No Cards

No Cards is a "musical piece in one act" for four characters, written by W. S. Gilbert, with music composed and arranged by Thomas German Reed. It was first produced at the Royal Gallery of Illustration, Lower Regent Street, London, under the management of German Reed, opening on 29 March 1869 and closing on 21 November 1869. The work is a domestic farce of mistaken identities and inept disguises, as two men desperately compete to marry a wealthy young lady. One is young and poor, and the other is a rich miser. Each disguises himself as her guardian.

No Cards was the first of Gilbert's six pieces for the Gallery of Illustration. It was also Gilbert's first libretto with prose dialogue and the first stage work for which he wrote lyrics to be set to music, rather than lyrics to pre-existing music. No Cards was played on a double bill with Arthur Sullivan and F. C. Burnand's Cox and Box, although Gilbert and Sullivan did not meet until later that year. After a successful 139 performances, the bill toured the British provinces. Gilbert liked German Reed's setting of the Babbetyboobledore song enough to reuse it later in 1879 in his next show, The Pretty Druidess.

Music publisher Joseph Williams & Co. reissued "No Cards" in 1895 with a score by "Lionel Elliott", which appears to be a pseudonym. A production mounted at St. George's Hall in London in 1873 appears to have been the first to use this "Elliott" score, and a revival took place at St. George's Hall in 1902. The Royal Victorian Opera Company of Boston, Massachusetts made a video of the piece in 1996 using the Elliott score. The first British revival in over a century is being produced by the Centenary Company at the Greenwich Theatre from 18 to 21 November 2009 (as a curtain raiser to The Pirates of Penzance) using Elliott's score retrieved from the British Library.

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