Word: gilbertian
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...easier to write than prose. On the other hand, Gilbert was a master of his own peculiar medium, and between the gaps there is some pretty good stuff and not a little absolutely splendid stuff. His exposition of his own personal form of social Darwinism, for instance, is typically Gilbertian, which is one of the finest possible ways for a song lyric...
...like cold water from the mouth of a fountain gargoyle-flows a stream of cold wisdom. Anouilh uses the coarse, truthful exaggerations of caricature deliberately to offset the genteel evasions of life painted in watercolor. The general's foundling son may just be the latest in a long Gilbertian line; but the Jostling father, the middle-aged satyr with his subaltern dreams, who finds it harder to grow older because he has never really grown up, is part of a sharper comic vision. The figure of the general suggests that there would be much less war between...
...Gilbertian terms, the object of the Winthrop House Music Society is sublime. And this year the production matches the goal; for with their performance of Patience, the Winthrop group has overcome with case the difficulties of piano accompaniment and crowded common room. It has collected the voices and the actors, often lacking in the past, to preserve the luster of Gilbert's lyrics and the sprightliness of Sullivan's music...
...plot has an immense sallowness, exceeded only by the banality of much of the dialogue. And yet authors Sidney Gilliat and Leslie Bailey rise sometimes to Gilbertian heights of whimsy. ("My dear," coss Gilbert to his wife, "how does it feel to be married to a transcendent genius?") Beginning with their Trial By Jury success and ending with Gilbert's elevation to knighthood after Sullivan's death, the film neatly skirts the high points of the duo's joint career. Instead, it brings to bear the full force of superficial analysis on the dissension that had them taking bows from...
Gilbert lived on for eleven years, and all the wit that had once gone to paper ran to tongue. An actor who gave a dreadful performance was greeted with the Gilbertian accolade: "My dear fellow! Good isn't the word!" When the suffragettes chained themselves to the railings in Downing Street and cried "Votes for women!", Gilbert threatened to chain himself to the Maternity Hospital and cry "Babes...