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Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.
- GenresPoetry
116 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1873
About the author
W.S. Gilbert
718 books36 followersBritish playwright and lyricist Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (18 November 1836 – 29 May 1911) wrote a series of comic operas, including
Her Majesty's Ship Pinafore
(1878) and
The Pirates of Penzance
(1879), with composer Sir Arthur Sullivan.
This English dramatist, librettist, poet, and illustrator in collaboration with composer Sullivan produced fourteen comic operas, which include The Mikado , one of the most frequently performed works in the history of musical theatre.
Opera companies, repertory companies, schools and community theatre groups throughout and beyond the English-speaking world continue to perform regularly these operas as well as most of their other Savoy operas. From these works, lines, such as "short, sharp shock", "What, never? Well, hardly ever!", and "Let the punishment fit the crime," form common phrases of the English language.
Gilbert also wrote the Bab Ballads , an extensive collection of light verse, which his own comical drawings accompany.
His creative output included more than 75 plays and libretti, numerous stories, poems, lyrics and various other comic and serious pieces. His plays and realistic style of stage direction inspired other dramatists, including Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. According to The Cambridge History of English and American Literature , the "lyrical facility" of Gilbert "and his mastery of metre raised the poetical quality of comic opera to a position that it had never reached before and has not reached since."
This English dramatist, librettist, poet, and illustrator in collaboration with composer Sullivan produced fourteen comic operas, which include The Mikado , one of the most frequently performed works in the history of musical theatre.
Opera companies, repertory companies, schools and community theatre groups throughout and beyond the English-speaking world continue to perform regularly these operas as well as most of their other Savoy operas. From these works, lines, such as "short, sharp shock", "What, never? Well, hardly ever!", and "Let the punishment fit the crime," form common phrases of the English language.
Gilbert also wrote the Bab Ballads , an extensive collection of light verse, which his own comical drawings accompany.
His creative output included more than 75 plays and libretti, numerous stories, poems, lyrics and various other comic and serious pieces. His plays and realistic style of stage direction inspired other dramatists, including Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. According to The Cambridge History of English and American Literature , the "lyrical facility" of Gilbert "and his mastery of metre raised the poetical quality of comic opera to a position that it had never reached before and has not reached since."
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 17, 2015
This Thin-Paper edition of The Bab Ballads looks like a small hardback, but is actually jam-packed with over 560 pages! It has over 350 illustrations by the author, and hundreds of hilarious works of light verse. This work has now gone into the public domain, and my first attempt to buy this book resulted in a cheap print-on-demand edition with only about 50 poems and none of the illustrations. If you are interested in reading these verses, I suggest you do a little extra legwork to make sure you find an illustrated edition they add a lot. Other than a few cringeworthy racist poems/drawings (from 1800s England...) this book supplied me with cover to cover enjoyment. I look forward to reading it again someday!
November 1, 2014
Enjoyable nonsense verse with strong rhyme & rhythm.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews