THE HUMOUR OF GILBERT AND SULLIVAN ) [To the Editor of
the SPECTATOR.] Sin,—A few days ago I witnessed a performance of Iolanthe by the D'Oyly Carte Company, and a few days earlier a performance of The Mikado : and having been surprised by the tepidity of my pleasure, I began to search about for the cause of it. Very soon I discovered, in conversation, that I was not alone in no longer much liking these operas : a fact which led me to suspect that their appeal has passed its zenith. And suppose, I thought, that we could find out why they are losing their power : might we not then under- stand why humourous works in general amuse people only, for a time ?
It is clear, of course, that if the Savoy operas are beginning
to decay, as I believe they are, the process is not yet visible from without. A glance at the queue for the pit is evidence enough. It is clear, too, that a great many persons who are now over fifty regard these operas with undiminished admir- ation and delight.. I find, though, that numbers of people who are now between thirty and forty are not excited to the pitch of their seniors : and, more significantly, that the young people who represent the intelligenzia go reluctantly,' if at all, to the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, and, if they do, go, are unaffectedly bored.
Now, I remember that when I was eighteen I enjoyed these.
operas in a measure that would have satisfied my elders. What has happened, then, during the last twenty years that many of us, though recognizing the grace of Sullivan's melodies and the unsurpassed brilliance of Gilbert's patter- songs, should feel that their work has become like flat cham- pagne ? For I am not of those who look with pity upon their seniors and who feel that nobody who pre-dates himself can have possessed any judgment.
First, then, I will suggest some minor causes of our dis-
satisfaction, and afterwards proceed to what I believe to be the main cause. During the last ten years and more we have ceased to look for a realistic effect in a stage-scene : the films can achieve it better : and many people must feel, as I do, that a stereoscopic " set " is peculiarly inappropriate to Gilbert's wild invention. Again, modern people do not regard an elderly woman as a ludicrous figure. Indeed, I suppose that this queer assumption in Gilbert's nature must have seemed unfortunate to a large number of his contem-. poraries. That is a very small matter ; but here, again,i is one of more weight. We have learned to appreciate--; for example, in Grock and in Charlie Chaplin—the humour produced by the spectacle of someone who performs absurd! actions in a grave, or at least an ordinary, manner. The D'Oyly Carte Company, I imagine, acts these operas in al traditional style—that is to say, as they were acted in the 'eighties : and in this tradition, it seems, the actor expects to amuse us by performing absurd actions as though he, fully appreciated their absurdity. The effect upon an audience' is similar to that of a man who laughs at his own jokes. I believe that the fun in Gilbert's work would show forth much; better if the plays were performed more gravely : for this; treatment would emphasize, instead of dissipating, their crazy and dream-like fantasy. Everyone realizes that, in the matter of slipping upon orange-peel, a bishop is much funnier than a butcher's boy.
I suggest, though, that the main cause of the difference in feeling between my contemporaries and my juniors, of the one. part, and my seniors, of the other, is that a great deal of, humour amuses people only because it shocks them. If IN'
had no moral prepossessions we might not find much to amuse us in the most popular plays of Mr. Coward and Mr. Lonsdale. They shock our morals. Gilbert; of course, never published a page that was less respectable, in this sense, than the pages of Punch or, Sir, the Spectator ; but I fancy, nevertheless, that he did shock his contemporaries—in a region, too, where we who have come later are shock-proof. I submit that the adults of the 'eighties were living in a period which, by com- parison with ours, was orderly, sedate, settled. Gilbert's topsy- turvydom seemed much more startling, much more amusing, 'to them than it seems to us ; because it was in strong contrast to the level flow of their life and ideas, whereas it does not precipitate us out of any assumption that life is orderly. We are all jazzing—or most of us are—and we accept his incon- gruities with a mere smile.
We might say, perhaps, that Mr. Coward succeeds by tickling the moral assumptions of an audience, and thereby producing a mild hysteria ; Mr. Shaw by tickling its intel- lectual assumptions ; Gilbert by tickling its general sense of orderliness. This is the humour that makes for giggling. In what way, then, does Shakespeare tickle us ? In no way at all. He never gives us the comic shock. He does not rely upon rendering us hysterical. We laugh at Bully Bottom, Sir Andrew and Falstaff because they are likeable creatures who are exhibiting the permanent frailties of human nature. !In consequence, our laughter is accompanied by the ghostly 'laughter of centuries. Here is a humour that does not fade for the reason that it does not amuse men by tumbling them out of some temporary attitude of mind. And perhaps we can say this also of Dickens and of Moliere. Most people seem to agree in guessing that it is for his humour that posterity will read Dickens.—I am, Sir, &c., CLIFFORD BAX.
[Our own experience is that the young do like the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. At Oxford and Cambridge the per- formances are besieged.—En. Spectator.]
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