The Fairy's Dilemma

Harlequin and the Fairy's Dilemma, retitled The Fairy's Dilemma shortly after the play opened, is a play in two acts by W. S. Gilbert that parodies the harlequinade that concluded 19th-century pantomimes.

It was produced at the Garrick Theatre by Arthur Bourchier, lessee of the theatre, on 3 May 1904 and ran for 90 performances, closing on 22 July 1904. The work was Gilbert's last full-length play.

The Fairy's Dilemma, "an original domestic pantomime in two acts", was W. S. Gilbert's first play produced since The Fortune Hunter in 1897. He had announced a retirement from the theatre after the poor reception of that play. In 1900, he wrote a story called "The Fairy's Dilemma", published in the Christmas number of The Graphic magazine that year. In 1904, he emerged from his seven-year "retirement" to adapt the story into a play, which he directed himself, as he usually did with his plays.The Fairy's Dilemma was Gilbert's only play premiered at the Garrick Theatre, which he had built in 1889.Incidental music for the piece was arranged by Edmond Rickett, consisting of popular songs of the 1860s and 1870s, such as "Champagne Charlie".The Fairy's Dilemma was Gilbert's last full-length non-musical play.

Arthur Bourchier had leased the Garrick in 1900, and he and his wife Violet Vanbrugh starred in numerous plays there over the next six years often producing new works, including The Fairy's Dilemma. The piece garnered enthusiastic opening-night reviews in London on 3 May 1904. According to The New York Times, the play "met with distinct success. It is brilliantly nonsensical".The Telegraph called it "a new sensation".The Manchester Guardian wrote, "The piece kept the whole house laughing almost without intermission during the two short hours of its duration.... It restores Mr. Gilbert to the stage in his most irresistibly whimsical vein, and deserves to rank among the brightest and most exhilarating of his productions."The Observer noted its "immense superiority", "fresh dramatic wit" and the audience's "sensation of delight not less keen than rare", while opining that "age cannot wither" Gilbert's "finish and precision... his mordant wit" and his "brilliant fun".Max Beerbohm, writing in The Saturday Review, however, criticised the show for being more appropriate to the 1870s.

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