Mr. Isaac Goldberg describes his Gilbert and Sullivan (Murray, 215.)
as "The Compleat' Savoyard." In aim, and to a good degree in accomplishment, this book of generous proportions is even more than the sub-title claims for it. Much has been written about each of the illustrious partners separately, and still more about them hi collaboration. But this volume is probably the first to present full-length portraits of Gilbert and Sullivan both individually and together. Mr. Goldberg adds little to our knowledge ; but, by showing us the two men as they were before and after the partnership, he certainly enables us to see the partnership itself in better perspective. While in no way minimizing the divine accident that 'brought them together, Mr. Goldberg maintains that the collaborators were never, "in the noble sense of the word," close friends, and that their artistic unity, though it reached to the core of their respective personalities, was rooted even more deeply in diversity of temperament than most critics have recognized. They inhabited different worlds, and the Savoy operettas were not so much the merging of those two worlds as "the common sector of two overlapping circles." Mr. Goldberg writes picturesquely and breezily. Sometimes, indeed, his desire for smartness oversteps itself, and his passion for crystallizing a judgment in an epigram occasionally deflects what is, on the whole, a penetrating and well-balanced critical taste.
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