Sweethearts (play)
Encyclopedia
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...
. The play tells a sentimental and ironic story of the differing recollections of a man and a woman about their last meeting together before being separated and reunited after 30 years.
It was first produced on 7 November 1874 at the Prince of Wales's Theatre
Scala Theatre
The Scala Theatre was a theatre in London, sited on Charlotte Street, off Tottenham Court Road, in the London Borough of Camden. The first theatre on the site opened in 1772, and the theatre was demolished in 1969, after being destroyed by fire...
in London, running for 132 performances until 13 April 1875. It enjoyed many revivals, thereafter, into the 1920s. The first professional production of Sweethearts in Britain in recent memory was given in the spring of 2007 at the Finborough Theatre
Finborough Theatre
The Finborough Theatre is a fifty seat theatre in the Earls Court area of London, United Kingdom , which presents new British writing, UK and premieres of new plays, primarily from the English speaking world including North America, Canada, Scotland and Ireland, music theatre, and rarely seen...
in London, along with Arthur Sullivan's
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...
The Zoo
The Zoo
The Zoo is a one-act comic opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by B. C. Stephenson, writing under the pen name of Bolton Rowe. It premiered on 5 June 1875 at the St. James's Theatre in London , concluding its run five weeks later, on 9 July 1875, at the Haymarket Theatre...
.
Background
This romantic comedy of mannersComedy of manners
The comedy of manners is a genre of play/television/film which satirizes the manners and affectations of a social class, often represented by stock characters, such as the miles gloriosus in ancient times, the fop and the rake during the Restoration, or an old person pretending to be young...
was written for Squire Bancroft
Squire Bancroft
Sir Squire Bancroft , born Squire White Butterfield, was an English actor-manager. He and his wife Effie Bancroft are considered to have instigated a new form of drama known as 'drawing-room comedy' or 'cup and saucer drama', owing to the realism of their stage sets.-Early life and career:Bancroft...
and his wife Marie
Effie Bancroft
Marie Effie Wilton, Lady Bancroft was an English actress and theatre manager. She appeared onstage as Marie Wilton until after her marriage in December 1867 to Squire Bancroft, when she usually appeared under the name Lady Bancroft...
(née Wilton), managers of the Prince of Wales's Theatre, and starred Mrs. Bancroft. Gilbert wanted his friend John Hare
John Hare (actor)
Sir John Hare , born John Fairs, was an English actor and manager of the Garrick Theatre in London from 1889 to 1895.-Biography:Hare was born in Giggleswick in Yorkshire and was educated at Giggleswick school...
to play the male lead, but the Bancrofts were not satisfied with him and cast Canadian Charles Francis Coghlan
Charles Francis Coghlan
Charles Francis Coghlan , Canadian actor, was born in Prince Edward Island, Canada, and was educated in law.He made his first London appearance in 1860, and became the leading actor at the Prince of Wales's Theatre. He starred in Sweethearts by W. S. Gilbert...
instead. The Bancrofts had produced the best plays of Tom Robertson
Thomas William Robertson
Thomas William Robertson , usually known professionally as T. W. Robertson, was an Anglo-Irish dramatist and innovative stage director best known for a series of realistic or naturalistic plays produced in London in the 1860s that broke new ground and inspired playwrights such as W.S...
in the 1860s, and Sweethearts was Gilbert's tribute to Robertson's "realist
Realism (dramatic arts)
Realism was a general movement in 19th-century theatre that developed a set of dramatic and theatrical conventions with the aim of bringing a greater fidelity of real life to texts and performances....
" style. The importance of small incidents is emphasized, characters are revealed through "small talk," and what is left unsaid in the script are as important to the play as what is said in the dialogue. These are all Robertson trademarks, though they are not key features of Gilbert's other plays. However, the play combines sentiment with a typically Gilbertian sense of irony. The story of the play deals with themes such as the differences between men's and women's recollections of romantic episodes, and the spread of housing developments to greenfield land
Greenfield land
Greenfield land is a term used to describe undeveloped land in a city or rural area either used for agriculture, landscape design, or left to naturally evolve...
.
The initial production of the play ran for 132 performances until 13 April 1875. The Times was much impressed with Mrs. Bancroft and the little play, writing, "the subtlest of mental conflicts and the most delicate nuances of emotion are expressed in graceful dialogue.... That the piece is thoroughly successful, and that it will be much talked about as one of the theatrical curiosities of the day, there can be no doubt". Squire Bancroft called Sweethearts "one of the most charming and successful plays we ever produced." Thereafter, it enjoyed many revivals and was toured extensively by the Bancrofts and the Kendals. The play continued to be produced through at least the 1920s.
Early in his career, Gilbert experimented with his dramatic style. After a number of broad comedies, farces and burlesques, he wrote a series of short comic opera
Comic opera
Comic opera denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria...
s for the German-Reeds at the Gallery of Illustration. At the same time, he created several 'fairy comedies' at the Haymarket Theatre
Haymarket Theatre
The Theatre Royal Haymarket is a West End theatre in the Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in use...
, including The Palace of Truth
The Palace of Truth
The Palace of Truth is a three-act blank verse "Fairy Comedy" by W. S. Gilbert first produced at the Haymarket Theatre in London on 19 November 1870, partly adapted from Madame de Genlis's fairy story, Le Palais de Vérite. The play ran for approximately 140 performances and then toured the British...
(1870) and Pygmalion and Galatea (1871). These works, as well as another series of plays that included The Wicked World
The Wicked World
The Wicked World is a blank verse play by W. S. Gilbert in three acts. It opened at the Haymarket Theatre on 1873 and ran for a successful 145 performances, closing on 1873...
(1873), Sweethearts, Charity
Charity (play)
Charity is a drama in four acts by W. S. Gilbert that explores the issue of a woman who had lived with a man as his wife without ever having married. The play analyses and critiques the double standard in the Victorian era concerning the treatment of men and women who had sex outside of marriage,...
(1874), and Broken Hearts
Broken Hearts
Broken Hearts is a blank verse play by W. S. Gilbert in three acts styled "An entirely original fairy play". It opened at the Royal Court Theatre in London on 9 December 1875, running for three months, and toured the provinces in 1876...
(1875), established that Gilbert's capabilities extended far beyond burlesque, won him artistic credentials, and demonstrated that he was a writer of wide range, as comfortable with human drama as with farcical humour. The success of these plays gave Gilbert a prestige that would be crucial to his later collaboration with as respected a musician as Sullivan.
1874 was a busy year for Gilbert. He illustrated The Piccadilly Annual; supervised a revival of Pygmalion and Galatea; and, besides Sweethearts, he wrote Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Gilbert)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, A Tragic Episode, in Three Tabloids is a short comic play by W. S. Gilbert, a parody of Hamlet by William Shakespeare...
, a parody of Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
; Charity
Charity (play)
Charity is a drama in four acts by W. S. Gilbert that explores the issue of a woman who had lived with a man as his wife without ever having married. The play analyses and critiques the double standard in the Victorian era concerning the treatment of men and women who had sex outside of marriage,...
, a play about the redemption of a fallen woman; a dramatisation of Ought We to Visit Her? (a novel by Annie Edwardes), an adaptation from the French, Committed for Trial, another adaptation from the French called The Blue-Legged Lady, and Topsyturveydom
Topsyturveydom
Topsyturveydom is a one-act operetta by W. S. Gilbert with music by Alfred Cellier. Styled "an entirely original musical extravaganza", it is based on one of Gilbert's Bab Ballads, "My Dream". It opened on 21 March 1874 at the Criterion Theatre in London and ran until 17 April, for about 25...
, a comic opera
Comic opera
Comic opera denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria...
. He also wrote a Bab
Bab Ballads
The Bab Ballads are a collection of light verse by W. S. Gilbert, illustrated with his own comic drawings. Gilbert wrote the Ballads before he became famous for his comic opera librettos with Arthur Sullivan...
-illustrated story called "The Story of a Twelfth Cake" for the Graphic Christmas number.
A drawing room
Drawing room
A drawing room is a room in a house where visitors may be entertained. The name is derived from the sixteenth-century terms "withdrawing room" and "withdrawing chamber", which remained in use through the seventeenth century, and made its first written appearance in 1642...
ballad of the same name was created in 1875 to help advertise the play, based on the story-line of the play, with music by the composer who would go on to become Gilbert's most famous collaborator, 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...
. It is one of only three Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...
songs that were not part of a larger work.
Roles and original cast
- Mr. Henry Spreadbrow (Age 21 in Act I; Age 51 in Act II) – Charles Francis CoghlanCharles Francis CoghlanCharles Francis Coghlan , Canadian actor, was born in Prince Edward Island, Canada, and was educated in law.He made his first London appearance in 1860, and became the leading actor at the Prince of Wales's Theatre. He starred in Sweethearts by W. S. Gilbert...
- Wilcox, a Gardener – Mr. Glover
- Miss Jane Northcott (Age 18 in Act I; Age 48 in Act II) – Marie Wilton (Mrs. Bancroft)
- Ruth, a Maidservant – Miss Plowden
- Note: in the UK, Harry is often an affectionate name for Henry, and Jenny is an affectionate name for Jane.
Synopsis
Act I – 1844A stiff Victorian youth, "Harry" Spreadbrow, has been suddenly called away to India and must leave immediately. He visits his childhood friend, a delicate if spirited young woman, "Jenny" Northcott, who is busy in her garden. He has long loved her. Harry summons the courage to declare his love propose marriage to her, but Jenny is flirtatious and capricious, and frustrates his every overture, letting him believe that she does not care for him. He asks her to plant a sapling near the window that would remind her of him, and they plant it together, despite her protest that it would eventually block the view. He also asks her to give him a flower to remember her by, and he gives her a flower in return, which she puts to one side without seeming to care about it. At last, dejected, he leaves, but then she bursts into tears.
Act II – 1874
30 years later, Jane, still single, lives in the same house with her nephew, though the garden has grown much in thirty years. Harry, now Sir Henry Spreadbrow, also single, returns; he has just retired from his career and returned from India. When they meet again, the full nature of the irony reveals itself: Jane has remained faithful to him all those years and remembers their last meeting in every detail. But Henry had recovered from his passion for her within the month and has forgotten most of the details of their meeting. The sapling that they had planted together has grown into a large tree, and Henry is astonished that Jane would have such a big tree blocking the view. Jane has kept the flower he gave her, while Henry had long ago lost the flower she gave him. "How like a woman!" says Sir Henry, to throw aside the flower and then keep it for thirty years; "How like a man!" Jane retorts, to swear undying love and then forget almost immediately. Henry makes it clear, however, that their romance is only just beginning.