Here is the biography of William Schwenck Gilbert:
William Schwenck Gilbert was born in London on November 18, 1836, to William Gilbert, a retired naval surgeon, and his wife Anne. He was the eldest of four children, and his parents were cold and distant, with prickly characters. Gilbert's parents were strained, and they separated in 1876. Gilbert cared more for his father than his mother, but his biographers are mute on his feelings towards his father's death or his relationships with his parents.
Gilbert spent his formative years touring Europe with his parents before they returned to London in 1847. He was sent to the Great Ealing School and completed his education at King's College, London. He did not go on to Oxford as he was determined to join the Army to fight in Crimea. He failed to obtain a commission, and turned his attention towards making a career as a government clerk and barrister in the years 1857-66.
Gilbert's interest in the theater seems to have come to him at an early age. He began making submissions of prose, verse, and drawings to the comic magazine "Fun" around 1861, and wrote "The Bab Ballads" for the magazine. He turned to playwriting and his first legitimate production, "Uncle Baby," debuted at London's Royal Lyceum Theatre in October 1863. The play ran seven weeks, but he was not produced again until 1866, when his pantomime "Hush-a-Bye Baby" and his burlesque "Dulcamara" were produced in December.
Gilbert married Lucy Agnes Turner on August 6, 1867. Little is known of her, although most biographers speculated that her personality was soothing and conciliatory, a fitting counterpoint to Gilbert's own abrasive and confrontational personality. She likely dominated her household, and Gilbert even may have been afraid of her anger lest he trespass her in her domestic fiefdom.
Gilbert's last burlesque, "The Pretty Druidess," debuted on June 19, 1869. He had already begun writing for the Gallery of Illustration, a small, sophisticated theater that produced his "No Cards" on March 29th, earlier that year. Freed from the interference of stage-managers of the more vulgar, commercial theater, Gilbert was able to develop his personal style while writing for the Gallery. The Gallery presented six Gilbert musicals in which his unique tone of voice began to emerge.
Adopting a more restrained style, he produced "fairy comedies" in blank verse for the Haymarket Theatre. He became a theatrical director in this period and began directing his own plays so as to exert artistic control over them and fully realize their potential. In 1867, he directed the Liverpool production of "La Vivandiere" and the London production of "Thespis" in 1871, a year that saw six other Gilbert productions on the boards.
Gilbert's reputation was waxing, and he was positioning himself as one of the major forces on the English stage. He collaborated with Gilberta Beckett on the political satire "The Happy Land" in 1873. The play, which lampooned prime minister Gladstone and two of his ministers, was banned briefly. This was the beginning of Gilbert pushing the parameters of what could be presented on the English stage.
Up until Gilbert decided to publish his oeuvre, plays were published very cheaply, as pamphlets for the use of actors rather than readers. Gilbert wanted his plays published as real books, proofread and attractive so they could find a place in the home libraries of gentlemen. The first volume of Gilbert's plays was published in 1875 by the respectable house Chatto and Windus in an attractively-bound, well-printed volume that eliminated stage jargon intended for actors.
After the success of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Trial by Jury," Richard D'Oyly Carte became the duo's producer. The third Gilbert and Sullivan collaboration, "The Sorcerer," was presented in 1877, as was his masterpiece "Engaged," a cynical and ironic work that was very funny. Critics attacked the play as debasing the human spirit. However, critics and audiences eventually would accept Gilbert's cynicism when he wrote in tandem with Sullivan due to the ameliorating effect of the latter's music.
Gilbert continued to write plays without the participation of Sullivan, but they were not successes. His serious drama "The Ne'er-Do-Weel" (1878) flopped after opening to awful reviews, and the rewritten version, "The Vagabond," also proved a flop. Gilbert's blank-verse tragedy "Gretchen" (1879) lasted but three weeks on the boards, as did his farce "Foggerty's Fairy" (1881). The 1881, Gilbert and Sullivan's satire on Oscar Wilde and his circle, "Patience" was a
