''The Princess'' is a

blank verse Blank verse is poetry written with regular metrical but unrhymed lines, almost always in iambic pentameter. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the 16th century", and Pa ...

farcical Farce is a comedy that seeks to entertain an audience through situations that are highly exaggerated, extravagant, ridiculous, absurd, and improbable. Farce is also characterized by heavy use of physical humor; the use of deliberate absurdity o ...

play, in five scenes with music, 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 fam ...

which adapts and parodies

Alfred Lord Tennyson Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his ...

's humorous 1847 narrative poem, '' The Princess''. It was first produced at the

Olympic Theatre The Olympic Theatre, sometimes known as the Royal Olympic Theatre, was a 19th-century London theatre, opened in 1806 and located at the junction of Drury Lane, Wych Street and Newcastle Street. The theatre specialised in comedies throughout ...

in London on 8 January 1870. Gilbert called the piece "a whimsical allegory ... a respectful operatic per-version" of Tennyson's poem. The play was a modest success, playing for about 82 performances through April and enjoying a provincial tour.Moss, Simon
"The Princess"
at ''Gilbert & Sullivan: a selling exhibition of memorabilia'', c20th.com, accessed 16 November 2009 Gilbert liked the theme so much that he adapted the play as the libretto to ''

Princess Ida ''Princess Ida; or, Castle Adamant'' is a comic opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was their eighth operatic collaboration of fourteen. ''Princess Ida'' opened at the Savoy Theatre on 5 January 1884, for a ru ...

'' (1884), one of his

Savoy Opera 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 ...

s with Arthur Sullivan. ''The Princess'' is a satire of

women's education Female education is a catch-all term of a complex set of issues and debates surrounding education (primary education, secondary education, tertiary education, and health education in particular) for girls and women. It is frequently called girls ...

, a controversial subject in 1847, when Queen's College first opened in London, and in 1870 ( Girton opened in 1869), but less so by 1884.

Background

''The Princess'' came fairly early in Gilbert's playwriting career, after his very successful one-act

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 ...

, ''

Ages Ago ''Ages Ago'', sometimes stylised as ''Ages Ago!'' or ''Ages Ago!!'', is a musical entertainment with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music by Frederic Clay that premiered on 22 November 1869 at the Royal Gallery of Illustration. It marked the ...

'' (1869) and before ''

Our Island Home ''Our Island Home'' is a one-act musical entertainment with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music by Thomas German Reed that premiered on 20 June 1870 at the Royal Gallery of Illustration. The piece has five characters and is "biographical", i ...

'' (1870, another such piece). The play was Gilbert's first of the 1870s, a decade during which he wrote more than thirty-five plays, encompassing most genres of comedy and drama, including his series of blank verse "fairy comedies", beginning with ''

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, adapted in significant part from Madame de Genlis's fairy story, ''Le Palais de Vérite'' ...

'' later in 1870 and his first operas with Arthur Sullivan. In 1870, Gilbert was establishing his "topsy-turvy" style and proving that his capabilities extended well beyond his early burlesques and extravaganzas. ''The Princess'' is one of several Gilbert plays, including ''

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. The play is an allegory loosely based on a short illustrated st ...

'', ''

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. It wa ...

'', and the later operas, '' Iolanthe'', ''Princess Ida'', and ''

Fallen Fairies ''Fallen Fairies''; ''or, The Wicked World'', is a two-act comic opera, with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music by Edward German. The story is an operatic adaptation of Gilbert's 1873 blank-verse fairy comedy, '' The Wicked World''. In Fairy ...

'', where the introduction of males into a tranquil world of women brings "mortal love" that wreaks havoc with the status quo. Stedman calls this a "Gilbertian invasion plot". The play is a farcical burlesque of Tennyson's 1847 narrative blank-verse poem, '' The Princess''. Gilbert's play is also written in blank verse and retains Tennyson's basic serio-comic story line about a heroic princess who runs a women's college and about the prince who loves her. He and his two friends infiltrate the college disguised as female students. Gilbert returned to his play in 1883, adapting it as one of his operas with Arthur Sullivan, entitled ''

''. When Tennyson published his poem, women's higher education was a novel, even radical concept. When Gilbert wrote ''The Princess'' in 1870, women's higher education was still an innovative idea.Mack, Beverly B. and Heidi A. Strobel
"Scholars and Scholarship"
''Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History'', edited by Bonnie G. Smith, Oxford University Press, 2008, accessed 1 September 2009.

Girton College Girton College is one of the Colleges of the University of Cambridge, 31 constituent colleges of the University of Cambridge. The college was established in 1869 by Emily Davies and Barbara Bodichon as the first women's college in Cambridge. In 1 ...

, the first university-level women's college in Britain, had been established at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...

in 1869. However, by the time Gilbert and Sullivan collaborated on ''Princess Ida'' in 1883, a women's college was a well-established concept.

Westfield College Westfield College was a small college situated in Hampstead, London, from 1882 to 1989. It was the first college to aim to educate women for University of London degrees from its opening. The college originally admitted only women as students and ...

, London's first women's college, had opened in 1882 and is cited as a model for Castle Adamant, the women's college in ''Princess Ida''. The lyrics to the songs in ''The Princess'' were set to popular tunes from popular operetta and

grand opera Grand opera is a genre of 19th-century opera generally in four or five acts, characterized by large-scale casts and orchestras, and (in their original productions) lavish and spectacular design and stage effects, normally with plots based on o ...

of the time, including works by

Hervé Hervé is a French language, French masculine given name of Breton language, Breton origin, from the name of the 6th-century Breton Saint Hervé. The common latinization of the name is Herveus (also ''Haerveus''), an early (8th-century) latinizati ...

and

Jacques Offenbach Jacques Offenbach (, also , , ; 20 June 18195 October 1880) was a German-born French composer, cellist and impresario of the Romantic period. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s to the 1870s, and his uncompleted opera ' ...

. The three young men are played by women, so that, during a large part of the play, women are playing men disguised as women. Gilbert had been eager to try a "blank verse burlesque in which a picturesque story should be told in a strain of mock-heroic seriousness." The satire in the piece is of a higher intellectual order than the pun-filled burlesques playing in London at the time, and the publicity for the play touted this.Stedman, p. 77, ''quoting'' Gilbert, W. S. "An Autobiography" in ''Theatre'', NS 1 (Apr. 1883), p. 220. The dialogue in ''Princess Ida'' is little changed from that in ''The Princess''.

Roles and original cast

*King Hildebrand – David Fisher *Prince Hilarion, his Son – Maria Simpson (Mrs. W. H. Liston) *Cyril and Florian, his friends, Noblemen of King Hildebrand's Court – Augusta Thompson and Miss Montgomery *King Gama – Mr. Elliot *Prince Arac, Prince Guron, and Prince Scynthius, his Sons – Jessie Earle, Miss Harrington and Miss Ewell *Atho, King Hildebrand's Chamberlain – Mr. Franks *First Officer and Second Officer – Arthur Brown and Mr. Davis *Gobbo a Porter – Mr. St. Maur *Princess Ida, Daughter of King Gama and Principal of the Ladies' University – Mattie Reinhardt *Lady Psyche, Professor of Experimental Science – Fanny Addison *Lady Blanche, Professor of Abstract Philosophy – Mrs. Poynter *Melissa, her Daughter – Patti Josephs *Bertha, Ada, Chloe, Sacharissa, Sylvia, Phoebe, Amarinthe, and Laura – Misses Joy, Clyfoard, Moore, Alma,

Everard Everard is a given name and surname which is the anglicised version of the old Germanic name Eberhard. Notable people with the name include: People First name *Everard Aloysius Lisle Phillipps (1835–1857), English East India officer awarded the V ...

, Fitzjames, Corinne, Graham and Clara *Lady Undergraduates

Scenes and story

The play is divided into five scenes: *Scene First – Court in King Hildebrand's Palace. *Scene Second – The Gates of Castle Adamant. *Scene Third – Grounds of Castle Adamant. *Scene Fourth – Hildebrand's Camp before Ida's Castle. *Scene Fifth – Inner Gate of Castle Adamant. The plot is essentially the same as the later opera: Ida's misshapen father, King Gama, and his three hulking sons (played as

breeches role A breeches role (also pants role or trouser role, or Hosenrolle) is one in which an actress appears in male clothing. Breeches, tight-fitting knee-length pants, were the standard male garment at the time these roles were introduced. The theatric ...

s in ''The Princess'') arrive at the court of King Hildebrand. They bring news that the beautiful Princess Ida, to whom Hildebrand's son, Prince Hilarion, was betrothed in infancy, will not honour her marriage vows. She rules a women's university and excludes all men from entering. Hilarion and two companions (also played by women) disguise themselves as female students and sneak inside the walls, but they are soon discovered, eventually causing chaos and panic, during which the prince has occasion to save Ida's life. Hildebrand agrees to give Ida a chance: The outcome of a tournament pitting her three brothers against Hilarion and his two friends will decide whether she must marry the Prince. In the battle, the Prince and his friends wound Ida's brothers, after which she accepts the Prince as her husband, admitting that she loves him (in Tennyson's poem, the Prince is defeated, but Ida, nursing him to health, comes to love him).

Notes

References

External links

Introduction to the play and links to the libretto

Script of ''The Princess''"Tennyson's ''The Princess''"
annotated by Alexander Scutt, with a prologue and materials about the Gilbert connections (2013)

{{DEFAULTSORT:Princess, The Works by W. S. Gilbert 1870 plays Adaptations of works by Alfred, Lord Tennyson