WS Gilbert A Mid-Victorian Aristophanes - Haddon Hall

34 THE ENGLISH ARISTOPHANES
Gilbert’s “philosophy” is to make the best of what comes — plain and direct like all
thoughts, however fanciful the arabesques that decorate them. As he puts it in Ruddigore,
which, taken all for all, is perhaps the most brilliant of his extravaganzas, not excepting
lolanthe or The Mikado, Every season has its cheer, Life is lovely all the year.
Or, as he varies the theme in The Gondoliers:
Try we lifelong, we can never Straighten out life’s tangled skein:
Why should we in vain endeavor, Guess and guess and guess again?
Life’s a pudding full of plums, Care’s a canker that benumbs,
Wherefore waste our elocution On impossible solution?
Life's a pleasant institution, Let us take it as it comes.
Set aside the dull enigma, We shall guess it all too soon;
Failure brings no kind of stigma — Dance we to another tune!
String the lyre and fill the cup, Lest on sorrow we should sup.
Hop and skip to Fancy’s fiddle, Hands across and down the middle;
Life’s perhaps the only riddle That we shrink from giving up!
“I take things as I find them, and I make the best of them — that's true philosophy”,
says “Clarice” in suspense to “Pauline” at the opening of Comedy and Tragedy. But there
are deeper notes than these, and one of them — struck by “Fairfax” in the Yeomen — sounds
with solemnity now that Gilbert has himself made his exit. It renders his own voice:
Why, sir, it is no light boon to die swiftly and surely at a given hour and in a given
fashion! Truth to tell, I would gladly have my life; but if that may not be, I have the next
best thing to it, which is death. Believe me, sir, my lot is not so much amiss.
This is serious; but Gilbert’s gaiety is irrepressible and irresistible, breaking through
every suggestion of gloom or despair. Some of his lyrics have an irresponsible flow of
rarefied nonsense, quite unique, and quite apart from their extreme ingenuity of structure.
They elude classification, yet a few instances will show that there is a real relationship
between these poems of wandering paradox. From Ruddigore:
Oh, happy the blossom That blooms on the lea,
Likewise the opossum That sits on a tree.
But when you come across ’em, They cannot compare
With those who are treading The dance at a wedding,
While people are spreading The best of good fare.
Oh, wretched the debtor Who’s signing the deed!
And wretched the letter That no one can read!
But very much better Their lot it must be
Than that of the person I’m making this verse on,
Whose head there’s a curse on— Alluding to me!