''The Bab Ballads'' is a collection of light verses by
W. S. Gilbert
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (18 November 1836 – 29 May 1911) was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his collaboration with composer Arthur Sullivan, which produced fourteen comic operas. The most f ...
(1836–1911), illustrated with his own comic drawings. The book takes its title from Gilbert's childhood nickname. He later began to sign his illustrations "Bab". Gilbert wrote the "ballads" collected in the book before he became famous for his
comic opera
Comic opera, sometimes known as light opera, is a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending and often including spoken dialogue.
Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a ne ...
librettos
A libretto (Italian for "booklet") is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major litu ...
with
Arthur Sullivan
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan (13 May 1842 – 22 November 1900) was an English composer. He is best known for 14 comic opera, operatic Gilbert and Sullivan, collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including ''H.M.S. Pinaf ...
. In writing these verses Gilbert developed his "topsy-turvy" style in which the humour is derived by setting up a ridiculous premise and working out its logical consequences, however absurd. The ballads also reveal Gilbert's cynical and
satirical
Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming or e ...
approach to humour.
They became famous on their own, as well as being a source for plot elements, characters and songs that Gilbert recycled in the
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan was a Victorian era, Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and the composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900), who jointly created fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which ...
operas. They were read aloud at private dinner-parties, at public banquets and even in the
House of Lords
The House of Lords, also known as the House of Peers, is the Bicameralism, upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is by Life peer, appointment, Hereditary peer, heredity or Lords Spiritual, official function. Like the ...
. The ballads have been much published, and some have been recorded or otherwise adapted.
Early history
![Frontispiece for Bab Ballads](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Frontispiece_for_Bab_Ballads.png)
Gilbert himself explained how ''The Bab Ballads'' came about:
:In 1861 the magazine ''
Fun
Fun is defined by the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' as "Light-hearted pleasure, enjoyment, or amusement; boisterous joviality or merrymaking; entertainment".
Etymology and usage
The word ''fun'' is associated with sports, entertaining medi ...
'' was started under the editorship of Mr.
H. J. Byron
Henry James Byron (8 January 1835 – 11 April 1884) was a prolific English dramatist, as well as an editor, journalist, director, theatre manager, novelist and actor.
After an abortive start at a medical career, Byron struggled as a provincial ...
. With much labour I turned out an article three-quarters of a column long, and sent it to the editor, together with a half-page drawing on wood. A day or two later the printer of the paper called upon me, with Mr Byron's compliments, and staggered me with a request to contribute a column of "copy" and a half-page drawing every week for the term of my natural life. I hardly knew how to treat the offer, for it seemed to me that into that short article I had poured all I knew. I was empty. I had exhausted myself: I didn't know any more. However, the printer encouraged me (with Mr. Byron's compliments), and I said I would try. I did try, and I found to my surprise that there ''was'' a little left, and enough indeed to enable me to contribute some hundreds of columns to the periodical throughout his editorship, and that of his successor, poor
Tom Hood
Tom Hood (19 January 183520 November 1874) was an English humorist and playwright, and a prolific author. He was the son of the poet and author Thomas Hood. ''Pen and Pencil Pictures'' (1857) was the first of his illustrated books. His most s ...
! (Gilbert 1883).
For ten years Gilbert wrote articles and poems for ''Fun'', of which he was also the drama critic. Gilbert's first column "cannot now be identified" (Stedman 1996, p. 11). The first ''known'' contribution is a drawing titled "Some mistake here" on page 56 of the issue for 26 October 1861 (Plumb 2004, p. 499). Some of Gilbert's early work for the journal remains unidentified because many pieces were unsigned. The earliest pieces that Gilbert himself considered worthy to be collected in ''The Bab Ballads'' started to appear in 1865, and then much more steadily from 1866 to 1869.
The series takes its title from the nickname "Bab", which is short for "baby". It may also be a homage to
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian e ...
's pen name "Boz". Gilbert did not start signing his drawings "Bab" regularly until 1866, and he did not start calling the poems ''The Bab Ballads'' until the first collected edition was published in 1869. From then on his new poems in ''Fun'' were captioned "The Bab Ballads".
Gilbert also started numbering the poems, with "Mister William" (published 6 February 1869) as No. 60. However, it is not certain which poems Gilbert considered to be Nos. 1–59. Ellis counts backwards, including only those poems with drawings, and finds that the first "Bab Ballad" was "The Story of Gentle Archibald" (Ellis 1970, p. 13). However, Gilbert did not include "Gentle Archibald" in his collected editions, while he ''did'' include several poems published earlier than that. Nor did Gilbert limit the collected editions to poems with illustrations.
By 1870 Gilbert's output of "Bab Ballads" had started to tail off considerably, corresponding to his rising success as a dramatist. The last poem that Gilbert himself considered to be a "Bab Ballad", "Old Paul and Old Tim," appeared in ''Fun'' in January 1871. In the remaining forty years of his life Gilbert made only a handful of verse contributions to periodicals. Some posthumous editions of ''The Bab Ballads'' have included these later poems, although Gilbert did not.
Subsequent publication
![Bab Ballads](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Bab_Ballads.jpg)
By 1868 Gilbert's poems had won sufficient popularity to justify a collected edition. He selected forty-four of the poems (thirty-four of them illustrated) for an edition of ''The "Bab" Ballads – Much Sound and Little Sense''. A second collected edition, ''More "Bab" Ballads'', including thirty-five ballads (all illustrated), appeared in 1872. In 1876 Gilbert collected fifty of his favourite poems in ''Fifty "Bab" Ballads'', with one poem being collected for the first time ("Etiquette") and twenty-five poems that had appeared in the earlier volumes being left out. As Gilbert explained:
:The period during which they were written extended over some three or four years; many, however, were composed hastily, and under the discomforting necessity of having to turn out a quantity of lively verse by a certain day in every week. As it seemed to me (and to others) that the volumes were disfigured by the presence of these hastily written impostors, I thought it better to withdraw from both volumes such Ballads as seemed to show evidence of carelessness or undue haste, and to publish the remainder in the compact form under which they are now presented to the reader. (Gilbert 1876, p. vii).
Gilbert's readers were not happy with the loss, and in 1882 Gilbert published all of the poems that had appeared in either ''The "Bab" Ballads'' or ''More "Bab" Ballads'', once again ''excluding'' "Etiquette." Some twentieth-century editions of ''More "Bab" Ballads'' include "Etiquette". In 1890 Gilbert produced ''Songs of a Savoyard'', a volume of sixty-nine detached lyrics from the
Savoy Operas
Savoy opera was 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 impr ...
, each with a new title, and some of them slightly reworded to fit the changed context. Many of them also received "Bab" illustrations in the familiar style. He also included two deleted lyrics from ''
Iolanthe
''Iolanthe; or, The Peer and the Peri'' () is a comic opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, first performed in 1882. It is one of the Savoy operas and is the seventh of fourteen operatic collaborations by Gilbert ...
'' (footnoted as "omitted in representation"). The effect was that of a new volume of "Bab Ballads". Indeed, Gilbert considered calling the volume ''The Savoy Ballads'' (Ellis 1970, p. 27, n. 53).
Finally, in 1898 Gilbert produced ''The Bab Ballads, with which are included Songs of a Savoyard''. This volume included all of the "Bab Ballads" that had appeared in any of the earlier collected volumes, the sixty-nine "Songs of a Savoyard" published in 1890, and eighteen additional lyrics in the same format from the four operas he had written since then. The Bab Ballads and the illustrated opera lyrics were alternated, creating the impression of one integrated body of work. Gilbert also added more than two hundred new drawings, providing illustrations for the ten ballads that had previously lacked them, and replacing most of the others. He wrote:
:I have always felt that many of the original illustrations to ''The Bab Ballads'' erred gravely in the direction of unnecessary extravagance. This defect I have endeavoured to correct through the medium of the two hundred new drawings which I have designed for this volume. I am afraid I cannot claim for them any other recommendation. (Gilbert 1897).
It was in this form that ''The Bab Ballads'' remained almost constantly in print until the expiration of the
copyright
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...
at the end of 1961. James Ellis's new edition in 1970 restored the original drawings, retaining from the edition of 1898 only those drawings that went with the previously unillustrated ballads.
Identification and Attribution
There is no universally agreed list of poems that constitute ''The Bab Ballads''. The series clearly includes all the poems that Gilbert himself published under that title, but there are others he did not include in any of the collected editions published in his lifetime. Most writers have accepted as "Bab Ballads" any poems, whether illustrated or not, that Gilbert contributed to periodicals, not counting poems written or repurposed as operatic lyrics.
After Gilbert's death there were several attempts to identify additional ballads that were missing from the collected editions that had been published to that point.
Dark
Darkness, the direct opposite of lightness, is defined as a lack of illumination, an absence of visible light, or a surface that absorbs light, such as black or brown.
Human vision is unable to distinguish colors in conditions of very low lum ...
& Gray (1923),
Goldberg Goldberg or Goldberger may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Goldberg Ensemble, a British string ensemble
* ''Goldberg Variations'', a set of 30 keyboard variations by Johann Sebastian Bach
* ''The Goldbergs (broadcast series)'', American radio ...
(1929), and Searle (1932) identified and published additional ballads, not all of which have been accepted into the canon. The most recent edition, edited by James Ellis (1970), includes all the poems that Gilbert himself acknowledged, all the poems from Dark & Gray, Goldberg, and/or Searle that Ellis finds authentic, and others identified by no other previous compilers.
There are several ballads that Ellis identifies as Gilbert's either on stylistic grounds or by the presence of a "Bab" illustration accompanying the poem in the original publication. These include two distinct poems called "The Cattle Show", as well as "Sixty-Three and Sixty-Four", "The Dream", "The Baron Klopfzetterheim" and "Down to the Derby". These attributions are provisional and have not been accepted by all scholars because the poems themselves are unsigned and Gilbert sometimes provided illustrations for the work of other writers.
Starting with the "new series" of ''Fun'' (those with 'n.s.' in the source reference), Gilbert's authorship is not in doubt, as the pieces for which he was paid can be confirmed from the proprietors' copies of that journal, which now reside in the
Huntington Library
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, known as The Huntington, is a collections-based educational and research institution established by Henry E. Huntington (1850–1927) and Arabella Huntington (c.1851–1924) in San Mar ...
.
List of "Bab Ballads"
The table below lists all the "Bab Ballads" that are included in James Ellis's edition of 1970. The second column shows the reference for the periodical in which each poem originally appeared and the third column shows the collection(s) that have included the poem. The following abbreviations are used:
* TBB: ''The "Bab" Ballads'' (London: John Camden Hotten, 1868).
* MBB: ''More "Bab" Ballads'' (London: Routledge, 1872)
* 50BB: ''Fifty "Bab" Ballads'' ((London: Routledge, 1876)
* D&G: ''W.S. Gilbert: His Life and Letters'',
Sidney Dark
Sidney Ernest Dark (14 January 1874 – 11 October 1947) was an English journalist, author and critic who was editor of the ''Church Times'', among other publications. Dark wrote more than 30 books on subjects ranging from the church to literature ...
& Rowland Grey (Methuen, 1923).
* Goldberg: ''Story of Gilbert and Sullivan'',
Isaac Goldberg Isaac Goldberg (1887 – July 14, 1938) was an American journalist, author, critic, translator, editor, publisher, and lecturer. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Boston to Jewish parents, he studied at Harvard University and received a Bachelor's degr ...
(John Murray, 1929).
* Searle: ''Lost Bab Ballads'', Townley Searle (G. P. Putnam's Sons, Ltd. 1932),.
* Ellis: ''The Bab Ballads'', James Ellis, ed. (Belknap Press, 1970).
Starting with "Mister William" Gilbert assigned numbers to most of the ballads that appeared in ''Fun''. Those numbers are shown in the second column after the source reference.
Adaptations
Some of the "Bab Ballads" have been recorded by several performers, including
Stanley Holloway
Stanley Augustus Holloway (1 October 1890 – 30 January 1982) was an English actor, comedian, singer and monologist. He was famous for his comic and character roles Stanley Holloway on stage and screen, on stage and screen, especially t ...
(1959)
Redvers Kyle
Redvers Buller Kyle (25 November 1929 – 18 November 2015) was a South African-born British broadcaster, voice over artist, actor and composer, best known for his work on the ITV network in the United Kingdom over forty years.
Biography
Redvers ...
(1963) and
Jim Broadbent
James Broadbent (born 24 May 1949) is an English actor. He won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for his supporting role as John Bayley in the feature film ''Iris'' (2001), as well as winning a BAFTA TV Award and a Golden Globe for hi ...
(1999).
["The Bab Ballads on Audiotape"]
The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive, 5 October 2011
Gilbert & Sullivan Discography, 26 October 2001, both accessed 25 August 2016 In 2016, The W. S. Gilbert Society released a 2-CD set read by various British performers, including several who performed with the
D'Oyly Carte Opera Company
The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company is a professional British light opera company that, from the 1870s until 1982, staged Gilbert and Sullivan's Savoy operas nearly year-round in the UK and sometimes toured in Europe, North America and elsewhere. Th ...
.
Four have been set to music by Ken Malucelli,
[ and two have been adapted for the stage by ]Brian Mitchell and Joseph Nixon Brian Mitchell and Joseph Nixon are a British comedy writing team. They were head sketch writers on BBC Radio 4's ''Jo Caulfield Won't Shut Up'' and BBC1's ''Live and Kicking'', and also wrote the TV comedy shows ''Slightly Filthy'' (LWT) and ''The ...
."Gilbert (No Sullivan)"
FoundryGroup.com, accessed 25 August 2016
See also
* ''
Pineapple Poll
''Pineapple Poll'' is a Gilbert and Sullivan-inspired comic ballet, created by choreographer John Cranko with arranger Sir Charles Mackerras. ''Pineapple Poll'' is based on "The Bumboat Woman's Story", one of W. S. Gilbert's Bab Ballads, writte ...
'', ballet based on "The Bumboat Woman's Story"
References
*
*
*
*
* Complete edition in one volume incorporating the original ''"Bab" Ballads'' and ''More "Bab" Ballads''.
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Notes
External links
Introduction to the ''Bab Ballads''*
{{Authority control
1868 poetry books
English poetry collections
British anthologies
Works by W. S. Gilbert