Sweethearts (play)

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For the Victor Herbert musical of the same name, see Sweethearts (musical).

Scene from the original production – Act I

Sweethearts is a comic play billed as a "dramatic contrast" in two acts by W. S. Gilbert. 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 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 2007 at the Finborough Theatre in London, along with Arthur Sullivan's The Zoo.[1]

Background

David Henry Friston's illustration in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News of the original production – Act II

This romantic

realist" style. The importance of small incidents is emphasised, 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
.

The initial production of the play ran for 132 performances until 13 April 1875.

Kendals.[2] The play continued to be produced until at least the 1920s.[6]

Early in his career, Gilbert experimented with his dramatic style. After a number of broad comedies, farces and

Haymarket Theatre, including The Palace of Truth (1870) and Pygmalion and Galatea (1871).[7] These works, as well as another series of plays that included The Wicked World (1873), Sweethearts, Charity (1874), and Broken Hearts (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.[2] The success of these plays gave Gilbert a prestige that would be crucial to his later collaboration with as respected a musician as Sullivan.[citation needed
]

1886 programme for a U.S. production starring May Fortescue

1874 was a busy year for Gilbert. He illustrated The Piccadilly Annual; supervised a revival of

Annie Edwardes), an adaptation from the French, Committed for Trial, another adaptation from the French called The Blue-Legged Lady, and Topsyturveydom, a comic opera. He also wrote a Bab-illustrated story called "The Story of a Twelfth Cake" for the Graphic Christmas number.[citation needed
]

A drawing room 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. It is one of only three Gilbert and Sullivan songs that were not part of a larger work.[citation needed]

Roles and original cast

  • Mr. Henry Spreadbrow (Age 21 in Act I; Age 51 in Act II) –
    Charles Coughlan
  • Wilcox, a Gardener – Mr. F. 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 Britain, Harry is often an affectionate name for Henry, and Jenny is an affectionate name for Jane.

Synopsis

Act I – 1844

A 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 and 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.

Notes

  1. ^ "About: Sweethearts & The Zoo – A 'Gilbert and Sullivan' Doublebill", OffWestEnd.com, 2007
  2. ^ a b c Stedman, chapter 8
  3. ^ Moss, Simon. "Sweethearts" at Gilbert & Sullivan: a selling exhibition of memorabilia, c20th.com, retrieved 16 November 2009
  4. ^ "Prince of Wales's Theatre", The Times, 9 November 1874
  5. The Penny Illustrated Paper and Illustrated Times
    , 14 November 1874, p. 315
  6. ^ Crowther, Andrew (24 May 1998). ""Sweethearts" by W. S. Gilbert". The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive. Retrieved 23 November 2007.
  7. ^ "Miss Anderson as Galatea", The New-York Times, 1883 January 23 32(9791): 5, col. 3 Amusements, retrieved 15 October 2006.

References

External links

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