Brantinghame Hall

Brantinghame Hall is a play in four acts written by W. S. Gilbert for his friend Rutland Barrington, who was then leasing the St. James's Theatre. The play opened on 29 November 1888 and closed on 29 December, after about 27 performances. It starred Barrington, his younger brother, Duncan Fleet, Lewis Waller, and Julia Neilson (being the professional stage debut of the latter two). Its companion piece was A Patron Saint.

Brantinghame Hall was the worst financial failure of Gilbert's career and sent Barrington into bankruptcy. Gilbert vowed never to write another serious drama again, although eventually he did. Historian Jane Stedman speculates that the failure of this play (produced soon after The Yeomen of the Guard, which increased Arthur Sullivan's desire to turn to more serious operas), and Gilbert's subsequent aversion at this time to writing serious drama, may have hurt Gilbert's partnership with Sullivan, since Gilbert declined to write any more serious librettos for Sullivan. However, this conclusion is dubious, since Gilbert and Sullivan soon collaborated on the comic and lively (and very successful) The Gondoliers (1889). Moreover, though Gilbert declined to write the libretto to Sullivan's grand opera, Ivanhoe (1891), it was he who recommended Julian Sturgis, who wrote the libretto for Sullivan.

Many of the characters in the play are reminiscent of those in Gilbert's Savoy Operas, including Somers/Boatswain; Ross/Dr. Daly; Ruth/Patience and Elsie; Alaric/Giuseppe; Mabel/Aline; and Thursby/Ludwig. Also, as in some of his earlier plays, including Charity, Gilbert touches on the theme of how a shamed woman is truly the noblest in society. The character Ruth notes, regarding the scoundrel, Crampton, "your heart was slow to turn; your eyes were closed. To open them it needed that a woman should clothe herself with shame. That has been done; and now, you see!" And she is told by Mr. Thursby, "the sooner a ship-load of you is shot into London society the better!" (Act IV)

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