G&S biography quotes

'These are the usual steps of the born artist: first the actor, then the producer, finally the writer; or, less concretely, assertion, expansion, creation.'

[...] 'Though people like listening to the criticism of others, they do not like the critic; they feel safer with a dullard who praises' (Sullivan was a critic). [...] He [Sullivan] had become a social lion, and though he basked in the universal admiration, he recognised its absurdity. 'I stood about the room in easy and graceful postures, conscious of being gazed upon,' he wrote from Manchester, where he was present at a performance of The Tempest and where he was 'taken to a ball and shown about like a stuffed gorilla.' [...] 'Sullivan had a genius for friendship with men who were older and more influential than himself, and this was his first serious check [a failed love affair where the parents refused to let him marry some girl].'

[...] 'The Englishman is perhaps the only man in the world who can laugh at himself; add music to the satire and he brings the house down, for music removes the sting of reality.' [...] 'He [Sullivan] was a creature of extremes; his periods of absolute idleness were succeeded by periods of feverish occupation; he completely abandoned himself either to a condition of mental vacuum or to one of mental vigour; there was no half-way house for him.' [...] 'He [Gilbert] regarded each of his libretti as a composer regards a symphony, and he determined from the outset to achieve perfect harmony from his orchestra of actors. Every word had to be said with a certain inflection, every moment had to be made in a certain manner, every position had to be judged to the square inch, every piece of 'business' had to be considered in its relation to the scene. The actors were not allowed, as in the old days, to emerge for an instant from the frame of the picture he was trying to create. They were like chessmen on a board, to be moved at the discretion of the player-producer; they were like marionettes, whose motions were governed by the master; they were members of a team, under the strict discipline of his captain. For this reason he preferred his actors to be novices, who could be taught by him and would not resent the teaching.' [...] 'Gilbert, in his speech before the curtain after the first performance [of the authorised Pinafore in New York, with the orchestrations], said: 'It has been our purpose to produce something that should be innocent but not imbecile.' That was the slogan of the collaborators: clean but clever fun. They had made up their minds, they said, to do all in their power to wipe out the grosser elements of early Victorian burlesque, 'Never to let an evil word escape our characters, and never to allow a man to appear as a woman, or vice versa.' That Gilbert's intention was entirely successful is vouched for by Dean Welldon: 'He wrote no play, nor even perhaps a line, that the sensitive modesty of a young girl might shrink from hearing.' - The book also mentions Sullivan's feminine charm on several occasions. It's very gossipy. Hesketh Pearson book. I think it's my Grandma Ruth's copy. It's stamped with Crawshaw, 2 Anvers Place, Christchurch 2.