The Ne'er-do-weel

The Ne'er-do-Weel is a three-act drama written by the English dramatist W. S. Gilbert. It is the second of three plays that he wrote at the request of the actor Edward Sothern. The story concerns Jeffery Rollestone, a gentleman who becomes a vagabond after Maud, the girl he loves, leaves him. He meets Gerard, an old school chum who arranges for him to have a good post. Jeffery returns the favour by sacrificing to try to help Gerard marry Maud (Gerard needs the marriage for financial reasons), even though Jeffery and Maud still love each other.

The play opened at London's Olympic Theatre on 25 February 1878. The play was poorly received, and Gilbert withdrew it after six performances. Critics felt that the play inappropriately combined sentimental scenes with comedy. Gilbert rewrote and restaged the piece three weeks later and renamed it The Vagabond. Although these changes brought a better reception, the play was not a success and closed within a month. Soon afterwards, however, Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore opened, followed by a decade of extraordinarily successful Savoy operas.

By the time he wrote The Ne'er-do-Weel, W. S. Gilbert had produced 50 previous works for the theatre and was one of England's leading playwrights. Successes the previous year had included a comedy, Engaged, and a comic opera with composer Arthur Sullivan, The Sorcerer.

Comic actor Edward Sothern had asked Gilbert, in 1875, to write a play for him. Gilbert was unable to complete that play on time, but Sothern asked Gilbert to be ready with a play by October 1876 that would feature him in a serious role with comic scenes. Gilbert wrote the play, Dan'l Druce, Blacksmith, but when the play opened at the Haymarket Theatre in September 1876, Hermann Vezin took the title role instead of Sothern, in a cast featuring the young actor Johnston Forbes-Robertson and the 19-year-old Marion Terry, sister of the famous actress Ellen Terry.

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