Opposite
Ends of the Spectrum: Shaw and Sullivan
By Jeff S. Dailey
George Bernard Shaw and Arthur Sullivan were both born
into lower-middle class households and both attained considerable influence in
the field of music, Sullivan as a composer and Shaw as a critic. As they matured, their lives went in
different directions. Sullivan became a
member of the upper class, while Shaw became a revolutionary, seeking to
restructure the level of society that Sullivan now inhabited.
How did this affect Shaw’s
criticism? Shaw was unlike any other
music or theatre critic of his time. Far
wittier and more insightful than his colleagues, he wrote entertaining
critiques that often betray his social concerns and his own artistic
frustrations. He also used his position
as a critic to belittle those writers he thought had an unfair advantage over
him, so that one must read his critiques critically.
Although Sullivan wrote many different
types of music, during the period when Shaw was a critic, most of his compositions
were dramatic in nature, so even when Shaw was a music critic, his reviews of
Sullivan’s music are, in reality, theatre critiques. At this point in his life, Sullivan was
wealthy and moved in social circles that included the royalty of several countries,
as well as leaders of the British government.
The presence of these people in the audience sometimes affected what
Shaw wrote, as did his health and his own personal relationships.
My paper begins by examining Shaw’s
qualifications as a music and theatre critic.
Much of his criticism predates his earliest theatrical successes, so it
is informative to see a developing aesthetic in his reviews. Next, I compare Shaw’s theatrical and
critical career with that of Sullivan’s, and, to a lesser extent, Gilbert’s. Then I examine what Shaw wrote about
Sullivan’s stage works (not all of which were written in collaboration with
Gilbert), and check the reviews for contradictions and political influences. Lastly, I show how Shaw left some
quasi-hidden references to Sullivan in his own works and examine how Shaw’s
critiques of Sullivan have affected the composer’s subsequent reputation and
his acceptance among audiences even today.
Because Shaw’s music and theatre
criticism has been anthologized and reprinted over the past century, his
comments on the arts of the Victorian age have become, in many cases, the main
surviving records of that period.
Inasmuch as Shaw was often a biased reviewer, his comments have significantly
affected many subsequent writers on Victorian arts. A critical review of Shaw’s criticism is well
overdue, and my presentation, by focusing on the works of Victorian England’s
most prominent composer, will reveal patterns in Shaw’s critiques that are
often not based on the artistic merits of the works being reviewed, but on the
social status of their creators and audiences.