fun ami Punch and weeklies lie The fllusrrated London

News. In addition, articles and write-ups on the navy and on Gilbert and Sullivan exist in large ddies üùe The Times.

On the secondary literature dealing with Gilbert and Sullivan, the work of musicologists and music historiaas have tended to focus on dramatic and music values.

There have always ken avid discussions on HMS Pinafote, but noue that provide an in- depth texhial and musical anaiysis to explore the presence of the Royal Navy, both real and imagine& in the work. The usage of humour by Gilbert and Sullivan to "sootùe" the

" For exampIe, see ALine Waites and Robin Hunt=, The liiustmted Titorimi Sangbook (London: Michael Joseph, 1984). '' Midiael Hays and -a Nikolopolou, eds. MeIociL- Zïe CdmI Emrgeme of a Geme (New York: St. Martin's Ress, 1996). a social feus of the middle class is a popular interpretation. The operettas, it is argued, were conceived as acui have been presented as a series of co~l~ervativesocial humour pieces, but these arguments oflen do mt define the exact details, origins and other implications of the individual pieces within the their opus.'4

The two mst up-to-date standard biographies are those of Arthur Jacobs on

Arthur Sullivan and Jane Stedrnan on W.S. Cii1bert.I' They both take new approaches to both men not commonly doae in the pst (or depending on the point-of-view, te-ûeadiig old ones).I6 Artbur Jacobs' book is refieshing in that it separates Sullivan fiom Gilbert and de& with him as an infiuentiai, albeit forgotten, serious composer of modest

~uccess.~'Likewise, Jane Stedman takes a similar approach and tears apart the idea of an inseparable duo to emphasize the fàct that Gilbert had a successtùi career as a playwright.

In her book, Stedman takes upon the task to "reconstnict the Me of a nineteenth century man of the theatre.. .a man whose old age as a country gentleman the New York Times said was 'the most English thing that has happened since Shakespeare planted his mulberry tree and appiied for a coat-of-arms.'"18 While her book has been criticized for its attention to insignificant detail and its inability to function as a readable biography, the

" !ke Regina Kirby Higgins, ''Viciorian Laughta: 'lhe Comic Opsas of Gilbert and Sullivan" (ünpublished Ph.D. Dissertation: indiana University, 1985) and David Cannaduie, "Gilbert and Sullivan: The Making and Un-Mahg ofa British 'Tmdiîîm'"m Wthsof tk English, Roy Porter ed. (Camùridge: Poiity Ress, 1992), pp. 22-23. lS ACfhtir Iacoi~,Arthur Sullivm: A Kctorzün Musician, 2d ed. (Aldershot: Scolar Res, 1992) and Jane Stedman, W;S Gilbert: A Classic Kcton'nn und Kr Theatre (ûxfmd: Oxfad UP, 1996). l6 Alexandra Mullen, "G. & S, Inc.," rev. of Wx Glh:A CImsic Vktoriianand HiS The-, by Jane Stedmm, The Arnen'cw Schdur, 67 (Wmter 1998), pp. 184-87. " The music of Sullivan outside ofthe Savoy opremis aie aat mdiiy exploreci either m writtai litaaaire, recadmgs nor Live concert hall pafo~~iencesand it is dwbly unfortunate that the buk of his letters iïe mpublished in the Pieqxmt Mar- Library. Jacobs pp. xi-niv. Stedmaa, p. viu. sheer amount of data she provides fills a gap in the research on W.S. ~ilbert.~'

Moreover, the rigoromss of Stedman's research is such that she occasionally takes some of the earlier biographers to task and debunks a few old mytbs when they misatûibute well-known witticisms to W.S. ~ilbert?'It should be noted that wide

Gilbert and Sullivan collaborated on a 10% and successtùl series of stage works, they hi rich documented lives outside their mutual work before, during and afler the partnetship.

Literature on Gilbert and Sullivan bas in the ptbeen rnainly focusseci on the pair as a creative and dynamic institution in mid-Victorian Britain. W.S. Gilbert, hirnself, cheekiy wrote in 1888, "...we are world-kmwn, and as much an institution as

Westminster ~bbe~."~'Popular works about the two men have always linked their names ever since the early twentieth centuy. What is more recent then is the ceassessrnent of bth men as supremely creative individuals in their own right. The music of Sullivari- the incidental music, the sacred music, the ceremonid music resplendent in its Victorian pomp and pageantry and the seventy-two plays of Gilbert, some of which are eminently forgettab1ehave received long overdue attention.' Even the early and well-devebped notion of the pair as a British institution has been challengeci. Recent reassessments have questioned the traditional reverence giver! to the operettas and their place in modern

Britain, but acknowledge at the same time that the operettas are adaptable to new productions that have been able to incorporate different interpretations ont0 the pliable

- I9 Aian Fiscbler, rev. of WS. Gilbert: A Cbsk YictorâanadKi 'Ineme,by Jane W. Stedman, The Opera Quaneriy, 14 (Augusî 1997), pp. 132-37- Stedman, p. Ki. " Ibid, p. 248. " Sullivan's only symphony, the @ntphn), in E major (the Irish), has been recordai at least twïce in the last several decades on the EMi and CFû labels. Mudi of Sullivan's bailet and incidental music is mdily avaüable on the Manxi Polo label. 1O comedie~.~What is quite possible is tbat they are now no longer simply as English as

'%ig Ben" or, to quote Gilbert, "Westminster Abbey."

Naval imagery and culture is a topic that has been approached fiom severai different angles by various authors wnting for various audiences. For example, studies have been published on Victocian myths of the sea. One has a chapter focussed on Wie

English seaman... a prototype of the best of the race: couragwus, moral, upright, strong, tolerant, and j~st."~Arguments that myth-making and myth-maintahing had in part fuelled the Royal Navy's sense of superiority which led to the bssilization of the fleet and its infrastructure throughout the late nineteenth century are not unlike the ones made in this the~is.~~The most obvious analogy and comection that can be made is to the debate on the simultaneous British imperhl deciine or complacency. The British Empire of the hte nineteenth century was not without its interna1 crises or problems of c~hesion.~~But in part, in that great display of British ingenuity, a cross spectnim of the classes of the mid-Victorian generatwn saw "the Great Exhiiition of 185 1 as an unequivocal sign of growing confidence regardhg the United Kingdom's role as a world power in ecommic, politicai, cultural and imperiai teftll~."~'

One of the best works on the image of the navy and its appearances in pop& culture dates hmthe beginning of the twentieth century." While dated, the work is cornprehensive in its scope and wide ranging in the periods the author attempts to cover.

Canaadine, pp. 12-32. " Cynthia Fansla Behan, Victorien Wthof fh Secr (Abiens: Ohio UP, 1977), p. 10. Ibi& p. 152. Bernard Pater, Tk Lion's Sh:A Short ITi~oyof&irish Inlperidisnr, t8SO-lWS (London: Longman, 1996), pp. 28-73 pussiin. Hoppen, P. 2. 2%arl~Napier Robinson, Tlie Brilish Tar fm Facr mrd Fiction (New York: Harper and Bros., 1909). 11 Seemingly obscure thiags like doggerel verse and magazines receive attention in addition to thmore obvious sources such as balais, songs and plays.

On authors wtao have done research on the Lives of the sailing man anâ the administration of the Victorian Navy thtxe are two that are outstanding. Eugene Rasor bas done outstanding work in the field of social history in ihe navy and John Beeler in mid-Victorian naval admini~tmtion.~~What they help to provide is a solid background in estabüshiig the naval context which saw the birth of HMS Pinafore.

While Litmature on Gilbert and Sullivan and litmature on the Royal Navy is plentifiil, the one important aspect that this thesis tries to address is the link between the two. HMS Pinrrfore, as an operetta that stands alone in its depiction of the navy, has not been studied in this mannet. Miîtary listory and cultural history are two disciplines that are not ofien put together fhquently, but indeed hnineteenth century navy has provided a fertile ground for the creatioa of military-related literature and art. The notion of a Par

Brifmnica ultimately derives, in part, from such ideas of military superbrity. British naval ascendancy in the Victorian perkd was an international reality, but its effects on the psyche of the British goverment and the British people are debatable. For some pst historiaus it was an age of equili'briuin, ehlycomfortiag hmthe perspective of a chaotk twentieth century, that was imposed not by British force of arms, but by tacit

intemational recognition of ~ritishd~minance.~~ But for cecent historians, the navy,

l9 Eugme L. Rasa, Re* à the Royal Navy: A Social ITi'tory of tkLonw kkI85&I88O ()[amden: Archaa, 1976) and John F. Beeler, HshNml Poiicy in the Glrrddo~~fiEr9 18&I880 (Sm:Stdùd UP, 1997). GddGraham, ï'k Politics qf1VdSuppenilrry. WaeS in BrülSh MiAscemfmy (Cambridge: Cambnw W,1965). 2 2 especially in the mid-Victocian period, "though granted the prestige of 'ptimacy,' was never given the fiinds or accorded the expertise which such a role demanded and deservededn3'It was an "era of inexpensive maritime supremacy" when most oiher

Western nations bad neither the wherewithal wr the interest to challenge Britain on the

The navy of the mid-Victorian period has to be uaderstood tbeq wt as momlithic institution that defended Britain and fùrthered her colonial ambitions, but as an institution that was in a constant state of flux. The erratic progress of refonn that was directed by various governrnental departrnents and the spate of technological developments gave the navy its growing pains. It would be gohg too fàr to say that al1 this can be found in music, but the fact remains that aspects of this context do hdtheir way into the text.

At this point in a discussion on the sources on Gilbert and Sullivan and the Royal

Navy it is important to set some of the parameters for this thesis. Al1 of the musical primary sources that are used in the discussion, but mst importantly HMS Pin&re, were published and widely distri'buted in their tirne. Their format was invariably piano/vocal score. This implies that the target audience possessed a piano and thus signahg the middle classes and higher. Indeed, excluding rnernbers of royalty, the aristocrats, and the few poorer audience members standing in the gallery, the bulk of the audience for HMS PinMore (and those who purchased its scores) consisied hrgely of middle-class mmbers?' Though it must be said that the phrase 'We'r are you a'shovin' to, as ifyou was a bloomin' Lord?"' was heard more than once as the crowd exited

Hoppen, p. 174. Kennedy, p. 178. 33 Rices fw seats at the Savoy varidgreatiy fMom as high as theguineas to as low as a shiîlhg .Joseph, p. 79. 13 hughthe chpdoo~s.~~ On the whole, Richard Doyle Carte had elevated The

Savoy ho"respectability" at a thewhen disreputable theatres were to be avoided by good t'amilies. Carte's Company had becorne a part of the rich and ever growing concert- going life and music purchashg industry in London. Indeed, the nineteenth century saw an explosion of concert-going and staged entertainments indicative of the relatively good economic heaith of the capital." The significance of these facts on the composition of

Gilbert and Sullivan's target audience will be fùrther explored in Chapter 4. The focus of this thesis thus hlls indiitly on the image of the Royal Navy as irnagined by a particular, but very large, group of people?6

The introduction thus tàr has been centred only on those items which are considered key primary and secondacy sources that provide workable material, Recent debates on Gilbert and Sullivan and the notion of the supreniacy of the nineteenth century

Royal Navy have been included to provide a contextual ûamework for the discussion on some of the preceding sources. While only detailed briefly, this bIickground on some wrks should at least allow the reader to be familiar with the historiographical literature and set the preIimiaary stage for a study of the significance of naval imagery, with a focus on HMS Pinafore, to the mid-Victorian generation.

Cellier and Bridgeman, p. 1 14. * William Weber, Music anàthe Mide CIms: The Socta1 Shrc~eof Concert L@ in hnrlon, Pmis und Vierutu (Loodoa: Crooa Helm, 1975), p. 6. 36 A pqulatîan shidy in 188 1 estimated that Landai's middfe class ofprutèssionaIs thai mcIuded claks, but arcludeci shopkeepers and artisans made up 21 3 pa cent ofaU employed maIes. Ibril., p. 128- 14 Chapder One: TbRoyal Navy and üritain's Neva1 Prowmss as Repmentod In !hlroW MuidWoik fmm the la* and 19* Centuries

If one accepts that Gilbert and Sullivan's HMS Pinafore depicts an image of tbe

Royal Navy tbrough musical and ciramatic means, then one mut also accept that these depictions were alw derived hmmany traditions that were already in existence and estabLished by 1878. There had to be precedents for what Gilbert and Sullivan presented to the public. Thus the conte* of the Royal Navy or the depiction of British naval prowess in music must also be expbred. Gilbert and Suüivan were the immediate progenitors of the operetta, but they themselves drew on an extensive British musical tradition that claimed the navy as one of its topics. The foiiowing analysis will attempt to cstablish some of the commonaiities in the musical depictions spanning a century before

HMS Pinafore and, in one case, the years that followed.

The musical heritage of Great Britain (and the eariy music traditions of England,

Wales and Scotland) has often bendivided by musicologists into various categories for

ease of study. In the early twentieth century, Cecil Sharp (1859-1924) had categorized

folk song by a series of strict deria. Ki coiiection contains a myiiad of songs loosely

organized under such titks as "Love and Cowtship" and "Country LX~."' At thc other

end of the specbum, British art music (or what we in the twentieth-fkt century loosely

cd "classical" music) bad aWybeen shidied in an antiquarian manner in the late

eigbteenth ceatury by Charles Burney (1726-1814) in bis semiml work on the bistory of

Maud Karpeles, ed., Cecil Sharp 's Collection OfEriglUh Folk- (London: Chc€ixdUP, 1974). 15 western music.'a ~owever,the importame of these distinctions between art and hlk

(or simply high and low) are not particularly limitiig when discussing the topic of navy, for in both 6'Colk"music and "classicai" music, the topic of the sea, sailors, navy, and naval prowess make their appearances.

A literacy and musical analysis of several examples that date hmdaerent periods will reveal what qualities and characteristics reaiained in place over the years and what changed. What was it tbat dehdthe sea and the navy, or at the most basic level,

Britain's mastery ofthe seas? And it is important to stress here that while these questions are often most easily answered through looking at the text or libretto, the type and style of music it is set to is often just as revealing. The criteria for the works examineci are based on three points: chronology, social ocigii and popularity. Chronology, in ternis of having a group of musical wotks that span a centuy before HMS Pinafore; social origins, in having musical works that were widely popular across the spectm of upper, middle and lower classes; and popukty, in terms of how widespread and well-circulated these works were. The ratiode for these criteria is that this will provide a fùller and more accurate picture of the seahaval lote of Britain as depicted in music.

The 6rst sample is in ail ükebod the most popular one: "Rule Britannk" This most patriotic of British songs has undergone a steady growth in its functions in the past centuries hmart music, to naval march, to patnotic anthem at the Last Night of the

Prorns, to its current incarnation as a popular Song for Eaglish football fans. The tune bad

- 38 Charles Burney, A Generai Hisiory of hic:Fmm tk EmIiest Ages IO tkPreseni Penod (1 TM), ed. Frank Mmxr (New Yak: Dom, 1957). See a discussionm Charles Bmey's importance to the develapmeat of Engiish musicology in Nicholas Temperley, Miic m Briraim- The Romuntic Age, l80Il- 1914 (hdm:'lne Aihione Ress, 1981X pp. 484-85. 16 gained such notoriety tbat by the early nineteenth centwy Ludwig van Beethoven bai composed a set of piam variations on its theme in 1803; in addition, on tùe occasion of

Napoieon's defat at the Battk of Hanau in 1813 aad the turnllig of the tide aga.th

French emperor, k also composed a battIe symphony called Wellington 's Vicrory whicb was appropRately prefaced by the popular tune played on Mes. While certainly not the earliest patriotic Song to r&r to Britain (Cf:Henry Purcell's "Britons, Strike Home!" hmhis Bonduca, 1695) "Rule Britannian is nonetheless a logical place to begin, Whiie

HMPinafore was created at the height of the Victorian British Empire, one similarly could argue that "Rule Britaania" had its origins in the so-called "First British Empire," an empire that was the resuit of the British successes overseas during the Seven Years

War and the subsequent acquisitions gained at the peace treaties.

"Rule Britannia" was composed by Thomas Augustine Arne (1 710-78) to words by Thomas Mailet ami James Thomson. A devout RomCatholic in what was still a stauncbly Protestant Britain, Arne was nonetheless successtùl in writing for the public stage and the saions that played his concerti and symphonies. The song appeared at the end of his masque, AAlfi.ed, composed in 1740 and was first performed at Cliveden, the residence of Frederick, Prince of des.^' As odd as it may seem "Rule Britannia" had its origins in the highest tevels of British society and it was ody later that Arne's piece made as way into the popular imagination at Dnuy Lane and Covent Garden. Fittingly, the song closed a patriotic work that was devoted to the hicking of Anglo-saxon times as

39 Maurice WübDisha, kt& Song: Fmm Dive 10 &mng Ruom (Laidan: Phoenix House, 1955), p 23. 17 much as it was devoted to an eighteenth century Prince of wa1es.q' As paûiotic as this stage wotk was (ia fonn and style, an English opera under the misleading tale of masque), it was performed using Italian singers and actors in the main roles. Indeed, the role of Prince Edward, Kiag ALfi.ed's heroic son, was created by the famous Italian castrato, Gaetano ~uada~?'Despite its elitist originq the song quickly becme a national favourite?

"Rule Briiannia's" text is comprised of six verses or stanzas (of which only the frst is Sung or known by most people) which are set to a strident and jaunty tune in C major.13 The music is unambiguous and remains in a major key (with an excursion into the dominant key of G major for a short period) for the entire duration. Arne does not modulate to minor, nor should he with such a heroic text. This is uncluttered and simple music. The fimous references to the sea and Britain's naval prowess occur in the first and

Mh stanzas and the important recurring re6rain: "Rule Britannia, Bntannia Rule the

Waves, Britons Never Will be Slaves." The other stanzas refer to Britain's resistance to tyiants and foreign powers, its commercial prosperity and its beauty and kdomWhile it bas become a favourite in the navy, hman analysis of its text and its music, it is not strictly a naval song. The qualities of fieedom and uabridled independence are

-- - - Michael Burd- Gmrick, Arne, and the marque of Alfid: a cme shu& in national, theatrical, and l~~~lCuipolirics(Lewis!m: Edwin Mellen Ress, 1994). " Casari were wildly popular in eighteenth century Britain. While these male ahos and sopranos, casuated m îheir youth to pceserve th& boyish voices, were most commonly used in Italian opera, they crossed ovn- to perfarm in popular English genres like oratorio (e.g. Handel's iCléssioh) and masque. " Der& B. Scott, rite Singmg Bourgeois: Songs ofthe ktorim DrwWngRmm and Parlow (Miiton Keynes, Philadelphia: Open W, 1989), pp. 178-80. " kasArne, Aljied- A Maqte (New York: Brewer Mills, nd), p. 42-43. [Note: This score is a facsimfle of a 1785 keyhdreductidvocal sam published by the London th of Longman and ûmderip]. Cf: wiih a mace thick-texhaed, Vidarian versim in Waites and Hmter, pp. 214-15. 18 extolled, all within the settiag of British supremacy on the high seas. These very qualities are the types of definitions that will represent the image of the British sailor for the hhwing centuries. Indeed, 'Rule Britannia's" association with Gilbert and

Sullivan's HMS Pinafore was to be more than just sharing a common theme of the sea.

They were to be placed cheek-by-jowl in the 1887 revival performance of HMS Pinqtiore

for Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee. The operetta thle ended with the rehin of "Rule

Brit-a" sung by the assembled persons on stage as the curtain

A second example that deserves analysis is "Heart of Oak." This song appeared in

1760, twenty years after the initial appearance of ''Rule Britannia" Its creators were

famous and well-known in British artistic circles. The words were by the busactor,

David Garrick (171 7-79) and the music by the English composer, William Boyce (1 7 10-

79). It may seem curious for a renowned Shakespearean actor to write the rousing lyrics

that were pubiished in the eighteenth century periodical The Universal Magazine or a

respected composer Like Dr. Boyce to set it to a tune!' Dr. Boyce was a learned

composer who, Like Thomas Arne, had written symphonies that were pleasant enough,

but hardly on the level of a Haydn or a Mozart. He was renowned for Anglican church

music such as hyrnns and anthems and his reputation was such that Charles Burney had

an entry for him in his monumental history. But when we corne across "Heart of Oak" we

lose aü notions of a stuf€y, bewigged composer. Here was a dyrousing, roilickig,

singable tune with a words that stmck home in 1760. The text, though written by an actor

J* 'Ibis occasional venion has been recently recordeci by The Sadler Weli's Opera company m 1987. IS Disher, p. 49. 19 and not a member of the Royai Navy, is nonedxless attempted fiom the point of the sailor. It is worth quoting the fïrst verse in whole:

Cane, dieer up, my lads! 'tis to glory we steer, To add mehimg mmto this wonderfiil year; To honour we cal1 you, not to press you Iie slaves- Fawho are so free as we sons of the waves? Heart of oak are our ships, Heart of oak are our men; We always are ready; steady. boys, a*, We'll fight and we'll conquer again and again? The ''wonderftl year" in question (1759-60) saw British victories over the French at

Quebec, the Antilles, Minden, and Wandiwash in southem India And not only did the

British gain territory at the expense of the French, but a new and promishg young king,

George III, ascended the throne on 25 October 1760. The song is a product of a period of intense patriotic fervour. That Garrick and Boyce chose specifically to sing pansto the

British tar is not surprising. The navy was instrumental in moving British troops around the world, bbckading French ports and beating the French in naval battles and combined operations such as Lagos, Quiberon Bay, Louisbourg and Quebec. Garrick and Boyce had numerous naval successes upon which to build their song.

The song has four verses in which the last two form a muii-narrative. In the füsî verse (quoted above), the British sailor is emphatically characterized as a ûee man. This statement can be seen in an hicLight given the very common practice of impressment during this petiod.47The cal1 to "honour" was nat the main reason mst common sailors entered the navy. The second verse (not quoted) ptaises the tenacious fighting spirit of

46 Kingsley Amis and James Cochrane, The Great BriIi;sh Songbook (London: Pavillicm, Lm,p. 17. " See Chapter 3. 20 the British sailor and the cowardice of the foe. Alteady, these two verses highlight two very important quahies of the ideal British sailor: &dom d personai liberty and the wiliiigness to fight till the bloody end. The necessity 6ra fight until the death (or at least until plenty of blood was shed) was alteady a part of Royal Navy culture at this time and was a particularly relevant topic. Admira1 Byng had been court-martialed and executed in

1756 for his lacklustre performance against the French at Minorca; his ody chwas

that he withdrew fiom the battle without pursuing the French fleet. His reluctance to fight

to the bitter end and cowardice were crimes of which he was convicted(' Extending this to the nid-Victorian period, which is the focus of this thesis, this culture of '2x1 noender

without a bloodbath" survives. Even if naval actions were scarce during the latter part of

the nineteenth century, officers could be court-martialed ifthere was any suspicion that

they did not "do their duty" and fight to the end (or at least attempt to before being

subdued) regardless of the oddsJ9 Finaily, the last two verses address the French invasion

scare during the Seven Years War that ended when the Royal Navy beat the French in

two separate actions at Lagos and Quiberon Bay. The refrain is quite important to îk

song, "Heart of Oak" not only refers to the "wooden wails" that kept Britain secure, but

to the stout and steady kart of the sailors. It is as ifthe sailors and their ships were orle

entity United in a mythicai metaphor. And once again, Garrick proudly writes about the

tenacity of the sailors' fighting spirit.

The music, like "Rule ~ritannj'a,"is iàirly unambiguous aiad simple. The wmmon

'' ûavid Howarth, Soveteiign of tkSe- (London-: CollmS, 1974), p. 229. '9 Ftederic Paul Srnola, "Emeute: Mutmy and the Culture of Authœiîy in the Victaian Na@ (ünpublished PhD. Dissertation: Columbia University, 1994). Also see Chapta 3. 21 time and dotted rhythm in the music deit a hkly brisk march. The one part of

Boyce's music that stands out are the extended, long-short rhythm, descendiig notes on the words "Steady, boys, steady." This is a standard eighteenth century example of descriptive word painting or making the music (the extended and held notes) reflect the meaning of the word (steady).''

The song eventually became so popular that it entered into official naval use as the march of the Royal Marines. It bas retained its ûeshness and popuiarity until this day, king played boisterously at the British farewell ceremonies in Hong Kong in 1997 as the

Royal Marines, representing the "senior service," marched out fûst ont0 the tannac at

HMS Tamar.

Leaving the eighteenth cenhuy behind us, the nineteenth century saw an explosion in domestic music making. The piano made its debut in the late eighteenth century and, indeed, London became a major centre of European piano manufacturing with such well-known firms as John Broadwood & Sons and Clementi (later Couard &

Couard) on the leading edge of piano techlogy. But the piano did not become widespread in middle-class homes until it could be manufactured on an easy and cheap bis. Once this was the case, the versatile instrument becarne a favourite vehicle for family entertainment as well as king a mark of hancial success, As the revolution in manuficturing occurred in the first Mofthe nineteenth century, the volume of music that was sol& diiseminated and perfomd occurred on a much larger scale than in the last cenhiry- The staSistics of pianos manufactuted and music copyrighted; and the ratio

sa Emest Macmillan, ed., A Cmdiim Song Book (Tmto: Deni, 1929), pp. 10-11 and Waites and Hm, pp. 212-13. 22 of pianos to people who could play the piano seem to bear this out?' The volume of published piano music grew massively and included trifles that at times contained naval topics. On the occasion of the bombatdment of Algiers in 1816, a piano sonata was

published that naively depicted the roar of carinon fùe and inserted the tunes of "Rde

Britannia" and "üod Save the King" for good masure. This now forgotten work by a

now forgotten composer surely pandered to the success of that particular action."

This point brhgs us back to music about sailors and the navy. The songs of this

period dealing with the topic of the navy were most often sold as vocal score sheet music,

arranged econornically for piano and voice, with the delectation of the buyers and theu

immediate circle of ûiends and families in mind. Later on, this point will be an important

consideration regarding the marketing of the image of the navy and its sailors. But the

songs that follow in this analysis were distriiuted and sold on a much wider scale than

"RuIe Britannia" and Weart of Oak" had been in the eighteenth century.

An early nineteenth song (for which 1 do not have the music, but only the text) by

the composer John Braham (1774-1856) and the writer S.J. Arnold ctosely echoed the

song of Boyce and Garrick written more than fifty years eariier. "The Death ofNelsonl'

was first performed in 18 11 and remained popular for the whole of the nineteenth

century, lingering into the t~entieth.'~Tbe vivid text ofthe first verse runs:

'Twas m Tratàlgar's Bay, we saw the Frendunen lay, Each heart was bounding thm. We scom'd the fweign yoke, for our ships were British oak, And hearts of oak our men!

'' British firmq faexample, manufachaed23Jûû pianos m 1850; this figure ballooned to 75,000 in 1910. Nicholas Tempedey, '"The Lost Chad," fictorian Sruûies, 30, No. 1 (1986), p. 7. "Mr. llaly, Yhe Siege ofAlgiers: A Chatactaistic Divertimento for the Pianofbrie, Composed and ReJpsctfiilly Dedicated to the British Nation" (Loadon: S. Draper, 1816). Disher, p. 56. Our Nelson mark'd them on die wave, three ch- our gallant seamen gave, Na thought of home and beauty. Along the line the signal ran, "England expects tbat everyman This day will do his duty.* There is Iittle doubt that SJ. AmAniold intended people to notice the specific refetences to

"Heart of Oak." The imagery and feeling are both similar. Both the ships and the men have "hearts of oak" as the metaphor that Garrick devised was retained. The added naval image here is the one of Admiral Horatio Nelson, who in death was immortalized by the

British public. The consununate British kmachieved aa apotheosis derhis victory at

Trafalgar. The similatities are not ody at a textual level as Braham, lie Arne and Boyce

behre him, considered himself a "serious" composer. Obviously, Braharn, the resident

opera composer at Covent Garden and a former optictenor, did not disdain writing

popular patriotic tunes that sold wel~"

Finally, as we move into the perioà of Gilbert and Sullivan in the second haif of

the nineteenth century, we find that songs with naval topics or songs that make a passing

reference to the navy do wt lose their popularity. If anything, the late Victorian and

Edwardian periods saw an Uicreased emphasis on the Royal Navy with a phenomenal

growth in its size and the rapid development of naval technology. While the 'kooden

walls" and "karts of oak" that were Britain's bulwarks were to be replaced by stem and

ùon in the 1860s, the tan who manned hm,and thus the true hearts of the ships,

remained objects of pride and legend. One mgthat deserves mention for its unbridled

confidence in British pluck and cesource, even though it is wt specifically in the genre of

naval Song dates, not coincidenMy, hm1878.

Ibid 55 Tempedey, Mur#: in Britain: The RomanIic Age, p. 304. 24 Music hall was a fonn of eutertainment that was nominally attemled by a différent class of people (and generally lower) from those wbfiequented the ûpéra

Comique and the Savoy ~beattre.~Tbuç it wouid be complex to analyze how naval- themed songs difEered subtly hmclass to class. But one notable mgof 1878 that had its origins in the music hail mssed over to diffetent ciasses with a generai popular appeal. "We Don't Want to Fight" by G.W.Hunt has been forever tagged as the mgthat introduced 'Tingoism" into the Engiish language, The chorus is as follows:

We dm't want to fi& bit by jingo if we do, We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too. We've fought the Bear More, and while- we're Bitais bu& The Russians hllnat have ~on'itantinople?'

Tbe heated events of 1878 flowing hmthe Russo-Turkish War concemed the potential

Russian capture of the ûttonian capiîal of Constantinople, thus threatening the power balance in the Eastern Meddmwan 4the British route east to India, The British had

tangfed once before with Russia in the Crimean War a couple decades before and it

seemed quite possible that they would do so again this tirne." But the only reference to

the navy occurs in the chorus, whkh describes Britain as having the ships to meet the

Russians in battle. But whiie it is not a Song about the navy per se, the importance lies in

the fàct that this amazingly and wildIy popular Song on the misdeeds of the Russians

makes a ckrefetence to the aavy as king an integral part of Britain's ability to wage

% AIthollgfi strktiy speakin& this was not ahvays the case as music halls m diktparts of Landon had dihtaudiraices. Wtt genaally, the people who atmded Gilhand Sullivan opcrertas wre the middle class families supremely parodiai by Gcage Gtosnnith (who was ironiaily the lead comic actœ at thae popular middle-class venuc, The Savoy) in The Dimy cfa Nobody (1892). They were hardly the same peaple who wddgo to music haii entertaoimaits with their driak and paceived and real uIicentiousngs." See George and Weedon ûmsmiih, ïkmrzryqfa Noe(Lcmb: Paiguni, I945)- " Penay Summertield, "Patriaism and Empira- Music Hall Entemiamait 18704914" m J.M. kKd5 d,Inrperfaltm d Popad0 Cdm&dm: Manchester UP, 1986), p. 25. sa lbid 25 war. Not coincidentaiiy a Line in the albimportant rem nuis: "We've got the ships, we've got the men, and got the mney, too.Ships mm tÜst even though it was not integral to the rhyme scheme of the text to have them listai firsî.

The mg, while performed by The Great Macdemtt in music halls, came to be published in a vocal score form, presumably for the piano-possessing middle classes.60 At present, it is only this score that we have to examine since Macdermott's original performance in 1878 occurred before the advent of recording technology. Beginning with a rousing instnunental introduction with triaâic tnunpet-iike calls, the song continues in the manner of a jig. The music is simple and attractive with a tehiri in which al1 could join. The manner in which the word "Constantinople" is shoe-bmed into the music adds

to its character. The song, simple and rousing, rode on the immense wave of patriotism in

1878, and no doubt added to it on the ~ay.~'Its widespread popularity was such that it

was alieged that Conservatives subsidized Macdemtt to sing it and then quoted the

words in Parliament and in The ~imes,6*

The last song to be examineci belongs to the later Edwardian period. While it

chronologically cornes aî?er HMS Pinafore (being published thirty-one years der

Pinafore and thus could have bad no influence on the operetta), it is nonetheless a

popular piece that demonstrates the continuity in naval myths that extends fiom the

59 Disher, p. 165. G.W. Hunt, "Macdermatt's War Song" (Londai:Hopwood & Crcw, nad)in Waites and Hunta, The fliwtrated Yicoriian Songw pp. 180-û4. ïkperforma, whow rdname was G.H. Farrell, had a short caren m the Royal Navy. See Christopher Ming, Were Simging And What They hgAbout (London: Harrap, 1952), pp. LU-85. Not al1 Britoos wae so enthused about the pubmîbl mir as the Great Macdennoît. Henry Peîtit wrote an mtaestmg parody of the mgwith words that went like this: u[ dm't want to figùt 1 I'II be slaughtered if 1 do. / i'd let the -ans have Constaniinople!" Waites and Hunter, p. 182. " Surumerfield, p. 26. 26 eighteenth century well into the period of dreadnoughts. Like Macdermott's song of

1878, "Ship ahoy!" was a popular music hall song that was eventuaiiy published as sheet music for piano and voi~e.~~Written by A.J. Mills with music by Bennett Scott, it is a good example of easy salon music for an eveniag entertainment with the faniily gathered around the piano. The tone of the text is light; the sailor is depicteâ as an amicable, spiriteci fellow whom ail the girls love (C' with the song "A11 the nice girls love a soldier"). From the nature ofthis text one would assume the common sailor's shore leave

is al1 sunshine and smiles! This quotation is fiom the thicd verse: "He will spend his money hlyand he's gen'rous to his pals; while Jack bas got a sou, there's half of it for you and it's just the same in Love or ~ar.'~The text is a bit of a departure fiom the

noble sentiments of blood and war in the earlier songs, but it still maintains a iargely

mythological image of the sailor, one of easy sexual mores and a mawho has a woman

in every port. The music is in a Lilting 61% metre that complements the text nicely. While

this depiction is mt an early twentieth century developrnent in naval mythology, it is a

slight departure hmthe more edifjhg heroic image. A look at the genre of melodrama

should dispel the notion that sailors have always been only depicted as heroic. The

depiction of the sailor as a Lover CO-existswith the warlike, bekose image hmthe

seventeenth century onwards.

The geare of mutical melodrama was just as impodant as music in the

development of the saiiorhavy myth. It is reveaîing to note that, in addition to their

bravery, sailors' iove lives are reflected in plays about km.From Congreve's "Love for

M.Mi and Bennett Scott, "Ship Ahoy!" (London: Star Music Pubiiig Co., 1909). 61 The use of non-British coinage (sou) was no douk a n-ty for die hyme scheme. IbuL 27 Love" in the seventeenth century to the numerousi melodramas of the oineteenth century, üke the famous Black Ey 'd Sm,sailon have been written up in plots with numemus romantic twists!' It is curious to note that while sailors were ofien the object of romance, the type of romance changed over the years; in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and in 5hip ahoy!" sailors were lusty, easy going beings; beguining with nineteenth century melodrama and in HMS Pinu$ore, they are sanitized and chaste.

Perhaps this was a sign of conteqrary mores? This could be analogous to the ribaldry present in Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones by the eighteenth century Henry Fielding and the change to neatness and rnanners in the novels of the early nineteenth century Jane

Austen Regardless of how they love, sailors definitely have a "sofi" side apart fiom their ability to wield a cutlass. HMS Pinofoe cm thus claim a part of this literary genre as an ancestor, m addition to the equally ancient üneage of naval-themed songs.

This survey of naval songs is intended to dernonstrate a certain continuity in the music creating and music making tradition of Great Britain. While it is impossible to generate absolute desabout the conunentary that a particulac selection of songs exhibit, it is possible to make several fairly accurate generalizations. For a start, the survey of these few songs seem to demonstrate that there were two basic, but not mutdy

exclusive images of the British naval sailor: the ktking the sailor who was brave in

battle and steadîàst in devotion to king and country; the second was that sailors loved

lustily and loved hoiaestly. As the hte eighteenth century Charles DiWin (1 745-18 14)

wrote in one of his popuhr naval songs:

65 Jiu Davis, "British Bravery, or Tars Triumphant: [mages of the British Navy in Nautical Melodrama," New îkatre Qmter&, 4 (19883, pp. 133-34. That girl who tain wwld choose a mate Shwld ne'er in fondness fail her, May thanic halucky stars if hte Shwld splice her to a sa il^.^

One was an ability to fight to the death without yielding; the other was an ability to be tender and human. Both were admirable qualities in the mythic British tar and one sees that these images were recycled or repeated again and again in works spanniag the centuries.

How accurate were these portrayals in relation to the actual state of the Royal

Navy? One thing music and drama tended to ignore were the harsh conditions that existed on board H.M. Ships. Jack Tar could be brave and couId be a hopeless romantic, but he was also the subject of scurvy; alcoholism induced by the nun rations; harsh and

0thbrutal discipline; and occupational hazards hmmanring a lully-rigged hi^.^'

These conditions do not improve greatly until a series of naval reforms that began in the late Victorian period.68 This is an entirely relevant topic that will be explored more thomughly in the coatext of HMS Pinqfore, but in the meanwhile, the merry music making would continue obiivious to the reality of Jack Tar's day-to-day condition.

QUOSCd m Robinson, p. 429. '' üavis, pp. 12628. " Rasa, pp. 3MI passim 29 Cheptet Two: HMS PIdbm and Vimririn Naval Fewout

The previous cbapter's analysis of musical exampbs in piut centuries that depict the Royal Navy serves as the context to the genesis of MSPinafore. The qualities of the navy and the sailors depicteci are boldly sketched out in rbpand harrnony in fairiy unambiguous tones arad shades. When examineci side by side, the operetta ttMS Pidore can be seen at once as a direct descendent of these musical traditions as well as a parody.

Its ambiguous nature is an interesthg source for discussion later. More than a single isolated song or a spoken dtama, it was a combination of the two. Fiily, it drew sttongly fiom the traditions of music and Song delineated in the 6rst chapter. Secondly, it aIso drew hmthe Victorian tradition of theatre. An examination of some of its more direct antedents vis-à-vis its authors and the context in which it was composai, staged and teceiveci wiil give an unobstructed view of the stage upon which the late nineteenth century Victorian sailor-hem was expected to stm.

Before entering into a discussion about the place of the Royal Navy in Victorian music theatre, its place in music cuiîure and in tum the two media's influence on HMS

Pinqhre, one must be familiar with what constituted îhe average middIe-class Victorian's experience with music other than the piano-induced craze for domestic music making discussed previously. For those who codd dord it, concert going was the nineteenth century cdtured musical event. it was both fàshionabIe and edifj4ng to Listen to tk

'"ancient" music of Mozart aml Beethoven as it was to iisten to music by then living composes, now hus,such as Brahms and Wagner, or the now forgotten Louis Spohr and Gaspare Spontini. Foreign music drama, mst wmmonly Italian opera, was another 30 imporiant venue for the concert-going public. Since the eariy eighteenth century, tbe

English middle and uppet classes had developeà a taste for cirama presented in a tongue they couid not wminally undetstaad (this strange paradox ôecame a source of pointed satire for the noted essayists Joseph Addison and Richard Steele in their publication The

Spectator and for Wiiam Hogarth in his engra~in~s).6~The same day HMS Pinufore opened at the Opéra Comique, Giocchino Rossini's opera Mmes in Egypt was revived.

"A large and distinguisbed audience assembled on Friday night at Exeter Hd to witness the event, and loud ancl continued applause proved that the speU of the great [talian master of melody remains as yet unbr~ken.~~

That Gilbert and Suiiivan succeeded in the field of music drama while writing in

English was a murce, at once, of both pride and amazement. While the proponents of a native English opera tradition had cded Ioudly for its recognition, few examples ofthe

form met with any success. khn Gay's The Beggm's Opera (1 728) and Thomas Arne's

Arrmerxes (1762) are, in the genres of ballad opera and opera seria respectively, among the oniy tepresentatives in the field, and they dated hmthe eighteenth century. Charles

Dibdin, a prolific writer of popular naval verse, succeeded with some comic stage

ventures in the latter part of htcentiiry, but is aow largely forgotten7' Lesser known

69 As pucepthe as Addison's comments semi to our modem mslilities, they mut also be tempered with the lmowledge that the English aperas he produced failed miserably against the Manvariety. Jealousy was probably a mativatim Cor his and Steele's pomted writings. Wintm Dean, Handel's @mm, 1704- 1726 (Oxfiad: clam da^ Ress, 199S), p. 147 and ûeraid Newmao, The Rise of E@hh Natrhnolismr A Cuitmi Kut~I7JI)-I83O (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999). p. 63. " TIie Times, 27 May 1ûî8. '' He was a plificwriter of songs th& heid the ses as a subject and there bas been a tecent recocding cn tbe Hypaian hbei (1992) of some of his amic opaas: ïkEpkesiim Mztmn, The BrkkiLs~Mmand Zk Grenadkr. 3 1 works by Henry Bishop (1786- 18%) dated hmthe early nineteenth century included

CI&, or the Maid of Milan which containeci the now fàmous ballad, "orne, Sweet

Home!". Gilbert and Sullivan's long series of Savoy Operas achieved what was deemed impossible before: the continued success of English music drama on the stage. It is important to make a distinction at this point. The music culture discussed up to ww was strongest in the vibrant musical metropolis of on don.^ Aithough published sheet music and petformances of symphonies and operas circulated in smaller cities and in the provinces, musical Iife in London was the richest, and it otten influenced the concert- going taste of the more outlying areas of the British Isles. Music theatre as a combination of drama and music was eminently successtùl in London, and it is not surprishg that the

subject of the navy would be utilized in this genre as well as others.

The lower classes were hardly likely to attend the above-mentioned concerts or operas. While some of them were only working a few yards away, the opera buses at

Covent Garden and Dniry Lane were otherwise worlds away. Yet this did not mean their

lives were devoid of music or music makiig. Henry Mayhew in his exploration of the

London poor devoted a section of his multi-volumed work on the rich musical culture of

the streets where popular ballads and songs were mixed together with the latest Verdi aria

while orgm grinders rubbed sbulders with highiy traiued wind baadr" The widespread

presence of tcained musicians on the street ehgout a living is not so incongnious as it

might first seem The working class was not insensitive to the latest pop& song or

ballad On the contrary, the establishment of music hall entertainment and the pubüshhg

" Weber, p. 68. Hairy Mayùew, The LoMn Labour dtkLondon Poor, Vol. 3 (New York: Dover, 1%8X pp.173-78. 32 of popular songs in cheap soag sheets ailowed the working class to induige in a different, but mnetheless extant, music culture.

While al1 classes had their own music cuhure, this did not preclude the possibiiii of cmssovers. There were different levels of music halls often divided by class and location in London: aristocratie halls around Leicester Square and the West End, bourgeois halls in the suburbs and working class halls in the East ~nd?'Same of the upper classes, however, made their occasional appearances at the Iower chhalls in a case of "slummuig it.'"' Likewise, music hall lyricists in the secoud haifof the century often imitated the staunchly middle-class W.S. Gilbert and his particular style of ballad aad lyric writing. It is revealing to keep this class division in mind when looking at the way the navy was portrayeci in Victorian music culture as it might lead one to draw distinct conclusions that have class correlations

Spoken Thafm and the Navy

The period of chief concern here is the mid-Victorian era, but more specificaliy the years between 1875-1880. This brief span is chosen for several reasons. Firstly, this period was one of general çomplacency encouraged by the British donùnance of economic and kignaffairs. The British empire was at its kight of power and The Royal

Navy had established itselfas the world's iargest and most powerfiil and there was no

'' Lautence Senelick, "Politics as Entatainmat: Victaian Music Hall Saigs,'' F'ictorim Snarlies, vol. XIX, no. 2 (Dec. 1975), p. 154. '' Dagmar Kif& The WctorÎan Muric Holls Culture, class and mtjltct (Cambridge: Camkidge UP, 1991h 62. "See K. ïtmdoce Hoppa, The K&F'ictorii Gerrmion (Oxford: Cl-dai Rag 1998) a bard Pm,The Lion's Share: A Shan Hiitory of BrirrSh fmpnidism, 1850-I99.5,3" ed. (New Y&. Loagmm, 199a). 33 major war in this period which required the full resources of the navy. The challenge of

Napoleonic France was more than halfa century in the past and the challenge by

Wibeimian Germany a quarter of a century in the future. The "two pwer standard," which dictated the size of the Royal Navy as king as large as the next two largest navies in the worki combined, was usually maintaineci. The only conflicts the navy was involved with in this period were colonial wars that required "gunboat dipbmacy" and wars with corntries iike China (the First and Second Opium Wars) that required only minor fleet actions. Secondly, this period was one of general technological standstill. The great innovations of sheathing ships in uon or building ships completely out of steel and ha- them run on coai-fired stem boilers had been well-established by 1860.~

However, the even greater innovation of the Fisher dreadnought design was still many years away. Thirdly, this period saw the gradual completion of social reforms in the navy begun in the mid-Victorian period?' The main abuses of the Nelsonian period in the areas of discipline, recruitment and living standards were minïmized or ameliorated while

üaining was standardized. Flogging diminished aller 1870 and was finally ablished in

188l?~Through the establishment of training schools, the institution of a standardized

method of recruitment and the irnpmvement of service periods, the term "lower deck"

would becorne obsolete by 1880.8' Essentiaily, the period chosen represents a somewhstt

domspan of time with fèw upheavais in the naval context. Even though coming

Richard Humble, Before the Dreadnnrghr: The Royal Novyfim Nelson IO FUher (London: MacDonald and Sane's, 1976). p. 107. Sec Cm3 for fierdixussian " John Laffin, Jack Tm: The Sfory ofk Brihkh Sailor (London: CasseIl, 1969), p. 62, MI Rasor* p. 7. 34 close to hostiüties during the Russo-Turkish War, the navy did not have to engage a belligerent major power. An analysis of this period would not be as difficuh as an analysis of a period of great fluctuations in the state of the navy. How then does music drama portray sailors and the navy?

HMS Pidore was a part of a long standing tradition of depicting the navy on stage. Nautical melodrama, while differing fiom HMS Pinafore because of the lack of set music pieces, had become a well-established genre by the mid-Victorian period. Indeed, its heyday was not during Gilbert and Sullivan's time but in the period immediately after the Napoleonic Wars fiom the 1820s to the 1840s. Fancifiil things such as a water tank installed at Sadler's Wells for rnock naval battles were al1 a part of the growth in the public's interest in patriotic naval topics?' The genre was really a part of the wider stage hmknown as melodrama. The word melodrama has a negative connotation in modem

Engiish usage, but during the nineteenth century, when this stage form first emerged, it was enthusiasticaily received. Essentiaiiy, a melodrama concem itself with spectacular plot and action. The characters are often stock and the tale conventionally ends with a moral lesson. Finally, the play combines tragedy, comedy and spectacle with music and elaborate stage scenes al1 for eager popular c~nsum~tion?~Thus in the case of nautical melodrama, the sailor or Jack Tar in these plays was the stock main character wbo always

" Mar& Carlson, "He Never Should Bow Down To A Domindg Fm:Class Taisions And Nautid Meladrama" m Hays and Nikolapoulou, ab., p. 152 Also see Gillian Russell ZkTheohes of Wm Pe@omunce, Poiitk.~,and Sociery, 1793-18 15 (Mord: Clarendon Press, 1995). Ftank Rahili, The Worldof Ml&m~(University Park: Pearisylvania State UP, 19673, p. xiv. 35 displayed heroism and patriotism." These plays were essentially uplifting works about the state of the navy.

In spite of this ostensible purpose, Jim Davis argues that the plays were also quite prepared to show the audiences how abusive the system was in the navy. Flogging around the fleet, for example, was a serious punishment that sent a sailor to dserent ships to be whipped. The result was a back that was vhaily stripped of its flesh. The genre of nautical drama was not afhid to show this, but it was occasionally tempered with the idea that it was a necessary evil for the good of the hsti~ion.~Flogging as an excessive punishment was an idea well-presented in these dramas; indeed, the point was made by the character Jack Neptune in The Sea (1 834) that "it [[flogging] is cruel, degrading and unnaturai." He goes on to hope that %e day is not fat distant, when so fou1 a stain to out national cbaracter ... will be blotted hmold England's naval and military code for e~er!"~'In spite of his desire, there is no doubt that he would have been surprised that a tradition that dated from the ancient times of seafaring would vanish in another mere forty years. The sentiments hmJack Neptune are fairly revolutionary coming hmthe mouth of an actor porûaying a sailor in a commercially staged play in early nineteenth century Britain. One wonders whekthe writers of these plays ever took into consideration the possibility of official censorship fbmauthorities or public indignation at the cruel treatment of men ifthey believed them to be accurate representative of life in the aavy. As it turns out, the plays' seemuigly radicai social analysis was only willing to

" The nicimame "Jack Tar" aiginates fmm 16e use of a amunai name like John to dende a sailor and his use of tarpaulin (a waterproof fiibric made frm Eamd canvas) m bis clohmg. " Davis, p. 122. " bid, p. 131. 36 attack the abuses of the institution aad not the institution itself? This was a careh1 distinction. Furthermore, ifthe heroes in these plays took the abuses meted out no matter how cmel and with good cheer, why then should the audience be indignant?' The Royal

Navy had little to fear hmthese pductions.

The representations of the various abuses meted out to sailors (flogging,

recruihnent by impressmentU and 0thfom of corporal punishment) and realities of

sailors' lives (awful food, living conditions, the purification of homosexuality and other

"moral offenses'') were ail legitimate sources of material for nautical melodrama. In

addition to the stock material of heroism and patriotism, the genre provided a complex

but sornewhat fictionalized look at the sailor and the Royal Navy. It is interesthg to

speculate, but dficuh to ascertain, whether the public saw the lives of the sailors as

inhecentiy alien to their own: attendance at such plays king a mild fonn of voyeurism. In

tenns of concrete statistics, the plays were certainly successftl. The most famous one of

the& Black-Ey 'd Susan (1829) by Douglas Jerrold, ran for 400 nights at four or five

different theatres during the course of its 6rst year.8gThe tense ending where poor

aa IbM, p. 14 1. Je6yN. Cox, 'The Ideological Tack ofNautid MeIodniman in Hsys and Nikolopailou, eds., p. 186. This word evokes gangs of thugs waaddng ccmsîai towns looking fa sailors to face into -ce. indeed, the topic of impressment has been thorougtiiy discussed in naval litnature. 'lhe abuses of the this tectuitment system were legaidary as men sought a myriad of ways of avoiding the "gangs." However, the word has nothmg to do with "press" or canpulsia~It is a a~luptimof the Fmch word ?est'' ar "imprest" meanmg mmey paid to a saila on enûy into bie navy. Laffin, p. 30 and see Chapter 3 far fiaher discussl*onan the topic and cmtext. For such a wildly popular play, Jerrold anly received a mmf6û fian its nùhial m. Russell Jacksai, Victoriun Theatre: ïkZkrrhe in Its 2trne (New Yak New Amsterdam Ress, 19891 p. 303. 37 William is about to be banged at the fore-yard arm before king finally saved by

Captain Crosstree's confession doubtless contriited to its popularity.gO

The list of otherworfdlytopics in these plays is long: the heavy-handed corpond

punisbtnent, the squalid living conditions on board ships and the enforced discipline al1

belonged to a diierent world hmtbat of the audience. Were the floggings and the

depiction of loose morals tfien a playwright's trick in drawing the customers into the

playhouse? There is contraâictory evidence on th. While corporai punishment is

approached head-on with defiant speeches and proclamations, as Jack Neptune's

protestations clearly show, the sailor's sexuality was ''ppurifed." Homsexuality was a

recognized, if officially abhorted, occurrence on board ships packed with men and boys;

however, th. topic was never attempted in mutical plays.9' Sailors remained "chaste"

and "naïve," capable of strong brothetly relationships with men, but only ever interested

in good and wholesome womea And even these relationships oflen remained strangely

platonic. in what scholars argue is the first mutical melodtama, William Moncrieff s

Shipwreck of the Medusa (18201, the plot is a simple love story. The captain's daughter

loves a lowly seaman; however, neither class dïerences nor the captain's protestations

are able to hinder their eventual union.92How strange it is to read this plot summary and

90 Douglas Jercold, "Black-Ey'd Susann in Kinefemth Ceniuty Plays, Gage Rowell, ed. (London: ûxhd: UP, 1953)' Act V. iii., p. 43 9' Indeed, whenever the crime of homosemiality was posecuted it was listed under various names such as "gros indecency, an utmatucal ottènce, mcieacless [sic], perpeûaîion of lewd acts, etc-" The unwilhgness to keep detailed records on the -oa of this type of ohce has made it difficult to guantifL the subject matter today. Popular iiiture on the suôject in recent years has made the hitherto "censured" topic into legitimate sîudy. See for Cbaper 3 fa further discussion on the topic and context and Rasor, p. 98. Also see Steven Zeeland, Liialm anà sexrtal ùlenn'~:cming the lùie betwen "straight" and "qy" in the Us Nq(New Y&. Haworth neSq 1995). " Carlsoa, p. 152. 3 8 then realize it is essentiaüy the same hework W.S. Gilbert used in HMS Pinafiore fBy-eight years later. The associations with nautical melodrama so apparent in the nineteenth century are mostly Likely lost on modem audiences. it is with these curious contradictory elements that sailors were presented to the viewing public. Gilbert and

Sullivan, decades iater, were to capitalize on these types of depictions with their masterpiece: HMS Pinafore. They were to take the old genre of nautical mebdmma to another level with the addition of the important element of music. While it was not the only naval-themed piece of the period it was the only one that achieved immortality.

HMS Pinafire, or The Lass that Loved a Sailor, premiered in London at the Opéra

Comique on Saturday, 25 May 1878. The event was reporteci in The Times and other newspapers with reiatively Iittle fànfare as it was oniy one of the night's many theatrical and musical entertainments. The reviews during the following week were generaiiy positive. Accordmg to The Times, "Chorus and orchestra acquitted themselves of th& by no means easy task in a very creditable manner, and the performance-conducted on the first night by the composer himself-was received by the crowded audience with every sign of satisfacti~n."~~Before the year was out, the ''Pinafore Crazen wouid wt only spread throughout Great Britain, but also across the oceaa to the United States, first in

Boston and tben New ~ork.~The Boston Advertiser proclaimeci uiat it was a long time

93 ThP finies, 27 ky1878. 94 Stedman, p. 169. Also see Harold Kanîhar, "H.M.S. Pinafore and the Thesta Season in Boston, 1a18- 1879," Jodof Populm Culture, 24 (1991), pp. 1 19-127. 39 skethe city bdseen "an entertainment at once so wveI, dm& decent and delig~.ngsIn fact, the oniy dissenter in Britain seemed to the British Ptllne Minister himself, Benjamin Disraeli. The newly-minted Lord Beaconsfield had oniy recently returned triumpbantly hmthe Coagress of Berlin and he wrote before going to and der the performance in late August 1878:

Monty montagu Corry, his private ~eccetacyland Iare going to the play tmight to see same nonsense which everyone is going to se+-Parasol or Pi@-a burlesque-a sat ofthing 1hate ... Except at Wycombe Fair in my yauth, 1 have never seen anythmg so kdas Pim#?ore- It was nut aien a burlesque, [mm]a sort of provincial El& Ey'd SUSM.~

Perhaps the sly digs at his First Lord, W.H.Smith, were too much for him to bear. In any event its great suçcess was due, in no small part, to its smart lyrics and singable meiodies.

Whether the significance of the subject matter was lost on audiences is another question.

Certainly for the American audiences, many of the dusions and sly reknces wouid have been difficult to catch in a single hearing. For the British, HMS PinqtCore had reactmed a stupendous 180 performances at the Opéra Comique by the end of 1878." It wouid increase in popuhrity, &tain its position for the next several decades and even to this &y never really ceme to be a central part of the music theatre repertoire. The patriotic subject matter, combined with tbe way it was presented, was undoubtedly what brought the British audiences back again arad again. Moreover, what is worth exploring are tbe nautid connotations of the operetta (in both iyrics and music) and kirlinks to

QS Quoted in Jacabs. p. 127. % Qwred in Joseph, p. 72. * Stedmm, p. 165. 40 The plot of the play itself is of a very simple nature, namely a love story that ends happily. While not the most original of plot Les, the dialogue in the play was denrather wittiiy by W.S. Giibert. Apart fiom his collaboration with Arthur Sullivan on fourteen Savoy Operas, William Schwenck Gilbert was a noted Victorian playwright who, while not having the tashionable style of an Oscar Wilde, was noted for his contrived, but hilarious style. His marked sense of satire and wit exposed any and al1 to ridicule and mockery. Born the son of a talented navd surgeon in 1836, Gilbert experienced a colouriùl episode at age three when he was allegedly kidnapped in

~a~les.~~He told this apocryphal story to a biographer almost seventy years later and hinted how it inspired many a witty creation in his contributions to the magazine un.'^

However, he did not ociginally aspire to be a phywright or a literary man of any sort.

Admitted to the Department of General Litetanire and Science at the University of

London in 1853, he was then fied with a desire to joui in the Crimean War effort and

attempted to take an examination for a commission in the Royal Artillery in 18~6.'~'But

the end of the war that year forced Gilbert hma potential career in the army into a

stultifying office job afhhishing up the requirements for his bachelor's degree. His

need to serve his country was fiilfilIed with bis joining of the militia in whicb he had a

98 'Ihe Fdct that W.S. Gilbert was die son of a nad surgeon might explain his atîention to the accuracy of HUS Pinujore's setting and staging- Admgto later recollections by Sullivan's colleague at the Savoy, François Cellier, and acquaintrmce, Cunningtiam Bridgeman, Gilbert researched die subject matter before he set about to write his Lioby makmg thquent Msits to ships at andior m Portsmouth, including Nelson's Hi5 &my. Ceiiier and Bridgeman, p. 49. 99 IX. William Gilôert (1804-1889) was a man of Ietters himselfpublishing pamphlets entitled Chi the Present @stem of Ratingfir rk Rr14efof the Pwin the hîèmpotis (1857) and novels such as Shirley Hi11 AsyIm; or, The Memoirs of a Mmwmmk (1863). Stedman, pp. 7-8. 'Oo ibid, p. 2 and Dark and Grey, p. 4. 'O' Stedman, p. S. 41 long career. However, we remember Gias a versifier and aot as a soldier or office clerk. He began to tire of his job and in 1861 started submitting drawings and short writings to the new periodical Fun. Gilbert's most ment biographer, Jane Stedman has summed up the position of this new periodical in the landscape of publications: "To

Punch, the Fun gang and their cheeky paper seedracketty and coarse."lo2 But it is in tbis publication, under the pen name Bab, that Gilbert began to write and illustrate short witty pieces called The Bab Ballu& that emded topsy-tumydom; these later kame the source for his Savoy opera plots, HMS Pinafore included. 'O3 One piece (among the several that are sources to HMS Pinafore), entitled Taptain Reece" opened thus:

Of al1 the ships upon the blue No ship containeci a bctter uew Than that of worthy Captain Reece, Commanding of The M~el,ukce.'~ This kindly captain who is beloved by al1 his crew is a direct forerunner of Captain

Corcoran of the HMS Pinafore.

Between this period and the period of the Savoy operas, however, Gilbert was intent on creating a career in writing pIays rather than king a mere contributor to a magazine.

His mild successes in this field, laced with a taste for pointed satire and cynicism, drew reviews that often nui thus:

So cruel a fbce had never been seen. The public was accustand to two or three comic characters, to satue at the ucpenseoho a three ridiculous types. Here [referring to Gilbert's play Enguged(1873)] was a cwiaiNre of al1 mankind The spectatm tau eâ, but the jest was too bitter for their plate. It was at once too bitter and too me! P

'O2 ibid, p. 14. 'O3 One of Giibert's Fdvourite words, topsy-turvy simp1y means upside-dowu or in a state of utta confiision. W-S, Giibert, The Bab BalIodr, ed. James Ellis (Cam- Mas.: Hiuvard UP, IWO), p. 143. 'OS By Augusth Hm, The Eqlish auge (Loadm, 1897) quoted in Max Keith Sutton, KS Gilbert (Boston: Twayne, 1975), p. 79, 42 His most successtùl works (ushg public enthusiasm aad length of nins as a measure) would be his librettos. Gilbert was an enthusiast of operetta and admired the French works in that genre by composers such as Jacques Offenbach; he even enthusiastically adapted Offenbach's Les Brigandr into English for a British production in 1871.'O6 When the impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte (1 844- 1901) offered him the opportunity to collaborate with Arthur Sullivan in 1875, he accepted the challenge at once. Carte was, at the tirne, merety Iooking for a piece to fiil-out the performances of a short Offenbach operrtralO' What resufted was a one act work, Trial By Jus, that took the judicial system as its target for satire. Wlesuccessiid, it was short-breathed and miniature in scale. The next work, The Sorcerer of 1877, was partially a hurnorous parody of the Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti's L 'Elisir d'more; it was also much longer in score and

text than Trial By ~ury.'~~It also enjoyed success, but it took the next production in 1878

to propel the pair into stardom.

In the creation of the Iibretto of HMS Pinafore for Arthur Sullivan, Gilbert took

the subject of the Royal Navy, toyed with befùre in The Bab Ballads, and fàshioneâ

sornetbiog utterly unique. Sending the draft of the play to Sullivan in January, the pair put

the work speedily together by May. While the iove story between a common sailor and

his captain's daughter is the main theme of the operetta (as the subtitle none tw subtly

explains), almg the way Gilbert manages to spear, alhide to, or plain expose in his

peculiar mamer the various quirks, contradictions and abuses of the Royal Navy. On the

'" Ibid, p. 83. '07 Jacobs, p. 9î. '" Alan Fischler, "ûiibert and Donid," The Opeto Quaeriy vol. 11, no. 1 (19971 p. 34. 43 various topics that nautical melodrama tackied, and uidd built upoa, Gilbert hther eiaborates and, one would evea dare say, burlesques. How did Gilbert see the Royal

Navy and bw far was he willing to push the Limits of portrayai? That the play was subject to the appmval of the Lord Chamberlain's Office before performance was one factor, but the ohhad to be the willingness of the middleçlass audiences to accept his particular brand of satire with a positive showing of box office receipts.Io9 As rnentioned behre, his cynical plays had met with limited success though his The Happy Land of

1873 gained same mitoriety for king cen~ured."~George Grossrnith (1847- 19 121, who created ahstail of the main comic characters in Gilbert and Sullivan's operettas, satirid the kind of middle-class people who wouid have been audience members in his

1892 Vnaginary journal, Tlie Diary 4a~obody.'" One wondm how the main character, the self-important M..Pooter, petty bourgeois in social cksand values, would have reacted to the startling displays of love between ranks and the portrayds, if any, of

In examinhg HMS Pinafore, the most obvious theme to look at is then the one of love between ranks. Josephine, the daughter of Captain Corcoran, is hopelessly in love with the common sailor RaIph Rackstraw. The plot is complicated by the îàct that she is to be betrothed to the Fkt Lord of the Admiralty, Sir Joseph Porter K.C.B. Already there is a double exposition of the probiem: Iove and marriage between ranks. Fi,Raiph is

'O9 "Lost mgliam HMS. Pim$ôre dimvered,'' Yimouvet Sun, 17 ApriI 1999, p. 55. ''O GilWs causbic satire ofthe then Liberal govenunent ofGladstone m the play moved the Lord Chambetiain's ûûke imo adion. The resuiîing controversy over theatre and dramatisîs' rights were debated by way of letters m the newsp9pas, Giwas ladai as an Ansropbanes and îhe uproar was even said to have helped de- the Liberal govanment in hnexteldon Stedman, pp. 105-8. '" Gemge and Weedon Gmssmith, The Diby of a No60&. 44 but a common sailor and would be an unsuitable husband for Josephine. Secand, tisere is the alrnost equal but more bridgeable disparity in tank between Josephine and the FÎrst

Lord. The constant theme that one senses fiom the operetta is that love will triumph over distinctions of class. Sir Joseph Porter assures Josephine that "love is a platform upon which al1 ranks meet" (and in the process konicaiiy strengthens her resolve to marry

alp ph)."^ Ostensibly this goal is reached in the end when Ralph does mars, Josephiw and everything resolves rather satisfactorily. However, the method by which Gilbert reaches the satisfactory conclusion is not radical at all, but rather in the reah of topsy- turvydom of which he was a master. It tum out that the Ralph was switched at birth with

Captain Corcoran by the bumbling nursemaid, Little Buttercup, and that Ralph was actually a well-bom aristocrat. In this case, Ralph marrying the daughter of a common seaman is wt as outrageous as ifhe were m+g his commanding officer's daughter.

(A rather ridiculous resolution as the ''hrernast lad" Ralph would be roughly the same age as his captain!). As patriotic and as fervently Gilbert and Sullivan laud the British tar, the very way by which the operetta concludes kept the sailor Mywithin his social

The operetta was not the first coilaboration between the two men, but it was the first that set London and New York abuzz. Catch phrases and "Pinafore-mania" wodd

sweep the English speaking world and capture the imagination where the earlier operettas

did not.'" Triai By J.y was a short and experimental work in the genre of English comic

opera and The Sorcerer had success, but MMS Pinafore w the thedfor other Gübert

IL2Bradley, ed., The Complere Annotaled Gilbert and Sullivan, p. 163. II3 Higgins, p. 43. 45 and Suiiivan mations to follow. It had two acts and opemi adclosed with an overture and two graimd finales. While the fertile invention of the two men was at its

happy best in this peridof their lives, it was the newsworthy events of the late 1870s and the cultural associations (vis-à-vis naval-themed music) more than anything else, that

sewed as the hsphtioa for the music and the plot.

From the established dailies Like The Times (est. 1785) to newer publications Like

The illustrated London News (est. l842), newworthy items were written up in articles

ofien with related editorials, cartoons and, in the case of the latter publication, etchings

and drawings of the subject matter. From the publication and ensuing controversy of

Charles Darwin's The Descent of Matt in 1871, to the bringing of Cleopatra's Needle to

London, to the creation of the îïrst London telephone exchange in 1878, the print media

reported items exhaustively. Technical drawings for the layman of Hughes' electric

sonometer and Edison's teIephone, for example, graced The Illus~tatedLondon News of

15 November, 1879, satisS(ing the mid-Victorians' fascination with gadgets.

The event that received the most attention during 1877-78 was the growing crisis

related to the "Eastern Question." Related to the weakening of the ûttoman Empire in the

late nineteenth century and consequent Russian capaciousness, the '%stem Question"

involveci Great Britain for reasons of imperial security. The growth of Russian

imperialism in the mid-nineteenth century was beginning to bring it into confikt with

pre-existhg British intetests wtonly on the northan borders of India, but also in the

Ottoman terdories. The moniund Turkish empire straddied the mutes to india and

beyond via the Suez Canal, directly affëcting Great Britain's deand its militafy links 46 to its eastem colonies.'14 Takhg the political context back to 1875 when the Ottoman provinces of Bosnia and Henegovina revolted against Turkish de, we hdthe Russians cIaiming to be the pmtectors of the ûrthodox Christiam living in these affected areas. As the relations between Russia and the Ottoman Empire steadily worsened during the course of the next year, the British took notice, augmented the Mediteman fleet and ordered Vice-Admiral Homby with the fleet into the Dardanelles to deter Russian aggressioalLsThis was done to no avail. Russia declared war on Turkey in 1877, ad, with only a few setbacks, marched towards Constantinople thugh the Bab.The crucial event occurred in early 1878 when the Russians were on the verge of tabg the

Ottoman capital, In a series of feints and counter-feints, the British managed to cajole the

Turks into accepting the entry of the British fleet into the Sea of Marmora. This provocative fact (and the misguided Russian belief that the British ships were loaded with troops) combined with growing Austro-Hungarian irritance at the Russians saved the

Turks for the moment.' l6

These miiitary events were kiiowed closely in Bntain and were vividly registered

in the public imagination. During this period wet plate photography was aiready

widespread; however, the process was not yet able to mas produce photographs onto the

pcinted page. Engravings of the events based upon on-the-spot drawings, a fonn of

artists' impression, were the only way of getting pichires into newspapers. The Illustrared

"'Bernard Porter, p. 85. '1.5 Anàrew Lambert, 'The Shield of Empire, 18 15- (895" üi The .prdRlustmted History qflkRoyal Naiy, 1. R Hill, ed. (Oxfad: Oxfocd W,199% p 190. "'Sir William iaird Clowes, The Royal N&y: A Hisoy From the bii't ï7me.s tu the Denth of Queen mon4 VOL7 (1903; rp LOI MI^: chatham, 1997), p. 297. 47 London News, a weekly, specialized in this medium. The events surrouading the

Russo-Turkish War and above dl, the Royal Navy's involvement in the affair ceceiveci the most attention. Vivid engravings depicted the ships and men of the Royal Navy "in action" as it wece. Something as mundane as the loading of beef joints onto HMS

Alexandra by Jack Tacs received fiont page cove~a~e.~"Counterbaiancing this hardy view of-thesailor hauiiig in his vicnials were the grand vistas of the British fieets that were ohprinted on a double page spread.lI8 Smoke stacks bilowing and rigging taunt, this image was the closest that most of the British public would ever get to the Royal

Navy during their lifetimes. With ail the obvious suggestions thaî the news media provided, the already extant public interest in naval topics as demonstrateci by the popularity of nauticai melodramas and the rich tradition of representing the navy in song behind them, Gilbert and Sullivan attempted their third collaboration in the spring of that

Arthur Sullivan's music provided the perfect vehicle for Gilbert's verses. The

marriage of poetry and music in aa aesthetically pleasing manner has always been a

difficult task to accomplish, and according to John Dryden, who attempted operas several

times with Henry Purcell two centuries earlier, especially in the English language. Often

Gilbert's rhymes cm seem awkward and contrived on paper. Examine this passage for

example:

Things are seldom what they seem, Skim milk masquaades as aeam; Highlows pas as patent leathas; Jackdaws saut in peacock's featber~!'~

'" Tlie RZ~~tratedLo&nNews, 16 Mardi 1878. 'la &a?, 16 Februtiry and î3 February 1878, Also see firrtha discussion and illrrstratians in Cbapier 3. Bradley, ed., The Complere AmatedGilbert andSdlivan, p. 157. 48

Such rhymes are often set quite fluidiy by Sullivan and it is often hard for someone familiar with the works of the duo to read these verses and not think of the associated tune at the same tirne. Arthur Sullivan's background was rich in music. He was bom in

1842, the son of a cnilitary bandsrnaa. Thomas Sullivan was employed at the Royal

Military College at Sandhurst and young Arthur had ample opportunity to absorb the musical culture in which his father was immet~ed.'~~Talented as a singer, the young

Sullivan's career started with his entry into the prestigious Chapel Royal as a chorister in

1854.12' His talent was such that he was able to attend, through a scholarship, the music conservatory in Leipzig where he learned composition adconducting among other music skills. While there and during bis continental travels, Sullivan rapidly made the acquaintance of many of the luminaries of the European music scene: the virtuoso violinist Joseph Joachim as well as the composers Ignaz Moscheles, Louis Spohr,

Giocchino Rossini and Franz Liszt. On his remto Great Main in 1862, he tùlly expected to become an established composer of sacred and serious works.

Sullivan launched his career with a triumphant ffourish as he conducted his ne

Tein* ballet music at the Crystd Palace that Between then and the beginnings of his coilaboration with Gilbert, he spent his the conducting at music festivals, composing instnimntai, vocal aad hidental works and publishing songs that were

I2O Jacobs, p. 7. 12' The Chapel Royal was an ancient mstihdion that served the sovereign's musical needs on ecclesiastical occasions. It was an exclusive body of male sin- rather than msüumentaIists. ln Jacobs, p. 30. 49 immensely popular, climaxing with his moving ballad "The Lost ~hord"'~This last piece ran through so many editions and arrangements that it became hackaeyed by the tirne of the composer's death in 1900.

His wllaboration with Gilbert was by no means a pte-destined one. Sullivan hi collaborated with other writers in the area of musical stage works. But Trial By Jury was immensely popular and had a run of 175 performances in 1875 alone. Gilbert's humour and good verse Mingfor music would be manied to Sullivan's delightfùl, but rately stiallow music. Gilbert had some early points of criticism concerning Sullivan's music as it worked with the words of other writers. Writing in Fun he reviewed Sullivan and

Francis Burnard's Cox and Box (1867) in critical terms:

Mt, Sullivan's music is, in many places, of too high a class fa the grotequely absurd plot to which it is wedded. It is hyhm and there, and grand or graccfiil where it is not fùnny; but the jyand and gracetùl have, we think, tao large a share of the honours to themselves.'"

While Gilbert was referring to another writer, there is the hint that his own works were in a similar vein. However, as he started to work with Sullivan, Gilbert's absurd pbts became the perfect match.

The music to fIMS Pinafre has often been sumrned up by many a casual listener in several words. breezy, Light, iùn and mutical. It is this last description that is teUing,

The music that Arthur Sullivan composed is especially tailored to fit the wotds anci the theme of the operetta. He even wittily lifted themes hmother composws and insetteci thin meaningfùi ways into his own music.lu He began work on the music in 1878 as

Sir Arthur Sullivan, TheLost Chad" (Laidai: Boosey & Co., n.d.) m Waites and Hraiter, eds, Tlie üiwtrated fictorian Song- p. 55-59. 12' Stdtai, p. 84, Compare the apening of "A many years agon m Act II with Franz Schubnt's houslieder "Erlktinig.'' 50 fast as Gilbert could supply him with the words. Working through illness anâ chronic beaith problems, ibe score displays no sign of shiggk or pain wbatsoever. We have

SuUivan's own words for this as he wrote years later about the experience: ''1 would compose a few bars, and then lie almost insensible hmpain When the paroxysm had

passed, 1 would write a little more..."'26 Amazingly the result was a score that was

brilliantly orcbestrated with music that harked back to a tradition of depicting the navy in

Song and stage.

The operetta consists of twenty-one musical nurnbers excluding the overture and

the entr'acte. Rather than a short description of each and every number, a detailed

analysis of few key numbers demonstrates more conctetely the naval music traditions that

Sullivan drew on. The overtrae is a logical place to start!" While mt actuaily composed

by Arthur SuHivan, it contains a potpourri of tunes by the composer that originate fiom

the operetta iïnked together hoa seamless insirumental ope~gg'28The main nautical

flavouring corne hmthe opening section which is a sprightly dance in 618 tirne; this

motive is used again in the fast act finale as a unifjing device. While the overture is

commenced by a menaciag dnun roll (which is suggestive of cannon tire and appears

again later), the bright anci very fiil1 scoring and happy major mode tune leaves w doubt

tbat this operetta is a comedyy'" The rest of the ove- is fairly conventional with a

lacobs, p. 121. '" See Appendix 3. The overtures to many of the Gilbert and Sullivan o~ereîîasare esseatialiy trnes cobbled together hm the numbers in the work with the voice part omitîed and replaced by instruments. They provide an effective opening giving the audience a frneiaste of the music to aune. They were usuaiiy ananged aaly days befxe the performance by Sullivan's dates Alfied Ceiüa or Hamilton CbGeMse Hughes, The Music of Ank SuUNan (Westpat: GreenWood Press, 1959), p. 132. '" SuArthur Sullivan, IlbETPiiq4m: An f&wmna in TwAcls (kw Yok Kahus, I978), pp. 3-17. [Note: This is a full score of the music raîher than the mare cornmon vocal score]. 51 languid andante section with oboe solo, polka rhytbms and a thriilhg end. One is more reminded of Johann Strauss Jr.'s sparWing Habsbwg Vienna than naval Portsmouth.

What is more interesthg to the Listeaer are the songs and vocal ensembles in the

operetta. In this there is a great variety of thenes and aliusions and the force of Gilbert's

words that penneate the music. A couple of Josephine's solo pieces are reminiscent of

grand Italian opera which the paying public were fâmiliar with through the singing of

such prima donnas as Adelina Patti. The musical elements that relate directly to the Royal

Navy are essentially hmthe male principals and the ever present male chorus of sailors.

The major piece for the chorus of sailors is in the first act. The glee "A British

tar" is a song written by Sir Joseph Porter IGC.B.'~~He righteously States:

It is a song chat I have composed for the use orthe Royal Navy. It is designeci to encourage independence of thought and açtiai in the lowbranches of the -ce, and to teach the pinciple lhat a British sailor is any man's equal, excepting mine,13'

A fiuther description of it will be presented in Chapter 3 when this song is related to the

notion of a sailor's equality with everyone else. But for now one has to remember that

this song was set into the action of the play with the sanction of the First Lord! This was

hardly wise encouragement for obediince to one's superiors within the history of the

Royal Navy's disciplinary system

Another section of the operetta that is central to the action is the Act 1 finale.'32

Here we have the principals resolving to get married while the sailors and Sir Joseph's

"sisters, cousias and aunts" encourage them. The fide is a ten minute ait?& tbat is

See Appendix 3. 13' Braàley, ed., The Compkte AmafedGilbert dSdlivan,p. 139. 13' See Appendùr 3. 52 complex musicaiiy and constructeci mund the Josephine's reaiization of her love for

Ralph. It opeas with tension-filled music as Ralph attempts suicide, progresses though a love duet when Josephine accepts his love and ends Wyon a thphant note. Various musical themes heard earlier are drawn upon and woven together in the îïnale. The most significant portions in the context of navy themes are two chocuses. The first one "Shall we submit" is an indignant reply to the discovery that Josephine had at first rejected the band of Ralph. Like the nature of the glee, again the reference is to tars not king

"slaves" and mling the b'waves"(a natural chyme for Gilbert). The finai chorus is a substantial reworking of the opening theme of the overture with the hompipe elements of the sailors' glee providing a general dance while the curtain cornes dom. The words are the same, but this time the orchestra is at tùll strength and the chorus of Sir Joseph's sisters, cousins and aunts add in their high voices to augment the sailors. This is essentially the most elevated point for the noble tar in the operetta as Josephine and

Raiph have declared their love amidst the general approval of the sailors and womn.

This ail makes for a satisfactory conclusion to Act L"~

The last piece to look at is the rightly îàmus We is an Englishrnan." This paean to the British sailor occurs at the climax of the operetta when Captain Corcoran discovers that his daughter Josephine is about to elope with Ralph Raçkstraw in the ensemble r(Carefullyon tiptoe steaIinggy"" The sailois intewene and potest Captain Corcoran's separation of the pair, with the backing of Sir Joseph's earlier comments, claiming tbat as a British sailor, Ralph is "any man's equai" and thus wodd be a suitable husband for 53 Josephine. The text is utterly cornical with the mention that Ralph could have been "A

French, or Turk, or Proosian [sic]..but in spite of all temptations.. .he remains an

Enghhman." The situation is made ail the more ridiculous by Sullivan's ankm-like seîthg. 13' This was a case of using a serious setting of hilarious words to burlesque the nature of patriotic anthern singing. It is most likely that Gilbert and Sullivan were not king critical of the British involvement in the Eastern Mediterranean, but only sought to make a topical reference to the heightened patriotic atmosphere of 1878. "He is an

Englishman" rivaled the nationai anthem in popularity for a time and even Gilbert was pmud of his brash lyrics."6

HMS Pinafore was to becorne the rage of the theatre season that year. The summer was uncomrnonly hot and attendance slackened not long derthe operetta's opening on 25 May. Mer a respite in the weather, however, and perhaps some public promotion (pieces hmthe operetta were supposedly arranged in instrumental versions and played at promenade concerts), the box office receipts grew tremendou~l~.'~~

Published versions of the songs in the operetta were soon available for sale by Chappe11

& ~0.'~'By the next year, the work had crossed the Atlantic in an unauthorized version and was making headway in the United States. A Children 's Pindore had been arranged

135 Bradley, ed., The Complere Annotaled Gilbert and Sullivan, pp. 166-69. Wbm asked by an Ameriam im-O to admpt HMY Piqhre for Amaican audiences and to change the words ofthat houschorus to "He is Amai-can", Gilbert replied ÿou must remember that I remain an Englishman. No, sir, as Img as HlCLT Pmafoorr?holds afloat she must keep the Unioa Jack Qing.'' CeHia and Bridgeman, pp. 60 477-79. 13' It is stiil unclear today whether these arrangements ppularized the tunes of Pinafore and hght the am& back to the ûphComique. Sullivan yeam later refalled thai this occmed, though cmtemporary advertisements, detailed as they were with the concert program, made no mention of the music of HMS Phqfto~at these cancer&, and only that Sullivan diied. Jacobs, p. 126. 13' Sce the sheà music and mstnanmt sales addsing m îkikwiwted- News for the latter part of 1878. The nical scae appeared a mat thcee weeks aftcr the praaiere. See p. 560 m 15 June, 1878. 54 to the consternation of the author Lewis Cm11 since a number in Act II had the youngsters singing "He said da~nrne!"'~~Regardless of cantroversy, HMS Pinafore made a splendid initial nia. Years later, just before the First World War, an old Lady recoutded to Cellier and Bridgeman that it was the best play she bad seen Aer Hamlet. "And ifs so breezy, too," she remarked as "it brings a sniffof the briny ocean right away into this stuffy UiIand to~n."'~~This last quote is teliing of the general reception it received during its fht production, provincia1 tours and subsequent revivais. Why was this the case and why the happy association with the ocean and by extension the Royal Navy? The navy was certainly not always a happy place even ifthe sailors of HMS Pinafore were.

'39 Jacabs, p. 127. '" ûrei, ed., p. 155. 55 Chapter Thm: HMS Pinam, Mwic, Dmmand the Relation ûetwwn Art and Lih in tiw Royal Navy

Up to this point, the discussion bas centred on the manifestation of the aavy in music and song in past centuries and on the particulars of HMS Pinafure as king an outstandhg work in this genre. We have explored some of the various depictioas in music and drama of the British naval sailor, the instiition of the Royal Navy and its military exploits. The music and Iiterary works of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were particularly

well-developed in this respect as they paralleled the growth in importance of the Royal

Navy in relation to the geographical growth of the British Empire. Composers and

playwrights responded to a public demand for works that contained popular subjects: the

bravery of the sailor in battle, the prowess of the British nation as represented by the tar

and the hardimess of the sailor in a Spartan üfestyle that the leadership of the Royal Navy

imposed. What remains to tic done is to link the various manifestations in the selected

works prior to and including HMS Pinafore with the actual state of the navy and the

sailors. The artistic Liceuse that composen and playwrights exercised contained equal

amounts of htasy and verisixnilitude. While ùnposstôle to quantify the degree of

historical reality about the navy in artistic productions (or the more interesthg question

of how much art influenceci Mie), it is nonetheless possible to point out links that

demonstrate a very tangible bond between He and art,

Th8 R~~ifment,Lfi adWdYItU of ri 8- Tûf

The We of a British Tar is one of legend-most of that legend bearing negative

co~otatiomand images. The poor food, the heahh problems such as scurvy, harsh 56 discipline, cramped living quarters, fèar of fllrther imptessment once back on hnd aiter

-ce bad eaded, the sûictly enforcd temis of duty ami the iow pay are conditions that historians and cnthusiasts hr the Royai Navy will draw attention to. But by and large these weii-known myths were a reality for the Royal Navy during the Nelsonian period and before, Co+ to the dernnavy or even the Victorian steam navy, the navy in the age of sail was not a pleasant place for the common sailor. However, the major diiiplinary refoms of the nineteenth century Victorian navy that accompanied the technological revolution of steam-powered iron hulled ships had tiuidamentally changed the social structure and living conditions of the men of the Royal Navy. By the time of

Gilbert and SiiUivan's HMS Pinufore in 1878, the days of severe floggings, climbing masts to operate the sails, worm-ridden, moukly hard tack and leathery salted beef were long past. The katrical sailors on HMS Pinrrfore, while still living in a melodramatic fear of the "cats-nine-tails," were at ieast Living a more cornfortable life in the service than their immediate and distant predecessors on the old wooden tbree-deckers.

In the years prior to the extensive Victorian reforms of the Royal Navy, the career of many sailors began with impressment. It is Unportant at this point to state that the navy was compriseci of voIuateers as weU, but during times of war eaforced service was the ody metbod by whiçh îhe Royal Navy could have its numerous men-O-warready for batt~e.'~'The peace time staniag of th Royal Navy was such that most of its ships were dermanned wiîh a mere skeleton crew adequaîe to get a ship underway but not enougb

"' Indeed, there was aumtemginary saying of the Nelsaaian periad tbt 4"One volunteer was lhe qua1 of three pcessed men.'' Mdywmting to be cin board a ship and king forced to be thnt made a dinérence m motivation when catryUig outâaily âuties. 57 to manage the ship in a battle. Thus there was a dire need for more men during major conaicts with Great Britain's continental rivals. Duting the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries this was a very ûequent demand. Often the unfortunate volunteers were lured by propaganda posters spouthg coloirrfiil phrases that descniJamaica as

"that delighttùl Island, abounding in Rum, Sugar and Spanish Dollars, where there is delicious Living and plenty of Grogg and un ch."'^^ If one did not know better, fiu off

Jamaica seemed like an absoiute paradise to a pwr saiiing man in Cornwall or in any other seaside British county. Nonetheless, the hire of exotic locales which naval ships would often fiequent was not enough to attract adequate numbers of men into the service and more irnportantly, during times of war, the navy had to have an effective system by which it could stafYits vessels quickIy. Impressment was the brutal answer.

The navy operated press-gangs, mving groups of toughs who wandered the coasts of the British Isles in search of saiIing men who were eligible to be impressed into the service. The practice in its intent was no different than that of modem conscription-it fulfilled the navy's ongoing need for able-bodied seamen to man its ships. However, the method by which this objective was achieved was in most part reprehensible as it was

open to aü sorts of abuse. Predictably, ik French Revolutionaty Wars and the

Napoleonic Wars that lasted the two decades between 1795-1815 exacerbated the

situation in the navy. The long drawn out war with France and her allies, and then a

shorter one with the United States in 1812, put great pressures on the navy to fkd as

many able-bodied seaman in a most effective, expeditiius and efficient manner as

'.'' Lattlli, p. 29. Also see Captain James Pack, Nelson's BI&: & Stoy of Naval Rum (Annapolis: Naval institute Press, 1995) for the significance of alcobol m the daiiy lifé of a sailor. 58 possible.

Press-gangs were technically under the command of a naval officer with a warrant signed by local magistrates. They were only allowed to seize British seamen who were between eighteen and fi@-five Yeats of age and who did not have any other certificates to exempt them fiom service.143They could seize them while the seamen were on shore and they could even seize them when they were on the high seas in merchant service. The powers that these press-gangs had were extraordinary. Indeed, the War of 1812 with the

United States was fought partly over the issue of the Royal Navy impressing American

seamen into the service. Press-gangs shply boarded American merchant vessels on the

high seas and took men they deemed to be British in spite of the fact that they had

probably lived in the United States for quite some tirne. Certificates that the American

authorities provided American sailors to pvethat they were American citizens were not

worth the paper they were printed on as the press gangs ofien simply ignored them if

someone had a strong British accent. The tàct that some sailors on American ships were

British deserten merely sewed to highlight the por conditions onboard British ships as

compared with their American ~ounterparts.'~Britain's titanic struggle with France and

resulting sideshow with the United States created a need for men to sail the wwden walls

tbat kept the French at bay. The extraordinary powers and the amazing reach these gangs

pssessed becorne legendary and was very ofien the way a sailing man found himself in

the service of one of His Majesty's Ships before Victorian times. 59 The delicious irony of David Garrick and WiUiam Boyce's jovial song "Heart of Oak" is even more apparent now with the realization of how utterly hopeless it was for a sailing man to avoid the press-gangs. Perhaps he wodd iive off borrowed the in a seaside town, avoiding the press-gangs until he would be sold into the naval service while in a drunken stupor by the inn keeper or perhaps by a woman tired of her sailor-lover.

The caii to honour in "Heart of Oak" was a polite façade and the navy knew it and did

"press" its sailors like "slaves." However, if we codd take them as king representative of reaiity, the sailors onboard HMPin4fore were for the most part volunteers who joined the service of kirown hewill. The great change towards the percentage of men rec~aedthis way in the latter halfof the nineteenth century as compared to the beavy usage of the press during the hnn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was not a

rnere ac~ident.'~'

Two decades into the reign of Queen Victoria during the l8SOs, many of the

traditional ways by which the Royal Navy ran its day to day operations had to change

when problems in the system were highlighted by the Crimean War. In the years of

relative peace foilowing the Napoleonic Warq impressing slowly died out as a method to

remit the majority of men.146The pay for a seamen graduaiiy increased so that there was

'" in the navy of the war-year of 18 10, the manpower estmiaie stood at 145,000. Ofthese, it has been estimated that only 25 pet cent were volunteers. nie rest were pessed, quota and bounty men. nie inunediate pstwar peiod saw rapid demobiliauim. in 18 15, thenavy employed 90,000 men and m 1820 only 23,000. The press was in disuse onid theoretically thenavy was mly staffed by voluntegs, excephg the fèw quata and bounîy men still drawn iato the -a~ Men were discharged and laid up and some came back as volunteers m the post-war years Ibid, p 206 and Midiael Lewis, The Nmy in Trmition: 18141864. A Socid mtory (Edmburgh: Hoddx and Stoughtai, 1%5), p. 176. '& Impressmg mm mto the navy as a feccuitmeut method sri11 occurred as late as 1835 during the reign of William IV and probably happened an a ~~~OCCBS~*O(ISafierwards. The Ras Act, while never induxi m the twentïedi cenhay, wrts shll an the sîaMe books as hie as 1%7. Lafi, p. 46. 60 no great fiaancial disadmatage in servitg in the Royal Navy as opposed to the mercbant service. The Continuous Service Act of 1853, in addidion to pay, also improved the chances of promotion as weii as the widening of pension benefits.lJ7 Furthermore, the tradition-bound Admirahy, sbaken by several particularly violent mutinies in the 6rst haif of the century, made concessions to the lower deck in order that an already tense situation would not boil over again into gewral anarchy. In this respect, 1859 is a key year for the

Royal Navy in terms of naval reforrn. it was during this year that the Admiralty fkdly instituted a series of reforrns to improve the Living conditions of the men below decks.

The fkst of a series of five naval discipline acts was passed in 1860 and the last in 1866.

The mutinous events of 1859 that led up to the legislation (and other minor outbreaks in that decade that accompanied the passing of the acts) wuld be descriid as widespread though kcking the sensational nature of the 1797 rn~tinies."~

In 1797, in the midst of war with France and her dies, several mutinies broke out at Spithead and the ~0re.l~~The uprisings were ofien over the miserable pay and were of varying degtees of severity; the authorities suppressed them quickly, handing down floggings and death sentences in the most severe cases. The most bloody episode

'" John Wmtai, "Lifé and Edudon m a Technically Evolvïng Navy: 18 15-1I25" in J.R HiII, ed., The wordiîl~(~Irated Histoty of rhe Royol Navy, p. 260. '" It would be usefiil here to define what the Royal Navy considaed to be mutinous actions or WH&. They could be actions that involveci violence a,to qwte fiom the Adiniralry Digests, could simply be %e concerteci refiisal on the part of severai scamen to obey the cammand of thek superia officerdut without violence shown or threataied. While what was carsidered mutmous was loosely defined, the punisiunent fanai-ampliance was not, as tbat WB hrated an the most extraordinary and severe order. Rasor, p. 62. In 1860, nieodae Thring published a compmioa, but mdegal, guide to die new naval acts definmg mutinies m temis of collective insubaddoa (the need fa two or mare people to collaborate in ader or the mcident to be called a mutiny), piss~eand active roles. Smder, p. 5. niese were major naval anchorages tàr die Royal Navy. Spithead was the Channel between the Isle of Wight and the mainland. The Noce was the area at the mouth ofdie Tbames. 61 occurred aboard HMS Hermione where ten officers were murdececi and the ship handed over to the hostile Spaniards in the midst of a Eumpean ~ar.'~~In the following years the

Royal Navy hounded the fleeing mutineers with a vengeance, tracking them dom and eventuaüy executing 29 of the~n.'~' This episode revealed that while the men of the lower deck wouid revo h when pushed to a breakiig point because of poor pay and harsh discipline, it also amply demonstrated that the navy would put down any uprising heavy handedly, and in the case of the Hermione, exact vengeance with an uncornmon zeal.

What made the uprisings and subsequent official reactions to the events of 1859 different? During 1859 there were disturbances of varying degrees aboard more ihan a dozen ships. In most cases, the men complained about the lack of leave caused by manning problems which necessitated longer terms of service. Unlike 1797, however, there were no violent deaths during any of the mutinies. In any event they were ail eventuaiiy suppressed, but not before provoking a generally negative reaction fiom the press. The punishments handed down were certainly more lenient than the ones meted out sixty years behre in that there were no hangings or other severe reprisais. However, severe fiogghgs were still inflicted on many men. Fifty-three men whhad mutinied onboard the HMS Prinçess Royal, for example, were given a totai of 2141 lashes or an average of over 40 lashes per man.'" Surprisingly, the Admiraity ceasured the captain of the Princess Royal &er respondii to pressure and editorial complaints hmthe mspaper press and dogged criticism from an outspoken and Radical MY., Wiam

A dated, but ratha grippmg narrative an the subject was a study dane many years ago. See GE Mtinwaring and Bonarny Dobrée, Muriny: The Huating Republk (1935; London: Century, 19W). Rasor, p. 64. ïbid, p. 66. 62 Wüiiams (1789-1865).'53 Naval reforms bas were spurred on by the mutinies and public concern for the saiiing man had reached a aew level. However, as vehement as they were, cornplaints hmthe press and a lone MP were not the only motivation, Rasor argues that possibly "for the first the it [the Royal Navy] conceded that its enlisted constituency possessed human feelings, dignity, ambition, initiative, aspirations, and, yes, even respectabiiiiy, tbat uuiquely Victorian virt~e."'~~That the navy would have treated its men as something subhuman in the early Victorian period may be diaiçult to beiieve, but harshness of discipline and the rigour of naval life in the years befote bars this attitude out.

Moreover, th spirit of reform was not merely conhed to the navy. The 1860s was a period of change in electoral politics as well. The Conservative Refom Bill enlarged the voting fianchise in 1867-68 and worked in a mal1 manner to eliminate tiding inequalities. The foiiowiag Gladstone rninistry tackled disestablishment and land reform in Ireland. In addition, the post Crimean War period was noticeable for the widespread changes that swept the military establishment because of the army's mediocre performance. Even tbugh it can be argueci that any changes enacted in questions of authority or procedure were either arrested or hindered by the successes of the British in the Indian Mutiny, numetous cornmittees and inquiries were formed to 6.d some remedy to the problems that became apparent in that war.'"

Is3William Williams (Refarm) was a Radical reforma and aune fiim a merchant background He was most outspdrai on such issues as extension ofsuf6age, vote by ballot and the abolition ofChurch rates. He tepeseated Coventry and then Lambeth, with only three years interruption, hm 1835 until his deah in 1865. Mirhael Staitm, ed, Who's lPho of British Memibers of Pwlicrment, VOL 1 (Hassocits, Sussex: mester Ress, 1976),p.411* '" Rasat, p. 9. '" Hoppen, pp. 1%-97. 63 Being a part of this spirit of reform, naval discipline was one issue on the table during the 1860s. The mutinies of 1859 and in the foilowing years had led the Admkalty,

in a tare move, to ask its senior officers fiir reaction, solutions and respnses to the new

naval acts that had been passed in Parliament. The Reporrs and ûpinions uf@j?cttrs was

printed in 1867 and pmvides an insight into the minds of officas.lS6 The report offerrd

two main reasons why they thougbt the mutinies occmed. One was the presence of

"bounty men" Tbese sailors resulted fiom William Pitt the Younger's unpopular Quota

Act of 1795 which called upon the regions of Great Britain to supply men for the navy.

Each qionhad a quota whkh it had to meet.ln Oftm county authorities morîed to

offering the incentive of monetary bbbounties"to those who would step forward and fil1

the quota'58Tellingly, in the minds of the officers, the months before the mutinies of

1859 saw an iacrease of "bounty"men as there was an anti-French scare. in t 858 the

sudden increase in French ironclad construction, including the Gloire, had put the

Admiralty on hi& aIert.Is9 However, even during the Nelsonian period, these men were

iii-thought of as they had neither the motivation of true volunteers nor the skiIl of pressed

men who came at least Grom a sdiuing background. The kt that they were men who

were miiy "out of place" supposedly gave them a tendency to mutùiy.

'" Smder, p. 330. Also see William Hiclunan, d,Reports and Clpinions of û#icers on the dcts of Pmli~m& Admirdfy ReguIapionîfor MainraCLTningLkcijdiite and Good Olrder in the fia, Passed cnad lssssed since tk Yem 1860 (Laadai: Harwai, 1867). '" For iilustrative puposes here are die quotas for semai regioos: Lwdm had to supply 5,7W;Yorkshire i,#l; 26 fiam Radnaand23 hmRutland Lewis, p. 174. &id, p. 175. ''9 ïhe AchMalty had reason to be taise-nie French Gloire was a novel ship that is now cmsidered one of the tira imocliuis. The main krwas that Bntam's Supenaity in ships would be wiped out in ane strdce. Osair Packes, BririsIt Batliestrip (Landan: Seeley, 195% pp. 2-6, IM The second ceason was that the new naval discipline acts had somehow upset the Eraditional order with their regdation of punishment which used to be the sole paogative of the ~a~tain.'~As the supmae authority on board a ship, the captain virtually had the powers of life and death. His word on discipline was now augmentai

(though he would believe supersedeci) by clearly defuied, written out procedures. This was not an unexpected amer. Ttae new acts had not stopped the incidences of insuûordination and mutiny completely, so the officers bad an eary target on which to place blame. Yet neither of these explanations hold up to scrutiny. The list of mutineers did not ody inchde "bounty" men; nor were mutinies something new that was caused by these acts. These officers were wont to forget that violent mutinies had occurred in earlier times when discipline was more harsh.

As much as the officers complained of the new acts as interfiering with the old culture of absolute discipline, it was not tfae navy that provided the impetus for refonn.

The pressure in tbis priod came fiom other sources: parliamentary and public opinion.16'

As William Williams had deaonstrated in the House of Commons, the most outspoken critics were not old admirais nor men connected intimately with the navy. While Rasor argued that the navy possibly feh that the men of îklower deck deserved better treatment, the main push for the changes came hmParliament. The legislation for change &et aii was the initiative of Palmerston's govenunent which also haci been previously responsible for attempting to reform the Admidy Board in the earty 65 1860s.'~~The five naval acts encompassed an enormous range of things that affecteci the daily lie of the sailor. The Duke of Sommet, the First Lord, exclaimed that no comprehensive discipline bill had been enacted in over one hundred years and that this was 0~erdue.l~~The 6rst act in 1860 limited corparal punishment, expanded the amount of leave, insti~edmonthly pay, lowered the tirne required for good conduct pay and organized a new force of discipline onboard: the Ship's ~01ice.l~The four subsequent acts tacked on such minor additions as penalties for transgressions and limiting time for

While we read a great deal of conservatism into the opinion of naval officers in the report of 1867 regarding the outbreak of mutinies, we also see that there were some surprising and modern notions in response to the new naval acts. Captain Wilmshutst of

HMS Fisgard suggested, for exarnple, that the pstof media correspondent be created to explain to the press the issues most current in the navy (or at least the navy's official point of view) so that the public would be well-infomd. "1 don't think the Admiralty can ai3ord to treat the Press with contetnpt" is a sentiment that most military and govermentai organizations today wouid wbole-heartedly agree with.'" Alcoholism was an ever present issue with some mggesthg that wine be substituted for the hard rum that, when diluted with water, was served as grog. The best way to characterize the way of life

162 'The lacklustre pafonnance of the navy m Crimea, as well as die performance of the army, had ueated a public outcry farefnm m areas ofefliciency, management and expendiîures. However, ealmastan's govenunent never got to ~a~*ouslychangbg the structure of the Admiraity because the Board was saddled with too mauy problems and manbers wiih too mauy divergent opinions. Beeler, p. 42. Rasor, p. 116. IMIbiil, p. 67. 'a Ibià., p. 117. Icï6John Wmtcm, Humahfor the Lfe of a MOT!(London: Michael Joseph, 1977), p. 18 1. 66 for the lower deck in the 1860s was that it was in a state of flw Combined with the rapid technological aàvances, life in the navy undenvent its most wide ranging changes ever.

It is wise to caution, however, that tbese reforms did not suddenly appear in one year or even five years. While they were fir ranging, reforms that affected the common sailor had been implernented piecemeal since the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the dernobiization of the fleet in 18 18. There was the balving of the rum ration in 1825 and the abolition of the beer ration in 1831 tbat addressai the continuhg issue of alcoholism and the realization that more ofien tbm not it led to accidents, fights and unrest. Manning problems were addressed with the creation of a national registry of active mariners in

1835; those who were rotated in turn to the top of the list were to serve for five years. The

Crimem War spurred the creation of a Reserve where mariners would be encouraged to join with strictly defmed tenns of service and decent pay.'6'Nor were the reforms of the

1860s the last. Changes to the conditions which the tacs were subject to was an ongoing process. Flogging as a method of punishment wntinued until 1871 when it was

suspended in peacetime and thes Wysuspended ahogeîher in 1879.'68 But it would be accurate to state that the decade of the 1860s was outstanding in the number of reforms

introduced and the swütness of implementation.

Reaching 1878, the navy that &sted was essentiaiiy changed hmits Nelsonian

predecessor. Wiih reference to the Iower deck, pimishment was no longer dependent

solely on the whims of a particular captain. As disgruntled as many of the old officers

16' 16' Wmtm, "LXe and Educatim in aTechnicaiiy Ewlvnig Navy 1815-1925," p. 263. Wmtm, Hwohfor tk L@ ofa SaïTor!+ p. 178. 67 were about being straight jacketed in the exercise of their autbotity, their means of punishing offenders were strictly regulated by new codes set out by Parliament and enforced by the Admiralty. Confinement rather than corpord punishment became the mk. The iast man to hang at the yardarm after a rather hasty court uwshal on board a ship was in early 1861. He was convicted for attempted murder and the cucumstances most iikely dictated why he was sentenced so quickly and bhly.169Mer this incident, summary execution under the old way was impossible with the new naval discipline acts that rneticulously recorded each crime and the punishment meted out in accordance with the des.

With this histocic background of the lower deck in the mid-nineteenth century, the social order on board HMS Pinrrfore can be understwd with a greater chrity. The application of the specifics of naval reform to a fànciiùl operetta yields minute detail of

Gilbert and Sullivan's re-creation of naval life and how fàithfi~lthey remained to reality in spite of the apparent silliness of the dramatic material. One important issue should be noted though: the question of whether Gilbert and Sullivan intendeci the opera to be set in the pst rather than in 1878. While the opera was mentioned as king set in 1840 by W.S.

Gilbert in his printed li'bretto to the Lord Chamberlain, this is never made clear in the action of the plot nor in published scores and liiretti. The strongest evidence against taking 1840 as gospel is the mention of a telephone in the 1st act. London wouid only have its fûst telephone Company in Iune 1878, a fùll month derthe operetta opened.

'69 The mcident oçnirred on the Chiua dlaiag the Second Opium a Am>w War with China (betwcea the yesrs 1856-1860 puucNated with the fitiled rrooluhat the Tccaty of Tienstin (18581). Presumably, the kct that thae had been a wer going an and that they were thorisands of miles away hm Great Briiain allowed the presiding ofnœrs the leeway to do as tbey wished- Ibid 68 And it bad only been invented two years earlier in 1876 by Alexder Graham Bell.

This was a very conscious anacbmnism and indicates that Giibert never took the issue of

the year of setting seriously. We can safely assume that with al1 the rehences to contemporary events and people in the years leading up to 1878, HMS Pinafore ki more a

ship of 1878 than 1840 and that its depiction of people and social relationships is chat of

the contemporary period of Gilbert and Sullivan rather than forty years in the

As mentioned earlier, the theme of love triumphing over class distinctions is the

main mover of the pbt in the operetta"' While the depiction of sailors as king keand

noble spirits was mt new, the presence of it in HMS Pinafore is really quite relevant in

light of the nmerous social refonns to the lower deck during the past few decades. And

yet there is a delicious irony, for it is because of the shift in the navy's treatrnent of the

common sailon that there is an inherent contlict between the crew mernbers. From the

beginnhg of the operetta, the sailors have been deemed bright and worthy men. The First

Lord of the Admiralty, Sir Joseph, had even composed a song for the sailors'

entertainment. The song "is designed to encourage independence of thought and action in

the lower branches of the service, and to teach the p~ciplethat a British sailor is any

man's equal..."'* What foliows is the giee, "A British Tar," in an old English madrigal

style tbat transfomu itself into a most unlikely hompipe dance. The song is sung without

accornpaniment in the f'nst section with two basses against one tenor for greater sowrity

and seriousness. The second section is brisk and brings in the entire men's chorus for a

"O Bradley, ed, The CompfeteAnnotaled Gilberr and Sullivan, p. 118. "' See Chapîer 2, p. 43-44. ln Thougfi Su Joseph sarcastically he a& that the British mior was the eqdof any man, excepring his tordship hiinseIf. Bradley, ed., ed, Complete A~ol~edGilbert and SulINan, p. 139. 69 roiiicking finish However, even dertbis rousiug spectacle, the one sailor wbo still believes in the old order is Dick Deadeye. The viiiain of the opetetta (and a fine one dimensional stock character), he is the one who does not believe Ralph's love for

Josephine is possible given the current social order and does not beüeve for one minute that Sir Joseph's polite prowuncements are sincere.

Dick Deadeye is not a temily cornpiicated character. He is a typicai melodramatic stage villain whom the audience would mst iikely boo and hiss at his on- stage antics. However, he is given several Fies which are teUing with regards to the social order of the lower deck in relation to officers. He is the only sailor to look with disgust upon Ralph's efforts of wooing Josephine. It was unnatural as "captain's daughters don? mrry foremast ha~~ds."'~In thip respect, Dick Deadeye is most aware of the social barriers preventing a union of this sort and for this realistic view he is shunned by the rest of the sailors. In subsequent scenes he responds to Su Joseph's talk about equaiity with skepticism According to Dick Deadeye, Sir Joseph "means well, but he don't know. When people have to obey other people's orders, equality's out of the question."'74 Gilbert and Sullivan set this villain up against the rest of the cast even ihough his pronouncements have the most realistic quality to them. Yet the auâience is not expected to sympathize with his comments but rather to cher on the poor sailor lad

Ralph. in the end, it is topsy-tunrydom that triumphs as Ralph marries Josephine rather than the triumph of reality.'"

ln LM, p. 125. fiid, p. 14 1. '" However, the resolution is radier coatrived and not a hugely radical statement See Chapter 2, p. 43-44. 70 This tesoiution is bound to give Pi-e an escapist feel considering the reality of a sailor's social position. Whik the navy was wiliing to treat its sailors in a more

"humane9"r, it Hl far sbrt in promothg any idea of equality behveen ranks. Nor was this its dictum. And yet in spite of the remaining inequality between ranks, the notion of a sailor's equality with any person is an old one which reached back to the days of nautical melodrama in the early nineteenth century. Wih the improved situation of

sailors in this period, the gap between htasy and reality on the stage had becorne smaller. Sailors actually did enjoy better conditions on board ships and beçame more

respectable. The Victorian attitude had made the navy hto a place worthy of a career.

Coloutfiil memoirs were writîen ancl published to "give some grown-up boys an idea of a

sailor's life" and to encourage the thought oftk navy as a place to be.'" And by the end

of Queen Victoria's reign, The Times had stated that the sea service fiom officers to,

more amazingly, regular seamen was an ''abst incomparable school" for the formation

of character.'" Was this idealism ofthe mvy at its most rampant? The concept of a

school was certaidy a fàr cry hmthe eighteenth century or Nelsonian navy when sailing

men feared for their Iives serving in the draconian navy and most people, while happy it

was giving England glory, considemi the navy a good place to send the criminal

elernents of the chies.

In what is probably one of the more hummus episodes in the operetta that relates

to naval discipline, Captai.Corcotan cracks a whip over the heads of the sailors as they

"'Admiral Sn Wüliam Kmedy, K.C.B., hmhFor the Li$ fea Sailor! Fi& Years in the Royd N.y (London: Blackwood, 1890), p. v. '" Tiie Times, 19 Juiy 1902 quoîed in Cqnthia Fansia Beiuman, VktorùmMyhs cfik &a, p. 69. 71 sing. Those in the middle class audience who knew that flogging as a punisbment in peacetime had been suspended since 1871 (and in abeyance for a decade before bat) woulâ bave found tbis bit of "nostalgiaYyto be entertaining. Near the end of Act II, the lovas have concocted a plan to escape the ship in the dead of night and elope ashore hoping to 6nd a convenient clergyman who would perform the ceremony. Unbeknownst to the pair and the rest of the crew and cast, Dick Deadeye had already warned the captain that his daughter, that very Nght, would try to steal away. in a duet with the captain, "Kid Captain, I've important idiotmation," he relates the plan, fuiishing the piece with the captain threatening to bring out the cat-0'-nine-tails, The hiiowing ensemble piece after the duet set by Sullivan is a brilliant work of contrasting loud and sofi dynamics. Here is the text of the tirst stanza:

ALL Caretiilly on tiptae stealing, Bteathing gently as we may, Every step with caution feeling, We will sofily steal away. (CAPTAiN stumps.-Chrd.) ALL (much dmed). Goodness rne- Why what was that? DICK. Silent be, It was the cat! ALL (re-4. It was-it was the cat! CAPT. @rotking eut+ 'nine-fails).They're right, it was the cat!'"

While the crew sings piano so as not to wake the captain, Sullivan cleveriy places aforte chord for the captain's stamping-signalimg his displeasure and emphasipng his impending intervention into the flair. AU the while, Captain Corcoran has had bis eyes on the pmceedings hmthe quarterdeck. In most productions, he cracks his cat whüe he stamps his feet. This seemhgly mhor anachronism onboard HMPinajèore was no doubt

In Bradly, d,The Complete Awuted Gilbert andSuilNan, p. 169. 72 a concession to the remembrance that the navy oncehaci a severe policy (or more accurately a lack of a humane poiicy) conceming discipline.

That something as frightfid as a flogging could have been deinto a stage gag for a Light comedy is a testament to the change in attitude towards naval discipline. In the nautical melodramas of the early nineteenth century, when flogging had still been in the common practice, the tar who suffeted under the cat was depicted as heroic figure to be sympathized with. in Douglas Jenold's play The Mutiny at the Nore; or, British Sailors in 1797 (1830), the character Richard Parker declaims to the audience:

Listen, îhen wonder that men with hearts of throbbing flesh within ihem can look upon, much less inflicî, such tartures. They sent him to receive 500 lashes, so many at the side of every vessel, wtiilst the thronging aowd hung upon the yards and rigging, to hear the wretch's cries, and lodc upon his open wounds.'"

This is tdya monologue that is designed to capture the sympathy of an audience. Jerrold was a dramatist ancl, as such, took sorne artistic license, but he had also served in his youth as a midshipman and was well aware of the brutalities of naval life, Jerrold was

vehement in opposing a practice that could bring a man close to death while at the same

time pointing out the irony of existing British laws preventing the excessive flogging of

aaimal~.'*~Moving ahead fifly years mto the mid-Victorian perd, the issue of kgging

is king used for comic effect. Tt had aiready passed into naval lore as something of the

pst, rather than king a burning immediate issue of humanity and compassion as it had

been in Jerrold's the.

'" This play was a case of Jerrold dramatizing the actual events of the serious 1797 mutinies. Quoted m Davis, p. 130. &id, p. 131. Otber commentators have pointed out the same irmy- in 1847, William Howitt cunmented on the protectîmdogs &ved as opposed to soldiers. Rasor, p. 53. 73 The episode with the cat was mt the end of Gilbert and Sullivan's comedic efforts with naval discipline either. Mer having okedlong enough, Captain Corcoran thwarts the couple's plans and confIonts Ralph hr having had the audacity to propose mankge to Josephine. This co&ontation spawns one of the silliest parts of the operetta: the Gilbert and Sullivan crime of swearing in the navy. As mentioned eartier in Act 1,

Captain Corcoran is a very well-liked captain who never swore at his crew. He sings,

"Whatever the emergency; / Though 'Bother it' 1 may / Occasionally Say, / 1 never use a big, big D-.""' At this point later in the operetia he breaks his usual practice and uses the word "damme" to Ralph. Si.Joseph Porter's female cousins and aunts overhear this and are filled with revulsioa Most hnically in that musical number, the fernale members of the cast sing "he said damme" innumerable times (actualiy twelve repetitions which seem even more when set to mu si^).'^ Sir Joseph sends Captain Corcoran to his cabin like a schoolmaster sending a pupil to the corner of a room. However, when Ralph reveals his love for Josephine, Su Joseph wastes no tirne in having a couple of menacing

Royal Marines clap hirn in chahs, Ralph's indiscretion has landed him in the ship's confinement quarters or, as it is called in the operetta, a "dungeon ceii."

Here is another reflection of a reformed navy: tbat of confinement rather than corporal punishrnent. In the navy of Nelson's period, Ralph would have no doubt been stripped of his shirt and flogged with tbe cat for his indiscretion in attempthg to elope

"' Bdley, d,The Complefe AnnotatedGilberi andSulIivan, p. 129. When HiW Pi@re was staged as a chiidcm's versim, this part of the opeeetta was retairied and the chidm used the word "damme" as WU. Whiie pdpsmly a mild proMty by ewn Victmonanstandards, childten's autha Lewis Carroll (Chartes Dodgsai) objected violently to ihis obsoenity of havhg childrai Wear mstage. "How Mr. Gilùeri ddhavestooped to wite, and Sir Arthur Sullivan cwld have prostituted his noble art to set to musi% sudi vile irash, it passes my sknl to undastand." Sîedman, p. 175 and Mullen, p. 186. 74 with his captain's daughter. inthis case, MWS Pinq%re 's plot wouid resolve thus:

Ralph is about to be flogged, but Little Buttercup reveals his past as a highbom child who was switched at birth with the lowborn Captain Comran. Sir Joseph cannot bring himself to marry a Josephine, now a lowiy seaman's daughter, and allows Ralph to many

Josephine. A11 is forgiven and the nuptials follow. In spite of the still happy outcome, one

could hardly imagine such a sensitive character as Sir Joseph ordering such a punishment

for Rdph nor, more importantly, wouM the reguiations of the contemporary navy allow

for such a barbaric practice. So as it happens in the operetta he is only threatened with

imprisonment before Littie Buttercup saves him with her fàr-ktched tale of hby farming

(teiiiigly, and no doubt for emphasis on Ralph's unfortunate fate, the words "dungeon

celi" are repeated six times in ail six verses of the musical nurnber: "Farewell, my own").

Gilbert and Sullivan worked into the hbric of their tale a most contemporary

depiction of sailors and some of the conflicts that were current in the navy. The exactness

with which Gilbert took his task in fashioning the Liietto is fascinating. Visiting HMS

Vicrory "he made sketches of every detail of îhe quarterdeck to the minutest ring, blt,

thole-pin, or ha~~ard."'~~Also having enthusiasticaily served in the militia and having a

father who was a former naval surgeon gave him an eye hr detail. In spite of a copy of

the Libretto ostensibly dating the action of the opecetta as occurriag in 1840, Gilbert and

Sullivan created their crew with the most up to date and modem depictio-that of

British natiod character as represented by a new and humane navy that treated its dors

fàirly and was an ideal place for the formation of character and development of morals.

'" Cellier and Bridgeman, p. 49. 75 Sailors king the buiwark ofthe aation was nothing new in the late nineteenth century, but what was still very modern was the fact that sailors could be respectable in spite of stiii existiig social barriers. Writing in the late nineteenth century, Sir William Laird

Clowes the eminent naval historian said that the modem British saifor was "no longer a dninkea, dissipated, merly improvident fell~w."'~This change in perception, whether in the written works of men lieClowes or in the popular songs of the period such as "Ship ahoy!," or on the stage as in HMS Pinafore, was noticeable.

HMS Pinafiore is reveaiing for what it chooses to tell us about the contemporary navy. It does not give us a by any means a complete picture, but, while its sailors are a comedic caricature of navy men, they retain a certain air of reality about them within the discussions on discipline, class and class boundaries. However, Gilbert and Sullivan also tell us a great deai about the Victorian middle class attitude towards sailing men in what they chsena to work into their operetta. One such topic was sexuatity.

Surprisingly, in light of the conventional rhetoric on Victorian prudery, ttiis issue was addresseci by the various reforms of the mid-Victorian naval administrators. While sexuality in Victorian society has become a very popular topic, it is usually given less coverage when it pertains to the na~y.~~~There are few articles on îhis topic, and most treat the issue in a rather perfiinctory mamer. One reason could be a reluctance to tackie what was, until only recently, a sensitive topic. But a more important reason may be the dficulty of comprehensive research because of the lack of documents and other diable

Quoced in Behrman, p. 75. See Michael Mason, The Miakiitg ofrctonim SexuBl Anihrcies (Oxfad: Oxfad UP, 1944) and Andrew H Miller and James Eii Adams, eds, Sexuolitii in Vk~~nimBriram (Bloomington: indiana UP, 1996). 76 accounts in the naval sphere hmthis period. This was mainly due to the public

Victorian attitude towards sexualiîy cbaracterized by "secretiveness, rnisconceptions, pdery, hypocrisy, euphemisms, and the double standard."'86 And yet we learn tbat the sexual health of the Victorian naval sailor was a matter of serious concern to the naval administrators of the second haif of the nineteenth century.

The chief concem of the Admiralty was the incidence of venereal disease among

the men. The tendency was to focus on the consequeoces rather than the causes and how to prevent an epidemic fiom breaking out. The solution they formulated was the

regulation of female prostitutes in restricted areas which most sailors ftequented ancl

thereby limiting their access. An expanded Contagious Diseases Act in 1866 (one of a

series that the government introduced) created districts where the prostitutes wouId be

checked regularly by medical examiner^.'^^ Yet the definition of a prostitute was so open-

end& that rnany poor women who lived in these districts were subjected to king hauled

before a niagistrate and forced to have needlessly humiliating and often painful medical

inspections. The outcry and subsequent popular (and often female led) movement against

the Act was such that the tenns pertaining to these restricted districts were suspended in

1883 and repealed in 1886.Ia8In the end there was letl a îàiled experiment: that of

regulating sailors' sexuality ihrough the control of the women the Admitalty believed

k,p. 87, '" The Contagious Diseases Acts pertaiiimg to the military were passed m 1864,1866 and 1869. Each Act expandeci the geographical size of the areas affiècted and gave power and responsibilities to the Admiity and Wrir ût?ïce in the enfarcement of regulatims. These acts could be considered ihe hi& point of "sanitary intavaitianism" m the long history ofmedical and mdpolitics m nindeenth cenhay mm. Frank Mat, fbgerow SPxucilities: &diCo-moruipfitics in England sime 1830,2& ed (Londm: Routledge, 2ûûû), p. 54. las See Judith R WalkmOWItz, htim'onami VktorrOn &dey: Women,class, mà the str~e(Cambridge: Cambridge üP, 1980). 77 they patronized. Veneteal disease increased immediieiy derthe repeal of the Acts and did not subside until the First World War.

The issue of vemreal disease was poorly addressed as the Admiralty, in addition to the Contagious Diseases Act, only ever forbade women to be on board ships or restricted the sailors' opporhrnity for shore Ieave. Until later, whether through Victorian prudery or ignorance, there was never any attempt at fi.ank education or communication

with sailors. The lack of a comprehensive officiai policy directed at saiiors rather than at

prostitutes created a haphazard health policy at ôest as it did not address the primary

motivation fôr the sailors to fiequent prostitutes: the lack of proper sbore leave and the

off fiom long commissions. It was ludicrous of the AdmU.alty to believe that men could

be completely chaste for the five years or so in ôetween ardwus commissions. What then

kept on occurring was the oki tradition of officers who allowed women on board the ship

on the sly to keep the men happy or of sailors contmuing to frequent prostitutes whenever

they had the chance to go a~hore.'~~The period in question can be characterized by the

failure of official haif measures in attempting to deai with the sexuality and sexual heaith

of saiiors.

Moreover, the Admiraity's concern was only with sexuaiity in the hetemsed

sense of the wocd. Men it came to homosexualii, the issue was only discussed in the

most oblique of tenas in officiai documents. ",..indecent acts to Boys.. .an unnatural

offense.. .nasty açts. .. 6lthy coduct ...": listed bere are only some of the iuadequate

'19 Evelyn Berdanan, The Hidien Navy (Laida: bishHimiItai, 1973), p. 19; Henry Baynham, More the Mmt: Nacd Ratings of tkNineteenth Ce- (Laadon: Hutdiinson, 197 l), p. 39; and Rasor, pp. 97- 98. 78 tem by which homsexuality was de^'^ As a sexuai act. buggery was pmished most severely; as a form of social telatioaship, it was aot even possible, kt aione cec~~ntzed.'~'It remained a capital offense until1861 and conviction hmthat date unta

1967 could have meant life imprisonment.'gtMeed, many sympathetic captains, ùi order to pmnt an oficial court martial that couid mean certain dath, oilen recordai the nature of the offense in the vagitest of terms and punished the sailors with a few lashes. L93

And yet homosexuality has been a part of the Royal Navy for as long as the navy existed.

In the twentieth century, Sir Winston Churchill's sardonic quote about the Miions of the navy as king "rum, buggery and the lash" highligbted behaviour tbat, while clearly existing, was not recr,gnizRd by a more polite cmwd that thought of saibrs as behg gwd natured, honest, fighting men and, who, while having ~xualurges, would at fast satise them only with wcime~.'~~

The punishment for buggery or sodomy, as incidences of homsedity were then calkd, was most severe. The navy hanged men who were caught infragrante delicto. Sodomy and the breakdown of urder were somehow linked in the minds of officers and perhaps not sutprisingly the execution of men for sodomy derthe great

lmRBSOC, p. 98. 19' kfaey Weeks, Coming OuP: Homsexwl Politics in Brilainjiom tk Nineteenth Cenwy ro the Ptesent (Landon: Quarte&Books, 1977), pp. 1 1-13, '" A. Gilbert, "Buggery and the British Navy, 1700-186 1," hianal of Socid H~toory10 (1976-77), p. R. Ig3While oficially abhorred, one of6ca- wtote mu& later in 1910 that "1 have ken stationed, as you know, in two LW three ships and 1 thmk they have beni tharmghiy rcpeseoîative of the best sort of British Seamen. ûi the D-. hanusexuality was riti, and one couid sse with his own qes how it was going on between &cm...To my hawledge, suiomy W a regular ttiing ai ships that go on lmg uuises. in warships, 1 would say that the saila prefared iL" Ihe passage is siirprisiirpriJmg tÙr iîs nmdialaoce, radier cool assessneat of the issue and ihe referaice to officers as well as men. fiid, p. 73. "Suppdy spken to die Elad ofthe Admiralq in 1939.Quoted in Rasor, p. ii. 79 mutinies of 1797 increased ~li~htl~.~~'Perhaps they equated the revolt against the command structure with the 6'revoLof the baser elements" against authorized semal behaviour.'% The Royal Navy's attitude towards homosexuality clearly mirrod that of civilian society: homosexual behaviour would not be tolerated.lg7 It could even be said that the navy punished homosexuais with more zeal since the closed society of both officers and sailors onboard a ship was more closely scrutinized. While officers were rarely charged with moral offences, even they were subjected to harsh punishments in cases of ~odom~.'~~Even though officers could never hope to stamp the practice out completely, most actively sought to punish the men who engaged in such activity, whetber personally with the captain ordering the punishment or more severely though a court martial. As with most crimes in the navy, however, the treatment of sailors kame more ienient in the nineteenth century. The last execution for sodomy occurred in 1829 and the Victorian attitude that homosexuaIity was a category of mental illness that needed to be treated rather than punished (or in isolated cases even tolerated) slowly took t10ld.'~~

Sexuality or hst as distinct fiom the flowery emotion of love is distinctly absent hmmost literature and music relating to naval sailors. In HMS Pinafore, the sailors are of a particuhîy chaste type. Far hmbeing foul-mouthed, they care for nothing except being "attentive to [tbeir] duty" and to "stand to [theu] guns al1 day."2w Raiph's passion

'* A. Gilbert, p. 87. '% Ibià, p. 88 and Weeks, p. 13. 19' For cidians, the Cemal Law Amendment Bill of 1885 in aie of its articles outlawed al1 forms of male homosexual contact definitively. Most, p. 10 1. '" A. Gilbert, pp. 84-85 In George Drysdale's The EIenrents of kid Scieme (I868), the authœ even goes so fiu as to say that Society's trealment of homosanuility is abmrdly "out of proportion'' and advocates tolerance. Quoted m Mason, p. 193. MO Bradley, ed., ïkComplete Amuted Gilbert and Sdlivun, p. 119. 80 for Josephine is tnie as the outcome bears his devotion out, but he is ever so prim and proper m his coudip. Uniike Nanki-Poo and Yum-Yum, the pair of lovers in Gilbert and Sullivan's later work The Mikado (1885), Raiph and Josephuie never even get around to flirting, let alone attempting to kiss iike their counterparts in the later pete et ta.'^' Ail

Ralph could ever do was propose to Josephine in the most bombastic and unbelievable way possible. He cries out:

Aye, even though Jove's amwywere laundied at the head of the audacious mœtal whose lips, unhallowed by relationship, dared to breathe that precious word, yer would breathe it aice, and then pcrchance be silent evnmore. JosephUie, in one brief breaih 1 will mwnmte the hopes, the doubis, the anxious fears ofsix weary maiths. Josephine, Iam a British sailor, and 1 love yo~!~'~

RaIph puts Josephine in an impossible position. She cannot possibly respoad to the bluff protestations of love hma lowly bom sailor. Predictably, she rejects him ouüight and storms off the stage in a pretended rage. It is only the katof Raiph's suicide that forces Josephi to open up her heart and accept his (ove at the end of Act iI.

This acceptame then forms the topic for the grandiose finale of the act that resembles the ensemble endings of contemporary grand opera. Herein Les the interesthg quality that

Gilbert and Sullivan decided upon for theu main character: Ralph is an accurate budesque of his melodramatic forebears.

Thus the concerns of the crew are limited to singing about th& good captain, duties and social standing. The sailors are a rather bloodless lot in that they are flat characters that represent a particular type of depiction tbat reached back into the

Gilbert and Sullivan mate an entire scene atwod Nanki-Poo and Km-Yum's flaunting of Giibert's fancifi11 lapanese law agaùist flirtaig with the duet 'Were you not to Ko-Ko pligtited" as the cmüepiece. Ibid, p. 585. ibid, p. 145. 8 1 traditions of melodrama: tbat of an asexual sailor. As mentioned in Chapter 2, the dorof an mrly nineteenth century naval melodrarna was a chaste and naïve man, stmng and brave but essentially artless. This was the popular Victorian public view of the naval sailor as other songs bear this out. Even the later song 5Ship ahoy!" (1 W), wMe a bit more ambiguous in its text with regards to a sailor's sexual mores, plays upon the humornus ideaiized notion that "ail the nice girls love a sail~r."*~~In this respect, HMS

Pinafore realiy falls in hewith the contempocary ideal. However, the relentiess sanitizing of dorsMIS under an ironic light. The realii of venereal disease was a concem for the Admiralty, as it had an impact on the everyday health (and thus productivity) of the sailors who rnanned the vessels. But it and the idea of a sailor's virility or sexuai'i never became a large part of the popular image of a British tar. While this was not tme in the twentieth or in earlier centuries, the sanitking of the tar image was the case in the nineteenth. Mer considering the musical and dramtic productions of this period, the evidence bears this out.

If heterosexual inferences ate spatse in nineteenth literature and in music rehting to the navy, hornosexuality is completely absent. There is simply no engagement, with or even a snide refetence, to the matter. While recognized as existing by the Admiralty, it was sordid and not befitting of the men who led Britain's first heof defense. Reading in between the ünes of HMS Pinafore however, gives us a reinterpreted view of the matter.

As mentioned previously, homosexuality had been a recognized, though not publicly acknowledged, part of the Royal Navy's social structure. Long periods of duty on the

'O3 GJ. Miils and Bennett Scott, "Ship Ahoy!" (London: Star Music Publishg Co., k909). 82 high seas and the generally strict discipline had fostered a type of camaraderie amongst sailors îhaî, not infiequently, included sexual relations. Allusions to this can be argued to exist in HMS Pinafore. Twice in the play on separate occasions, but most noticeably in

Act 1 after his ostentaîious arrivai, Su Joseph Porter K.C.B. makes pointed references to

Captain Corcoran's 'kmarkably the crew" and "splendid seama~l."~He even goes so far as to tell a sailor that he will personally teach him the hornpipe afler

Coming as it does Aer his close inspection this is a possible double entendre linking

honipipe with the lechernus meaning of hom and h~rn~?~Taking the dialogue itselg as a plain dentext, it is admittedly difficult to draw f'irm conclusions. But there has been

a tradition of theatre companies playing this very dialogue in a campy fishion, with the

Fust Lord of the Admiralty as a slightly effete and suspect "closet" case?07 One wonders

how exactly Gilbert intended George Grossmith to play the role since there was no

detailed mention of individual performances in commentary on the premiere. The review

in The Times was rather perfùnctory in this regard.*'' The illustrated London News had

9209 n, only gone so far as to say that George Grossmith "sang with quiet humour.

ZM Su Joseph sajs to Ralph m Act II, Wow tell me, my t'ne fellow-for you ure a fine fellow-" The emphasis is Gilbert's Bradley, ed., The Complete Annorared GiIbert undSullivan, p. 175. ?OS Ibid, p. 139. Hampipe also appears in Grossrnith's The Diqof a NOMwhen Mr. Pooter's ''nautical Look" me particuhr day becmes a ause for ridicule. Gageand Weedon Grossrnith, p. 68. 2w For chri@, the sexual mcaning of the word "hm" had already entdthe English language in the sixteenth century. Shakespeare had employed it m his plays and in the eighteenih centlny Samuel Johnson had mcludeâ that defmition in his dictiamy. "Homy" came to be useci in the nineteenth cenhry. 'O' Lisîen to the classic versiai of HM Piqfim recordecl by the D'Oyle Carte Company on the Decca label a similarly watch the video version (1960). Close m spmt to that production Es the versiai produced by the Canadiaa Broadcasîing Corpaation (198 1). The earliest available D'Oyle Carte Clpm Company recordhg dates fian 1922, wùile the earliest record'mg by The Russell Hmting aad Odem canpanies on cylmders dates fiam 1907-when Gilbert was still alive. The ossified nature of the D'Oyle Carte Company's performance rituais makes theif recad'igs a direct desceadait ofthe original pafiances by the originaI cast Canaadine, p. 25. IZe lies, 27 May 1878. 'O9 llie ltlirrfrrrledbndonNews, 1 June 1878, p. 515. 83 reviewer in Fun wrote, "George Grossrnith more than sustains the repute he has already gained in his particular branch of art, but where ail is so good it seems hardly fair to particularise.~'2'0In any case, Giibert would have controiied his portrayai most careflllly as he was a martinet at rehearsalsO2"Either Grossrnith's acting was so subtle as not be aoticed or it was dehirate, but ignored in written accounts. Like most of ihe research on homosedity in this period, the assessrnent is highly speculative and one

risks jumping to rash conclusioas when examinhg HMS Pinafore fiom this angle. It is

most accurate to say that the pssibili@ of this representation is existent rather than

In case of visual imagery, HMS Pinafore relied on contemporary depictions of

sailors for its staging. Not only was Gilbert precise in his research on the stage set, he

was also a stickler for accurate costumes. The sailors' costumes were specially ordered

fiom tailors in ~ortsmouth.~~~Even the weii-kwwn Admiral Lord Charles Beresford,

then a Junior Lord at the Admiralty, attested to the accuracy of the visuais in an 1887

letter to Arthur Sullivan worth quothg in part.

1 was perfectly delighted wi?hPinQm last night-uite excellent. You told me to tell you anything 1 saw which offended the eye of an expert. h'tbe X, They are minor deîails, but make the difikence in pafécth and not absolute perfection?'3

Complementing this image on stage, Jack Tar was ofien featured on the cover of

contemporary newspapers and magazines. The image perfkctly complements the one

created in music and iiterature. The nlwirated London News and The Graphie are ideal

2'0 Fun, 5 June 1878 ''' Cellier and Ridgeman, pp. 50-52. '"Stedman, p. 155. '13 Uarù and Grey, p. 75. 84 sources for during the late 1870s they were heavily focused on the Eastern Question in which the navy played a role. Indeed, Gilbert sought to capitaiize on a public aiready saturated with mvai imagery and pteoccupied with the war that had been going on in the

East between Turkey and Rusa and the potenhi invalvement of Britain's noble tardI4

Gilbert himself resigned his militia commission in the Royal Aberdeenshire Highlanders in the heady atmosphere of the spcing of 1878, debathg on whether to devote his entire theto the theatre business or to take the chance, if the regirnent came on duty, and satisfy his youthful dream of sewing in the military?"

At the the, ships and large fleets were very popular subjects for the newspapers.

However, whk photography was alteady a well-establisid technology, mass reproducing photographs on newsprint was not yet po~ible."~Hence actists were employed to create their ink drawüigs for reproduction in the newspapers. What resulted were massive two-page spreads and vistas of the British fleets stearning in a stately fashion in the Sea of Marmora or the dramatic visions of the last moments of a ship about to sink?"

in the drawings of tus, the imagery focused on the hard work, the sweat and the diligence with which sailors performed their tasks. In one picture, two sailors are shown

heroicaily manning their ww Gatling gun?18 in another picture, on the iiont cover no

les, they are hauiiig joints of beef onto kirship.'19 The tan are manhandling the heavy

''' Higgins p. 37. *15 Stedman, p. 157, *" Lemard de Vries and Ilonka van Am&, Hr;rwas tku News, 1865-1897 (New York: St. Mariin's Press, 1973), p. 6. ?'' See The Ilmmedïon&m News, 23 Febniary 1878, p. 163 and 30 Mar& 1878, p. 29%. "'ibid, 2 Mardi 1878, p. 190. *19 ibid, 16 March 1878

90 load while others look on enthusiastically. Finaily, in large engraving, sailors are at cutlass drill. Al1 the sailors are in petfect synchronization with their cutlasses thrusting forward in an aggressive gesture of defiance. The tàces are stem with nary a mile.^^'

There is a certain blduniformity around these pictures. Sailors were drawn as sailors

and wt individuals. Individual characterizations of a particular sailor was not done. In the

bigger çontext of creating an image, these drawings amplement the one already well-

delineated. These three sarnples were only published witbin three weeks of each other

and only a htbnofwhat was published in the years and mnths in and around March

1878. These pictures had to be ksh in the mind the audience of HMS Pinafoe which

bad its prerniere scarcely two rnontbs later on 25 May 1878.

The image of British naval tar was part myth and part reality. It is clear that there

was, on the one hand, a certain homogenous image tbat focussed on attributes that were

real or imagineci and excluded many others. Hence we find the bold and brave sailor,

with only minor variations, in early nineteenth century melodrama, in song sheets, in

poetry, in engravhgs and drawings and, of coume, in the work of focus: HMS Pinafore.

This was the sailor who did not fear to die in serving bis country, suffered under

discipline, but bore it with the customary British stiffupper lip. This was the sailor who

cherished his supposed Womand unpredictable Iife. An undated ballad, probably late

eighteenth or eariy nineteenth century, sums up tbis imagery: When we sail with a fiesh'ning breoae, And landsmen ail grow sidc, sir; 'Ihe sailor 1011s wiîh his muid at ease, And the saig and the can go quick, su. Laughing hae, Qua@% Steadily, readily, Cheaily, rnmily, Still fiom aue and thinkmg fiee, 1s a sailor's life at se8'

On the other band thete existed the heterogeneous pupof sailors who actually manned the ships of the Royal Navy. Rather than king a uniform lot, they often became sailors for various ceasons. As we have seen, even thuugh Unpressment had fden into complete disuse by the Victorian perioà, ihere were still the necessary evils of quota and bounty men in addition to the more respecteci sailmg men who volunteered whether for the decent wages or simply for a more adventurous Me than that of the merchant marine.

Once in the service they certainly did not ail behave the same. Sexual desues are a part of being human and the sailors were no exception. As some of the evidence shows, they were susceptible to prostitution and the venereal disease that oAen accompanied it.

Without applying modern distinctions conceniing the boundaries of sexual orientation, some of them engaged in homosemial activities that îhe Addtyacknowledged as acisting but abh~cred.~There simply was never an actual Jack Tar. The uibr Uoage that did exist in the nineteenth is a composite ofthe popular characteristics in song and verse and none of the more coarse or impolite ones.

=' Quoted in Robinson, p. 366. It would be rather anachronistic to apply here nvnitieih centiiry dehitiais ofhomosexual and hetaosexual to nineteenth caihiry people. Ratha than being strict boundaries ofgender prefnenœ, sexuaiity was rather tluid as some officers, carectly ar moareftly, ihought that prostitution with women was an excellent alternative and prewmiioa for the aaumceof homosexu~lity,Others thought that prostitution taught vice and emùoldencd men to try homdmcesces A. Gilbert, p. 91. The Royal Navy was and still is an institution that can ôe divided into several constituent parts. In temof materials there were the ships, the dockyards, the naval colleges and the coaling stations. In tem of personnel thewere the lowly Jack Tm,who were the backbone of the navy in peace and wartime as weil as the officers and administrators thaî oversaw the system and provideci the leadership. To this point, the discussion has really focussed on the foundation of tbe navy: tbe common sailor. However, in discussing the

Royal Navy as a whole, the Amy,the politics and the technological development that created a distinct navy in the mid to late nineteenth century as opposed to the old sailing navies of Drake, Benbow or Nelson's periods need also to ôe considered. The nineteenth century saw great changes to each of these areas whether in technological advances or inst itutional reform.

The technological advances that made the Victorian navy possible were, of course, not independent fiom the advances tht characterized this period. Stem power and plate armour had becorne tbe mie; wood had completeiy disappeared as the main construction material and coal had become more important than canvas. Al1 were a resuit of the indusûialization that had begun with inventions such as the stem engine and the rehement of manufacturiag techniques such as the mlling of progressively stmnger iron and later steel plates, Like most tmshns, the move hmsail to stem occuned

graddy with hybrid ships dong the way. Tbe £irst vital step to systematizing the 93 development of ships was the establishment of a School of Naval Architecture in

181 1-= From there various innovations poured W. Ficame a stem-powered sbip, then the adoption of iron for huli material and Wy,the development of screw propulsion.

The screw powered stembattleship came rather quickly &er this and many old wooden hulled ships were converted hto hybrid stem battleships retaining some rigging.

The immediate years &er the Crimean War and a perceived French threat gave irnpetus to the development of new vessels. The revohitionary HMS Warrior (1860) was built of uon hmthe keel up and fitted with the most advanced sheli-breaking arrnour of the day; it was a testament to Victorian engineering and British industry. It is stiii floating and serving as a museum in the present day. From then until the tirne we are most concemed with, when HMS Pinafre reached the stage, the navy developed bigger and more novel vessels (including mastless vessels, turret ships, breech loading gus, vessels with below the waterline rams at the bow). The days when an entire wooden fieet could be rnothballed for decades and then brought out wùen a war occurred, as had happened with the forty-five year old Yictoty at Trafiilgar, were long over. Every brief period of several years mw brought romething new to the ledger.24

The progression of these mjor innovations may seem rather logical and smooth, but the period was marked also by hindrance hma consmative Admiralty- The Battle ofNavarino in 1827 against the Turks was raksymbolic, for while it was the last major

"ûavid K. Brown, RCNC, "Wood, Saü and ~aibaiisto Steel Seam and Shells: I8 IS-I89S," m LR Hill, ed., The ûxford iilt~~haiedHistory $the Royal Ni,p. 202- Humble, p. 107. 94 battle withold wooden ship of the line, the leaders of the Royal Navy retained the old thinkiag for several more decades. The admirais in charge during the Crimean War,

Napier aiad Dundas, were septuagenarians who gained the$ experience during the

Napokonic ~ars.~We the commandes of the flets were derbng in the tooth, the administration was no better. Coastantiy under the watch of the goverment in terms of expediures, the Admiralty felt it unnecessary to implement changes that were rather costly. In fàct the first m-thirdr of the nineteenth century was not a period of graduai and iogical innovations in the Royal Navy. It was one of half-measures, jerky steps and growth spurts and this did not impmve until the young generation that had fought with

Nelson died off.

The officer corps, while ofien rigid in its admiration for the glories brought to the navy by Nelson, also underwent some changes. The numerous technologicd advancements me& Unit a more coqlete education was needed if these ships were to be efficiently comrnanded. However, the entry of officers and their training in the pst-

Napofeonic years was still rather haphazard. Naval cadets could simply join if they were oominated by the Admiraity with the support of Muential fdyand fiie~eids.~As an old admiral attested, there were no service exams he needed to take when he joined."

And in this period, the officercorps was stiii the preserw of the fe~.*~Anotber mute

'?5 Ibid, p. 59. LdCharles Beresfad, lakr to tangle with Admital Fisha during the ûreadnought years, joined in this marner. Ahniral Lord Charles Beresfi The Mémoirs ofAhira1 Lord Chcnles Beresford, Vol. 1 (London* Meuthea, 1914), p. 5, "Admirai Kennedy, p. 2. "'Riskg fiom the lower deck to the wacmomi was almost impossible. There had been isolated cases during the Napoleaiic Wars, but naae during tbe rest of the nineteenth century. It took Wimstan Churchill, die FiiLad of the Admidty, to mhoduce a new ail-encanpassing scheme in 1912 whereby this would be possible. Winton, "Life and Educatiaa in a Technically Evolving Navy," p. 274. 9s was through the Royal Naval College at Portsmouth with courses, that while providing a complete gentleman's education, ofien had tenuous naval connections. French, drawing,

dancing, and fencing were ail included on the syllabus with the standard courses on

~eamanshi~.~~in 1857 a new syllabus which outlined the method by which prospective

oû'icers were to be trained was introduced. in addition to studies at the College, they were

to spend time aboard a stationary vesse1 before going to sea as a midshipmen. Thus the

officer's career began, advancing through the ranks until the selected few became

admirais.

With regards to the officialdom and the hierarchy of the Royai Navy, there can be

no doubt as to whkh direction Gilbert and Sullivan wanted the satire to be aimed. The

Admiralty had corne under heavy criticism before their time. Financial policies and

domestic concems with revenue were key motivating factors for strearnlining the mnning

of the navy. Figures below show that naval spending as a percentage of the total budget

was very high dunng the 1850s and 1860s.

Table 1

Naval Spending as a Percentage of the Total Budget, 1852-1879 Year Rerce~ap Year Perceniam Year Percen~~~ge Year Pelcentw 1852 9.25 1859 12.65 1866 15.48 1873 13.49 1853 10.48 1860 15.5 1 1867 15.99 1874 13-44 1854 12.42 1861 1824 1868 15.67 1875 14.36 1855 18.00 la62 17.24 1869 15.16 1876 13.68 1856 20.30 1863 16.21 1870 13.93 1877 11.38 1857 16.68 1864 15.92 1871 13.59 1878 13.19 1858 14.07 1%65 16.24 1872 13.84 1879 11.0 1 Saurce: John F. Beeler, British ~VadPolicy in the Gldone-Disraeli Eru 18661880, p 58. 96 These figures can be expiained by the events of the time. The Crimean War dmve up expenditure during the war years with a high in 1856 and then the early 1860s saw the rapid constniction of advanceci vessels. However, these high naval expenditures were not the ideal. Reforrn measures to the Admiralty focused on the financial sphere in trying to lower navy-related costs. On the eve of the 1868 general election even a service journal chided Benjamin Disraeli's goverment:

It seems almast hopeless to expect htwe shall ever be able to get our mmey's worth out of the Admhlty. Neitha Parliament, nathe ophicm of the public, na the Ress-not even a hostile vote in the House-can move the gigantic, blundaing, shiptinkaing National Cmpyout of its otd gro~ve.~~ The voters broughî the Lr'berals to pwer aud hoped for change. What happened during

William E. Gladstone's first ministry (1868-74), notable for its reforms in other areas of

British life, was the complete subordination of the Adrniralty Board to the Eontro~of the

Fust Lord whose main priority was the budget.u' In hindsight this is not a surprise. The rapid technological advances describeci in the years leading up to the Gladstone era meant that research and development was the subject of the day. And this was extremely costly and needed sound politico-onsirial mimagement. The succes of coatding the purse strings carefùily is borne out by the statistics of the later years. During the late 1870s and

1880~~naval spending rmly exceeded fourteen per cent of the total budget.U3

Gladstone's efficient Fii Lord, Hugh Childers (1827-95), pushed for changes in

z0 From the NdmdMilittmy Gafre (Lon&), 8 Febnmry 1868, quoted m Beeler, p. 82- =' Andrew Lambert, The ShieId of Empire: 18 15-1û9Y m LR Hill, ed., The Oxford Rlwtrafed l8~1oryqf the Royal Navy, p. 199. In his manoirs, Lord Cbarles Beresfôrd seemed raîha pertutbed by this even a decade later. He cites an mcident when he was a Junior Lord (1886) and his signature was beiig used as a mere nibberstamp. Beresfad, Vol. 2, p 356-57. "Naval speodmg would remam rrlaavely low usitil1904 (the dreaclnought race) when every je^ meaat that more than twenty percent ofthe miidbudget would bc spent an the navy Beeler, p. 58. 97 other areas as weii. I-k bad serveci as a Civil Lord m the past and shated Gladstone's vision on fiscal policies. Under his guidance (1 868-Tl), the program for the promotion and retirement of officers was expandeci and overseas sqiiiadrons were reduced ami redi'butedU4The duties of the naval Lords were reapportioned while daily meetings, which in Childers' mind wasted time, were abolished. The naval Lords were to be aware of their specific duties; in addition, daily synopses were printed and circulated to keep the

Lords idionned of each other's w~rk-~~

The fohwing years saw Childers' reputation damageci by the HMS Captain &air and the wrangling that occdin the aftermattl~.~~Rather less successful than Cbilders in the reduction ofnaval expenditures, George Goschen (1831-1907;First Lod 1871-74) succeeded Childers and then came the Conservathe rem to pwer in 1874. George

Ward Hunt (1825-77) became First Lord (1874-77) and emphasized maintainhg a sizable fleet and keeping in twie with Disraeli's strident imperid policies epitomized by the symbolic proclamation of Queen Victoria as Empress of India in 1876. Yet trying to maintain a navy fit hr imperid duties and to kpexpenditures hmrishg was a task in itself

Mer Hunt's unexpected death in 1877, Disraeli thnist William Henry Smith

(1825-91;Fi Lord 1877-80) into the limelight. Smith's appointment was mther odd, though fie was a fàvourite of Disraeli's, Queen Victoria had opposed his appointment on

Ibid. p. 84. asIbii, p. 100. 136 h?W Cagruin was a poorly designed ship, but itp design managed to pass through al1 the oficial hradles. It sunk in a ligbt gale off Gibcaitar an 6 Septanber lm, taking with it 472 out of 490 men including the Shi's deSigria Cowper Phipps Coles and Hiigfi Childers' seumd SUU. kler, p. 112 and Mes, p. 142. 98 the grodsthat it might alarm oflhrs. Hitherto a secretary to the treasury, be came hma modest commercial ratber tban a baditiod landed background. But he had suund exprieme with fiscal policies as he worked undec the Chancelier of the Exchequer earlier in the Disraeli ministry. The years there bad prepami him for a challenge.

In the wrangiing between tk naval Lords ad îhe First Lord, it was certain tbat the naval Lords, concernai purely with the state of the navy in comparison with rivals, would demand mire matériel to work with and hence more fiuïding. But the First Lord was a mernber of ihe Cabinet, answerable to the Prllne Minister and thus requird to pment a budget within the governments own spending limits. The balancing act tht the

First Lord had to manage was not enviable. W.H. Smith's more illustrious Liberal predecessors, Hugh Chilciers and George bschen, had performed the task with sorne degrees of success. Smith, in his turn, ûied to keep the equilibrium

During his administration the Russo-Turkish War (1 877-78) had tempted the goveniment to haseits defense budget. However the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir

Stdlbrd Noithoote, rnanaged to keep the expendhm imxease dl?' Smith, echoing his counterpart, bad also tried to keep expdiiures for the navy dom. These were difllicult times for Disraeli's Conservative government as, in addition to the Eastern

Crisis, colonial wars flared up in South Mica against the Zulus (1879) and the Afghan rebels in northem Mia (1878-79). In spite of king in the opposition and accustomecl to playing partisan politics, m 1879 Gladstone had tfiese words to say about Smith in a spxchdenouacuig Disraeli's finaricial poiicy There has ken, 1 must say, one member

100 But the refmnce was there and derthinly veiled. Politicdly aware members of the audience would have known that WH. Srnith had also risen hmhumble begidgs with a cummmial backgroinad and had no p&r expertise when it came to ninning the flairs ofthe "senior service." He was probably more at home ninning his chah of oflice supply and newsagent stores that still exist t&y. Indeed, even Disraeli taok to caiiing his naval minister "Pinafiore Smith" son&er LUIS Pin@ore took ofïhpopularity.24'

(Though Disraeli, bimself, was rather put off by ihe ~~eretta)?~~This !kt seems to contïrm that the target of Gilbert's pen was W.H.Smith Victorian society as a whole

accepted this In what seems to be a response spurred on by the success of HMS

Pinajore, the 20 November edition of Fun, Gilbert's old mg, printed a huniorous List of

"Tips For Admiralty Civil Lords" by A. Reefer. "'Booms' are deby frhg great guns"

went one ofthe numemus Tt is difficult to assess the satire that Gilbert created

arodhis Sir Joseph Porter charaçter. Gilbert explained to children in a story book about

HMS Pinafore that:

You would naturaily (hink that a person who mmanded the entire Mish Navy would be the most accomplished dawtio ml&be found, but that is noi the way in whicfi such thhgs are managed in ~n~land.'~

But then Gilbert pmbably did not take into account the Fust Lord's ratkr more

"' Bradley, "Gilbertand Sullivan and the Victorian Age? p. 17. '"Joseph, p. TL. Whm tbe FiiLad, W.K Smith, @ded at a boat launch m Dwmport, the Royal Marine band present mischievwsly gave a mditim ofSir Joseph's auîobiographid song "When I was a l@ in spite of he Port Aâmiral's express ordas that the offiidingmusic should ndbe performed. BradIey, ed., 'Ihe Corndete Alp~olatedGilbert andSullivan, p. 134. Rowdy students at OxfOrd also mgexcapts fimm ihc operetîa when W.H. Smith was there to -ive an hmorary D.C.L. dqree m 1879. Behrman, p. 144. IU Fim, 20 Novanber 1878. 245 Quoted in Bradlq: eà, 2ne C.teAmtaled Gilbert dSdIivan, p. 134 and Dark and Grey, p. 75. 101 encompassing de. Sir Joseph is rather self-important, but hardly a wxious character? This was done perhaps for stage reasons, for Sir Joseph provides the cody within the more serious love story of the operetta. What the evidence suggests is a

Gilbertian parody of both Smith and the office of Fust Lord-a brand of satire he already had exhiiited in his earlier plays, except that this tirne it was moilified with Sullivan's music.

Gilbert and Sullivan mocked the old naval tradition of placing men into position when they bad neither the practical nor technical training and experience. First Lords could either be naval men or civilians, but teilingly for the Victorian period only one, the

Duke ofNorthumberland (1852), could have claimed to have had some naval e~~erience?~'Gilbert levels th. complaint at the navy in his creation of Sir Joseph

Porter. This is not out character, though, as Gilbert's pen had always been (and would be) rather acrid, not only towards individuals, but more importantly, towards official

institution^.^'^ Likewise, Captain Corcoran is a composite character who is a target of the

satire against this practice. Apparently, Captain Corcoran is related to a peer and acts like

a social snob. Josephine gives a rather fidl account on the fumishings of her fithet's

home:

OR the ane hand, papa's Iuxurious home, Hung with ancestral armaur and old brasses, Carved oak and tapesiry hmdistant Rome, Rare '%lue and whitcn Vendan kga-glasses, Rich oriental rugs, 1-ous soîà pillows,

'& (Su Joseph in a statement regardhg his own ophiai]: Taptain Cacaran, it is one of the happiest characteristics ofîhis giarious country that official utterances are mvariably regarded as unanswerable." Wley, ed., The Compkte AnnotatedGilben dSullivan, p. 167. '" Beeler, p. 38-39, 2u Cf: HlldSPmcl/m wiîh the subjects of the legal system, anny and House of Lords m TM/By Jioy (1879, ZkPirates of Pemmce (1879) and Iolmuhe (1882) respedively. And everyihing that im't old, fia ~illow's.~~~ Wih the trappings of a cornfortable upper middle-class life complete with a department store shopping experience (rather îhm the lower middle class that Sir Joseph seems to think that the Corcorans belong to), the captain is quite obviously the product of recmitment fiom the ranks of those families who have connections with the

While he appears to be a democratic and kindly captain in his song '4 am the Captain of the Pinafore" and who "hardly ever uses a big, big W." he still is a man of his times and an avid social ~lirnber.~~'He is mon ihan willing to marry his daughter Josephine in a marriage of convenience to the FiLord for the cause of advancement. Indeed, when the captain discovers Josephine's tnie fmlmgs for Ralph, he sings a ballad highlighting his obsession with the outwards marks of social Near the end of the operetta he blurts out, Tor my excellent crew, / Though foes they could thump any, / Are scarcely fit

Company, / My daughter, for you."Ul

Captain Corcoran's own htent affections for the lowly bwnboat woman, Little

Buttercup, are suppressed because of the dispanty in social class. He dismisses her affections by saying, "1 am touched to the hart by your innocent regard for me, and were we differently situateci, 1 think 1couid have retumed it.'"" Humorously, his undoing at the end of the operetta is his imprudent swearing and the subsequent revelation tbat he

'49 Bradley, ed., The Complete Anmated Giibmt and Suiiivan, p. 16 1. See the trio "Never mmd the why and wherefae" benVeen the Capaui, Sir Joseph and Josephme. lbid., 163. '' '' fiid, p. 127-29. mis was the ballad that was cut ûan the orm man ce, nie text has swived, but the music was lcmt and cmiy recently diswvered. "Lost saag kixn H&X Piqfhre discovered," Voncouver Sm,17 A@ 1999, p. 06. 2n Bradley, d,The CompIete A111101mkd Gilbert anâ Sullnan, p. 17 1. UI lbid, p. 157. 103 was low-bom baby thus nullifjrig the marriage arrangements between Sir Joseph and

Josephine. He was a sociable aiici polite man perhaps, but not exactly the mode1 of an efficient or brave captain. The social tensions between the main characters are rather muted as the ûiumph of Mph's love for Joseph takes prùnacy, but it serves the very important role of an impersonal and pervasive antagonist.

Victorian naval technobgy is üttb cepresented in the operetta. As mentioned earlier, in the genesis of the operetta Gilbert was known to have researcbed caretiiily the ships in Portsmouth, especially h5US Victory, for the creation of his stage set. But even if one takes the setting date (1840) of his Iihetto copy to the Lord Chamberlain seriously, there is nothing that distinctly dates the ship. Ralph is a sailor who labours on the fore- yard am and this suggests riaging, but rigging was still very common on ships well into the 1880s. Much has ken made already about the presence of the navy in the Eastern

Medierranean in 1878, but Gilbert must have also had in his mind, when he wrote the tex, to HMS Pinclfore, the fiillibility of Victorian naval technology. The sinking of HMS

Capîain in 1870 was a setback amidst construit advatlces and, more recently, the sinking of HMS Etaydce in Mareh 1878 was a tragedy tbat he certainly noticeddu5The only technological advancement referred to in the operetta, however, was not even naval related: the busreference to the telephone near the end of Act II. The sailors mention balls whistiing lice in their opening cbnis. This was ratiier anachmnistic, even in 1840, as exploding sheih had become the main type of ammunition replacing so lid shot. On the whole, the operetta stays away ûom making any pointed refetences to cmnt

Indeed, Gilbert cumposed a chanty pantomime in which he actecL In me performance, the proceeds weat to die wivs and chiidrai of the seamen killed in the smkiag of HA5 Eurydice. Stedman, p. 156. 104 technological developments. This is not unexpected since the operetta is, afler di, about comedy, music and human relations told in a captivatmg little story rather than about the setting.

Operetta is counted among one of the more fiivolous musical art fonns. Far hm the noble sentiments of serious opera and the abstract artistic nature of absolute music forms such as symphonies and concertos, its very name immediately triggers in the listener's (and viewer's) mind images of parties and champagne and of fluff and flowen.

Gilbert and Sullivan's operettas, however, are nowheré near as vapid as this common perception of the genre may indicate. In the case of HMS Pinafore, W.S. Gilbert's stinging libretto, backed by Sullivan's fiesh music, manage to portray, to spear, and to praise a wide range of notions and facts about the navy. For an hour and a half to two hours worth of entertainment, the pair took a contemporary subject, satirized it savagely, and clothed it completely in the most innocent meras possible. In this respect, they were masters aud most eminently successfui. Chapter Four: The Royal Navy and Jack Tar as an image of Pax Brfbnnica

The longer perspective of navy and art has been fleshed out with some detail in the previous chapters. From most cases ohserveci, it is seen that the effect has been one way. The successes of the eighteenth century certainly inspireci 'Xeart of Oak" and 'Rule

Britannia." "We Don't Want To Fight" and HMS Pinafore were clearly built upon the fiuor and clamour that greeted the Russian invasion of Turkey. The content of the songs are in plain view and have been analyzed. Wtis possible then, and within the scope of this thesis, is coming to a conclusion on what images did these works project and through examining the context, to question the motives involved.

The one outstanding naval image that cornes to mind is that of lowly Jack Tar. Al1 the evidence examined points to a fàirly uniform figure. They were heroic figures who fought for Britain's greatness and reputation, they were equal to any man, they were honest and me, and above ail they were not to be condescended to nor patronized. The naval-themed songs examined in this thesis in the past hundred yem before HMS

PinCrfore have these qualities distilled into the operetta The operetta had the good fortune of king more well-known than earlia musical works on the navy thaaks to the appeal of its charm and sound constnicîion. It topicality in the heightened jigoistic atmosphere of

1878 no doubt led to its successful fitg run of 571 performances (in just under two years)

.inLondon and over 700, ifone includes the second and third companies D'Oyle Carte 106 sent to tour the Its presentation of Jack Tar is conventionai and . . romtic, but in its more acidic aspects it ridicules the administration of the aavy and the social hierarchy that was rigid enough to separate the ranks.

Yet it has been argueci recently that Gilbert "offered agility of mind more than serious criticism of society and values.. .everything wrong or dunder-kaded had been vaporized in the weightless atmosphere ofcomedy, the Savoy serving as a kind of vacuum-sealed container for the process.y'z7 Indeed, çome contemporary critics had already ackmwledged Gilbert's propeasity for sharp wit in his earlier plays, but were a bit leery at recugnizing the Savoy operas as true social criticism. The ~ll~liimedTheatre reviewer wrote of IoIanthe (1882) that:

nie libretto of Iolank has been utilizeâ by its author as the vehicle for conveying to society at large a fding potest on behalf of the mdipant, and a scathing satire upai the herediiary moi* oiour Legislatue. Advocacy and denunciation of this sort are al1 very well in melodrarna, where telling 'points' may always be made with the unniaiteci wrongs of the poor and the reprehensible uselessness of the aristocracy. But they jar upon the sa and taste alilce when bmught to bear upus iughthe medium of a mgmg by half a Kiin a proféssedly comic opera.

Certainly the argument and debate of whether the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan were bkevolutionary"was not new. That there was bite in Gilbert's writing is not in question.

His coUeague François Cellier, an occasional conductor at the Savoy, cafled Gilbert's darts "exceedingly keen-pointeci" but 'hever poisoned by any venom of biiemss.. .n259

But 1 would argue that the ctiticistns were neither vaporized nor made impotent. The tàct remaùis that there is much critical commentary and topaallusion present. The

'56 Stedman, p. 163. "Higgins, p. 187. Quoted m Bradley, ed., Tlie CompIete Amatpted Gilkrl andSJIïvcm, p 436. 39 Cellier and Bridgemaa. p. 66. 107 romparison to the renowned ancient Greek cornedian is made again as Dark and Grey wmte "the atmosphere of Gilbert is the atmosphere of Aristophanes.. .he [Gilbert] was, of course, a sentimentalist and a satirist, entitled to lash the age and cornplain of human nature.''2a Rather, Gibert's ofien Swiftian satire was menly cbthed in a digestible coating for the middle-class audiences. This is quite a distinction hmking "vaporized" or "impotent." And in some cases even that çoating in Sullivan's delightfully orchestrateci melodies and polka rhythm was not nearly enough. Two songs had to be cut hm

Iolanrhe aller the opening for the salie of box office receipts because of the "heavy" politicai satk that the reviewers fouijarring?6' As we have seen earlier, Gilbert's me

Happy Land (1873) pilloried Gladstone's administration rnercilessly to the consternation of the Lord Chamberlain's office. That Gilbert's taste for social and political satire sold well to the audience was certainly wt dulled in his collaboration with Sullivan; moreowr, the political views of the two were rarely in c~nflict.~~~Set in the context of al1 the operettas we see that the nautical jiks HMS Pinafore fall into place quite naturally.

W.H. Smith received his share of attention in HMS Pinqfore, but he was not the f'stnor the last character to be immortalimi, albeit in a pointed manner, by Gilbert and

Sullivan. IoIanthe was a rather extrerne case where Queen Victoria, John Brown, W.E.

Gladstone, Lord Randolph Churchill and Lord Hartington (in addition to short references

'EO Dark and Grey, p. 240. Bradley, ed., Tk Comptete AnnufmedGiibert andSuiibn, p. 358. Sullivan was radia apolitical never commaiting on the issues of the day hm parliamentary suffige to the Irish tebellion. Jacobs, 58. Gilbert was rather more mvolved. A Free Mason, he was never sîaunchly for one party or another. He had atiacked the Lt'bnal Gladstone m 1â13, but he had also depiaed the Coasavatives W.K Smith in 1878 and Lord Randdph Churchül in 1882 unîlatteringly, Stedman, p. 90. 108 to Charles Dilke and Joseph Chamberlain) aii receive theu Humom~sly,

Gladstone seemed rather numb to aü of this when writing to Suiiivan:

Noîhing, 1 thought, mldbe happier than the manner in which the comic strain of the piece was blended with its harmaiies of sight and soun4 so good in taste and so admgable in execution fiom the bcgmning to endzw

And on some occasions, the people king caricatured were deiighted at the attention they received. Sir Gamet Wolseley, hero of the Ashanti War and the Red River Rebeiiion, was delighted at the possibility that Major General Stanley in the Pirates of Penzance (1879) was based on himZ6'Oscar Wilde made a lecture tour of the United States soon der performances of Patience (1 88 1) in which the ''fleshy pet" Bunthorne bore a striking resemblance to the aesthetic Institutions, Wre the legal system in Trial By Jury

(1875) ad the House of Lords in lolanthe, as weii as movements, Iike aestheticisrn in

Patience and fende education in Princess Ida (1 884), were not spared either. And, as if conscious of the end, in their penultimate collaboration, Utopia Limited (l893), Gilbert just about managed to tackle ail the stereotypes of Victorian Britain in this operetta about

a far-off society wanting to become '~rîiect"and thus English! In a clever dusion to

HMS Pinafore, Captain Corcoran makes a reappearançe in that operetta and shgs about

the greatness of Britain's navy. Gilbert's words and SuNivan's music found in each other

a balance in presenting biting satire in a manner that was completely acceptable to the

audiences for the more than two decades of their cooperation until its end in 1896.

Gilbert was never clear with lolanfk's caricatures. This mtnpretation was suggested in 1978 by Kenneth Baker, îhen a Cmservaiive M.P., in an ingenious article printed m the Dai& Telegrtpih. Bradley, ed, Ine Complere Anmtated Gilbert ondSdlian, p. 3%. 264 Joseph, p. 72. 265 Bradley, 'Gilbert md Sullivan and the Victocim Ag%" p. 18. '66 indibly as it seems, it was Richard D'Oyle Carte wbo aganued the lecture tour. Wilde adas a prumaîicm far the upcanmg pe&mances ofPatienre in Amcrica. Ibid., p. 19. 109 That Gilbert and Sullivan couid be seen as somewhat conservative, but never stodgy, was a resuh of making their works appealing to their audience. Mer dl, ît was the middle classes who patronized îhe Savoy (and in the earlier theatre where Gilbert and

Sullivan staged their works, the Opéra Comique). When Gilbert was asked about how he satisfied his audience, he said that it was due to bis ski11 in serving nunp steak and oyster sauce. "Crème de volaille may pl- the epicure in the stails, but ...will surely irritate the costerrnonger in the gallery." Likwvise, the baked sheep's heads the lower classes kquently ate would revoit the upper class."' Thus the image of the rather bland nunp steak served to satisQ the greatest number: the middle classes. And, indeed, the ticket prices at the Savoy reflect this. The three and four guinea boxes never made much money and they were later reduced to ow and two guinea~.~~~The vast range of the 1292 seats from these prices to the low of one shilling in the gallery were aimed at the middle classes.269A middle middle-class Londoner eaming £1000 a year rnight have two per cent (£20) to spend on entertainment. That would still comfortably allow attendance at

forty concerts with upper bracket tickets of 10s. 6-? The fact thaî royalty, aristocrats

and prominent politicians graced the boxes on many occasions only helped to advertise

Gübert and suIlivan."' Likewise, the eIements in the cheaper seats ofien sung the

roilicking choruses hmthe previous year's operetta btinging to the Savoy an air of

Higgins, p. 3. 'a ibid, p. 17 a. Joseph, p. 79. ''O Weber, p. 24. ni in addition to the afientioaedappearances of Disraeli andGladstone at the operettas, Edward, Rinceof Wales was also a fiequent audience member at 'lhe Savoy. Joseph, p. 7 1. 110 conviviaiii, but the bread and buttet for the two were Wythe middle classes.272

Their strong appeai to the Iargely middle-class audience does not detract hm their willingness to push the limits. For why not stay safe and leave out the allusions completely, if the audience found such references distastefiil? Operettas that were mete fluffand melodramatic love stories were not unknowa in Britaii or on the continent? In

Gilbert's past history whenever his satire was deemed by some to be too outiageous, others simply replied "that the audience's good taste was censor eno~~h.'~That the

Savoy stayed packed in those years and the audiences were rarely offended or ouûaged seems to answer this question. Booing and hissing was known at less respectable theaires, but the bourgeois crowd "knew" when to applaud and when to be silent. Enthusiasm or revulsion never descended into bedlam?" The audience very much enjoyed seeing and hearing barbs, that while neatly resolved and sornewhat blunted at the end of the usual two hour romp, still retained enough venom when aimed at certain people or institutions.

The other aspect outside of the presentation, effectiveness and the value of criticisms in HMS Pinafre on the navy was the larger image of the sailor and the navy as a part of being British and, most importantly, having an Imperia1 identity. In 1899, when asked for a date for the beginning of the Eqlish navy, the naval historian JK. Laughton said that it wouid impossible to set a date hr"when English &tory begins, the navy was

"Indeed, while the lower classes attended îhe Savoy as well, they, and working marinas especiespecially,were ahfond of sea shanties th& at times din5rcd in focus hthe distïnctly middle class EPe ofGilbert and Sullivan. See Stan Hugill, ed., SWesFrm rk Seven Sem (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, Ltd, 1961). "Alan Hyman, Sull&an anà Hik Sakilites: A Srwey ofEnglish operen~~,1860-1911 (London: Chappell, I978), p. Il7paarirn. 274 Stedman, p. 107. "Joseph, p. 74. 111 already an English institution."n6 The navy is then utterly bound up with the idea of being British. Unlike the insecurity of the starker post-colonial vision in the late twentieth century, the nineteenth century had ban called by many Englishmen, both then and now, the age of Pm Briiannica or the British ~eace." Bound up with this peace was its enforcement and its embodiment by th Royal Navy and the tacit acknowledgement of other nations of the navy's superiority. Essential to this continuing image untii the challenge by Germany was a work such as HMS Pinafore. Indeed, David Cannadine has argued that HMS Pinafore "offer[s] a romcelebration of the age of unchallenged fighting ail."^'^ Self-satisfaction and u>nplacency, while not ail pervasive, was never very far away in the Victorian mvy. Gilbert and Sullivan, while codortabl: in their enormous success, nonetheless took up the matter in HMS Pinajiore to gently poke holes at what they saw were inadquacies, absurdness and ineficienciea The two-sided nature of HMS Pinafire thus begins to reveal itsetE First, as a criticism ofcontemporary issues and people and second as an expression of 1878 British patriotism This seemingly unworkable and contradictory formula nonetheless succeeds-conservative, but vide sath at its best, The apparent irrelevance and remoteness of the opemas' Giibertian plots and staging in a pst-imperid Britain today al1 serve to denote their vital link to that

''' It should be noted here that 1 use Engiii and British synonymously in spite of the cmttrend to sepamte the two. The "coIo(lizatimn of the Smand Welsh was such that in the nmeteenth century writers often did not give a ihought to using England when îhey meaat Gteat Britain. Behrman, p. 3 1. "Antony Easthope, Engiishness OirdNafionolCdhm (Ldm: Routledge, 1999), p. 4-5. cannadine, p. 21. 112 imped period and the comfoning aspect of "traditi~a,~~'~

In this thesis, it has been argued that tlMS Pinafore was a unique and outstanding artistic production. What was unique about HlWS Pinafore, in spite of the superficial resemblance to burlesques and nautical melodrama, that made it different than the previous traditions? The question cm be answered on two planes. Fust, the linkages between the operetta and the previous mania for melodramas in the early nineteenth century are evident only in spi&, but not in content. The ceferences Gilbert makes are highly contemporary in nature aiad would makc little sense to an audience of five ym earlier let alone an audience of twenty or even thirty years earlier. Gilbert was highiy aware of his physical surroundings and social milieu when it came to creating his plots.

The paûiotism displayed is entirely coming hm, and a reaction to, the events and emotions of 1878. Macdermott's War Song and HMS Pinaw are hvo rather obvious and weii-loved works that have surviveci the initiai hype. But les obvious contemporary commentary has also demonstrated the atmosphere of the time. The aforementioned and illustrated drawing of sailors at cutlass drill in The IZIus~atedLondon News carried a description of them and mentioued how ''popular sympathy is at this moment fieely bestowed on the brave fellows in blue jackets ...*" Continuhg with the popularity of sailors that year, a political cartoon in Fun lamented the &ct that the British did not ultimately tangle with the Russians. Under a drawing of two Jack Tm,the caption fan:

Moreover, the questi*onofsetting in the hventy-first oentucy presents a special challmge to productions outside ofGreat Elritain. Gilbert and Sullivao bave aiways been weli-received m Commonwealth naîims and the United States, but they have also made headway in such piaces as Gmany and Japan. in the twentieth century nie D'Oyk Carie Opaa Company made several Coast Co coast visiîs ofNordi America Jqh,p. 3 12. 2W The RltLtmtedC0nr;bn News, 28 Marcb 1878, p. 274 and Chapter 3, p. 90. 113 Fim Tm:-'Weil, Jack, it seems we shan't have a bush with the Roosians afer dl." Secddino:-Wgh! Bru&! No. #y, while them there political beggars have bcen jawing we oould 'ave settled the blamiing latfa'

While Richard D'Oyle Carte iiterally sweated over the survival of HMS Pinafore in the humid months of the early summer when attendance slacked, the success of the opecetta, in hindsight, seerned completely assured in the jingoistic atmosphere of 1878.

On the other band, HMS Pinrrfore qlydisplayed qualities which linked it to previous porüayals of sailors and the Royal Navy in the nautical melodramas which preceded it. This was done before and it was to be clone again. The uniqueness of

Pinajore then does not corne hmthe rather conventional depictions of saifors and th

Navy, but hmthe effective satire and the otlen outrageous portrayals of characters: hm

the brave sailor in Ralph, to the ineffective captain in Corcoran, to the bwaucratic First

Lord in Sir Joseph.

A microcosm of naval history in the nineteenth century is reptesented in the

operetta to those with a discerning eye. And this is the unique aspect of the work. Few

British operettas (and indeed Continental ones as well) outside those of Gilbert and

Sullivan have such minute contemporary detail worked into them It was rare indeed for

Sullivan to have such a sharp witted iiirettist and indeed in how many operas and

operettas are the writers listed &st or even mentioned at dl? In the beginning, the pairing

of '%ullivan and Gilbert" appeared as olten as the now conventional ordering, but

tradition, as weii as the respect for the vital work of the Librettist, has changed that.

Gilbert's words were as vitai as Sullivan's ageless tunes. Fmm the age old depiction of

Fm, IO Suiy 1878. 114 sailors, to the spirit of naval discipline refonn of the mid-nineteenth century, to the rampant patriotism of the late 18709, to the sly digs at the Admiralty, HMS Pinafre succeeds as a stage work and as an enduring record of its surroundings.

As mentioned earlier, Gilbert and Sullivan attempted to continue, on one levei, the patriotic tradition of nautical melodrama and, on another levei, to budesque and satirize tbat very same tradition. It succeeds in both endeavours and more. It is a clever piece of social satire on the state of the navy's administration and oEcer corps and it does make linkages to the state of the real navy laced with humour and adodwith glittering music. And, as a workthat represents the Victorian aavy in its zenith, it at once lauds its preeminent position in maintainhg Britain's place in the worid and it gently criticizes the nwnerous foibles that plague certain individuals in the navy. It is no mere empty jingoistic piece in spite of the milieu hmwhich it sprang. In gauging the radical social nature of Pinafore, it is dficult to make an accurate assesment. However, for the average middle-class theatre enthusiast, Pinafore represented a world that was fke from the social rules of Victorian England. For the 'hunp steak and oyster saucen crowd of the

Opéra Comique and the Savoy, the interest was not m seeing dsticsocial dramas nor racy burlesques that could be found in other theatres. The interest was in Gilbert and

Sullivan's, at times comfortiog, but ofien jarring and unique vision of the world. And in that topsy-turvy world, sailors could go on dreamhg about marrying above kir station aucl actualiy achieve it without consequences, even if this was wt the nom in late nineteenth century Britain. Ifwe accept tbat each of Gilbert and Sullivan's works bave a general comedic and musical appeal and a narrower topical apped, then the ûeedom and 115 generally untàmiliar nature of a sailor's He to the civilian must have bad something to do with the specific, topical attractiveness of HMS Pinafor. Its depiction of the sailor was the ultimate fantasy in which a theatre enthusiast could ùiduige. Appendix One

A cappella is a term that simply means vocal music that is sung without instrumental accompaniment.

Ballad opera

Bdad operas of the eighteenth century could be considered early English predecessors to the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan. For the most part, the work consisted of popular songs or ballads interspetsed with spoken dialogue. This is not ualike the later form of the operetta in the nineteenth century. The most hmus and earliest of these Engf sh ballad operas was The Beggar 's Opera of 1728 with words by John Gay (1 685-1 732) and music by .ioha~Chnstoph Pepusch (1667-1 752). It broadly satirized the current English taste for foreign opera

A whip deup of nine rope lashes, the cat-0'-nineetails was a common instrument used in the flogging of a sailor.

Forernast hands

This term means al1 those who secve "before the mast." The word is synonymous with the tem "lower deck" and "blue jacket."

Full Score

A hl1 score is sbeet music that accurately represents each of the instrumental dor vocal parts that are required for performing the piece.

This was a manner of recnlltment employed by the Royal Navy until the early nineteenth century. in times of necessity, the Royal Navy was allowed to force or impress any sailing men into the service. The press became f'amous for its bnitality and arbitrariness in recruiting men for the service.

Libretto

A li'bretto is the wordbook of an opera, opereita, oratorio, or any other large vocal work. The word is an Italian temi meanhg "little book." The lower deck denoted a place on a ship and was a term given to ordinary seamen as opposed to the commissioned oEcets. The mythid Jack Tar was a man fiom the lower deck. In the nineteenth century* kre was virtually no upward mobility for men of the lower deck. The term technically becomes obsolete around 1880 when the living quarters of ships change because of technology. Awther term for these men was %lue jacket."

Madrigal

The madrigal was a sophisticated art torm that developed, in its most popular incamatmn, in Renaissance Italy. It was vocal cbamber music for skilled amateurs, usuaiiy without instrumental accornpaniment. Adopted m England in the late sixteenth centwy, native composers took the Italian style and fitted English poetry to it. An important collection entitled The Triumphs of &iam (1601) was dedicated to Queen Elizabeth 1.

Masque

A masque is a musical entertainment iiacorporating drama and poetry. Not uniilce opera, it iq however, smaller in de.These entertainments were most cornmon in the noble households in the fifieenth and seventeenth centuries.

Melodrama

In its modern usage, the word melodrama has acquired negative connotations. They were plays that had sensational plots and crude appeals to emotions. To quote Frank Rahill (p. xiv):

Melodrama is a fm of dramatïc composition in prose partaking of the nature of the tragedy, comedy, pantomime, and spectacle, and htended for a popular audience. Rimarily conmed with sWmand plut, it dis qnm rnimed action extmsively and anploys a more or less fixd canplement of stock characters, the most important of which are a sufferhg haoine a hao, a persecuting villain, and a benevolent comic. It is amvmtionaliy moral and humdarhn in point of view and sentiinairal and optimistic in temper, concluclhg its fible happily with virtue rewarded aiter many trials and vice punished. Characîai*sticaUyit offas elaborate scenic ades and misceiheous divati*ssementsand mtroduces music fieely, typically to underscae clramatic efféct.

This was melodrama with a pmmunced naval or mutical theme. The sailorljack tar figure is usuaiiy the hero. II8 Operaseria

Opera seria is simply Italian for s&us opera. More speciîically it was the type of serious opera that flourished in the eighteenth century. Its form was unvarying, consisting of solo arias for singers connected by recitative, a type of heightened musico-dramatic speech. Thece were occasionally ensemble pieces and chocuses that punctuaîed the work. Subjects were ofien drawn hmGreek myth or Roman history. More famous examples include George Frideric Handel's Giulio Cesare (1724) and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's iu Clemenza di Tito (1791). in the eighteenth century English context, Handei's grandiose works for The Royal Academy of Music, including Giulio Cesare were the subject of much satire during the 1720s and 1730s. The respoases gave rise to ballad opera.

An opera usually consists of an acted drama where the words are set to music and the work is sung throughout its entire duratioa. In an operetta, only the more dcamatic moments are sung and set to music. The dialogue is spoken as in a play. As for the subject matter, an operetta is invariably a comedy and the music is thus in a iighter vein. Famous nineteenth century composets of operetta in the English language include Gilbert and Sullivan; in French, Jacques Offenbach (1819-80); and in German, Johann Strauss Jr. (1 825-99), Franz von Suppé (18 19-99 and Franz Lehar (1870-1948).

Quarterdeck

The quarterdeck was an upper deck of the ship war the stem. It was a term given to officers as that would be where they would command a vesse1 and have their quarters. Only officers could linger in this area of the ship.

Savoy operas

The operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan took up the aame Savoy operas afier the performing company led by imp-O Richard D'Oyle Carte moved into the Savoy Theatre in 1881. The theaire was built for the express purpose of performing the duo's works. Even earlier works, such as IiMS Pinajere, that predated the move to the Savoy carne to be classified as such.

This was a fàvourite word of W.S. Giibert. It simply means upside domor in a state of utter confiision. A vocal score is the reduction ofa fùll score for piano anci voice. Usually this would be the ediiion used for practices and rehearsals where oniy a pianist would be available to accornpany the singers, rather than a full orchestra.

Bradley, lan, The Complete Annotated Gilbert and Sullivan. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996.

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Rahill, Frank. The World of MeIodiama. University Park; London: The Pennsylvania State UP, 1967.

Rasor, Eugene. Refonn in the Royal Navy: A Aial History of the Lower Deck, 1850- 1880. Hamden: Archon, 1976.

Seaton, Douglas. Ideas and Solles in the Western Musical Tradition. Mountain View, California: Mafielà, 1991.

Stedman, Jane W. KS. Gilbert: A Classic Victorian and His Theatre. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996. Appendix Two

The Dnmsab monmof HMS Pinafora

The Rt. Hoa Su Joseph Porter, K.C.B. Fir~Lord of fhe Admirale

Captain Corcoran Comntunding HMS Pinqfore

Tom Tucker Midphipmite

Ralph Rackstraw Able Seaman

Dick Deadeye Able &aman

Bill Bobstay Boatsw~in

Bob Becket Bwt~in's Mute-Carpenter

Josephine the Caprrrin 's Daughter

Cousin Hebe Sir Joseph 's First Cousin

Mrs. Cripps (Little Buttercup) A Portsmouth Bumboat Womun

Fit Lord's Sisters, His Cousins, His Aunts, Saibrs, Marines, Etc.

Source: Ian Bradley, ed. The Complete Annotated Gilbert und Sullivan (Mord:Oxford UP, 1996), p. 1 14.

The Amment of HMS Pinafore

Some time before Act 1opens, Etaiph bas fidien in love with Josephine, the daughter of his commanding officer, Captain Corcoran. Likewise, Little Buttercup, a buxom peddler-woman, has Menm love with îhe Captain himself. Class pride, however, stands in the way of the natural inclinations of both the Corcorans to reciprocate Raiph's awl Buttercup's affections. The Captain bas, in fkt,been amnging a rriarriage between his daughter adSir Joseph Porter, First Lord of the Admiraity, who is of the social class above even the Corcorans. When Act 1 opens, the sailors are merrily ptepsring the ship for Sir Joseph's inspection. The generally happy atmisphere on deck is marred oniy by Little Buttercup's hints of a dark secret she is tudhg, by the misanthropie grumbliag of Dick Deadeye, and by the love-brn plaints of Ralph and Josephine. Sir Joseph appears, attended by a train of 121 ladies (his relatives, who ahvays fohw him wkrever he goes). He explains how he became Lord of the Admirahy and examines the crew, patronizingly encouraging them to feel that they are everyone's equal, except his. Like the Captain, he is very punctilious, demandimg polite diction among saiiors at aIi times. Josephine fînds him insuffèrable; and, when Ralph again pleads his suit and fdlythreatens suicide, she agrees to elope. The act ends with the general rejoicing of the sailors at Ralph's success; only Dick Deadeye croaks his warning that their hopes will be tiustrated. Act II opens with the Captain in despair at the demoraiization of his crew and the coldness of his daughter towards Sir Joseph. Little Buttercup tries to conifort him, and prophesies a change in store. But Sir Joseph soon appears and tells the Captain that Josephine has thoraugbly discouraged him in his suit; he wishes to caU the match off. The Captain suggests that perhaps his daughter fkels herself inferior in social rank to Sir Joseph, and urges him to assure k that itaequality of social tank should not be considered a barrier to marri9ige. This Sir Joseph doeq not reaiizing that his words are as applicable to ksephine in relation to Ralph as they are to himself in relation to Josephine. He thinks that she accepts him, wkreas actuaiiy she is reaffkming her acceptame of Ralph; aad they al1 job in a happy song. Meanwhile Dick Deadeye bas made his way to the Captain, and informs him of the planned elopement of his daughter with Ralph, The Captain thereupon intercepts the elopers; and, when he learns th Josephine was actually running away to marry Ralpb, he is so incensed that he cries, "Damme!" Unfortunately, Sir Joseph and his relatives hear him and are horrified at his swearing; Sir Joseph sends him to his cabii in disgrace. But when Sir Joseph dso learns hmRalph that Josephine was eloping, he angrily orders Ralph put in irons. Little Buttercup mw cornes out with her secret, which solves the whole difliculty: she coafesses that many years ago she had charge of nursing and briaging up Ralph and the Captain when they were babies. lnadvertently, she got them mixed up; so the one who now was Ralph reaiiy should be the Captain, and the one now the Captain sbuld be Ralph. This error is immediately tectjned. The sudden reversal in the social status of Ralph and the Corcorans removes Sir Joseph as a suitor for Josephine's hand and permits her to marry Ralph, ad her f5tber to marry Buttercup. Sir Joseph resigns himseifto marrying his cousin, Hebe.

Source: W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, HM.S Pinafore or the Lass that Loved a Suilor (New York: G. Schirmer, Inc., 1938). Appendix Thme

Musilcal excerpts end openings hmvarbus songs

Excerpt fiom '%Rule Bitannia" by Thomas Arne fiom an laLhcentury edition by Longman and Broderip

Excerpt £iom Teart of Oak" by William Boyce fiom a 1p century ediion by Chappe11 Excerpt fiom Macdemmtt's 1878 War Song hma 19 century edition by Hopwood & Crew

Wiirra A J WL~S Compoud by BEIKOTT SCOT7

Excerpt hm"Ship Ahoy!" hma 1909 edition by Star Music Publishing Co. Ltd. Musical mrptsand openings MmHMS Pinafore

No. 1 Introduction and Opening Chorus-(saiiors> "We sail the ocean bhe" SCEKE:- Quarfrr.dcc& of II. M.S. Pinnfotr Snilo~zltd Ey hntsrrnit~.dirrorrrrd cfran in.^ brar*cnnrk. *plirrag rrpl>r.rlr.

NO.4 Recit. and Song- (Captain Corcoran and Chorus 01 Sailors) Wy gailant crewv NO.9 Song-tSii ~ose~hand Chorus) 'When 1 wris a lad''

NO.10 Gllee-c Ralph, Boat ~wain,Carpenter%Matqand Chorusof Sailors) British ttii*"

1, A Brit - ish tar is i~ soar-ing soul, As 2Ifis eyes shouId fIash with an rn - born fire, Ilis CARPENTE R

1. A Brit - bh tar is ii soar-irg soul, AS 2.His ejcs should ftsh with an in - burn fire, His No. 12 Finale- (ACT I) Tan 1 survive this overbearing?"

Allegretto moderato

NO.15 Scena- (hsephine) "The boars creep on opnce9'

NO.17 Duet - (Captain and Dick Deadeyc) 66Kind Captain, I've important information'' Na18 Soli and Ciorus "Carefally on f iptoe tealing9'

No.19 Octet and Chorus "Farewell, ni,v own!l9

Eire - wil, iiiy own, Light of ny life, frire- Na21 Finale "Oh joy, oh rapt are unforeseen!''

dh jog, oh rap-ture -

Id oh joy, oh rap-turr

Oh joy, oh rap -turr Allegro vivace.

Copyright Credit:

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Weeks, JeBey. Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain fiom the Nineteenth Century to the Present. London: Quartet Books, 1977.

White, Colin. Victoria 's Navy: The Heydq of Steam. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1983.

Wmgfield-Stratford, Esmé. The Foundations of British Pafriotism. London: The Right Book Club, 1940.

Wmton, John. Humahfor the Iijè of a sailor!. London: Joseph, 1977.

Zeeland, Steven. Sailors and sexual iaentity: crossing the fine beîween "sh.aight" and 'Bay" in the US. Navy. New York: Haworth Press, 1995.

Articles and Revks

Bdey, Peter. "Conspiracies of Meaning: Music Hd and the Knowingness of Popular Culture." Past and Present, no. 144 (August 1994).

Beeler, John. "'Fi for Service Abroad': Promotion, Retirement, and Royal Navy Office- 1830-1 890." M~ner'sMirror, 81 (1995), 3003 12.

Bradley, Iaa. "Gilbert and Sullivan and the Victoh Age." Histos, Today (Sept, 1981), 17-20, 138 Cd,David. "Giand Sullivau: ThMaking and Un-Mahg of a British 'Tradition"' in &th of the English. Roy Porter, ed, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992.

Davis, Jh. "British Bravery, or Tan Triumphant: Images of the British Navy in Nautical MeloMNews Theatre Qumferly,4 (1988), 122-143.

Fihler, Alan. "Gilbert and Donizetti." The Opera Qumterly, VOL XI, no. 1 (1994), 29- 42.

.Untitied review of W.S. Gilbert: A Ciassic Victorian and His Theatre by Jane K Stedman. The Opera Quarteriy, vol. Xnr (August 1997), 132- 137.

Gilbert, Arthur. "Buggery and the British Navy, l7Oû- t 86 1," Journal of Social Hisfory 10 ( 1976-77): 72-98.

Kanthor, Harold. "HA4.S. Pidiore and the theatre season m Boston, 1878-79."Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 24, lggl,ll!?-j27.

Munich, Adrienne. '"Capture the Heart of a Queen': Gilbert and Suilivan's Rites of Conquesî." The Centennial Review, vol. XXWi, no. 1 (1984),23-44.

Price, Richard N. "Society, Stahis and Jingoh," in G. Crossick (ed.), The tower Middle Class in Britain 1870-1914. London: Cmom Heùn, 1977.

Senelick, Laurence. "Politics as Entertainment: Victorh Music Hd Songs." Victorian Sfudies, vol. XIX, no. 2 (Dec. 1975),149-180.

Summertïeld, Penny. "Patriotism and Empire," in JM. MacKenzie, ed., Imperiaiism and Pop& Culture. London: Manchester UP, 1986,

Tempedey, Nichoh. "The Lost Chord." Victorian Studies, vol, XXX, no. 1 (1986), 7-23.

Higghs, Regina KErby. 'Y ictorian Laughter: The Comic Operas of Gilbert and Sullivan," Unpublished Pm.Dissertation. Indiana University. 1985.

Smoler, FdcPaul. '%mute:Mutiny and the Cuhure of Author@ m the Victoriau Navy." UnpubW PD.Dissedon. Columbia University, 1994.