Gretchen is a tragic four-act play, in blank verse

Blank verse

Blank verse is poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the sixteenth century" and Paul Fussell has claimed that "about three-quarters of all English poetry is in blank verse."The first...

, written by W. S. Gilbert

W. S. Gilbert

Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S...

 in 1878–79 based on Goethe's version of part of the Faust

Faust

Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend; a highly successful scholar, but also dissatisfied with his life, and so makes a deal with the devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Faust's tale is the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical...

 legend.

The play was first performed at the Olympic Theatre

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 much of its existence...

 on 24 March 1879. The piece starred Marion Terry

Marion Terry

Marion Bessie Terry was an English actress. In a career spanning half a century, she played leading roles in more than 125 plays. Always in the shadow of her more famous sister Ellen, Terry nevertheless achieved considerable success in the plays of W. S...

 in the title role, H. B. Conway as Faustus and Frank Archer as Mephisto. The play was not a success and closed after about 18 performances on 12 April 1879.

Background

Gilbert and Sullivan

Gilbert and Sullivan

Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...

 produced their hit comic opera

Comic opera

Comic opera denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria...

 H.M.S. Pinafore

H.M.S. Pinafore

H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It opened at the Opera Comique in London, England, on 25 May 1878 and ran for 571 performances, which was the second-longest run of any musical...

in May 1878, and Gilbert turned to Gretchen as his next project. Gilbert was by then one of the most famous playwrights in England, but he was known more for comedies than dramas, and so Gretchen was anticipated with much curiosity. Although Gilbert had met with some success in earlier dramas, his last such piece, The Ne'er-do-Weel

The Ne'er-do-Weel

The Ne'er-do-Weel is a three-act drama written by the English dramatist W. S. Gilbert. It is the second of three plays that he wrote at the request of the actor Edward Sothern. The story concerns Jeffery Rollestone, a gentleman who becomes a vagabond after Maud, the girl he loves, leaves him. He...

(also at the Olympic), had met with a difficult reception in 1878.

Gilbert was inspired to write Gretchen after seeing a picture called "Regrets", showing two priests, one of whom looks wistfully at a pair of lovers. He began to study Goethe's Faust in April 1878 and was ready to show his plot outline to Henry Neville

Henry Gartside Neville

Thomas Henry Gartside Neville was an English actor, dramatist, teacher and theatre manager. He began his career playing dashing juvenile leads, later specialising in Shakespearean roles, modern comedy and melodrama. His most famous role was as Bob Brierley in Tom Taylor's The Ticket-of-Leave Man...

, manager of the Olympic Theatre

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 much of its existence...

, in June 1878. Gilbert worked for a total of ten months on the play. He finished writing the play in December 1878 but did not agree with Neville on many production details, including which set and costume designers to use and some of the casting decisions. The cover of the theatre programme carried a lengthy note by Gilbert earnestly explaining that he was not attempting to put Faust on stage in its entirety, but simply to "re-model... the story of Gretchen's downfall". Gilbert's version of the story differs from most Faust tellings in that Faust makes no agreement with the Devil. The Devil shows him a vision of Gretchen, and Gretchen sees Faust in a dream before she meets him. The Devil, in Gilbert's version, becomes a mere anticlerical raisonneur.

Gretchen lasted only three weeks, although it was given in America in 1886, with May Fortescue

May Fortescue

May Fortescue was a singer and actor-manager of the Victorian era and a protégée of playwright W. S. Gilbert. She was a member of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company from 1881 to 1883, when she left the company due to an engagement to a nobleman, young Arthur William Cairns, Lord Garmoyle...

 in the title role. After the failure of Gretchen, Gilbert concentrated on the highly profitable Savoy Opera

Savoy opera

The Savoy Operas denote 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 impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte built to house...

s, writing only a few more plays during the rest of his life.

Reception

Gilbert wrote, in an introductory "Notice" to the printed version, that the play "was received with exceptional favour by a crowded house", and that the theatre manager had not given the play a chance by closing it so soon, when it had premiered during Lent

Lent

In the Christian tradition, Lent is the period of the liturgical year from Ash Wednesday to Easter. The traditional purpose of Lent is the preparation of the believer – through prayer, repentance, almsgiving and self-denial – for the annual commemoration during Holy Week of the Death and...

. The box-office receipts fell off sharply after an enthusiastic opening. He later told an interviewer: "I consider the two best plays I ever wrote were Broken Hearts

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...

and a version of the Faust legend called Gretchen. I took immense pains over my Gretchen, but it only ran a fortnight. I wrote it to please myself, and not the public." He also later remarked, "I called it Gretchen, the public called it rot." The Sunday Times praised Gilbert's "scathing" satire and "powerful" versification, but other reviews were mixed. The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

gave the play a long and respectful notice, The Observer

The Observer

The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...

praised the play but was lukewarm about most of the acting, and The Manchester Guardian called Gretchen "Little better than a travesty.... Some admirably written blank verse is the only merit which the play possesses." Reviewing the play's 1886 American production, The New York Times did not judge it to be among Gilbert's best, although the paper did find the treatment of the Faust story interesting, with many novel touches.

Synopsis

Faustus is a monk who had once been a soldier. He had fallen in love with a woman who left him for a wealthier man. Faustus joins the Church to escape from women and the world. Soon, he realises that his life in monastic isolation is a hollow sham, and he desires to live in the real world, though he is still completely disillusioned with it. Mephisto, the Devil, shows him a vision of a truly pure woman – Gretchen. Faustus returns to the world to seek her. Gretchen dreams of Faustus, and her cousin Gottfried, who wishes to marry her, entrusts her to the care of Faustus when he marches to war. When Faustus and Gretchen meet, they are irresistibly drawn to each other.

Faustus knows that taking her as his lover would corrupt her perfect purity, but his love for her is too strong, and they end up in each other's arms. Three months later she is pregnant, and he confesses that he cannot marry her, as he has taken the monastic vow. Horrified, she tells him to leave her and return to the Church. Gottfried returns from battle and proposes marriage to her but is rejected. When he realizes why, he threatens to kill his betrayer, Faustus. Gretchen falls grievously ill because of her sin. Faustus, anguished with guilt at what he has done, reverts to the monk's habit and cries: "Send me my death, oh Heaven – send me my death!" Gottfried bursts in to kill Faustus, but they reconcile at Gretchen's deathbed. As she dies, Gretchen forgives Faustus, advising him to devote the rest of his life to "faith, and truth, and works of charity".

Roles

• Dominic – J. A. Rosier
• Anselm – Mr. Vollaire
• Faustus – H. B. Conway
• Gottfried, a soldier – John Billington
• Mephisto – Frank Archer
• Agatha – Miss Thornton
• Bessie – Miss Lonsdale
• Barbara – Miss Folkard
• Lisa, Gretchen's friend – Mrs. Bernard-Beere
• Gretchen – Marion Terry
  Marion Terry
  Marion Bessie Terry was an English actress. In a career spanning half a century, she played leading roles in more than 125 plays. Always in the shadow of her more famous sister Ellen, Terry nevertheless achieved considerable success in the plays of W. S...
  
  
• Martha – Maggie Brennan
• Frederic – Mr. Allbrook

Analysis

Gretchen echoes several other Gilbert plays, particularly in the character of Faustus: The title character of Dan'l Druce, Blacksmith

Dan'l Druce, Blacksmith

Dan'l Druce, Blacksmith is a play by W. S. Gilbert, styled "A Three-Act Drama of Puritan times". It opened at the Haymarket Theatre in London on 11 September 1876, starring Hermann Vezin, Johnston Forbes-Robertson and Marion Terry. The play was a success, running for about 100 performances and...

(1876) becomes a misanthropic miser, and Jeffrey Rollestone, the hero of The Ne'er-Do-Weel (1878), becomes a wandering tramp. Mousta in Broken Hearts

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...

(1875) is a hunchback rejected by a woman, and in The Yeomen of the Guard

The Yeomen of the Guard

The Yeomen of the Guard; or, The Merryman and His Maid, is a Savoy Opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 3 October 1888, and ran for 423 performances...

, Jack Point is destroyed by losing his love. A disappointment in love leads them to retreat from the world, to become misanthropes and outcasts. Faustus is a sympathetic, but deeply flawed character. Through him, Gilbert attempts to blur the moral absolutes of Victorian drama, just as he does in his comic plays.

Faustus has turned his back on the world which hurt him so deeply, but he is no happier in isolation in the monastery, as he cannot hew to the moral absolutes of the Church. He hopes to be purified by loving the pure Gretchen, but instead his influence corrupts and eventually kills her. He pleads for death, but Gretchen's dying words of advice are that he should not escape from guilt with "coward death", but instead atone through "faith, and truth, and works of charity". But Faustus has no correct course, unable to find peace by following the Church or living in the real world. There is no reason to believe that Faustus will be able to do hold to his promise of faith, truth and charity.

Gilbert scholar Andrew Crowther commented that Faustus is part of a recurring theme of "the unresolvable paradox of the outsider who seeks acceptance, the misanthrope who wants to be loved", and represents an aspect of Gilbert himself. Crowther wrote: "Faustus calls himself a cynic, as the critics often called Gilbert, but retains his belief in female purity – a sentimental aspect of Gilbert which is demonstrated clearly enough in [Broken Hearts and Gretchen]. Also, just as Gilbert satirised the Establishment of which he became at length a part, so Faustus scorns worldly things and at the same time desires them".

External links

• Full text of Gretchen at the Internet Archive
• Gretchen at the Gilbert and Sullivan Archive