Randall's Thumb

Randall's Thumb is a play by W. S. Gilbert that premièred in 1871 at the opening of Marie Litton's Royal Court Theatre in London. Its plot, based on a short story that Gilbert had published the year before, relates how the forger Randall blackmails the innocent Buckthorpe for a crime he did not commit, hence putting him "under Randall's thumb". In the play, several characters pretend to be different from their real selves, a theme to be repeated in later works by Gilbert. The play received mixed reviews (ranging from "brilliant" to "a very dreadful mistake") but lasted for a successful 123 performances in its original London run.

Gilbert had already written a considerable body of stories, plays, poems, criticism and other works by the time he wrote Randall's Thumb. Its success led to an American production and to more Gilbert plays produced at the Royal Court Theatre. He would go on to write more successful plays and, between 1871 and 1896, the libretti to the popular series of Gilbert and Sullivan operas.

From the mid-1860s through the early 1870s, W. S. Gilbert was extremely productive, writing a large quantity of comic verse, theatre reviews and other journalistic pieces, short stories, and dozens of plays and comic operas. In 1871, he produced seven plays and operas. Gilbert's dramatic writing during this time was evolving from his early musical burlesques to a more restrained style, as exemplified in his string of blank-verse fairy comedies. The first of these was The Palace of Truth, which opened in 1870 to widespread acclaim. He was also developing his unique style of absurdist humour, described as "Topsy-Turvy", made up of "a combination of wit, irony, topsyturvydom, parody, observation, theatrical technique, and profound intelligence".Randall's Thumb dates from the middle of this period, when Gilbert was trying different styles and working towards the mature style of his later work, including the extraordinarily successful series of Gilbert and Sullivan operas.

Marie Litton took over the proprietorship of the New Chelsea Theatre in 1871 and renamed it the Royal Court. Its opening attraction was the première of Randall's Thumb on 25 January 1871. Gilbert wrote and rehearsed the play at the same time as another work, A Sensation Novel, which he opened only three days after Randall's Thumb at the Gallery of Illustration. In Randall's Thumb, several characters play roles that differ from reality: newlyweds pretend to be long married, and an old married couple pretend to be newlyweds. The contrast between appearance and reality is a theme to which Gilbert returned many times in his later work. Another favourite Gilbert theme in this piece is the idea that gentlemanly behaviour triumphs "through the love of a virtuous woman".

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