An Old Score is an 1869 three-act comedy-drama written by English dramatist W. S. Gilbert

W. S. Gilbert

Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S...

 based partly on his 1867 short story, Diamonds, and partly on episodes in the lives of William Dargan

William Dargan

William Dargan , an engineer, often seen as the father of Irish railways, came from Killeshin, County Laois, Ireland. Born in 1799, he constructed Ireland's first railway from Dublin to Dún Laoghaire in 1833. He constructed over of railway to important urban centres of Ireland...

, an Irish engineer and railway contractor, and John Sadleir

John Sadleir

John Sadleir was an Irish financier and politician.He entered the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1847 as a Member of Parliament for Carlow...

, a banker who committed suicide. It was written before any of his Savoy Opera

Savoy opera

The Savoy Operas denote a style of comic opera that developed in Victorian England in the late 19th century, with W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan as the original and most successful practitioners. The name is derived from the Savoy Theatre, which impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte built to house...

s with Arthur Sullivan

Arthur Sullivan

Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO was an English composer of Irish and Italian ancestry. He is best known for his series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado...

. Despite an encouraging review in The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

, the piece was a failure. It was revived in 1872 and rewritten as Quits, but it fared no better.

Background

Gilbert described An Old Score as "my first comedy". He had previously written more than a dozen stage works, and although they were all intended to be funny, they were in the styles of burlesques, extravaganza

Extravaganza

An extravaganza is a literary or musical work characterized by freedom of style and structure and usually containing elements of burlesque, pantomime, music hall and parody. It sometimes also has elements of cabaret, circus, revue, variety, vaudeville and mime...

s, pantomime

Pantomime

Pantomime — not to be confused with a mime artist, a theatrical performer of mime—is a musical-comedy theatrical production traditionally found in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, India, Ireland, Gibraltar and Malta, and is mostly performed during the...

s and one-act farce

Farce

In theatre, a farce is a comedy which aims at entertaining the audience by means of unlikely, extravagant, and improbable situations, disguise and mistaken identity, verbal humour of varying degrees of sophistication, which may include word play, and a fast-paced plot whose speed usually increases,...

s, not full-length, character-driven "comedies"; and so the play represents part of Gilbert's move from being a humorist to being a dramatist. Gilbert adapted part of the story of the play from his 1867 short story Diamonds. It is also based partly on episodes in the lives of William Dargan

William Dargan

William Dargan , an engineer, often seen as the father of Irish railways, came from Killeshin, County Laois, Ireland. Born in 1799, he constructed Ireland's first railway from Dublin to Dún Laoghaire in 1833. He constructed over of railway to important urban centres of Ireland...

, an Irish contractor, and John Sadleir

John Sadleir

John Sadleir was an Irish financier and politician.He entered the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1847 as a Member of Parliament for Carlow...

, a banker who committed suicide in 1856.

The play was written before Gilbert had developed his "Topsy-Turvy" satiric style and so shows Gilbert at his most straightforward. Gilbert was a disciple of the playwright T. W. Robertson, who had introduced naturalistic staging and acting to Victorian era

Victorian era

The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...

 theatre. Robertson's comedies had serious moments, as well as comic, treating their themes with some sentiment and usually conveying a simple moral lesson. Gilbert likewise intended An Old Score to be partly serious, calling it a "comedy-drama". The play borrows elements from Robertson's Ours and Tom Taylor

Tom Taylor

Tom Taylor was an English dramatist, critic, biographer, public servant, and editor of Punch magazine...

's Still Waters Run Deep. Gilbert had provided another work for John Hollingshead

John Hollingshead

John Hollingshead was an English theatrical impresario, journalist and writer during the latter half of the 19th century. He is best remembered as the first manager of the Gaiety Theatre, London...

's Gaiety Theatre

Gaiety Theatre, London

The Gaiety Theatre, London was a West End theatre in London, located on Aldwych at the eastern end of the Strand. The theatre was established as the Strand Musick Hall , in 1864 on the former site of the Lyceum Theatre. It was rebuilt several times, but closed from the beginning of World War II...

 in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, Robert the Devil

Robert the Devil (Gilbert)

Robert the Devil, or The Nun, the Dun, and the Son of a Gun is an operatic parody by W. S. Gilbert of Giacomo Meyerbeer's romantic opera Robert le diable, which was named after, but bears little resemblance to, the medieval French legend of the same name. Gilbert set new lyrics to tunes by...

(1868), which had opened the theatre.

An Old Score opened at the Gaiety on 26 July 1869. The cast included Rosina Ranoe, who later married F. C. Burnand, and Henry Neville

Henry Gartside Neville

Thomas Henry Gartside Neville was an English actor, dramatist, teacher and theatre manager. He began his career playing dashing juvenile leads, later specialising in Shakespearean roles, modern comedy and melodrama. His most famous role was as Bob Brierley in Tom Taylor's The Ticket-of-Leave Man...

, who later produced some of Gilbert's plays. Following the Victorian tradition of long evenings in the theatre, An Old Score, which ran for two hours, was second on a triple bill beginning with an operetta and ending with a "new opera bouffe", Columbus!, or the Original Pitch in a Merry Key, by Alfred Thompson. It was not a success, despite encouraging reviews, and closed in late August after about 24 performances. It reopened on 11 November 1872 at the Court Theatre

Court Theatre

Court Theatre or Royal Court Theatre may refer to:*Court Theatre , Chicago, Illinois*Court Theatre , a theatre company in Christchurch, New Zealand*Court Theatre of Buda, Budapest, Hungary...

 in revised form as Quits but did not fare much better, running for about 46 performances.

The Times wrote that "Generally, the characters are sketched with a firm hand, and the dialogue they utter, though not
especially brilliant, is consistent and to the purpose." Commenting on its opening night reception by the audience, the paper noted, "An Old Score was followed by every symptom of success, and if its good fortune does not prove permanent it will be because the work is too genuine a comedy to suit the taste of the age." When Gilbert originally proposed the play to Hollingshead, the manager of the Gaiety Theatre, the latter was impressed by its "clever dialogue". After its failure, however, Hollingshead opined that the piece had "one great and only fault: It was 'too clever by half.' It was too true to nature – disagreeable nature. It was not served up with enough make-believe sauce." Hollingshead noted that, in the play, a son argues with his father. This was unacceptable to audiences in 1869. Gilbert expert Andrew Crowther writes that, although the play has faults, "we can judge An Old Score to be a genuinely powerful drama. There are scenes in this play which are so powerful that they knock the reader back in his seat. There is a "shooting-from-the-hip" quality about some of the scenes which is exhilarating and even just a little bit shocking." It may be, also, that the play was too intimate for the huge stage of the Gaiety.

The play was published in 1869 by Samuel French Ltd.

Samuel French Ltd.

Samuel French Ltd is the UK sister company of Samuel French Inc., an American company, bearing the name of its co-founder Samuel French. The company publishes stage plays for the UK market, mostly acting editions, serves as licensing agent for performance rights, and runs the UK's leading...

, in 1870 by Thomas Hailes Lacy

Thomas Hailes Lacy

Thomas Hailes Lacy was a British actor, playwright, theatrical manager, bookseller, and theatrical publisher.Lacy made his West End stage debut in 1828 but soon turned manager, a position he held from 1841 at The Theatre, Sheffield...

 and again in 1877 by Samuel French Ltd.

Roles and original cast

• Colonel Calthorpe – Samuel Emery
• Harold Calthorpe (his son) – John Clayton
• James Casby (a Bombay merchant) – Henry Neville
  Henry Gartside Neville
  Thomas Henry Gartside Neville was an English actor, dramatist, teacher and theatre manager. He began his career playing dashing juvenile leads, later specialising in Shakespearean roles, modern comedy and melodrama. His most famous role was as Bob Brierley in Tom Taylor's The Ticket-of-Leave Man...
  
  
• Parkle (an attorney) – Mr. Maclean
• Manasseh (a bill discounter [a comic Jewish money lender]) – J. Eldred
• Flathers (a footman, afterwards Harold's clerk) – J. Robins
• Ethel Barrington (Colonel Calthorpe's niece) – Miss Henrade
• Mary Waters (a nursery governess) – Rosina Ranoe
• Mrs. Pike (a Gray’s Inn laundress) – Mrs. Leigh

Synopsis

Act I
Ethel Barrington, the niece of Colonel Calthorpe, is engaged to be married to James Casby, an honest and successful merchant from Bombay. The Colonel, formerly a man of means, had paid for Casby's schooling and helped him find his first job, and so the Colonel believes that Casby owes him a large debt a gratitude. The Colonel is angry that Casby, while acknowledging the Colonel's help, has not agreed to give him the money to pay his now-substantial debts (although Casby cryptically states that he will satisfy the debt in another way). Ethel, however, is in love with her cousin Harold Calthorpe, who lives an extravagant lifestyle. Harold, in turn, loves Mary Waters, a nursery governess. He leaves his father's house because Mary is cruelly dismissed from her post and vows to marry her.

Act II
In Harold's chambers, Mary and Harold are not yet married. He is well paid for writing scandalous articles for The Tormenter, a journal, but he is morally disturbed by doing this and turns to drink. Casby and Ethel ask him to return home to his father, but Harold refuses. Colonel Calthorpe then arrives in good spirits, having just inherited some money and a title from a relative, Lord Ovington. He offers to forgive Harold, but Harold still loves Mary and confronts his father with his disreputable action towards her. He refuses to return home.

Act III
Since the Colonel is now the new Lord Ovington, Casby is no longer an eligible match for his niece, Ethel. The Colonel encourages Casby to break off the engagement, which does not bother Ethel much, since she still loves Harold and never loved Casby. Harold has gone missing, and Mary arrives looking for him. Mary and Ethel find some common ground in this misfortune and strike up a friendship. Casby now aims to settle his old score with Lord Ovington and goes to see him. He notes that Ovington's acts in helping him as a youth were entirely self-interested, because Ovington needed to do so to reverse his previous reputation for cruelty while in the army. By taking this apparently philanthropic action, Ovington had won the hand of a wealthy lady. Nevertheless, Casby is indeed grateful for the help. He reveals some notes on which Ovington had forged Casby’s name as guarantor to several loans: Casby has now paid these on Ovington's behalf and further notes that he will not expose Ovington as a forger and has therefore freed Ovington from the threat of prison. So, they are now even (as Casby says, they are "quits"). Ethel, concealed, sees this interview, which makes her love Casby and forget her feelings for Harold, who has now been found and who can now marry Mary.

External links

• Link to full text of An Old Score and commentary at the Haddon Hall website
• An Old Score at the Gilbert and Sullivan Archive
• The Times's review of Quits, 29 November 1872