Word: turvydom
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Topsy-Turvydom...
Sullivan, for all the delirious ridiculousness inherent in his music, had long been chafing at Gilbert's contagiously ridiculous topsy-turvydom. He had long cherished the ambition to do something more dignified, more pretentious, more "worthy" of his musical ability. Already he had demanded that Gilbert write something more substantial "without the supernatural and improbable;" Gilbert had bridled, rued, agreed to. capitulate, then blithely written?The Mikado! Superbly Sullivan matched improbable for improbable, comic for comic, and suspected miserably that he was belittling...
...absurd, in government, in the Law, in personalities. He was never tired of mocking the foibles of the England he loved. But in this book he is represented as a sentimentalist gone wrong. He himself was fonder of his serious comedies than of his triumphant excursions into topsy-turvydom. He was never fully aware of the peculiar quality of his own genius. Up to the end, he rebelled against the critics who, he felt, were forcing him to don the cap and bells, which became him so well...
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