Adrienne Munich
In its details, intelligence, breadth of scholarship, and original archival research, this book offers treasures and a beautifully written, sometimes exhilarating read. A brilliant, unique contribution to Victorian studies that will prove to be a benchmark.
— Adrienne Munich, Stony Brook University
Terry Castle
It takes superb critical tact and intelligence—not to mention a finely-developed affection for the ludicrous—to write well about the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan. How, indeed, to capture their classic mixture—the satiric fizz and musical japes, sublimely silly plots and galumphing stage turns, the gorgeous lyrical flights—without destroying everything that is funny, significant, and ravishing? Yet in Gilbert and Sullivan, Carolyn Williams has done exactly that: given us a scholarly study as full of dazzle, wit, generosity, and surpassing intelligence as the Savoy operas themselves. Yes, one appreciates at once the graceful, marvelously informed discussions of individual works, but this book is always opening out into something larger and more magisterial too. In the complex and absorbing way Williams has mobilized a spectacular panoply of themes—the history of nineteenth-century comic theater, Victorian feminism and sexual mores, the nature of parody and burlesque, the dramatic use of choruses, political satire, Wagnerism in England, the Aesthetic movement-she astounds and delights. Pour, oh pour, the pirate sherry: this is joyful, joyous, life-enhancing scholarship.
— Terry Castle, Stanford University, author of The Professor and Other Writings
Robyn Warhol-Down
Carolyn Williams highlights what ought to have been obvious all along about Gilbert and Sullivan's portrayal of gender: they're just kidding. Williams gives these wonderful works the reading they deserve.
— Robyn Warhol-Down, Ohio State University
